Chapter 231 - Moving Forward (12)

The Mages and Knights looked at each cell they had opened silently. The scene they saw inside was pretty common for them but still not a regular thing they would be able to see everyday.

Of course, for the civilians, the story was hugely different. Taking a glimpse of someone's opened abdomen and their viscera littering the ground was enough to scar their psyche, let alone spending a couple of minutes staring at the gruesome scene.

The Knights and Mages could see the haunted look on their face, and Iliana understood well what had made them look so haunted—the impersonating Demon.

"Let's get them out first. We will check what has happened afterwards," Iliana instructed.

The others nodded wordlessly, and immediately took the civilians out from the twelve cells. The civilians were kept in their group after coming out, and the cells were immediately closed to prevent the pungent smell of blood from wafting out of the cells.

The civilians sat on the ground, looking at everyone around them in horror with a pale face. They looked like someone who was intoxicated with drugs and thought that the world was their enemy.

Iliana walked towards the palest looking person, who had been in the first cell, and knelt on the ground when she was right in front of him. Grabbing the civilian's head to make him look at her, Iliana stared at him questioningly.

"Tell me what happened."

The civilian was unresponsive at first, but the moment he registered what Iliana had just said, his eyes quickly widened as his pupils shrunk, indicating how terrified he was with the memory he was recalling.

"T-There was a black—shadow—no... It was a ghost—a Demon! It was amongst us. It was pretending to be us!" The way the civilian talked was pretty similar to a child who was explaining his wrongdoing—randomly unclear.

Since Iliana knew, though not accurately, what had happened however, she wasn't mad at the civilian. "Calm down. I believe what you said, so tell me who the person you doubt as the Monster is?"

"He is the Demon. He is now just pretending to be human, so he can keep preying on us!" The man pointed his trembling hand at the person sitting beside him while staring at said person in horror.

Iliana turned her eyes to the accused person, but said person was as absent-minded as the middle-aged man who had accused him had been. The frail looking elderly man was staring blankly at the ceiling as if not believing what had happened to him.

"You are accused of being a Demon by your roommate. Do you have anything to say to defend yourself?"

"Me? A Demon?" The frail looking elderly male slowly turned his head at Iliana. "He must have mistaken me with the person beside me. I saw him—he turned into a Demon the moment the door was closed!"

Iliana sighed in exasperation and tried her best to not roll her eyes at how annoying the situation had become, before looking at the person whom the frail looking elderly man had pointed his hand to.

The person was a gloomy young woman, whose entire existence screamed 'I am suspicious,' and Iliana wouldn't even mind saying the young woman was the Demon just by her look alone.

"This old fart here told me that you are a Demon. Can you convince me the otherwise?"

"I will not defend myself. I know that I am not, and I prefer dying as a human rather than living amongst Demons." The young woman's gaze turned fierce as she looked at Iliana. "What about you? Can you prove that you are a human?"

Iliana clicked her tongue and immediately moved to the last surviving civilian of the first cell. Unlike the others, who were preoccupied with their thought, the woman was hugging her knees while silently crying.

"Are you a Demon?" At this point, Iliana was sceptical enough about whether the woman could provide her an answer. "If so, tell me how you ate the poor man in your cell."

"I am not the one," the woman whispered inaudibly.

Iliana heard it, but she decided to be petty due to her annoyance. "Talk louder—I can't hear you."

"I am not the Monster!" The woman exclaimed as she looked into Iliana's eyes pleadingly. "It was that man! That man threatened to kill us if we made a sound while he was eating the man beside him."

The girl pointed her hand to the first person Iliana had questioned, and it left Iliana irritated. Iliana immediately stood up from the ground, swept her hair to the back in frustration, and called the others to gather.

While waiting for the others to come, she mused to herself. Everyone in the first cell that she had asked were all pointing to a different person, as if they were seeing something different.

'Is it because of the Minotaur Warrior's heart?' She started to think that maybe feeding them the heart gave them some kind of an illusion, which caused the different statements. 'Tsk. They are basically claiming that all of them are Monsters.'

When the others gathered around her, Iliana looked at them silently. Those who already knew looked at Iliana in bafflement, meanwhile those who didn't know yet but had somehow already got the gist of it were looking at Iliana questioningly.

"What are their responses?"

"They are claiming the person beside them is a Demon."

