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

Chapter 63: Investment 63: The Boy Who Played Weak

For a long moment, nobody moved.

"Jin," Leonard said carefully, as if approaching a spooked animal, "I don’t know what’s going on right now, but this really isn’t the time for jokes."

"Do I look like I’m joking, Your Highness?" Jin rolled his shoulders, and the air around him—previously unremarkable, forgettable, the kind of presence that blended into a crowd without effort—began to change. Thicken. Press down on all of them like the weight of an approaching storm.

"That’s not possible," Rose whispered, her thorned vines instinctively recoiling from him despite there being no visible threat. "This density of mana. It’s not first-year. It’s not even fourth-year. This is—"

"This," Entoma finished for her, voice tight with something that hadn’t touched it once throughout the entire fight until now, "is an Imperial."

The word landed in the throne room like a physical blow.

"An Imperial?" Deria’s jaw dropped. "As in, one of the twenty-two? Jin? Jin who literally cried about missing hot chocolate cappuccino while we were all about to die?"

"That was a genuine concern," Jin said mildly. "I really do miss my cappuccino."

"You’ve been going to class with us. Eating in the cafeteria with us. Complaining about assignments with us." Futaba’s exhausted mind struggled to reconcile the boy she’d known for months with the crushing pressure now radiating off him. "You’ve been faking being weak this whole time?!"

"Faking’s a strong word." Jin gave a small, apologetic shrug. "I’d call it more of a... long-term undercover operation."

"On whose orders?" Elliot asked quietly, still shielding Seria, still watching Entoma’s every micro-expression for the moment she’d decide to strike.

"The headmaster’s," Jin said simply. "The All-Seeing Eyes himself requested it personally. Said there were currents moving beneath Adonite Academy that even the Imperial council couldn’t fully see. Told me to enroll as a first-year, keep my head down, watch, and wait."

"Watch for what?" Rose demanded.

Jin’s gaze flicked, just briefly, toward Entoma and the three Bug Lords standing rigid and wary behind her.

"For exactly this."

"So this whole time," Deria said slowly, still trying to wrap her head around it, "every time you tripped over your own feet in combat drills, every time you lost to Edith in a spell-casting duel—"

"Deliberate," Jin confirmed. "Every single time. Do you have any idea how hard it is to lose convincingly to a first-year without them noticing you’re holding back? It’s genuinely one of the more difficult things I’ve had to learn."

"I noticed," Edith said, narrowing her eyes. "I always thought it was strange that you never once used the same losing pattern twice."

"You’re smarter than you let on too, apparently," Jin said, almost approvingly.

"Touching as this all is," Entoma cut in, voice sharpening with impatience, "I find myself entirely uninterested in your backstory, Imperial."

Entoma’s composure, cracked but not yet broken, finally snapped back into something resembling defiance.

"An Imperial, hiding in a school of children." She let out a short, humorless laugh. "How very like the old man. Always three moves ahead, always too much of a coward to make them himself."

"He’s not a coward." Jin’s tone, for the first time, lost every trace of its usual laziness. "He’s patient. There’s a difference, and you’re about to learn it the hard way."

"Rank," Entoma demanded suddenly, dark energy swirling tighter around her raised palm. "Tell me your rank, boy. I want to know exactly how much of an insult it is that the council sent a child to deal with us."

Jin considered her for a long moment, head tilted slightly, as if weighing whether she’d even earned the answer.

"Twelve," he said finally.

The number rippled through the exhausted students like a physical shockwave.

"Twelve," Leonard repeated hollowly. "Out of twenty-two."

"Middle of the pack, really," Jin said with a self-deprecating little smile. "Nothing to write home about."

"Middle of the pack among the twenty-two most powerful mages alive on all of Hale," Edith said faintly, "is still enough to make literal demigods reconsider their life choices."

"I mean, when you put it that way, sure." Jin cracked his knuckles, green mana beginning to pool at his feet in slow, spreading tendrils that sank into the cracked stone floor like roots seeking water. "Anyway. You lot look thoroughly exhausted, and I did technically promise the headmaster I’d try to keep casualties to a minimum. So."

He looked up at Entoma and the three Bug Lords, and something in his previously lazy, half-lidded eyes sharpened into a focus that made even Seria’s blood run colder than her own ice ever could.

"Why don’t the rest of you sit this one out."

"Arrogant little—" Ru’s claws twitched, dark energy flaring around him in preparation. "You think a single Imperial scares the four of us?"

"No," Jin admitted honestly. "I think I’m about to bore all four of you to death, actually. This next part’s not going to be very interesting to watch. Sorry in advance."

Entoma’s dark orb, still swirling above her palm, finally released.

It shot toward the group of exhausted students with terrifying speed—far faster than any of them, drained and battered as they were, could hope to dodge.

Green light erupted between them and the incoming attack.

Not a shield. Not a spell circle. A single branch, thin and unassuming, sprouted from the cracked stone floor and grew with impossible speed, intercepting the orb of dark energy and simply—absorbing it. Swallowing it whole, the way a sponge swallows a single drop of water in an ocean of capacity still left unused.

"That’s—" Entoma stared at the branch, then at Jin, disbelief finally, fully cracking through her composure. "That’s not possible. That spell shouldn’t just be neutralized like that."

"Should," Jin said, walking forward slowly, green light spreading from his footsteps in intricate, spreading roots that climbed the bone pillars, wrapped around the shattered throne, threaded through every crack in the ancient stone floor, "is a word for people who still think they understand what they’re dealing with."

He stopped in the center of the throne room, surrounded now by a forest of glowing green branches that had transformed the entire chamber in a matter of seconds.

"You four have caused quite a lot of trouble," he said, voice calm, almost gentle, entirely at odds with the devastating power humming beneath every word. "Killed students. Corrupted an instructor. Nearly got several of my classmates killed."

The branches pulsed once, in perfect unison, like a held breath finally released.

"I think it’s about time somebody put an end to that."