Future Diary Survival Game-Chapter 49 : Monster Hunt - 2

Chapter 49: Monster Hunt - 2
The first person to notice it was Sienne.
While serving us tea after dinner, she said quietly,
“Footsteps. Two people.”
At that, Aina perked up her ears.
Soon, she frowned slightly, looking frustrated.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Well, sensory skills like this are hard to match for ordinary people. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m way better than a knight. It’s just that Auntie’s too overwhelming.”
Armelia glanced at me with a somewhat tense expression.
I gave a slight nod and said to Sienne,
“It’s Edgar and Ian.”
“Yes. That would make sense.”
“Will you meet them?”
“I will. I’m sorry to everyone, but…”
“No. We can’t force you into a one-sided choice, Sienne. That’s fine. But—”
Sssrrk—
I placed my brooch into her hand.
“Please wear this.”
“This is…?”
“The first-place reward from the Fourth Quest I mentioned. It greatly boosts physical abilities. Ian’s wearing the same one.”
“You think I might have to fight him?”
“Perhaps.”
“Is it all right for me to accept such a precious item?”
I smiled faintly.
“Consider it a bribe, hoping you’ll be lenient on me.”
“…This won’t change my decision, you know.”
“That’s fine. I’m not the physical type anyway.”
“I’ll take it for now. Once the danger passes, I’ll return it.”
She accepted the brooch.
Honestly, that alone was a huge step forward for me.
Even in the Future Diary, I had given Sienne a brooch, but she hadn’t accepted it back then.
At least now, she seemed to trust me more than before.
After fastening the brooch, she spoke,
“I’m sorry, but could you step outside for a moment? I’d like to speak with them alone.”
“All right. But—”
“…?”
“I just want to greet Edgar once. We’ve got quite the twisted connection, but I’ve never actually said hello properly.”
Sienne hesitated briefly, then nodded.
We waited a little longer, passing the time.
A few minutes later—
Step, step.
Even my ears could hear the footsteps now.
From near the door came muffled voices.
“Do we really need to knock? If you want, I could just blow up the whole cabin.”
“You’ve gotten quite violent, Ian. You used to be a bit more composed, didn’t you?”
“Mm. My apologies. I’m just… in a hurry.”
“Let’s talk first, then. It’s not like he’ll live past today anyway.”
So that voice belonged to Edgar.
Knock, knock.
Soon came the sound of knocking.
Sienne, as the host, responded.
“Come in.”
The door opened.
I didn’t care about Ian — I already knew him well.
My eyes were fixed on Edgar.
Even though I’d seen his face before when I killed him once, it was still the same — utterly ordinary, nothing remarkable about it.
He smiled pleasantly and said,
“Good evening. Fine night, isn’t it?”
“Edgar Tyler.”
“You must be Mr. Mason, right? I suppose this is our first proper introduction. A pleasure to meet you.”
“It is. Last time, you tried to blow up the entire territory without warning.”
“And you, without warning, stuck a needle in my neck. Let’s call it even.”
Armelia frowned.
“In cases like this, who started it does matter. You tried to kill us, strangers you’d never even met. We only took revenge.”
“……”
“More than that—you tried to blow up thousands of innocent civilians along with us. And now you want a civilized conversation?”
“Well, back then I didn’t know Mr. Mason would turn out to be such a fascinating person.”
Edgar stroked his chin.
There was pure curiosity in his eyes.
“Looking at you now, you just seem like an ordinary man. What are you hiding behind that mask, Mr. Mason?”
“Not as much as you.”
“I’m not hiding anything.”
“You are. For example—how you killed the King of the Partikal Kingdom.”
At that moment—
The grin froze on Edgar’s face.
At the same time, all expression vanished from Sienne’s as well.
A brief but deep silence wrapped around us.
Sienne was the first to break it.
In a trembling voice, she asked me,
“M-Mr. Mason? What did you just say?”
“This man—Edgar Tyler—isn’t his real name. His true identity is something else.”
“……!”
“I think you know him. He’s the one who betrayed your lover.”
Crack.
Sienne clenched her fist tightly.
Killing intent began to seep from her body.
Then Edgar spoke again, feigning a playful tone.
“Come now, why the hostility all of a sudden?”
“……”
“To accuse me of being a regicide—how absurd. I don’t even know how to respond to something that ridiculous.”
“One of your teammates from the Fourth Quest had a connection to me,” I said casually.
“The Quest took place in the Partikal royal audience chamber, didn’t it? They said you looked up at the throne and said this—”
“……”
“Thinking back on it now, I wondered if I’d killed him too easily back then.”
The faint smile that had been on his face vanished again.
I continued speaking.
“When you work as a waiter, you meet all sorts of customers. One of them, a historian, once told me that during the war between the Empire and the Kingdom of Partikal, the king of Partikal personally led his troops into battle.”
“……”
“But at some point, the king suddenly withdrew to the rear and never left the palace again. Even the Empire at the time thought it strange. They said he wasn’t the kind of man to do that.”
So I made a deduction.
There must have been a reason why he couldn’t step onto the battlefield anymore.
Maybe he’d fallen ill or been paralyzed with fear.
