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

Chapter 60: Investment 60: What the Wind Left Behind

Rewind, just slightly—to the moment Deria and Futaba first tasted poison in their veins.

"Poison," they’d stuttered in unison, collapsing to their knees as the cuts Mary had carved into their skin burned white-hot, then numbingly cold, then white-hot again.

"Oh, don’t look so glum." Mary tucked a strand of mushroom-pale hair behind her ear, strolling toward them with the unhurried gait of someone who already considered the fight finished. "It’s not fatal. Well. Not immediately."

"Funny." Futaba spat blood onto the cracked earth, forcing herself back up onto one knee through sheer, stubborn will. "’Cause from where I’m kneeling, you sound awfully confident for someone who hasn’t actually won yet."

"Confidence," Mary said sweetly, "is simply what winning feels like before the enemy realizes it."

"Cute line." Deria dragged herself upright using a jagged spike of stone she conjured beside her. "Did you rehearse that, or does villain monologuing just come naturally to bug people?"

Mary’s serene expression twitched, just slightly.

That twitch was all the opening Futaba needed.

"Moo-chan." Her voice dropped low, steady, the poison in her veins visibly slowing with each passing second as white mana burned through her bloodstream like a purifying fire. "Purge."

Wrapped around her fists, the two bundles of white light that had once been Moohawk pulsed brightly, and warmth—actual, physical warmth—spread outward from Futaba’s chest, neutralizing the toxin cell by cell.

"You—how are you already recovering?" Mary’s composure cracked fully this time.

"Turns out," Futaba said, cracking her neck, "the great families of Eniweiss don’t raise their daughters to die from a bug bite."

She closed the distance in half a second, faster than Mary’s eyes could track, and drove both glowing fists into Mary’s torso with enough force to crack the earth beneath them both.

Deria followed immediately after, stone gauntlets slamming down like twin hammers of judgment.

"Fists Up, round two, bitch."

Mary’s ladybug-fused gauntlets shattered under the combined assault. She staggered, blood—her own, this time, dark and viscous—dripping from a wound at her temple.

"I refuse," she hissed, "to be humiliated by a pair of overgrown—"

She never finished the sentence. Deria’s earth spike drove clean through her chest from behind, and Futaba’s final punch, wreathed in Moohawk’s purified light, met her from the front.

Mary’s body dissolved into a puddle of crushed ladybug shells and dark mist, her voice fading into nothing more than an offended, sputtering whisper.

"Finally," Futaba exhaled, dropping to sit on a fallen log. "That bitch talked way too much."

"Agreed." Deria wiped sweat from her brow. "C’mon. Elliot and Seria’s mana signatures are going haywire somewhere east of here. We should move."

---

Not far off, a different battle had reached its own bloody conclusion.

Gion—the housefly-eyed Bug Lord in his immaculate, blood-splattered red suit—had proven a far more tactical opponent than his siblings, weaving illusions of himself so convincing that even Rose’s keen eyes struggled to pinpoint the real target.

"Clever trick," Leonard admitted through gritted teeth, golden lightning arcing wildly around his blade as he cut through yet another false copy that dissolved into harmless light. "But illusions don’t bleed."

"Astute observation, Your Highness." Gion adjusted his cuffs from somewhere unseen, his voice echoing from every direction at once. "Too bad astuteness alone won’t save your fellow students from what’s coming for them."

"Empty threats," Rose said flatly, "from an insect who’s spent the last ten minutes running."

"I don’t run." Gion’s voice, for the first time, carried a thread of genuine irritation. "I strategize."

"Sure you do." Edith’s fingers wove together a spell circle overhead, green tendrils of vine bursting from the cracked earth in every direction, blindly searching, probing, hunting for a heat signature that wasn’t fake. "And I’m sure you’ll strategize just as well with a hole through your chest."

One of the vines twitched. Then lunged.

Gion barely dodged, his cover blown, real blood—finally—spilling from a shallow gash along his ribs.

"There you are," Rose whispered.

She was already moving before he could recover, blade wreathed in thorned wine-colored mana, and Leonard flanked from the opposite side, lightning crackling violently along his sword’s edge.

"Enough games," Leonard said. "Surrender, and perhaps we’ll grant you a swift end."

"Surrender?" Gion actually laughed, a wet, unpleasant sound. "You misunderstand your position entirely, Prince. I was never fighting to win."

"Then what," Edith demanded, "exactly were you fighting for?"

"Time." His grin widened, cracked and bloody. "And I’ve bought quite enough of it."

He detonated.

The blast wasn’t large—barely enough to crack the surrounding stone—but it was enough to send all three of them stumbling backward, coughing through a haze of acrid smoke.

When it cleared, there was nothing left of Gion but a faint trail of dark mist dissipating into the canopy above.

"He got away," Leonard growled, slamming his sword into the dirt in frustration.

"No." Rose’s eyes narrowed at the smoldering crater where Gion had stood. "He was never planning on winning this fight in the first place. He was buying time for something else."

Edith’s face paled. "Entoma."

As if summoned by the very thought, a violent tremor rolled through the earth beneath their feet, distant but unmistakable—the unmistakable shudder of a battle far larger and far more dangerous than the one they’d just survived.

"That’s coming from the throne room," Edith said, already sprinting. "Elliot and Seria are in trouble."

"Then we stop wasting breath talking about it." Leonard broke into a dead run behind her, Rose close on his heels.

---

Elsewhere, in a scorched clearing littered with the last smoldering remnants of Liam’s obliterated body, August and Taumus stood catching their breath, the dual-colored spell circle beneath their feet finally fading.

"Well," Taumus said, wiping soot from his brow, "that’s one down."

"Only took an ultimate spell and half our mana reserves." August let out a long, exhausted sigh. "Worth it, though."

The ground trembled again—stronger this time.

Both of their heads snapped toward the source.

"That’s not normal battle tremor," Taumus said, all traces of exhaustion draining from his voice.

"No." August was already moving. "That’s someone’s mana threshold breaking the sound barrier of reality itself."

"Elliot," they said together, and broke into a dead sprint toward the source of the quake, mana reserves be damned.