Chapter 63: Hostage Situation – 2
At the sa ti.
Edgar and Vayne had already arrived at the Imperial Capital.
To be honest, Vayne just wanted to drop everything and go have a al.
Unfortunately, he had work to do.
“Please find soone for , 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 seed 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 sothing more.
“Who do you want to find?”
“I don’t know.”
“What? Are you kidding ?”
“Listen. Among Mason’s party mbers, there’s the Princess.”
“Th-The Princess?”
“So that ans there must be soone in this capital whom she treasures and loves dearly.”
Vayne understood up to that point.
No, he even understood what ca 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. Sowhere in this capital, there’s soone Arlia treasures as much as her own life. I want you to find that person—and bring them to .”
This sort of request really didn’t sit well with Vayne.
But that inexplicable feeling ca over him again, and silently, he nodded.
“Give three days.”
“Thank you. I’ll be staying at that inn over there—co find 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.
Monts 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 co first.
He began to write.
I went over the last page several tis.
My complexion hardened as I read the diary.
With trembling hands, I pulled out a bead.
Arlia asked,
“What’s wrong, Mason?”
“Just… give a mont.”
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 ti it was blocked, it worked fine again, didn’t it?”
“There must be so 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 ti—
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 ans 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 comnt 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 soone like Edgar.
Or maybe she was just shocked that her own blood had participated in Magireta’s quest.
At that mont, Arlia 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 mont.
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 confird death.”
“Right. I never believed my brother would die so aninglessly. 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.”
Arlia’s expression trembled, pale and fragile.
I bowed my head, overco 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 sa.”
Her words eased my heart a little.
And at the sa ti, I made up my mind—I had to save Cecil, no matter what.
‘Not just for Her Highness the Princess.’
The death of soone 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 agreent.
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 sothing 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 sothing out.
A needle.
But not one she usually used—it was sothing 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 ti, our father was still the family head, but my brother’s influence within the family was steadily growing.”
“……”
“When the day ca 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.
Arlia 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 an to complain, but I ended up talking too much.”
“……”
“I just ant 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 sothing.]
‘Don’t.’
[It’s important.]
The Diary Book flipped open with a whirr.
I tilted my head.
‘This ti, it’s not like any of the party mbers are in imdiate danger.’
[Not right now. But if the future unfolds as written in the diary…]
‘Ah.’
The exhausted party mbers 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 ti.’
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.
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