Chapter 7. Nothing else but Fate

The group of Orion, Subaru, Emilia, Puck and Reinhard soon enough left the deserted alley for the loot house, with the dwarf guide leading the way.

Realizing that their guide was a dwarf, Orion found it quite amazing, even though it was no a silver-haired dwarf.

Unfortunately, he knew that no one else would catch this reference, even Subaru. On Subaru's Earth Tower of God did not exist, or it was not released 'yet'.

At this time the party of five plus a cat began walking into the slums of the capital.

After the group was silent for a while, Reinhard eventually broke the silence, saying, "Orion-sama, would you mind me asking where you're from?"

"..." Orion was silent.

Would he mind? Yes, he would.

At the side, Subaru was silent as he reflected on his actions after noting Emilia's sick-looking expression. 'Damn, I'm terrible at reading the mood. I hope she doesn't blame me. But she looks so depressed. I'm so stupid. I'm so useless…'

Meanwhile Orion hummed after thinking for a moment, smiled at Reinhard and said, "I feel that being honest might be the best choice in this situation, no matter how absurd the truth is."

Reinhard raised his eyebrows at these words.

While Subaru and Emilia's attention was also attracted.

After being silent for a moment, Orion said honestly, "I'm from a place far away, from outside Lugnica. I just came to this city accidentally through something like teleportation magic. And Subaru is the same."

Orion suspected that Reinhard already had Divine Protection that allowed him to detect when someone is lying; it would be strange if he didn't yet have it.

He might dance around the topic and answer vaguely, but he knew that, firstly, there was no need and secondly, by now it might be reasonable for him to want to reveal his secret at this point.

Subaru was silent as he watched Reinhard.

"... I see. So that's what happened," Reinhard said after a while, his blue eyes flashing. "You said that you're from outside Lugnica. Care to tell me which nation you are from exactly?"

Not wanting to say anything stupid again for the time being, Subaru remained silent.

"Even if I were to tell you, you wouldn't recognize it. Our homeland is *really* far away."

Reinhard had raised his eyebrows again, while Emilia looked at him curiously.

"Really far away? What do you mean by that?" Puck asked, uncaring if it was impolite or not.

Orion: "Well, basically… Another continent?"

At this, Reinhard paused his footsteps as he knew that it was the truth, Emilia looked at Orion with confusion, while Puck nodded thoughtfully.

At the side, Subaru also nodded and said, "He said it, so I guess there's no point hiding it. Yep! I know, it's hard to believe, but we're actually from a parallel world."

"A parallel world?" Reinhard asked. "You mean there are other continents beyond the great waterfall that are parallel to ours?"

Subar was a bit taken aback at this conclusion, then said, "No. Not sure what the great waterfall is, but I'm not talking about a 'parallel continent'. I mean literally a 'parallel world'."

"Hmm… But isn't it the same then?" Puck said.

"No, it isn't," said Subaru.

"But if it's a separate continent from beyond the great waterfall, then it's basically the same!" replied Puck.

"No, it isn't!" Subaru rebuked.

"Well, whatever." Puck shrugged.

"... Anyway, you guys believed what we said rather easily," Subaru muttered as he looked at the three.

However, Orion understood why. By the look of things, Reinhard should have detected that it was not a lie and suspected them for being abnormal, Emilia was too clueless to care about it, while Puck simply did not care much either way.

In addition.

Puck answered, "Well, I can sort of read your thoughts, so you didn't seem to be lying."

"What, you can read our thoughts?!" Subaru jumped at this

Puck nodded his head. "Humu. So if you have too many naughty thoughts, I'll erase you. Be warned."

"You know what, when you act so cute when you say it, it's hard to take your threat seriously," said Subaru. "Also, I will not yield easily. Here, fluffy torture!"

Subaru then grabbed Puck and began petting and giggling at him.

"Ha! Hahaha! No! Haha! I'm dying! Stop it, stop it! Hahahah!" Puck laughed as he rolled on top of Subaru's palm.

