Failed To Abandon the Villain - Chapter 22

The summoning circle to summon a spirit wasn’t particularly difficult to draw, and since it appeared in every book she’d read about spirits, Valetta remembered it well.

Following the delicate movement of her pale fingertips, a red summoning circle was drawn on a tattered piece of cloth.

At a glance, it looked as if she were summoning a demon. Jin shuddered violently, his translucent fur quivering along with him.

“I wouldn’t want to be summoned by such a grotesque summoning circle!”

At Jin’s outburst, Valetta let out a small laugh. She seemed utterly unfazed.

“What do I need to say to summon it?”

“To summon a spirit, you have to recite the summoning chant. For a wind spirit, just say the chant for the Spirit of Wind.”

Jin responded reluctantly. Valetta searched her memory. While her memory was quite exceptional, she didn’t recall the summoning chant word-for-word.

In the end, Valetta asked Jin for help, despite his grumbling, and managed to get the summoning chant from him.

“You’re probably the only one in the world who’d ask a spirit to teach you how to summon a spirit.”

Valetta glanced at Jin briefly before opening her mouth.

“Riding on the winds that blow through the skies, I summon thee to this very spot. Great Spirit of the Wind, Jin.”

“…No way.”

The summoning circle, etched in crimson blood, began to glow. Soon, a falcon that had been outside the glass wall vanished in a swirling gust of wind.

Shortly thereafter, a small breeze began to stir atop the summoning circle. It quickly grew into a whirlwind, and from within, a massive falcon, twice her size, emerged, stomping on the summoning circle with its talons.

“…Ah, it worked.”

Valetta brushed herself off and stood up. Jin, who had been skeptical about the summoning, stared at her with a dumbfounded expression. His short beak hung open as if he were at a loss for words.

“…What the hell is this…?”

“So, it is possible to summon you,” Valetta murmured, gazing up at Jin with a curious expression. She figured that if she drew the summoning circle on paper and carried it with her, summoning a spirit in an emergency wouldn’t be so difficult. At the very least, it seemed like she’d be able to protect herself amidst the other mages.

At that moment, a sudden flash of light appeared behind Jin’s transparent figure. Before Valetta could turn her gaze toward it, Jin was flung into the wall with a loud crash. Bang! The impact echoed as Jin collided with the wall.

“Gah…”

“Master, are you okay?”

Reinhardt, his expression murderous, approached Valetta without hesitation. It wasn’t even a walk; in the blink of an eye, he was in front of her. Valetta barely had time to blink, yet there he was. She raised her head to see Jin pinned to the wall by an unseen force, unable to move.

“…What’s with your hand, Master?”

“I don’t think that’s something you need to concern yourself with.”

At her cold reply, Reinhardt slowly extended his hand and grabbed Valetta’s wrist. As he lifted her hand, blood that hadn’t yet stopped flowing ran down her index finger in a thin line.

“You cut yourself, didn’t you, Master?”

Reinhardt spoke, his eyes devoid of any humor. His gaze briefly flickered to the piece of tattered cloth on the floor, marked with the summoning circle, before moving away.

As his eyes traced the source of the torn cloth, they landed on her leg, partially exposed up to her thigh. It was an easy discovery.

“If you needed paper and a pen, I could have gotten them for you anytime.”

“……”

“Hmm? Master?”

Reinhardt slowly licked her fingertip. His crimson tongue emerged from between his lips, sweeping away a trail of blood that had trickled down. A chill ran down Valetta’s spine, and the fine hairs on her body stood on end.

Reinhardt, now so close she could feel his presence, let his eyes gleam dangerously.

“This makes my heart ache, you know.”

With a chilling light in his gaze, Reinhardt pressed his thumb against Valetta’s wound. Her face twisted in pain.

“Ahh…!”

She let out a stifled cry as the sharp pain coursed through her. He watched her reaction silently before slowly brushing over the wounded area with his thumb. In an instant, the blood that had been dripping stopped, and the wound healed completely.

The sharp pain that had momentarily clouded her thoughts vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving Valetta in stunned silence.

This was far beyond human ability.

Reinhardt was a being like that—a creature born with powers that far surpassed human limitations, living a solitary life steeped in loneliness, always isolated.

Valetta turned her head away from him slowly, avoiding his gaze.

“Master.”

“……”

When she didn’t respond, Reinhardt pushed her back gently, making her sit on the bed. Then, as always, he knelt in front of her.

With the same demeanor as a decade ago, he lowered himself before her and looked up at her, his eyes unchanged.

“Valetta.”

His voice was sweet, almost seductive. As if trying to prove that he wasn’t dangerous, Reinhardt curled the corners of his eyes into a smile and called out her name.

