Chapter 3. I Waited Two Lives for a Cheat, and It Was the Breeding Knight

Chapter 3: 3. I Waited Two Lives for a Cheat, and It Was the Breeding Knight

Then... I saw him coming. I saw the blade, I saw the angle, and I knew with total clarity that I had no way to block it.

I think there was a moment where I should’ve felt terror, but what I actually felt was mostly annoyance...

I was going to die on a muddy road, in front of a little girl, without ever finding out what my talent was...

After two lives of waiting... I wasn’t even going to get the punchline.

My mind did that stupid thing where it flipped through memories at such a high speed. Maybe this was the last moment played through me before I faced death for the second time.

I saw the examiner wiping his crystal... Tomas with his burned eyebrows... Alicia on the fence with her bundle of bread...

I saw the promise we’d made... the one I’d told her she would regret.

But now that I realized something...

I hadn’t become the strongest...

I hadn’t proven anything yet to her...

And I didn’t get a chance to speak my true feelings to her...

But I knew one thing for sure...

"I... didn’t... COME THIS FAR...! Grgghh...! Hust to watch them... DIEEEGGGHHHH!!!" I screamed and tightened my grip on the broken handle until my knuckles went white. "If this is where I go... then fine by me...!"

"At least they’re getting out of HERE RIGHT NOWWWWW!!!"

The blade came down.

SWINNGGGGG!

And the world went quiet.

I’ve thought a lot about what happened next, and I still can’t describe the silence properly... It wasn’t the sound that stopped.

It was more like everything around me paused to take a breath, and I was the only thing... that was still moving.

Then something hot and golden exploded out of my chest...

The light hit the road like a thrown bucket of sunrise. Brannoch’s sword flew out of his hands and spun into a tree.

His horse screamed and reared, and the other knights shielded their faces and backed away, their weapons ringing in their grips as if they were trying to run too.

I can feel the pressure rolling off my body, and it shoved the mud flat in a wide circle around me.

I felt it all at once... The ache in my ribs vanished, the cuts on my shoulder stitched themselves shut, and my lungs filled with air like I’d just been born again, which, to be fair, I already had once.

Better late than never I guess... that system of mine... and that power I should’ve deserved...

Yes... feel it... harness it... the power that poured through every muscle I had.

A glowing panel unfolded in front of my face, clean and blue, exactly like the ones in the novels I used to mock.

There it is... you fucking bastard... you’re late.

[Awakening Complete!]

[Congratulations, Roland Ravenshield!]

[You have awakened an SSS-Rank Unique Class: THE BREEDING KNIGHT!]

I read it... Then, because I’m a thorough person... I read it again because... what the actual fuck?

I expected such a cool system or awakening name, but what did I get...?

"The Breeding... Knight?" I said out loud.

Nobody answered. The knights were too busy being terrified, and Alicia was too busy being stunned.

I looked at the panel harder, hoping for a typo, or a mistranslation, or maybe a second line saying ’just kidding.’

But fucking hell... There was no such luck.

[Class Type: Growth / Bond Evolution]

[Class Effect: Your power grows through intimate bonding with compatible female knights.]

[Additional Effect: Compatible partners experience accelerated growth, enhanced attributes, and potential ability evolution.]

[Warning: Your class cannot reach its full potential without establishing a compatible bond.]

I stood there with a broken sword handle in one hand and a legendary power in the other... and I felt something inside me quietly give up.

"Twenty years," I said. "Two lives... I waited two whole lives for this, and the universe looked at everything it could have given me and went with that?"

The panel did not apologize or anything...

I’ll say this much for the class, though... Even without the bonding part, the awakening had given me enough raw strength to deal with the immediate problem.

I have to be grateful... and that word ’Breeding.’ Is this what I think it is...?

I looked up at the knights, and for the first time in my life, men who outweighed me and outranked me looked at me the way people look at a storm that’s about to land on their house.

"Captain," said one of them, in a tiny voice. "This... this is...!!!"

"I see it," Brannoch said.

His face had gone gray. He took a long look at me, at the light still curling off my shoulders, and I watched him make the smartest decision of his career.

"Fall back...! We’re leaving immediately!"

"Whaaaat...? You’re leaving already...?" I said. "Like... right the fuck now?"

