[ todomatsu is sitting somewhere outside the refectory and messing around on his phone in a vain attempt to distract himself from... literally everything.

looks up at lucas when he comes by (did he just see the hair in his peripheral vision and mistake him for a girl again? who's to say) and just kind of raises his eyebrows like "welp" ]

Nice how everything keeps getting worse all the time.

[Running gag of anticipating talking to a cute girl only for it to be Lucas Yet Again.

What a mood, though! He looks tired. He is tired. At least he's not going through it to the level the BG3s and Honkeys are but damn if he doesn't feel like he could sleep a solid week after the last few days.]

This is far from what I expected of this ritual, and yet it fits all too well for a group who would even "cut corners" on summoning a powerful deity. [HE HATES THESE CULTISTS SO DAMN BAD.] ...Are you faring alright? As well as can be expected, at least?

[ he also hates these incompetent cultists, even though if this was happening in his canon they would absolutely be cutting corners and fucking things up in stupid ways too, so he doesn't have nearly as much room to judge as he's deluding himself into thinking he does. ]

...Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I wasn't close to any of them.

[The truest and most importantly funniest form of judgment is the hypocritical kind. He'll just take a seat nearby.]

Even then, the situation we've been placed in isn't an easy one to take in.

[The concern and suspicion that this might happen again had all but been confirmed, after all.]

[ yeah the situation 100% sucks, no argument there. ]

No, and it's a lot worse now than it seemed to be when we thought we had two months to figure this out.

Two months to figure it out, and certainly less direct or indirect interference from the cult itself...

[When you think they're just going to be watching like creeps from afar and then they start doing more WEIRD BULLSHIT CULT THINGS!!!!]

[ shakes his head ]

I'd thought if anything they'd be trying to prevent us from dying before the date of the ritual, but I sure got that wrong.

It seems that what some speculated was correct... That the exact timing of our shed blood doesn't matter within the spread of the next two months.

[Bad! Tiring. This cult can't even stick to schedules.]

Which means they have no incentive to keep us alive even outside of these rituals that affect us.

Nope!

[ soooo he's going to edit the list of potential locations he compiled during the minievent before he gives it to the npcs to take out anything that could end up being interpreted in a deadly way... ugh. ]

The monster thing too... originally they made it sound like that was completely unrelated to the ritual and we could pretty much opt out of it if we wanted. And now it turns out that oh, actually, they can use them to turn us into brainwashed murder machines. Cool.

[COOL!! He presses his lips into a thin line, displeased.]

Being tethered to something that can take control and behave in such a way is... [Bad? Discomforting? Upsetting?? SUPER CREEPY. All of these things and more. He shakes his head, rather than finishing the sentence.]

Moreover, if people do begin to find their partners, the number of dead we could face in a week will rise exponentially...

[ yeah!! all those things!!!! doesn't help that pestilence kept calling it being "infused" with a monster, which just. bleh. ]

Yeah... ugh. I still feel like it's safer not to, but I don't know how many will agree with that.

I agree, at the very least. You have the right idea.

[At least as far as he's concerned... Smashcut to some effect next Monday making life even more difficult for people who don't want to find their partners.]

If the only incentive is a wish provided by the same magic this cult relies on, there's a high chance it won't turn out in the way one might hope, anyway.