The Extra Villain: I Made a Contract With The Dragon Empress!

Two days passed quickly. In that time, Merlin gradually adapted to the world of The Lost Hero novel and began changing his attitude toward the servants, guards, and even his own parents.

Of course, many people were skeptical at first. Some even suspected Merlin of harboring a hidden plot that might trouble them in the future.

But the two days passed peacefully, and slowly everyone started to believe in his transformation.

Even so, one person still found it hard to accept the change—Catrine.

Merlin had tried to approach her in various ways, but the little girl always kept her distance, even running away whenever she saw him.

These past two days had truly been a tough challenge for Merlin in trying to raise Catrine's favorability toward him.

"Huh..." Merlin let out a small sigh. "I'm really incompetent. In two days, I only managed to gain twenty points. How useless."

His lips pursed in annoyance as he thought about how difficult it was to get close to Catrine. But he had expected that—the trauma the little girl had suffered was immense.

Still, he felt lucky that Catrine was only six years old. If she had been a teenager, Merlin was sure his mission would have been much harder.

Shaking his head, he sat slowly on the edge of the bed and looked up at the balcony, where the night sky was clear.

A sea of stars stretched out before him, so beautiful it left him dazed for a moment.

"Tomorrow is the day of awakening. If I'm not mistaken, Catrine will awaken a guardian spirit in the form of an ice giant bird," he muttered, narrowing his eyes.

Guardian spirits were divided into five ranks, measured by stars. The higher the number of stars, the stronger the spirit.

Catrine's guardian spirit had five stars, making it extremely powerful, while Merlin Clay's puppy in the story was only a one-star—a piece of trash.

"Tonight, I have to earn Catrine's affection. At the very least, I must bring it up to zero," he whispered, clenching his right hand into a fist.

As he recalled, the bird could sense Catrine's emotions. If her hatred were exposed, the ice bird would surely explode in rage.

In the original story, the ice bird despised Merlin so much it wanted to kill him. Fortunately, Catrine always held it back. Otherwise, Merlin would have died long before meeting the main character, Abel.

Taking a deep breath, Merlin got up from the bed and walked out of his room.

***

Inside her room, Catrine lay on the bed with her eyes closed.

Yet no matter how hard she tried, sleep wouldn't come. Instead, she felt restless and uneasy.

Slowly, her round eyes opened, staring blankly at the window at the far end of the room.

"What exactly happened to Brother Merlin? Why did he change like that?" she murmured in wonder.

Over the past two days, she had noticed a drastic change in him. The troublemaker and bully she once knew had turned into an obedient and polite child.

Merlin now greeted others with a smile, and Catrine had even seen him visiting the library.

When she secretly followed him, she witnessed something she thought impossible—Merlin actually reading books in earnest.

Having known him since childhood, she couldn't believe her eyes. And yet the truth was right there before her, leaving her at a loss for how to react.

"Still..." She pursed her small lips. "Big Brother Merlin really does seem different, and he always tries to talk to me. But I'm too scared, so I keep avoiding him... Am I a bad girl?"

Tears welled up as her eyes turned slightly red.

If someone asked whether she loved Merlin, the answer would, of course, be yes. Since childhood, they had always been together, and her brother had cared for her deeply.

But everything changed two years ago. The kind and caring brother she knew disappeared, replaced by a cruel and heartless boy.

From then on, he constantly tormented her and did terrible things, leaving her deeply traumatized.

She longed for them to reconcile and return to how they used to be, but fear lingered—that all of this might just be an illusion, a deception created by Merlin.

"Hiksh... Hiksh..." She sobbed, burying her face into the pillow she held tightly in her arms.

The situation was too complicated, and she had no idea how to escape it.

Knock!

Just then, a knocking sound came from her bedroom door, followed by a boy's voice calling out to her.

"Catrine, it's me. Are you asleep?"

--------//Author Note://--------

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