There was no need for the others to stay anything else, as Thompson's word had basically described everything about what they had heard. Iliana made a contemplating look, but Thompson's raised hand stopped her from musing to herself.

"Yes?"

"From the way they describe what they have seen, can I assume that this Demon they are talking about is a Monster?"

"That is right."

"I—I see." Thompson slightly recoiled in surprise as he had expected Iliana to deny it. "Kuhum! Why didn't you tell us earlier about it? If that had been the case, we might have been able to prevent all of this from happening."

Iliana quirked her eyebrow and scoffed. "Why are you so sure about that? Do you think you can find out who the Monster is now?" Thompson tried to speak, but no words came out. "That is right—you can't. The result is the same, Thompson."

"But, at least—"

"I don't trust any of you; there was a possibility that one of you was the Monster. I didn't tell all of you on purpose, so I can make sure that all of you are humans."

"So that is the case..."

Thompson understood Iliana's reason, and merely nodded his head in acceptance. He was actually a little bit disappointed by Iliana's decision as he had thought all of them were friends, but he didn't want to dwell on it too much.

Cray and Whitney were doing a good job making their face as straight as possible to hide the fact that they were the only people whom Iliana had told the information to.

Although it left a slightly bitter taste in their mouth, none of them felt guilty towards the people who hadn't been told about it. No matter how friendly they were towards them, they were still a Mage after all—they acted logically not emotionally.

"Do any of you have an inkling of who the Monster is?"

"From what I observe, it is highly possible that there is a at least a Monster in each group, otherwise, there should be only one chamber had a victim."

"The Monster is only one—I am sure of it," Iliana immediately rejected Steven's guess. "It is its way to trick us. Killing only one person in a room should be the stupidest thing it did, if it didn't want to be caught."

"It wants us to doubt everyone?" Whitney asked.

"It wants us to eliminate everyone else until it reveals itself."

Iliana wasn't really sure about what she said, but she believed that everything was orchestrated by Basil.

She believed that Basil was testing her ability to make decisions, and the price of making a wrong decision was the civilians' lives. Thus, misleading them was the thing the Demon did.

"Actually, I need something to confirm." Iliana directed her eyes to the only little girl in the group of civilians, who was in her grandfather's arm. "She will give us a huge hint."

Iliana walked towards the little girl, and bent her body to pat her head the moment she arrived in front of her. The little girl looked up at Iliana blankly, before smiling emptily.

"Mind if I ask you some question?"

"What do you want to ask me, beautiful lady?"

The little girl responded Iliana clearly, but she could tell that the girl was heavily shocked at what she had seen, contrary to her grandfather, who was as calm as ever. Instead of being impressed however, Iliana felt the elderly man was suspicious.

"What did you see in the chamber earlier?"

"What I saw?" The girl's empty eyes were immediately filled with horror the moment she recalled what she saw. "There was this big shadow coming out of nowhere attacking us! Grandpa protected me, but that shadow bit the—"

Iliana immediately prevented the girl from saying anything more as she couldn't bear the terrified look on the girl's face. 'Your grandpa protected you, huh?' Iliana silently gazed at the elderly man embracing the little girl.

Her suspicion towards the elderly man became even stronger, but her purpose of asking the girl the question wasn't to figure out who was the Demon.

She merely wanted to figure out whether the Minotaur Warrior's heart had caused the people to hallucinate, and the answer she got was, no.

There was only one individual whose ration she didn't mix with Minotaur Warrior's Heart, and that was the little girl's. Since the little girl had apparently said the same thing as the others, who had eaten the heart, it was proven that it didn't make people hallucinate.

The reason why she didn't give the girl the heart actually wasn't for this kind of situation however. She wanted to save the little girl in the very first place, and making her stomach become a delicacy for the impersonating Demon was not the way.

With that being said, the reason why the civilians saw a different thing was due to the Demon itself.

"Let's split these guys into 10 groups," Iliana said upon regrouping with Whitney and the others. "This time, group them based on your prejudice."

"Is it really necessary?"

"We don't have any other way, Thompson. I will hear you if you have any better suggestion."

"How about we also join one of the chambers?" Steven suggested.

Iliana merely waved her hand as if saying, 'Do what you do,' as a response. The civilians were quickly grouped up right after, and the Mages and Knights also entered six different cells, joining the civilians.

Thirty minutes passed, and only then they could figure out who the Demon was.. One cell was left empty, and the only alive person there was Cray.