Future Diary Survival Game-Chapter 63 : Hostage Situation – 2

Chapter 63: Hostage Situation – 2
At the same time.
Edgar and Vayne had already arrived at the Imperial Capital.
To be honest, Vayne just wanted to drop everything and go have a meal.
Unfortunately, he had work to do.
“Please find someone for me, Mr. Vayne.”
“Let’s eat first.”
“I’ll eat for you, so please find that person first.”
“You eating doesn’t fill my stomach.”
“You seemed fairly adjusted during the latter half of the quest. You’re not starving right now, are you? Just a bit hungry, that’s all.”
Vayne let out a small sigh.
That feeling again.
That strange sensation that made it hard to refuse this man’s requests.
That obsessive compulsion to do something more.
“Who do you want me to find?”
“I don’t know.”
“What? Are you kidding me?”
“Listen. Among Mason’s party members, there’s the Princess.”
“Th-The Princess?”
“So that means there must be someone in this capital whom she treasures and loves dearly.”
Vayne understood up to that point.
No, he even understood what came next.
With deep eyes, he asked quietly,
“You’re planning a hostage situation, aren’t you.”
“Exactly.”
“……”
“With your abilities, you’ll find a hostage much faster and more reliably than any guild could. Somewhere in this capital, there’s someone Armelia treasures as much as her own life. I want you to find that person—and bring them to me.”
This sort of request really didn’t sit well with Vayne.
But that inexplicable feeling came over him again, and silently, he nodded.
“Give me three days.”
“Thank you. I’ll be staying at that inn over there—come find me once you’re done.”
“Alright.”
Vayne vanished into the shadows.
Edgar entered the inn he had pointed at earlier and rented a room.
Then he asked a servant for paper and a pen.
Moments later,
he sat at the table and quietly began to move his pen.
‘What should I start with?’
Of course, in a hostage crisis, this line had to come first.
He began to write.
<We have taken someone precious to you.>
I went over the last page several times.
<Year 327, January 10th
I survived until the very last game.
So I believed this damn nightmare was finally over.
……
……
I thought if I ever lost my party members, it would surely be because of a quest.
Or maybe because of Edgar or one of his lackeys.
But I was wrong.
The end came in a way I could never have imagined.
It was about three days after the Fifth Diet Quest ended.
Suddenly, Magireta appeared before us and handed us a letter.
A letter sent by Edgar Tyler.
He said he was holding Cecil hostage, and if we didn’t kill ourselves by the deadline, he would kill her.
Of course, I tried to teleport to Cecil using a teleportation bead to save her.
But the bead didn’t work.
Edgar must have used the first-place reward he borrowed on credit to disable its function.
We panicked and rented the fastest carriage to head for the capital.
But before we could arrive, the date Edgar specified had already passed.
Then Magireta appeared out of nowhere, threw something at us, and said—
– Edgar told me to give you this.
It was a head.
Cecil’s head.
Carved into her cheek were the words: This is your choice.
I don’t want to describe how Armelia reacted then.
Thinking such a hostage incident could happen again, we frantically traveled across the continent, gathering our loved ones all in one place.
It was a grueling and painful journey, since we couldn’t use the teleportation beads.
When we finally managed to gather everyone, the Sixth Quest began.
And when we returned from it—those loved ones were gone.
Edgar had hired people in advance to kidnap them again while we were away on the quest.
Soon, he sent another letter—this time taking Sienne’s younger sister hostage.
A letter demanding that she kill herself if she wanted to save her.
The bead’s function was still blocked, so we couldn’t even go to her.
In the end, Sienne’s sister suffered the same fate as Cecil. Sienne fainted and didn’t wake for three days.
Next came Eris and Berseum’s wife.
And after them—it was my turn.
Mrs. Meyren, who cared for me like her own son, became the next hostage.
The last one was Aina’s older brother.
I later learned that he had joined Edgar’s side, only to be betrayed.
Naturally, he too was sent to us—only his head remaining.