"Even though before that... you just tried to kill me."

"Y-yes... and I deeply regret it!"

"Oh... Are you really now...?"

"Not even a little," he admitted. "But I’d like to regret it from far away!"

They didn’t even wait to collect their fallen friend, who got dragged onto a horse by the collar. Six knights of Drevane thundered off down the road like a pack of chastened dogs, and I watched them go, still half expecting the whole thing to turn out to be a fever dream.

But thank god... it was real, and I need to thank whatever god or goddess answered my last prayer.

I ran back to the wagons as fast as my new legs would take me, which was a bit too fast, because I overshot and nearly slammed into the old man.

I didn’t care about the awakening anymore...

I didn’t care about the class... the panel... or the pride I’d been carrying for two lifetimes.

I only cared about one thing... and she was kneeling by the wagon wheel, trying to bandage her own arm with her teeth.

"Alicia!"

She looked up. Her face was dirty, and her eyes were red, and before I could say anything else, she threw the bandage aside just to get to her feet and hit me in the chest with a closed fist.

It didn’t hurt, of course, thanks to the new stats, but I made a noise anyway out of respect.

"Ouch... is that how you thank your savior?"

"You idiot," she said. "You absolute... unbearable idiot...!"

"Hehehe. I know."

"You could have died!"

"I know..."

"What would I have done if you had died?!"

"Honestly?" I said. "Probably cried, then written a really mean poem about me or something..."

She hit me again, but then I got rewarded for it, which was a hug. She hugged me... real hard, and I could feel that her whole body was trembling against mine, and I forgot every joke I’d ever planned to make.

This just makes me love her even more, and I know that today... is the real day that I can protect her with my power.

And so... I put my arms around her carefully, because she was still bleeding, and she buried her face in my neck.

I can also smell how good she was... it was divine, but I tried to set that aside for later.

"Okay, hear me out!" I said after a while. "Not to complain, but I did just awaken an SSS-Rank class!"

"So I’d appreciate it if you stopped punching your kingdom’s newest national treasure."

She laughed, which turned into a wet, crooked sound against my collar, and then she pulled back and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Don’t ever do that again, you understand?"

"I’ll try my best."

"That wasn’t a request from me, idiot."

"Understood, ma’am! I’ll try my best, but harder this time."

She was still smiling when a new panel slid into the air between us, bright plus obnoxious and entirely unwanted.

[Bond Requirement Detected.]

[Compatible Female Knight Identified: Alicia Ainzfield.]

[Compatibility: SSS.]

[Potential Evolution: Unlocked.]

I froze.

No fucking way that fate was finally on my side after all this time.

I looked at Alicia... then looked at the panel.

But then I looked back at Alicia, who was clearly able to see it too, since she’d gone very still, and then I looked at the panel again, as if it might change its mind if I gave it a second chance.

"Wait," I said. "Alicia is my... first partner?"

[Affirmative.]

"And the requirement for that is... intimate bonding...? Like you know...?"

[Affirmative.]

"T-there has to be another way! Like the first step, you know... Training together, sharing mana, and maybe a friendly handshake...?"

[Alternative methods may provide limited benefits.]

[Full class evolution requires a compatible intimate bond.]

I put a hand over my face.

"I finally get an SSS-Rank awakening," I told the sky, "and it turns out my biggest problem isn’t monsters... kingdoms or dark lords."

"It’s explaining this to my childhood friend."

"I can read it, Roland," Alicia said quietly.

"I know you can read...! That’s what makes it so much worse!" And that worse thing is that someone should’ve not read the words from my own system.

But... it is what it is... I guess.

I peeked between my fingers. She had turned the color of a ripe tomato, which is something I’d seen on her exactly twice before, and one of those times she’d accidentally walked into the wrong bathhouse.

But she wasn’t backing away, and she wasn’t yelling at me... It’s even better that she wasn’t pretending the panel didn’t exist.

She was looking at me with a seriousness I usually only saw when she was about to correct my stance.

"R-Roland," she said. "Can I say something... and you won’t make a joke until I’m done?"

"Hmmm... nah... I can’t promise that."

"Then try... at least this once because right now... I’m going to say it once and never repeat it again."

I lowered my hand and nodded.