Chapter 20: Subaru Natsuki vs Reinhard van Astrea, I'll Win! (Patreon)

"You look pretty shaken up, Miss Anna..."

"Hmph, that's because you were being lewd. If any man ever dared cover my mouth like that, I'd cut off his whole hand!"

"That's way too vicious!"

Subaru Natsuki started to say something, stopped, started again, and stopped again — but after bickering with Felt, he still couldn't figure out what to say.

By his modern sensibilities, doing that to a girl generally wasn't okay, but even if he had done it, it surely wouldn't rise to the level of some grave violation. Still, the real question was: what did Anna actually think?

"If it embarrasses you, then let's just not talk about it anymore, or I can't promise what I might do, y'know."

Anastasia pouted and sighed, her cape-like fox scarf swaying gently. Even looking a little down after being teased, she was unbearably cute — impossible to rate poorly no matter how you looked at it.

But Anastasia quickly composed herself — or at least appeared to on the surface — and gestured to Mimi that there was nothing to worry about.

"Well, if we're not going to treat Subaru's grand ambition as a joke, then setting the Sword Saint aside, you'd better watch out for Lady Crusch, y'know."

"Grand ambition... you clearly don't believe in it at all. You're treating me like I'm just joking," Subaru said with a wry smile. "And what's this Sword Saint thing anyway?"

"...Are you serious?"

This time, all three of them froze.

Felt, Anastasia, and Mimi turned to stare at him in perfect unison, all making the same strangled noise, looking at him the way they might look at seven Sin Archbishops plus seven Witches of Sin standing right in front of them.

"Wait, is not knowing the Sword Saint really that outrageous?"

"Are you even human?" Felt couldn't help but snap. "I won't even ask if you're from Lugunica — as long as you're human, even if you'd been wandering the wilderness since the day you were born, there's no way you wouldn't know him."

"Felt might sound like she's exaggerating, but honestly, she isn't exaggerating at all, y'know. Sword Saint Reinhard has, for the past hundred years, been universally recognized across the whole world as the unshakeable strongest — if it weren't for the Divine Dragon and the very first Sword Saint, he might well be ranked the strongest in all of history, y'know."

Chatting away easily, the two 'good girls' seemed to have just casually said something utterly outrageous.

Subaru opened his mouth haltingly. "What if... everyone in the whole world fought him together?"

"That might have a chance," Anastasia and Felt said in perfect unison — the first time in recorded history the two of them had ever been so in sync.

"Only a chance?!"

Subaru's eyes practically spiraled. He could barely bring himself to face this reality, and immediately poked his notebook on the sly. "Notebook, notebook — are they serious?"

[Record updated. Based on world intelligence, cross-referenced with the host's objectives, two branch quests have been updated.]

[One: A ruler must never permit himself to be overthrown by his own subordinates. A monarch who has not thoroughly subdued those beneath him always carries the risk of being deposed. The host is required to physically defeat the strongest Sword Saint in history, Reinhard. Given the difficulty involved, the host may choose to challenge him one-on-one, or may instead unite every other fighting force in the world and gang up on the red milk dragon.]

[Two: The guardian deity of the Kingdom of Lugunica has been detected as the Divine Dragon Volcanica. A ruler who wishes to set himself apart from all the common, run-of-the-mill kings must achieve feats in every field that ordinary kings cannot. The host is required to tame the Divine Dragon Volcanica and take it as a mount. Given the difficulty involved, the host is strongly advised to wait until his strength meets the standard before attempting this.]

Huh?

Now this made absolutely no sense.

If Reinhard really was the strongest in history, why didn't the quest to fight him carry any warning, while the quest to tame the Divine Dragon specifically noted to prepare thoroughly first? Was the Divine Dragon actually stronger than the Sword Saint?

[Host confusion detected. Correcting host's understanding: it is not that the Divine Dragon Volcanica is stronger. Rather, the Sword Saint is highly unlikely to kill a challenger such as the host — on the condition that the host never lets him learn of the host's ambitions regarding the Kingdom of Lugunica.]

Meaning if it got exposed, he'd be facing hell-mode difficulty?

Please, spare me!

Subaru instantly derailed. "Please, I'll do anything — just never repeat what I said earlier when I was mouthing off!"

"I know, all right." Felt muttered under her breath, and for once — rare as it was — admitted her mistake outright. "That one really was on me... I've been thinking it over properly. I won't say it again."

After all, when it came to wanting to be king, even if someone like Anastasia might just laugh it off, if too many people found out, someone was bound to report it eventually.

"Yours truly doesn't know a thing, kay?"

Anastasia swung her two little feet cutely, smiling as she pointed to her own ear and then covered it. "But, whether it's Subaru's ambition to become — whatever it is he wants to become — or just being a good merchant, you really do need to watch out for Lady Crusch. I mean it, y'know."

Knowing Subaru had no idea what was going on, Felt added at once, "Crusch is the Duke of House Karsten, one of the four Royal Selection candidates."

"What about her?" Subaru still couldn't figure out why he needed to be careful of Crusch.

"This is public knowledge, yours truly isn't trying to stir up trouble between you two — you're welcome to confirm it with anyone else. It's common knowledge that Lady Crusch always slaps the merchants in her territory with heavy taxes. Even a single trip through her land to do business gets you fleeced for a fortune. It's really scary, kay."

"Right now Lady Crusch is one of the Royal Selection candidates, and she's here in the royal capital. If she ever learns how well things are going here, she could team up with the Council of Wise Men at any moment and come collect heavy taxes — that's something you really need to guard against. And if Lady Crusch ever takes the throne, the whole kingdom will probably end up under heavy taxation."

Anastasia kept smiling; everything she'd said so far was objective fact — well, the last part was speculation, of course.

But when she spoke of Crusch's harsh treatment of merchants, she didn't seem to show much dissatisfaction or dislike. Though she framed it as a warning, her attitude actually suggested she held quite a bit of goodwill toward Crusch as both colleague and rival.

Subaru sucked in a cold breath. "Whoa... so you're saying the very first boss might be a crown princess right off the bat?"

"Well, no need to worry too much. Yours truly does have some connections, and if something like that really happened, of course I'd come help, kay? On the condition, of course, that Subaru and Miss Felt agree to ally with yours truly and do business together, kay?"

A threat.

Sly as a fox, Anastasia — after that brief little scare tactic — finally let her fox tail show, and got down to the real reason she'd come here in the first place.

"Milady..."

At that moment, Mimi witnessed an extremely rare sight.

No matter the situation before, whenever Milady talked business, she was rational to a monstrous degree. But now, she was actually blushing faintly, and her gaze kept drifting more toward Felt than toward Subaru.

Negotiating while carrying unnecessary emotion — this was the first time Mimi had ever seen such a thing!