This cruel hostage crisis lasted for nearly half a year, and during that time, our minds shattered.
I tried desperately to turn their despair into anger toward Edgar.
Just when I thought it might be working, another letter from Edgar arrived.
<I have traded my life with Magireta to revive the loved ones you lost.Now, let’s start over from the beginning.>
……
……
After that, the party could no longer continue the quests in a sane state.
One by one, they all dropped out.
Perhaps they didn’t even try their best anymore.
Maybe, just as Edgar wanted—they took their own lives.
Was I a terrible piece of trash for turning away from Mrs. Meyren’s repeated deaths until the end?>
My complexion hardened as I read the diary.
With trembling hands, I pulled out a bead.
Armelia asked,
“What’s wrong, Mason?”
“Just… give me a moment.”
After several deep breaths, I ran a quick test.
“I want to go to the entrance of the Deut Territory.”
……
Nothing.
The bead remained silent.
The faces of the others grew grim.
Berseum spoke in a serious tone.
“This is that thing, isn’t it? Edgar used the tool he got on credit to block the bead’s function.”
“But after that first time it was blocked, it worked fine again, didn’t it?”
“There must be some kind of condition.”
I silently pieced things together and found the answer.
“It’s probably that when the wearer dies, the shoes can’t be used for a while.”
“Shoes?”
“Yes. When we fought Edgar, he made this unnecessary motion… tapping the floor with his shoes. The first-place reward must have been those shoes.”
“……”
“But Edgar fled after being drenched in my blood. I don’t know the exact details after that, but I believe he must have died once.”
And when the wearer dies, the shoes likely revert to being ordinary ones for a time—
as if they need a recharge period.
We didn’t know how long that period lasted, but what mattered was that right now, the beads were inactive.
Sienne asked cautiously.
“So, if he blocked the function of the bead… that means he plans to attack us, doesn’t it? To keep us from escaping.”
“No. It’s worse than that.”
I let out a deep sigh and recited what I had read in the Diary Book.
The atmosphere instantly grew heavy.
Aina spoke up, her voice trembling endlessly.
“Did you say… my brother? My brother?”
“Yes. It seems he ends up siding with Edgar later. Maybe he already has.”
“No. No, that can’t be.”
She shook her head in confusion.
‘Why is she reacting like that?’
Now that I thought about it, Aina once left a short comment on the administrator page saying I felt like an older brother to her.
Maybe she couldn’t believe her real brother would ever side with someone like Edgar.
Or maybe she was just shocked that her own blood had participated in Magireta’s quest.
At that moment, Armelia spoke in her place, her tone deeply sorrowful.
“Aina’s older brother, Benjamin Noel, lost his life when the family was annihilated.”
“……! Is that true?”
“To be exact, that’s how it’s been recorded. I only heard it secondhand, and in the future you saw, he’s still alive.”
I nodded and looked at Aina.
Her face looked like she might burst into tears at any moment.
I had never imagined she could make such an expression.
She spoke with difficulty.
“That’s what I thought too. On that horrific night, I fainted early on—I wasn’t conscious.”
“……”
“Later, I heard my brother’s body had been found, and that the Emperor had taken it away…”
“They said his body was completely burned. But since the size and the few remaining features matched perfectly, it was treated as a confirmed death.”
“Right. I never believed my brother would die so meaninglessly. I didn’t believe it, and yet…”
Aina clasped her hands together as if in prayer.
A brief silence followed.
Berseum then spoke in a steady, weighty voice.
“Let’s put the story about Benjamin Noel aside for now. What matters is what we’ll do next.”
“That’s right. Since we can’t use the bead right now, there’s no way to stop Miss Cecil from being taken hostage.”
Armelia’s expression trembled, pale and fragile.
I bowed my head, overcome by indescribable guilt.
“I’m truly sorry. I should’ve realized it sooner.”
“Not at all! You have nothing to apologize for.”