It was an unfamiliar way of addressing her, but Valetta couldn’t simply ignore it. Slowly, she turned her head to meet his gaze.

“If you need anything, I’ll bring it to you. All you have to do is give the order, Master.”

“I was just testing something. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

Valetta’s response came out like a sigh. The way his eyes burned with a reddish intensity, as if heated with emotion, was overwhelming.

“What am I supposed to do if you keep hurting yourself like this and drive me insane?”

“……”

Valetta narrowed her eyes. She wanted to ask why he would go insane, but it seemed pointless to argue. Instead, she kept her mouth shut.

“I could just kill every single person who dares to make weapons like this, couldn’t I?”

A madman truly operates on an entirely different wavelength, and Reinhardt was the perfect embodiment of that notion. Valetta mulled over his words for a moment before swallowing a dry laugh.

“Then let Jin go.”

“Jin?”

“The wind spirit you slammed into the wall.”

“Oh, right.”

At Valetta’s command, Reinhardt nodded obediently. With a single flick of his finger, the wind spirit, who had been pinned to the wall like a mounted decoration, fell to the ground with a thud.

“You cursed mage…!”

Jin’s voice, seething with rage, echoed in her mind. However, he didn’t dare charge at Reinhardt. It seemed even Jin instinctively understood the insurmountable difference in their power.

‘So, even spirits can’t handle him.’

Valetta had entertained a faint hope that Jin might be able to match Reinhardt, but it appeared she was wrong. She cast a wary glance at Reinhardt, watching him carefully.

However, Reinhardt didn’t react at all to Jin’s enraged remarks, as though he hadn’t heard them.

“By the way, Master.”

“Stop calling me that….”

“Why do you call that by its name?”

Reinhardt asked, his eyes curving into crescents. His gaze glinted like molten steel heated in a furnace, tinged with a dangerous obsession that made Valetta’s breath catch in her throat.

“How can I make you mine?”

Reinhardt murmured as he brought her fingers to his lips.

“I want to have you completely. How do I do that?”

His lips brushed against Valetta’s palm, pressing firmly in an almost reverent kiss.

Her body flinched involuntarily. His intense, burning gaze remained fixed on her face, refusing to waver or let go.

She could feel him barely restraining the madness that roiled within his eyes, like a storm threatening to break free. Valetta simply stared back at him, saying nothing.

“Let me leave this place,” she said quietly.

“It’s dangerous. Unless… is there somewhere you’d like to go, Master?”

“There is.”

At her answer, Reinhardt tilted his head slightly, watching her as his fingers slowly traced over her hand. His gaze was calm, but the slight tilt of his head gave his demeanor an eerie quality, as if he were deliberating something far beyond her understanding.

“You’re not planning to go to the Crown Prince, are you?”

“Where I go isn’t any of your concern, is it?”

“If I don’t concern myself with you, who else will, Master?”

Reinhardt’s voice dripped with sweetness, almost a whisper. Whether it was sincere or deceitful was impossible to discern, and Valetta’s brow furrowed even further at the ambiguity of his tone.

“I’m so curious about what you’re doing, what you’re thinking… to the point that I want to crack open your head and look inside,” he said.

Reinhardt cupped her cheek with his free hand while the other continued to caress her palm. His smile was soft and radiant—one reserved solely for Valetta. She stiffened at the sight of that smile, her lips tightening into a hard line.

Still sitting on the floor, Reinhardt rested his head on her thigh, tilting it slightly to the side as he wordlessly played with her hand. Valetta looked down at him in silence.

Reinhardt had a habit of doing this occasionally—seating her and then resting his head on her lap. It wasn’t just a recent behavior; he had done the same back at the Count Delight estate.

Late at night, he would sometimes visit her room under the guise of serving her. He would have her sit on the edge of the bed, only to kneel on the floor and rest his head against her lap or knee.

‘That wasn’t serving me at all,’ she thought.

Strictly speaking, it was something she should have forbidden and cast him out for.

But she hadn’t done so because, at times, Reinhardt’s actions seemed desperate—like a man clinging to the last fragile thread tethering him to sanity.

It felt as though, if she were to push him away, he might fall over the edge of a cliff, unleashing chaos and destruction in his descent.

Though Reinhardt didn’t act this way often, during the rare times he reached his breaking point, he leaned on Valetta. And whenever he did, she silently turned her head, letting him do as he pleased.

“Master,” he murmured.

“…What is it?”

“Stroke my hair,” he said softly.

His eyes, which had settled on her face, seemed to melt as they curved into a gentle, almost pleading expression.