Reincarnated as the Villainess's Unlucky Bodyguard-Chapter 220: Freedom Comes in Extremely Small Doses

The ceiling above me hadn't changed.

Still that same cracked expanse of dark stone, the faint glimmer of old spell-runes crawling like fading veins across its surface. One of them looked suspiciously like a snail if you tilted your head just right which I'd had ample time to confirm, since I'd been lying here for what felt like a century and a half.

I'd named it Gregory.

Gregory was currently my most stable relationship.

Which was depressing on a level I wasn't emotionally prepared to deal with, so I shifted the focus of my fury back where it belonged: to Azael.

She hadn't come back yet, which was deeply suspicious. Normally, after one of her monologue-fueled tantrums, she liked to linger hovering like a blood-scented fog, smirking while her shadow-magic rearranged my spine for the sixth time that week. But after that last encounter, she'd left in a hurry.

A bad sign.

For her, anyway.

[She's rattled,] the system said, its voice lounging lazily in my skull like it had a glass of wine and nowhere else to be. [Which is good, because it means she's slipping.]

She said I was hers, I thought, venom still simmering under the surface of my exhaustion. Like I'm some kind of stolen heirloom with a tracking spell on it.

[Yeah, not gonna lie, that level of obsession is giving "unhinged ex with magical control issues."]

She thinks I'm breaking because she's in love with the idea of me.

[And what do you call your feelings about a certain demon princess?]

None of your business, I snapped internally.

[Oh, don't be coy. You practically hiss every time that shiny hero boy so much as breathes her name.]

I would've argued, but that required energy. And motor control. Which I was still very much lacking. So instead I filed that irritation in the folder labeled "Emotional Problems I Will Absolutely Not Be Addressing Right Now."

Outwardly, I remained still utterly obedient, completely silent. A perfect doll made of guilt and compulsion. Inside, however, I was tearing strips of Azael's throne room into conceptual confetti and feeding it to Gregory the Snail Rune.

A small win, but we take what we can get.

How's the spell?

[Holding. But she's reinforced the outer layer. She's nervous, so she doubled her grip.]

Of course she did, I muttered, mentally pushing against the new magical constraints and getting the psychic equivalent of running headlong into a brick wall covered in glitter glue and malicious intent.

[We'll find the pattern again,] the system said more gently now. [We did it once. You got two seconds. That's more than most people manage when they're being soul-choked by a demonic ex-warlord.]

That was supposed to be comforting.

It was not.

Still, the smallest ember of satisfaction flickered deep in my core. Azael had noticed. She might not have said it out loud, but her fear was tangible, coiled behind her golden eyes like a serpent waiting for the next tremor.

Good.

Let her wonder if I was slipping away.

Let her panic.

But my moment of delicious petty vengeance was cut short by the very distinct sound of footsteps echoing through the corridor. Not Azael hers were sharper, more rhythmic. These were uneven. Lighter. They stopped outside the chamber, and for a moment, I thought maybe a guard had gotten lost and was about to become intimately acquainted with one of Azael's spike traps.

The door creaked.

A head poked in.

It was a demon. Very junior-looking. Horns still slightly crooked. Cloak too big for his frame, like he'd stolen it from someone with ambitions and better tailoring. He tiptoed into the chamber holding… a bowl?

"Um," he said nervously, voice cracking slightly. "Mistress said to… uh… deliver this."

He placed the bowl carefully beside me, as if I were a bear he was hoping wouldn't wake up and devour him.

It was soup.

Or something pretending to be soup.

It was purple.

It steamed purple.

I stared at it with the kind of disdain normally reserved for particularly aggressive tax paperwork.

"I think it's… healing stew?" the boy offered, inching back toward the door.

[If that's healing stew, I'm a candlestick,] the system deadpanned. [That thing's going to rewire your liver.]

The boy hesitated, looking at me like he half expected me to lunge up and snap his neck. I gave him the smallest twitch of my eyelid, which was all I could manage.

He screamed a little, dropped a spoon, and ran out of the room so fast he tripped on the threshold.

There was a long, echoing crash.

I smiled, invisibly.

[You're terrifying.]

I do my best.

With the room once again blissfully empty, I turned my attention inward. The moment had passed, but the crack in the wall was still there. I could feel it—like pressure behind my eyes, the faintest shimmer of movement in a sea of stillness.

Show me the new binding layer.

The system paused.

[You're not going to like it.]

I don't like any of this. Get on with it.

A map unfolded in my mind—a shimmering lattice of runes and thread-like sigils that wound around my consciousness like a tangled knot. Azael's spellwork was intricate, elegant, and grotesquely excessive. The woman didn't know how to do anything simply. She couldn't even enslave a soul without drafting an opera about it in curse language.

I reached for the weakest point, feeling the familiar resistance push back. My magic surged toward it like water against a dam.

This time, I pushed harder.

My fingers twitched.

It was slight barely a motion, but it was enough to startle the shadows.

Progress.

Then, unexpectedly, a voice.

"Well, you are dramatic, aren't you?"

I froze mentally and physically.

A figure stood in the shadows near the far wall, arms crossed, leaning with the sort of relaxed confidence only possessed by people who were deeply annoying and aware of their own effect.

He wore a deep red cloak and had eyes like polished silver coins—bright, reflective, and faintly mocking.

Another hallucination?

[Nope, that's real. He's in the spell.]

In it?

[He's woven into the bindings. Like a failsafe.]

"Correct," the man said cheerfully, tipping an imaginary hat at me. "I'm the security enchantment. Or, as Azael so charmingly called me, 'the sassy firewall.'"

He smiled, all teeth. "Name's Thalren. I'm not supposed to talk to you."

"Then don't," I hissed mentally.

He tsked. "But you're so entertaining."

I narrowed my internal gaze. Get out of my head.

"Oh, you're spicy," he said approvingly. "No wonder Azael's obsessed."

I didn't have the strength to argue, not with a sentient defense mechanism. Not today.

"Let me make it simple," he said, straightening. "You're getting stronger. She knows it. So she added me. If you want to keep unraveling this spell without setting off the magical equivalent of a demon nuke, you'll have to go through me."

Great. A sarcastic firewall with a superiority complex.

[Finally, someone else in here with my level of snark,] the system said, sounding genuinely delighted.

This is a nightmare.

Thalren smiled, as if reading my thoughts. "We'll be seeing each other soon, I imagine."

Then he vanished just like that. No smoke, no flair. Just gone.

The room was quiet again.

My fingers still trembled with that tiny spark of movement.

Two seconds last time.

Now, maybe five.

It wasn't much.

But it was mine.

And it was growing.

I turned back to Gregory the rune-snail on the ceiling.

"Soon," I whispered softly in my mind. "We're going to blow this place up."

Gregory, naturally, said nothing.

But I like to think he approved.