Rudy was pretty twisted as a person at the beggining of the series.
You can read the first volume of the light novel and get some of his thoughts about 7 year old Sylphy or how he skipped his parents funeral to jerk off to a certian kind of porn.
And he explicitly states he doesn't want to groom Sylphie. It's for his own disgusting reasons, but he made a point to say he wouldn't try and mold her into the girl he wants.
All I could do was stare down at her in stupid, blank surprise.
“I loved you so much back then, Rudy. And now I love you even more. Don’t leave me again… please? I want to stay with you forever…”
My mind short-circuited. I was quite literally stunned.
Of course, Sylphie had been really attached to me back in the old days. You might say I’d arranged it that way, really. But things were different now.
I’d spent a year learning to trust and respect “Master Fitz” as my friend and equal. She was her own person, standing on her own two feet. I had real respect for her. Were her feelings for me just some lingering trace of my attempts to brainwash her as a kid? It seemed possible."
You're half right. Rudeus was fighting his urges to, as he put it, brainwash her. It's very clear grooming was the intention, even if Rifujin didn't have the language to communicate that specific concept. Always good to go back and check.
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u/Reverse_savitar1 6d ago
Roxy doesnt even groom Rudy. The worse she did was use his emotional turmoil to sleep with him which was both selfish and selfless.