Future Diary Survival Game-Chapter 43 : Change of Guard - 4

Chapter 43: Change of Guard - 4
Ten minutes later.
The teams were two teams.
It had been decided: nineteen versus one.
Magireta spoke.
“Now we must decide the order for the seekers and the hiders. Representatives of each team, step forward.”
I approached Magireta.
But naturally Ian could not come forward.
Magireta flicked a coin, caught it, and said,
“Heads? Tails?”
“Heads.”
“Wrong, it’s tails. Then Ian — you decide. Do you want the seekers first? Or the hiders first.”
Of course the dead did not answer.
Magireta, who had waited a moment, turned her head to me.
“Will you yield to him?”
“That’s kind of you. Let us be the seekers.”
And so the game began.
Magireta led the nineteen of us out of the audience chamber.
And six hours later, she called us back into the audience chamber.
As expected, Ian’s corpse was still lying collapsed in front of the main gate.
I addressed the man named Font Ron, who had earlier poured out his grief.
“Go.”
“Huh?”
“Magireta killed Ian, but it’s your job to eliminate him.”
“…….”
“You wanted revenge, didn’t you? Rather than mutilating the corpse, eliminating him will be true revenge.”
“Waaah. Thank you. Truly, thank you, Mason.”
He stepped up to Ian.
Without hesitation he placed his hand on the dead man’s back and said coldly,
“Found you.”
One to zero.
After that there was nothing special.
We sat around leisurely, introducing ourselves and killing time.
After twenty-four hours, the teams switched.
This time we were the hiders.
We returned to the audience chamber and spent twenty-four hours there.
Ian was still exactly where he had died.
After spending quite a while whispering and chatting, we felt our bonds grow stronger.
How long had passed like that?
“Finished! Game over.”
Magireta’s cheerful voice rang out.
After the game ended, Magireta approached our cluster of people.
“Your little brother’s cunning shone again this time.”
“Thank you.”
“You all worked hard. Take your gold coins and—”
“Wait a moment.”
I hurriedly interrupted Magireta.
She readily nodded and waited.
I turned my body to the total of nineteen people, including my party.
“From now on I would like to ask a favor.”
“P-please, say it. We will do anything.”
To them I was literally a lifesaver.
Before I could even state my favor, they nodded as if they would comply.
“Magireta’s quests each have a first-place prize.”
“Eh?”
“It’s a kind of privilege given to the person who places first among the many game participants across the entire continent. Earlier I moved Ian with a bead, right? That was the first-place prize of the third quest.”
For a moment everyone’s expressions changed.
Greed rose on their faces.
Armelia Kerr Dneroum interjected.
“Mason. I know well of your kind heart wanting to share information.”
“Hah. This woman is sick again.”
“I’m not particularly sick with anything, Aina.”
“So… never mind.”
“Anyway, from a humanitarian perspective I understand sharing such important information. But it wouldn’t apply to us this time, would it?”
I answered with a gentle smile.
“Why not?”
“Because we could not possibly have met the conditions for first place.”
“What do you think the first-place condition is?”
“Isn’t it obvious? In a hide-and-seek game, the first place would go to ‘the person who found the most people.’ But our team only found Ian.”
I shook my head.
“That’s only looking at one side. In hide-and-seek it’s important to find well, but isn’t hiding well important too?”
“……No way?”
“Yes. As Her Highness said, the person who found the most would be first place. At the same time, ‘the person who hid the best’ would also meet the first-place condition.”
Everyone looked up at Magireta.
She still only smiled and said nothing.
Berseum spoke.
“But the criterion for ‘hid the best’ is a bit vague. You could determine ‘good finders’ by the number of people they found.”
“It’s the same. ‘The person who was not found for the longest time’ would be the one who hid well.”
“Hnn. Then there will be countless first-place people in this game. People who were never found could be easily found in games happening across the continent.”
“But would all those many people have played as long as we did?”
Everyone’s eyes widened.
I continued.