"It's rare to see someone be so casual with a spirit," Emilia commented as she stared at the scene in a bit of a daze.

"Well, we're not from around here," Orion said.

Reinhard glanced at him.

The last and final Royal Candidate is from beyond the Great Waterfall?

What would be the chance that he would randomly bump into Orion today during his rare day off and discover him, just on the day he appeared in Lugnica?

In addition, Orion was a man, so if anyone else encountered him, they would have never thought that he might be a Royal Candidate.

Only he, with his powerful perception and Divine Protections, would be able to sense the peculiar aura around Orion and decide to test him, which he himself did with little hope in the first place.

'This could not be anything else but fate,' Reinhard thought.

After walking for a few more minutes, as the group made all kinds of banter, Reinhard had suddenly stopped, frozen in his tracks.

Looking around and noticing the place that he found himself in, he could not help but gulp.

"Reinhard, what's wrong?" Subaru asked as he looked back at the 'Sword Saint' that suddenly paused.

However, Reinhard did not respond as he was in a daze, looking at the old rundown building in front of him. He murmured, "This place…"

'How could this be?... How could it be this place…'

Apart from him, his grandfather and perhaps his father, no one else in the world might know about the significance of this location, of this ruined building.

The location that he found himself in while following Orion-sama on his mission to help Emilia-sama retrieve her Royal Insignia was none other than the same place where his grandfather Wilhelm Trias and his grandmother, the previous Sword Saint, Theresia van Astrea met for the first time 40 years ago.

It was the very same place, this seemingly random location in the slums of the royal capital.

"Reinhard?" Subaru asked once again.

"It's nothing," Reinhard replied as he softly smiled and then slowly resumed walking again.

He then glanced toward Orion, but saw that he did not react as the others when he stooped, but instead observed the ruined building, seeming to hide deep thoughts.

"Is this place special to you, Reinhard?" Orion asked him at the next moment.

And Reinhard's body suddenly shook in response. He then muttered, "Orion-sama… It… Yes, it is a bit special."

Orion hummed thoughtfully, then turned around and resumed walking.

Meanwhile Reinhard gulped.

He was the Sword Saint, the strongest knight with a huge influence and power. The various Royal Candidates discovered so far had naturally approached him by now, trying to recruit him for their campaign.

In turn, Reinhard declined all of them because he had the supremely important mission for the kingdom of finding the last Royal Candidate, so that the Election could begin as soon as possible.

However, now his mission was finally over with his act of discovering Orion, as if he was being guided by fate to him.

Reinhard remained in mild daze for a moment as he thought of all this, then his expression turned more resolute as he began to observe Orion even more closely.

And from this point onwards, Orion noticed Reinhard walking even closer to him than before, and as if to guard him or to observe him.

…

On the way through the slums Orion saw that the Royal capital's slums were far more clumped, smelly and dirty than the desolate-looking scenes from the anime made him believe; these were the real slums one would expect from a medieval city and the nasty reality was quite disappointing.

While talking on the way, Orion, Subaru, Reinhard, Emilia soon enough seemed to have reached their destination as their dwarf guide suddenly stopped and pointed his finger at one of the buildings.

The dwarf said, "It's here! It's this building!"

Everyone looked together at a large wooden warehouse situated in front of them, much bigger than most of the buildings here.

Subaru muttered, "So this is the place, huh. It's pretty big."

"It's at the very end of the slums," Reinhard quietly said. He then turned to Orion. "Orion-sama, you mentioned earlier that Emilia-sama's life might be in danger. Should I negotiate for the insignia on her behalf?"

Orion slightly raised his eyebrows inwardly. 'He's asking me for my opinion? Well, that's good.'

He then glanced at Emilia and saw that she looked quite conflicted at this moment. He could imagine why - she was probably confident in her strength with Puck and did not want to ask for help, but she probably also wanted to trust him or was simply naively superstitious and worried.

