Chapter 12. Alicia Was Correct About This Female Knight... She’s Cold, But I Like It!

Chapter 12: 12. Alicia Was Correct About This Female Knight... She’s Cold, But I Like It!

When I take a good long look at Laura... and oh my fucking god...

She was exactly as Alicia described. And right away, she’s one of my types that I loved, especially those fierce eyes.

Imagine those fierce eyes turned into loving eyes by me because of how I conquered her. Anyway... she was tall and lean, with short blue hair that was cut sharply across her forehead and eyes the color of a winter sky.

She wore a knight’s cuirass over dark traveling clothes, and she held a long, plain sword in a perfect two-handed grip. And I already know that she’s going to be a fucking badass.

Five bandits were circling her, and behind them a handful of villagers hid behind an overturned wagon. She was fighting with the kind of cold, beautiful precision, and damn... that’s fucking hot.

Every cut was made exactly where it needed to be, and I could see right away that she was exhausted. Her breathing was shallow, a long cut had opened along her left forearm, and every step she took was a little slower than the last.

Is this a chance for me that I should take? I don’t know why, but ever since I’ve gotten the SSS awakening... my luck has gone really fucking good, and I ain’t complaining about this one.

One of the bandits feinted a retreat. Another one slipped around behind the wagon, aiming for the angle where she couldn’t turn in time, and a third was already swinging a heavy axe toward her ribs.

And that’s where I stopped thinking.

You know what time it is...?

It’s hero time, and so my legs just moved on its own. Probably because I wanted to be a savior for this badass woman.

The world slowed down around me, the way it had when I awakened, but this time I was ready for it... Combat instinct fed me the whole fight like a map where I identified the axe, the flank, the feint, and the gap in the formation.

I crossed thirty feet of open road in a heartbeat and slammed into the bandit that was sneaking up on Laura’s back, taking him off his feet with a punch that threw him halfway across the street.

The axe came down in the same second, and I caught the haft in my left hand and stopped it dead.

The axeman stared at me. But I stared back with a smug smile.

"Yo," I said, and broke his wrist. "Don’t you think it’s rude trying to hurt an injured knight like her?"

He screamed and dropped the weapon. I kicked him in the chest, and he flew into the wagon with a crash that shook the street.

Laura had spun around, her sword up, and the look on her face was a mix of shock and instant suspicion. I’d never seen anyone so efficiently unimpressed by how I saved her ass, but eh... that’s fine, I guess.

"Who the hell are you?" she demanded. "Identify yourself!"

"Whoa, whoa, let’s all take a moment to calm down, ahaha..." I responded with a joke out of habit, and then I reflected on the situation. ’Heh... melt down... get it? Since she’s so cold."

"Anyway...! Friend of Alicia Ainzfield, that’s me." I shook my head right away and offered her a hand. "Can you stand?"

"I don’t need a stranger to tell me whether I can stand!"

Yikes... now I get what Alicia meant. She’s really cold... almost as cold as the fucking blizzard.

"Great~! Then you can take the three on the left, right?"

"And what about the others?"

"That’s my job. I’ll wipe the floor with them," I replied while punching my own palm. "Better get ready or you’ll miss it."

I picked up the dropped axe, tested the weight, and put it back down because it was too heavy and I preferred my own sword. I drew the blade Hesper’s cousin had sharpened for me and turned to face the four men still closing in on us.

"Like I said... I’ve got those dickheads by myself," I said.

Laura gave me a look that I can only describe as deeply offended, but she didn’t have time to argue. The three on her left charged at the same moment, and she met them with a clean sweep that put two on the ground and the third on his heels.

I turned to the rest and let the new energy wash through my arms.

And my fucking god... It was unreal, honestly.

A day earlier, I’d have gotten myself killed in about eight seconds. But now... I could see every strike before it landed, and my body moved like it had been waiting years for permission.

I finally got the privilege to become the overpowered main character, and yes... it’s the second-best thing that happened to me because the first one was sex.

And so... back to the battlefield where I slid under a sword, caught the man’s elbow, and flipped him over my hip.

"Is that all you got, faggot?!" I sidestepped a spear thrust, grabbed the shaft, and wrenched it out of the guy’s hand.

"Too fucking—" A rock flew at my head from somewhere, and I ducked without even looking. "Whoa there! You think a cheap fucking trick would work on me?!"

One bandit with a crossbow was trying to line up a shot at the villagers hiding by the wagon.

"Hell no, you don’t!" I saw it coming a second before he got his finger on the trigger, so I kicked a loose cart wheel across the street.