“Cases where the number of people found by the two teams were equal, forcing overtime, are surprisingly not that common.”
“…….”
“Even if there was overtime, the chance of being discovered would have increased proportionally. Since overtime would be held in the same place, it would have been difficult to reuse a hiding spot. In other words, hiding spots would have become scarce… so of course the chance of being found would have gone up.”
“…….”
“I guarantee it. People who, like us, forced overtime and still ‘were not found even once’ are rare. Almost nonexistent… or at most a few people.”
They all nodded.
Berseum looked satisfied.
“So rarity would still be high. That’s fortunate.”
Aina clapped her hands and said,
“Ah! So you deliberately induced a team redistribution? Restarting the game from the beginning so we could drag out the time as long as possible. To increase our chances of getting first place.”
“Not at all. I only wanted to save as many people as possible.”
“Of course you’ll say that. I’ll let you off.”
I returned to the main topic.
“I’ll continue what I was about to say. I have a request to make of you.”
“Y-you don’t mean asking us to transfer a first-place prize…?”
“No? Of course not. It might be an item that can be transferred anyway.”
“Then?”
“If any of you hold the first-place prize and are in a position to steer future games to your advantage—”
I spoke as politely and kindly as I could.
“Be absolutely wary of a man named Edgar Tyler.”
“……?”
“He will bring fatal harm to your future survival. He is hostile to me.”
“If he is hostile to Mason, he must be an arch-villain!”
Hm.
He was a villain… but not because he was hostile to me.
I could only smile awkwardly.
“Well, telling you to be wary doesn’t mean much. Don’t try to act on your own. It’s dangerous.”
“Yes.”
“Just, if you notice any information or weaknesses about him, tell me. That alone would be a great help.”
“But we will scatter again. Even if we wanted to tell you, we might not be able to…”
“That.”
I could simply use the administrator page of my Diary Book.
If it was information that benefited me, it would be updated there.
Then, I could get information from the updated person through a secret conversation.
However…
I cautiously glanced at Magireta.
“You’ll find out when the time comes.”
“Ah, yes…”
“Anyway, I’ll be counting on you.”
At that moment, Magireta’s voice rang out.
“Are you done now?”
“Yes, Sister. We’ll take the reward as an item instead of gold coins—if we really are the first-place winners.”
“Sometimes you’re so cheeky I could die.”
Whirr—
Suddenly, a black hole opened to Magireta’s right.
Last time, she had reached into that and pulled out the teleportation bead.
‘Could that perhaps be a door to hell?’
This time, what Magireta took out was about the size of three finger joints… What was that?
A brooch?
A small silver brooch shaped like a flower that glowed with a sacred light.
Normally a brooch would be an accessory for women, but this one was simple enough that even a man wouldn’t look awkward wearing it.
“This time, you’re the ones who placed first. You were the only ones who weren’t found even once despite going into overtime.”
“Edgar must’ve also been first, right?”
“I said you were the only ones.”
“We were the only ones who hid well enough to win. Edgar probably won by finding well.”
“……”
“You can tell Edgar that I placed first. So please, go ahead and tell him.”
Magireta fell silent for a moment, then smirked.
“You’re right. That guy was first too.”
“……”
“For reference, he found fifty-eight people all by himself. He intentionally forced ties several times to create overtime.”
“……!”
“He probably worked that hard because he didn’t want to lose the first-place prize to you. Of course, since you chose the path of winning by hiding well, his efforts were meaningless.”
She asked playfully,
“Since I told you this much, should I tell him how you won, too?”
“Yes, go ahead.”
“You really take after your brother’s boldness.”
“By the way, what is this brooch? How do we use it?”
“How else do you use a brooch? You pin it to your clothes.”
I hastily pinned on the brooch.
My companions, as well as the other participants, followed suit.
Magireta spoke casually.
“Now then… everyone, try jumping in place with all your strength.”
I did not follow that instruction.
For some reason, I had a bad feeling.
