Investing in My Yandare Villainess Fiancée:Each Reward Fuels My Growth

Chapter 59: Investment 59: Hundred Mouths, One Hunger

Elliot moved on instinct alone, grabbing Seria by the waist and throwing them both sideways as the centipede’s colossal body crashed down where they’d stood a heartbeat earlier. The impact alone cratered the stone floor, sending fissures spiderwebbing outward in every direction.

"That thing," Elliot grunted, rolling to his feet with Seria still clutched against his chest, "isn’t just a summon, is it."

"It’s her." Seria’s breathing was ragged, frost clinging to the ends of her hair. "Or—part of her. I don’t know how to explain it. Every time I land a hit, it just... doesn’t matter."

As if to prove her point, one of the centipede’s hundred mouths peeled open along its underbelly and let out a shriek that sounded disturbingly like laughter.

"You wound me with such flattering assumptions, little witch," Entoma’s voice rasped from everywhere and nowhere. "This is merely a fraction of what I truly am. My True Form. The shell that even my own children have never been permitted to witness."

"Lucky us," Elliot muttered.

He set Seria down gently, though his eyes never left the abomination coiling and uncoiling before them like some nightmare given the shape of a centaur’s worst fear.

"Can you still fight?" he asked her quietly.

"I can always fight." Her tone sharpened, some of her old fire returning to her cracked voice. "I was simply waiting for you to catch up."

A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips despite everything. "Then let’s not waste any more time."

The centipede struck again—this time not with its head, but with a dozen of its clawed legs at once, each one aimed with surgical precision at a different point around them, an attempt to box them in from all sides.

"Ice Wall—Fracture Spread!" Seria slammed both palms against the ground. Jagged plates of frost erupted upward, intercepting six of the legs at once, buying precious seconds.

Elliot used those seconds well. He was already moving, blade wreathed in the churning gold-red fire of Cremation Gale, carving a burning arc across the remaining legs that pressed toward Seria’s flank. Where his sword connected, the bone didn’t just crack—it disintegrated, crumbling to ash the way dried parchment gives way to flame.

"It works," he breathed, equal parts relief and disbelief.

"Don’t get cocky." Seria’s voice snapped like the crack of breaking ice. "It regrows."

Sure enough, even as the severed legs turned to ash on the ground, new ones sprouted from the centipede’s segmented body with a horrible wet, cracking sound, each one longer and sharper than the last.

"Regeneration isn’t infinite," Elliot said, mostly to convince himself. "Nothing’s infinite. Not even her."

"Confidence," Entoma’s voice purred from the centipede’s grinning mouths, "is such an adorable trait in the doomed."

The centipede reared back, and this time its entire body began to glow with sickly green light, veins of dark energy pulsing beneath bone like blood beneath skin.

"Get down!" Elliot tackled Seria to the ground just as a wave of concentrated acid-mana erupted from the creature’s underside, washing over the throne room floor and turning solid black stone into hissing, bubbling slag.

The heat of it licked at Elliot’s back even from a distance, close enough to singe the edges of his already tattered coat.

"That would have taken both our heads clean off," Seria whispered, staring at the scorched crater where they’d been standing seconds before.

"Which is why," Elliot said, hauling them both back up, "we need help. Fast."

As if summoned by the very thought, the far wall of the throne room shuddered violently.

A massive spear of solidified earth punched clean through six feet of ancient stone, and through the settling dust and rubble, five familiar figures stumbled into the chamber, each of them bloodied, bruised, and thoroughly furious.

"Sorry we’re late to the party." Deria dusted rubble off her shoulder, a fresh gash along her collarbone still weeping blood that she seemed to be actively ignoring. "Had a bit of an argument with a lady who really did not want to stop talking."

"You could say," Futaba added, cracking her knuckles, white mana still faintly clinging to her fists, "that we settled the disagreement rather permanently."

Behind them, Edith limped in supporting Rose, whose usually immaculate uniform was torn at the shoulder, dried blood crusted along her jaw. Leonard brought up the rear, sword drawn, golden lightning still crackling weakly along his arms.

"We tracked your mana signature through the rift Deria opened," Rose said, straightening despite her injuries with that same unshakeable poise she carried even on the verge of collapse. "It was... not a pleasant journey."

"Where’s August and Taumus?" Elliot asked, scanning the group.

"Wrapping up," Leonard said grimly. "They’ll catch up."

The centipede let out a deafening screech that rattled every bone pillar in the throne room, clearly displeased at the sudden influx of new prey.

"Oh, how wonderful," Entoma’s voice dripped with mockery from a dozen writhing mouths at once. "The whole litter, gathered together for slaughter. How efficient of you all."

"Funny," Futaba said, cracking her neck side to side, "I was about to say the exact same thing to you."

Deria slammed her fist into her open palm, stone gauntlets forming instantly around both hands. "So, Ice Queen. What’s the plan?"

Seria’s crystal-blue eyes swept across the assembled group—her friends, bloodied but unbroken, standing shoulder to shoulder in a throne room built from the bones of the creature’s own victims. Something in her chest, some old, cold knot of solitude she’d carried since childhood, loosened just slightly.

"The plan," she said slowly, "is that none of us are walking out of here until that thing stops breathing."

"Music to my ears." Edith cracked her fingers, green healing mana already knitting the worst of the group’s wounds shut. "Though I’d prefer we hurry. I’m running dangerously low on patience and mana both."

Elliot raised his sword, flame and wind coiling together along its edge once more.

"Then let’s give her exactly what she wants." His eyes hardened, fixed on the massive, writhing horror before them. "A fight she’ll never walk away from."

The centipede answered with a shriek that shook dust from the ceiling, and six of its mouths split open impossibly wide, dripping streams of corrosive black bile onto the already ruined floor.

"Everyone," Rose said calmly, drawing her blade, wine-colored mana flaring around her thorned edge, "on my signal."

The centipede lunged first.

They moved as one.