BAAMMM!

It bounced off the crossbow, which went flying, and the man followed it with a shriek because the stock had smashed his fingers.

"Holy shit," one of the bandits said, backing away. "What the hell is HE!?"

"Under-appreciated," I said, and clocked him on the jaw.

I’d like to say I was being cool and calculated through all of it while trying to aura farm, but the truth is... that I was also making a lot of noise. Noise pollution.

At one point I told a man holding a mace that his mother must be so proud, which didn’t even make sense, and at another I yelled "fuck off" at a guy who kept trying to hit me from behind.

It all went by in a blur, and somewhere in the middle of it... I realized that I was enjoying myself with my new powers. And I could’ve made it this far without fucking Alicia or the results of my training back then.

When I looked around, the bandit boss was already running.

He was a thick, bearded man in a leather jerkin, and he was dragging something small under one arm. It took me half a second to understand that it was a boy, maybe six or seven years old, kicking and sobbing while holding onto the man’s belt with both hands.

I didn’t have a choice, and so... I took off after him.

Knight’s Sovereignty pushed my legs harder than I’d ever run in my life. I cut across a vegetable patch, jumped a fence, and landed in the dirt lane just as the boss rounded the corner of a barn.

He heard me coming and spun around with a knife pressed to the kid’s throat. "Whoa there... let’s all calm down for a second, alright?"

"Fuck off!" he yelled. "Do you see this?! I’ll FUCKING cut him!!!"

"I swear to the gods I’ll do it!"

"Eh... You really won’t," I said, and I threw up a hand, and Aether answered.

I’m not sure exactly how I did it, but... It felt like pulling a string that had always been there, and a thin sheet of pale light shot out of my palm and crossed the gap between us.

It hit the knife with a sharp crack, and the blade shattered into bright little pieces in his fist. The man yelled and let go of the boy, and I was on him before he could react.

"Where the fuck are you going, hah?!" I took him down with one hand on his wrist and one on his collar, flipped him onto his stomach, and sat on his back.

"Don’t move," I said, "or I’ll start using actual fucking violence on you."

The boy was standing there with big wet eyes, so I held out a hand, and he ran straight into my leg and hugged it. I patted his head awkwardly.

"It’s okay..." I said. "You’re okay... I’ve got you, kid."

By the time I got back to the crossroads, with the boss tied up and the kid riding on my shoulders, the rest of the bandits had either run off or been knocked flat.

Alicia was there, directing a group of villagers who were pulling people out of a burning house. She saw me, and her whole body loosened with relief.

Laura was standing alone in the middle of the street, holding her wounded arm and looking at me.

I set the boy down, and he ran to his mother, who burst out of the crowd with a wail. I watched them hug and looked away to give them privacy, which is how I ended up looking right at Laura.

"I’m not the one to judge that, but... you probably should get that treated as fast as possible," I said, nodding at her arm. "Don’t want that to get worse, right?"

She glanced at the cut like she’d forgotten it was there. Then she turned back to me with her gaze that was sharp and steady.

"You... intervened without knowing who I was."

I shrugged. "You were protecting people, and that was enough for me to know who you really are."

She didn’t say anything for a while. I couldn’t read her face at all, but something about the set of her shoulders changed, as though a very cold wall had developed one tiny crack.

"What’s your name...?" she asked.

"The name’s Roland! Roland Ravenshield."

"Roland... Ravenshield..." she repeated slowly, as if she were testing it. "I’ll remember that."

I was about to say something clever, because I’m physically incapable of letting a moment like that go by, when Alicia walked up beside me. She took in the scene, the tied-up boss, the defeated bandits, and Laura staring at me with open curiosity, and she raised one eyebrow.

"Laura~!" she said. "It’s been a while, isn’t it? Do you still remember me?"

"You are Alicia Ainzfield, correct?" Laura gave a short nod, though I swear her eyes were still halfway on me. "And this is... the man you were always talking about?"

"W-what?! I-I never said anything about him."

"You didn’t have to..."

I opened my mouth to introduce myself properly, and the panel decided that this was the perfect time to wake up.

[New Female Knight Detected.]

[Name: Laura Lapisfield.]

[Compatibility Analysis: Initiated...]

I froze.

Slowly, like a man in a nightmare, I turned my head toward Alicia. She was already looking at me.

Her smile was perfectly calm, and I’ve learned over the years that her calm smiles are much more dangerous than her angry ones.

"Roland," she said sweetly. "What did your system just say?"

I swallowed hard.

"I think," I said, "that our journey just got a lot more complicated..."