Since I stayed still, my companions didn’t move either.
But the other ordinary participants believed Magireta’s words.
“Hiya! Uh?”
“Hyaaah!”
“What the—!”
Bang!
The ones who bent their knees and leapt soon met the ceiling of the audience chamber.
They smacked their heads right into it.
It might have looked like comedy, but the outcome was anything but funny.
Thud. Crack.
Those who had slammed their heads hard fell to the floor like corpses.
The bodies raining down made it sound like a downpour.
“Flying.”
At that moment, Berseum cast some kind of magic.
The participants who had been falling freely slowed down, and soon settled softly onto the floor like feathers.
We rushed over to them.
“Are you all right?”
“There’s blood on his head…”
“They’re fine. No one’s dead. Though they’ll need some rest.”
Aina quickly rummaged through her tool kit and began treating them.
As she swiftly inserted needles here and there, life returned to the participants’ eyes.
‘That girl.’
If it had been the Aina from around the Second Quest, she wouldn’t have stepped forward to help.
She had really changed.
“Ugh… uh…”
“Please save me. It hurts so much.”
“My leg, my leg feels broken. Ugh…”
Berseum clicked his tongue and asked Magireta,
“What on earth happened here?”
Magireta answered as if it were nothing.
“The brooches you’re wearing are items that allow the wearer to surpass their physical limits.”
“……”
“The amplification varies drastically depending on the wearer’s base abilities. For an ordinary person, it’s just a five- or six-meter jump like what you saw earlier. But if a top-tier expert from the continent wore it, that would be a very different story.”
“……They seem to be in more pain from their legs than from hitting their heads on the ceiling. Why is that?”
“Of course, because of recoil. The timing of the recoil depends on the wearer’s original ability. For these ones, it must’ve hit within seconds. Pearls before swine, really.”
I was genuinely glad I hadn’t jumped.
Magireta mocked them, but truthfully, in terms of physical ability, I wasn’t much different from those ordinary participants lying on the ground.
Just thinking that I could’ve been one of them writhing in pain made my skin crawl.
Armelia spoke coldly.
“You could’ve just explained it with words. Why tell them to jump?”
“Why didn’t you jump, then?”
“……”
“I hate to say it myself, but was there any need to jump just because I said so? Those fools weren’t as cautious as you, and they paid the price.”
“As always, you’re absolutely despicable.”
Magireta only laughed.
By then, Aina—who had mostly finished treating them—spoke up.
“Well, if there’s a silver lining, at least it’s that.”
“Hm?”
“If this kind of brooch had gone to that bastard Ian… Ugh, just thinking about it gives me chills.”
“That’s true. How are they doing?”
“A few have hairline fractures, but they’ll heal soon. I don’t see any snapped tendons.”
It was a relief things weren’t worse.
Still, the audience chamber was filled with their pained groans.
Magireta plugged both her ears with her index fingers.
Even in that pose, she said,
“Ahh, it’s so noisy. Let’s wrap this up.”
“Ugh, it hurts too much.”
“Do you need to be sent somewhere specific?”
“Ah. The four of us will head to Deut Territory for now.”
“I’m telling you, it really hurts!”
“Okay. I’ll send you there. See you next time.”
The next moment.
My head swam.
The last thing I heard wasn’t their groaning as they rolled on the floor, but—
[You have safely cleared the Fourth Quest ‘Hide-and-Seek’.]
[Records during the Fourth Quest ‘Hide-and-Seek’ have been altered.]
[Some parts of your Future Diary have been modified due to these changes.]
[The ‘Thread of Connection’ function in your Diary Book has been upgraded.]
[You have completed the Hidden Quest: Survival of Armelia. Reward: 100 points.]
[You have completed the Hidden Quest: Survival of Aina. Reward: 100 points.]
[You have completed the Hidden Quest: Survival of Berseum. Reward: 100 points.]
[You have saved 15 ordinary participants. Reward: 15 points.]
[Current Points: 668]