Perhaps he’d been gravely injured—or had some urgent affair to deal with.
Or maybe, in truth, he had disappeared.
“The king had been kidnapped into Magireta’s game during the war. Together with the knight commander, Sienne.”
When the king vanished, the military command must have descended into chaos.
They must have hastily found a stand-in and spread propaganda claiming the king was still alive. But even so, they couldn’t send an impostor onto the battlefield.
And so, at some point, the king vanished entirely from the frontlines.
“The day the Empire captured Partikal’s capital, the king left a will behind and disappeared. Most likely, one of the royal family’s last loyalists handled it. They didn’t want the people to know their king had abandoned them.”
“……”
“But the real king was actually participating in Magireta’s quest. The last surviving king might have wished for the restoration of the Kingdom of Partikal. But instead…”
“He wished for my life to be spared.”
Sienne’s sorrowful voice followed quietly.
That’s right.
The man who had been her lover—was the king of the Kingdom of Partikal.
And Edgar had looked at the empty throne and muttered, ‘Did I kill him too easily back then?’
The king couldn’t have been killed by an ordinary person, since he was a quest participant.
Unless it was by another participant.
Sienne gently touched her bandaged arm.
“He was the one who chose me over his kingdom. Whether that choice was right or wrong isn’t for me to judge.”
“Sienne.”
“But that noble wish was trampled by Boyle Kanen—that damned piece of trash.”
Boyle Kanen, huh. So that must have been Edgar’s old name.
“Was Boyle a friend of the king’s? How did someone like him become close to such a high noble?”
“I heard they first met in the marketplace when His Majesty went out for an inspection. I don’t know how their friendship grew or what kind of bond they had. The king never bothered to explain.”
“……”
“But the trust His Majesty showed whenever he spoke of Boyle—it was genuine. I believed that, and so I opened my heart to him too.”
Her voice grew cold.
“But if the one standing before me really is that man, then he’ll die by my hand today.”
“……”
“The voice is definitely Boyle’s. But it’s his voice from twenty-seven years ago. He should’ve aged by now, yet it sounds exactly the same. That’s… strange.”
Everyone’s eyes turned toward me.
I explained slowly.
“Edgar was the first one to ask about the first-place reward, even back during the First Game. He also figured out how the trade worked faster than anyone else.”
“……”
“Looking at his actions, it was impossible to believe he was a first-time participant. Honestly, I’d already been convinced for some time that he was from a past game.”
Then Berseum spoke up.
“But as Sienne just said, if his voice hasn’t changed, then his age doesn’t make sense either. He doesn’t look like someone who could’ve been in an earlier game.”
“That goes for Miss Sienne too. Who would believe you’re in your fifties with that face?”
“But that’s thanks to Magireta’s omnipotence, isn’t it?”
“Yes. And it’s the same for Edgar.”
I gave a crooked smile.
“Edgar used his wish to gain eternal life. And in exchange, he offered the first-place rewards he’d accumulated, asking Magireta to let him participate in the next game as well.”
“……!”
“No wonder he was so good at this. Unlike Miss Sienne, he’d survived to the very last quest in the previous round. Of course he’d know all the hidden rules, and he’d have the patterns of the game memorized like the back of his hand.”
“……”
“I don’t know why he’d willingly crawl back into this hellish game again, though.”
I looked straight at Edgar.
“That’s what I’ve been waiting to ask you. What’s your true purpose? Why throw yourself into this game twice? What is it that you ultimately desire?”
“Heh, heh.”
Edgar burst into laughter that seemed to rise from the depths of his lungs.
The smile he wore now had completely changed in nature.
It wasn’t amusement—it was madness.
His eyes gleamed sharply, the same chilling look I’d once seen hidden under Magireta’s hood.
“Roughly seventy points, I’d say.”
“What?”
“No, truly splendid. I don’t know how you managed to communicate with the Fourth Quest participants, but… you’ve gotten quite close to the truth.”
Clap, clap.
He even applauded.
“But there’s one thing you got wrong.”
“And what’s that?”
“This isn’t my second game. It’s my fifth.”
“……?”
For a moment, I thought I’d misheard.
I couldn’t make sense of what he’d just said.
“A very long time ago—so long that you could call it an era now—I first participated in Magireta’s quest and won. I used my winner’s wish to ask for immortality.”
“……”
“Do you know why I asked for immortality?”
I tried to think, but it was impossible to read this lunatic’s mind.
“I have no idea.”
“Because I wanted to participate in the next game.”
“……! Why on earth would you do that?”
“Before Magireta’s game, the world was unbearably dull and tedious to me. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I was considered a so-called prodigy in nearly every field.”
His voice was unnervingly calm—no childish arrogance, just a statement of fact.
“In study, in combat, in everything, I never once faced a true crisis. Then, for the first time in my life, I felt fear and exhilaration. In Magireta’s game.”
“And so?”
“I wanted to keep feeling that thrill—that nervous excitement. Yes… I became addicted to Magireta’s game.”
“……”
“That’s why I wished for immortality. So I could keep joining—again, and again, and again.”
He was utterly insane.