“But still—”
“Edgar probably already reactivated the shoes long ago. Maybe even during the last quest. Whether you realized it sooner or later, the result would’ve been the same.”
Her words eased my heart a little.
And at the same time, I made up my mind—I had to save Cecil, no matter what.
‘Not just for Her Highness the Princess.’
The death of someone dear would shatter the party’s spirits completely.
It would even destroy their will to complete the quest.
Knowing that future was coming, I couldn’t just sit still and wait.
Berseum said,
“For now, we should head to the capital. If we hire a carriage right away, we’ll get there within two weeks.”
His logic was sound, and we all nodded in agreement.
Then, in the Deut Territory, we chose the finest carriage and the best horses.
We paid the coachman extra and asked him to drive nonstop, at full speed, all the way to the capital.
Inside the jolting carriage, Aina suddenly spoke.
“There’s something I should tell you.”
“Hm?”
“If my brother really did side with Edgar, then you need to know this.”
She rummaged through the tool box and pulled something out.
A needle.
But not one she usually used—it was something I’d never seen before.
It was so thin it looked almost like a thick thread, with small uneven ridges along its surface.
“Explaining it in detail would take too long, so I’ll keep it simple. With this, you can stir a person’s brain and cause their physical abilities to explode.”
“Like the brooch?”
“Exactly like the brooch. But the brooch only causes brief muscle pain as a side effect. This isn’t nearly that refined. As long as this needle is embedded, the person completely loses their sanity.”
She exhaled a shaky sigh tinged with grief.
“Our family used this secret technique to turn soldiers into slaughtering weapons—to use them as disposable pawns on the battlefield by imperial decree.”
“……”
“My father willingly accepted that decree, but my brother resisted to the end. At the time, our father was still the family head, but my brother’s influence within the family was steadily growing.”
“……”
“When the day came that more vassals followed my brother than my father, Father left the family and sought refuge with the Emperor. Then, swayed by that bastard Ian, he borrowed imperial troops and wiped out our family.”
‘Under the charge of disobeying imperial orders,’ Aina concluded quietly.
Armelia shut her eyes tightly, as though she were the one guilty of that sin.
Sienne, who had been silently listening, spoke up.
“But… destroying your own family just to reclaim it? I can’t understand that.”
“He probably tricked Father at first—said he’d only get rid of the vassals who followed my brother and then restore him as family head. Father must’ve foolishly believed him.”
“……”
“In truth, the Emperor and Ian joined hands to carve up our family for themselves. By now, Father’s probably dead too.”
We all swallowed hard at the bleak story.
Perhaps disliking the gloomy atmosphere she had created, Aina forced a faint smile.
“I didn’t mean to complain, but I ended up talking too much.”
“……”
“I just meant it as a warning. My brother would never use this needle by his own will—but Edgar might force him to.”
We all nodded.
And for a while, no one spoke.
Except for the rattling of the carriage wheels, the air was filled with silence.
[It’s too quiet, so I must say something.]
‘Don’t.’
[It’s important.]
The Diary Book flipped open with a whirr.
<Sudden Quest. Ensure the survival of Armelia Kerr Dneroum from the “Hostage Crisis.”>
<Sudden Quest. Ensure the survival of Aina Noel from the “Hostage Crisis.”>
<Sudden Quest. Ensure the survival of Berseum Ferux from the “Hostage Crisis.”>
<Sudden Quest. Ensure the survival of Sienne Katrin from the “Hostage Crisis.”>
I tilted my head.
‘This time, it’s not like any of the party members are in immediate danger.’
[Not right now. But if the future unfolds as written in the diary…]
‘Ah.’
The exhausted party members stop taking the quests seriously—and that leads straight to their deaths.
I looked out the window.
I didn’t say it aloud, but I was already certain.
‘We won’t make it in time.’
At this pace, we wouldn’t reach Edgar’s deadline.
Even though we had set out about two days earlier than what was written in the Future Diary, I didn’t believe that would be enough to change the future.
We needed another plan.
A different way.