Failed To Abandon the Villain - Chapter 4

The original Valletta in the novel was kind to Reinhardt. She didn’t treat him as a slave, but like an armour. Reinhardt also laughed and pretended to be as sweet as his nifty tongue. And then he killed her.

‘Woah, I got goosebumps.’

Valletta held her arms, shaking her head. She didn’t know how something that only came to mind could give her such a chilling sensation. She quickly went to her room and buried herself under the covers. Her shut eyes rested against the soft cloth. When she woke up, darkness was slowly descending.

‘Come to think of it, I should have just made him a potion…’

There was no need to call the doctor. In fact, it was a good opportunity to experiment, as this ability was not something she was familiar with, even after being reborn.

‘I don’t think the Count will sit still.’

After a moment’s pondering, she yawned and left her bed. She approached the desk. One side was filled with various herbs in transparent glass bottles instead of books.

The glass jars had complicated formulas written on them. They were one of the preserved items, a type of  formula that alchemists made use of. She took the herbs out of some of the jars and filled them in another empty jar. Then, she took out the paper and began to write the formula.

‘Why do I have to do all this…,’ she thought, but her hand continued to write the complicated formula without hesitation. Valletta let out a short sigh as she gazed at the alchemical formula written like a magic circle without any breaks on the paper.

“Extraction.”

Violet’s eyes began to glow, her lips quivering as if giving a command. A pure white magic circle appeared above her violet eyes. It was as if it was carved directly into her eyes. Soon, the intangible energy that escaped her fingers began to seep into the alchemical formula written on the paper. The formula glowed a deep purple as it absorbed her power.

Alchemy was a talent given at birth. Those people were born with the ability to listen to plants and use that ability to gather herbs in their best condition, to create the best potion. Each alchemist’s talent was a little different, but the potion of a master alchemist was said to even be capable of regenerating a severed arm or saving a person on the verge of death. Of course, this was a rarity among alchemists. But most alchemists could heal a wound in one day, that would normally take months.

What made them unique was that they held an ancient magic circle in their eyes. No one knew who created the formula or how, but there was an extremely low number of people with magic circles in their eyes in the whole world. The potion they created would be better than any other potion in the world. Some of the wizards imitated it and created something called “potion” which began to spread throughout the world.

However, in the end, it was just another imitation and could not compare to the real alchemist’s potion. As the years passed, the number of alchemists decreased significantly. Now, there were less than twenty officially registered alchemists in the entire empire. The potions made by those alchemists were rare and valuable, and the majority of them belonged to the imperial family. Therefore, naturally, all potions were owned by them.

However, Valletta was born into the family of Count Delight. A new alchemist who had the qualities to become a master. Although this setting wasn’t in the novel.

In fact, she was having doubts about whether she was really in a novel. The original Valletta was a lonely girl, treated coldly by Count Delight. So she turned to Reinhardt to work with him and help him get his revenge.

However, now that she was Valletta, she was different. Not only was she born with the power of alchemy, but she also had another ability that she couldn’t tell people about. In the past, Valletta was overprotected by Count Delight, to the point that she couldn’t take a single step outside her home without his permission.

However, she knew very well that his overprotection didn’t come from love. To Count Delight, Valletta was a very valuable trade item. So much so that he would use her alchemist’s blood as an excuse to make connections with the royal family. In fact, Count Delight became quite close to the emperor after he was assured of Valletta’s value by the imperial alchemist.

Valletta thought that the power  she was born with had changed things considerably. However, the core remained the same. And that was Reinhardt’s arrival. Count Delight brought Reinhardt as a slave even then. He thought that his beautiful face could be used one day. That was how beautiful Reinhardt was in appearance.

In the novel, Count Delight did not give Reinhardt to Valletta, but the fact that he was a “slave” remained unchanged.

The purple light filling the room slowly faded. The bottle that was filled with herbs had somehow turned to a light pink liquid. The alchemy formula that she had written on a piece of paper was nowhere to be found. It disappeared. All that remained was a single empty piece of paper without the formula.

She crumpled the paper and threw it into the wastebasket, leaving the room with a bottle of pink liquid.

Before she knew it, the sky was dark and the mansion was as quiet as death.

‘I don’t want to run into him…’

She hoped that the boy would be still sleeping. She turned the doorknob, which required her to reach upward with all her strength, and the door opened. Valletta carefully pushed her head through the door’s gap.

All was quiet. Valletta sighed and went inside. She didn’t see his red eyes, so she didn’t feel as scared as she thought she would.

‘He’s still a child.’

He was sleeping deeply, and so when Valletta untied the bandage, Reinhardt didn’t open his eyes. She quickly removed it and carefully sprayed the pink liquid she had made on it. Then, in a flash, his wound began to heal. It would be much more effective to heal the internal wound if he drank the liquid, but she couldn’t just open his mouth here and pour it in.

‘This is good enough.’

Finished with the proper treatment, Valletta quietly left the room, and Reinhardt’s eyelids slowly opened. When those murky red eyes glowed in the darkness, they shifted slowly.

“…I can’t believe she’s an alchemist. The rumors were true, weren’t they?”

Reinhardt murmured with a cold gaze, unlike his daytime appearance. Before the awakening, wizards had to yield to humans until they were awakened. The wizard’s unique magical eyes seemed to bring abhorrence to the average human. Perhaps that was why wizards had a more than normal sense of hostility towards ordinary humans.

Every so often, there were people who were born into good families or met good parents and had the qualities of wizards, but Reinhardt was different. He was born into the worst family and sold for a low price for being strange. As a war slave, he had to wield an unfamiliar sword on the battlefield. He knew that he would become a wizard. The one who became the Lord of the Magic Tower was born with all the knowledge of magic. And as proof of this, Reinhardt was able to use magic if it was not high level magic, unlike the wizards before awakening, who could not use magic at all.

Reinhardt guessed that it was because he couldn’t suppress all of his magic power. In the midst of all this, he was stabbed with a sword and brought here by a foolish human. And that was after he had undergone a horrible spell with a seal carved onto his heart.

“This would be useful…”

Reinhardt muttered in a low voice. He knew he could take advantage of the appearance he was born with. He knew how to be kind by accepting the kindness of others. It was a method he came up with as he rolled through the dirty world.

A survival technique.

A smile appeared on his lips. The smile was so pretty that anyone would be mesmerized by it. He had decided to paste in on his face until he came of age. At the very least, it would be much better to kneel here and call a naive girl ‘master’, than to roam around outside, lost.

Reinhardt glanced at his shoulder, where the scar had completely disappeared, and slowly closed his eyes. He knew the alchemist’s potion was wonderful. He did not refuse the surging sleepiness, knowing that sleep was the best way to heal a wounded body and mind.

Late at night, the boy and the girl slept soundly in their rooms.

***

“Valletta Delight!”

Valletta shivered at the scream that sounded like thunder. She thought her heart would plummet to the ground. Recognising the owner of the voice, she slowly opened her eyes. She blinked at the dark figure.

She looked up at Count Delight, who had invaded her room without permission and was looking down at her with a stern gaze.

It doesn’t matter if he was her father, it was inappropriate to come into someone’s room without permission.

Valletta sat up in bed, rubbing her sleepy eyes. Count Delight didn’t hide his frustrated gaze as he watched the inconspicuous Valletta.

“Yes, father.”

“Did you use alchemy on that slave?”

“Yes, because he was going to die if I left him be.”

Count Delight approached in a flash and grabbed Valletta by the collar with one hand, roughly lifting her up. The thin nine-year-old’s body shook in the air like a straw doll.