Along the way Reinhard had already questioned his 'intuition', and Orion used an excuse once again by simply saying that he 'has a strong intuition'. It would save him some trouble explaining his anime knowledge not only now, but also in the future.

And all that he said put everyone, including Subaru, slightly on edge in regards to their trip.

In fact, Orion was not completely lying. Even though the full truth was that his Instinct skill was currently sealed to only 5% of its effectiveness and was useless for the stuff he brought up, he did indeed have a strong 'intuition'.

Orion said, "Emilia and I will negotiate for the insignia. You watch our backs, Reinhard."

"Orion-sama…" Reinhard was taken aback at first, as if he disapproved, but then only nodded. "As you wish."

Seeing Reinhard agree rather easily, Orion faintly nodded back.

He had already considered his situation on the way and certainly did not want Reinhard to negotiate for the insignia.

It was not because he wanted to show off by doing it himself or foolishly fight Elsa, but… he did not want to have a scene of Felt directly passing the insignia to Reinhard.

Never!

If this happened, there would be a chance that it might be revealed that he was a fake Royal Candidate. The reason why Reinhard believed he was the last candidate might as well be because of Mordred's traits or the Holy Grail; basically he cheated his way in.

And what would happen if it's revealed that Felt, with blonde hair, red eyes and a fitting background for a missing Royal family member was also a Royal Candidate? What would happen to him and his quest?

Being a male with no background at all, he would likely fail in the mission and be branded as a fake and a swindler! At that point his only option might be a reset by killing Subaru.

Looking back on the quest details, his first objective was to become an official Royal Candidate, which he apparently was not yet.

That's why he wanted to get back the insignia himself instead.

"Mm, let's go Orion-san," Emilia said and then started walking toward the small porch of the wooden warehouse.

At that moment, Orion willed and a bright flash of red light surrounded his body.

As the light faded, Orion's entire body from neck to toe became clad in full plate armor and a wide and long sword appeared in his hand.

Mordred's armor together with C-rank Noble Phantasm sword Clarent!

"This…" Reinhard's eyes opened wide like saucers at this display of completely foreign magic.

Emilia was also surprised, but did not react as extremely, perhaps due to her limited knowledge of the world.

Meanwhile Subaru clicked his tongue. 'Tsk. I'll have to pick his brain how he did that.'

"Emilia, let's go," Orion said as he came closer to Emilia.

"Mm, yes." Emilia nodded as a serious expression returned to her face.

As the two approached the door, Orion raised his armored fist to knock, but then put it down and motioned Emilia to knock instead.

Emilia was a bit puzzled momentarily due to this action, but then simply resolutely knocked on the doors.

'If Felt is inside, she might think that the one who knocks on the door is her client Elsa and would simply open it. But if it was me who knocked while wearing these gauntlets, it would give us away,' Orion secretly thought.

After a few moments, the door slowly opened.

Confirming Orion's thoughts, a petite young blonde girl appeared in the door frame with a happy expression that instantly froze when she laid her eyes on the two of them..

"It's you!" Felt called out in a shocked voice as her eyes landed on Emilia.

"Thief! Thank goodness you're here. I have but one demand: return my insignia. It's important to me," Emilia quickly replied with a sharp tone.

At this, Felt wordessly backed off.

"Don't try to run away. I won't hurt you if you hand it over quietly," Emilia said as she extended her hand and formed six icicles in the air.

At the same time, Orion gripped his sword tighter and put on a cold mask to make himself look more imposing.

"Damn it. Old man!" Felt quietly called to a huge muscular and bald man at the back.

However, the muscular man shook his head and slowly said, "I think you should just give it up, Felt. You picked up something troublesome and troublesome people came with it."

"The fight hasn't even started and you're giving up?"

"Hey, Felt. Are you trying to get me killed?" The giant chided Felt for her provocation.

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(AN: There will be a bit of a break before the next chapter.)