SSS Awakening: I Become The Strongest Breeding Knight

Chapter 4: 4. I Waited Two Lives for a Cheat, and It Came with a Girlfriend Requirement

Gulp... don’t tell me that this is what I think it is...

Years of bad luck, and now... my luck is just over the rooftop, which was insane, but I can’t complain or say shit about this.

I just have to accept this and remember my priority, which was having a harem. Being a breeding knight was probably a sign of my true purpose.

”Uhm... you know...” She took a slow breath. ”I’ve been next to you for years.”

”I watched you fail every test, and I watched you get up the next morning anyway... when nobody believed in you... including your own father.”

Ahh yes... I remember having a father who was an asshole in this life, but eh... now that he’s gone, I don’t fucking care.

”I don’t want to be... uhm... you know... some random person who happened to be compatible.” Alicia was saying all of that with that nervous look, especially since her fingers were twitching. ”If you... uhmmm... need a partner to reach your p-potential...”

”Then... I-I...” She then takes a deep breath and exhales it hard, where I can feel it on my face. ”I want to be the first one who walks that road with you...!”

I tried to act like a gentleman about it by saying. ”Alicia, you don’t have to...”

I hope that I didn’t regret any of this for being a gentleman even though I... am so ready to make her my first.

”I said no jokes! This isn’t one, you know!” She took my hand, and her fingers were cold and shaking. ”I’m not doing this because of that awakening thing... and I’m not doing it because you suddenly got so strong all of a sudden.”

”I’d have said the same thing if you’d died tomorrow with nothing at all...”

Alicia starts to look around her, and then she focuses her beautiful eyes on me, and I suddenly blushed seeing that. ”Uhm... I... I...!”

”I love you, Roland...! I think I’ve loved you for a really... really long TIME...!” She said that while lowering her head and putting her hand on her breastplate.

Oh booooy... It had been a long day indeed...

I’d fought six knights, awakened a power I didn’t ask for, and died almost twice...

None of that had prepared me for those words, and my brain just stopped working... there’s no way that my REAL story has just begun for this point.

I got my first ever girlfriend... and she was a lovely one as well... like any other female knight you would find in any fantasy stories.

”Look... I don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything,” I said once it started again. ”That’s the one thing I don’t want...”

”If the power makes this into some kind of an obligation, then... I’ll find another way, even if it takes a hundred years.”

”It’s not an obligation.” She squeezed my hand. ”It’s a choice, and I’m choosing you right now!”

”Let me do that for once... and don’t try to carry all of this by yourself!”

I looked at the girl who’d stood by me since we were kids, who’d brought me food after every failure and told off an entire village on my behalf.

For the first time in two lifetimes... I realized that being the strongest might not be something I had to do alone.

At that moment, the universe, true to its usual sense of timing, ruined everything.

[First Bond Candidate Confirmed.]

[Alicia Ainzfield has voluntarily accepted the Bond.]

[Initiating the First Evolution Quest...]

[Quest: Establish Your First Intimate Bond.]

[Reward: SSS-Class Knight Evolution. Status: Locked.]

I read the quest, closed my eyes for three full seconds, and opened them again.

Alicia was watching me with an expression somewhere between nervous, amused, and fully committed... I know that she had clearly noticed that I’d gone pale.

”Alicia,” I said. ”Before we do anything... I need to ask you something.”

”Okay... What is it?”

”Do you think there’s a way to return this power and ask for a normal one?”

”HAHAHAHAHA!!!” She burst out laughing, with her face still red and her hand still in mine. ”I’m afraid you’re stuck with it, Roland...”

[System Notification: Host’s first partner is waiting.]

[Please stop procrastinating.]

I tipped my head back and stared at the clouds, and the clouds... as far as I could tell, were laughing at me too.

”Two fucking lifetimes,” I said, to nobody and everybody. ”Two goddamn fucking lifetimes, and I got reincarnated into the worst comedy in history...”

”But eh...? Who am I to complain?”

’Let’s become the strongest...’

’...BREEDING KNIGHT IN THIS WOOOOORLD!’

...

The old man from the wagons bowed to me so many times that I started to worry about his back... and of course, all this treatment just keeps making me feel like I was at cloud nine.

”Thank you, young sir,” he said, for what had to be the fifth time, and clasped both of my hands in his dry, knobby ones. ”Thank you... thank you... thank you... thank you... thank you...”

That’s got to be record-like there... thanking someone for, like, the tenth time.

”Those animals would have butchered every one of us... but instead you stood there with a broken sword like some kind of storybook hero!”

”It feels like I was looking at a legend being made!”

Oh pufft... this old man knows how to make a young man like me keep flying past the clouds until we reach outer space.

”Honestly... I really didn’t have a better option about it,” I said. ”It was mostly panic.”

”Panic that saved children and an old man like me,” he said firmly, as if he were correcting a student. ”I won’t hear otherwise... just take all the gratitude I can give to you.”

The rest of the rescued villagers had crowded in around us by then. A woman was crying into her apron, two men were arguing about who got to carry my pack, and a handful of kids had taken me hostage by the legs.

One of them, the little girl who had been watching me so hard before the fight, tugged on the hem of my torn shirt until I looked down.

”You look like the knight in the stories my mama always reads me every night,” she said.

I opened my mouth to give her a joke, and for once nothing came out. I don’t want to act like a fucking asshole at this point.

I had spent two lifetimes being the punchline.

In my first life I was the person who got hit by a delivery van, and in this one I was the person who couldn’t awaken anything... to the point that the village joke was with the wooden sword.

Nobody had ever looked at me like that... like I was something worth putting in a story, and it hit me harder than any of Brannoch’s men had.

I lowkey was about to cry, but I had to keep my cool just so that I could spread my new aura as a new ’breeding’ knight. A legend is being made, just like that old man said.

”Thanks,” I said, and my voice came out rougher than I wanted. ”But you should let Alicia take the credit... She’s the real knight here.”

”What?! Don’t you dare put this on me!” Alicia said behind me.

She had finally gotten a bandage tied around her arm, and her long golden hair, which she usually kept in a neat braid, had come loose and hung in a messy tangle over one shoulder.

She had mud on her cheek and a fresh blush on her face, and she was doing her best to avoid looking me in the eye. ”You... you were the one who stood in the road... and it’s clearly not me.”

”You carried two children out from under a wagon.”

”You got hit in the ribs by a horse.”

”By a man on a horse... It’s different.”

”Both of you did it,” the old man said, with the patience of someone who had settled many arguments between young people. ”And now both of you are coming with us to Marrow Creek, because I refuse to let my rescuers walk off with an empty stomach!”

And that... was how we ended up traveling toward a small farming village with an escort of grateful strangers.

The head of Marrow Creek, a stout woman named Hesper with forearms like fence posts, took one look at our torn armor and dirty faces and started giving orders.

Somebody ran off to get some hot water. Somebody else went to find a blacksmith.

By the time we got through the gate, a table in the middle of the square was already covered in bread, roasted vegetables, and a steaming stew that smelled like a wise decision.

Oh wow... this feels like a huge victory, and it’s something that I’ve finally deserved after all these years.

Maybe living here longer was worth it... I just got to wait for the right time to feel this privilege.