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

Chapter 74: Investment 74: Two Days

"Try again," Seria said, arms crossed, standing a safe distance back in the estate’s training yard. "And this time, try not to blow a hole through the stable."

"That was one time," Elliot muttered, shaking out his singed sleeve.

"One time this morning."

He exhaled slowly, closing his eyes and reaching inward toward that new, unfamiliar warmth curled alongside his own mana—vast, patient, and infuriatingly unresponsive to anything resembling direct instruction.

[Skion’s Inheritance: Passive stabilization in progress. Active abilities remain locked pending further bond development.]

"It’s not giving me anything useful," Elliot said, frustration creeping into his voice. "Just—stability. Whatever that means. I asked it for something I could actually use in a fight and got a system message about patience."

"Maybe patience is the point," Seria said, though her own tension was clearly fraying at the edges. "The old man told you power like this doesn’t change what you are. Maybe it simply won’t be rushed, either."

"We don’t have the luxury of not rushing it. We have—" he checked the sun’s position out of habit, an old dungeon reflex, "—less than two days."

Across the yard, Cassian directed a team of estate guards reinforcing the breach in the outer wall, stacked stone and hastily requisitioned iron plating forming a makeshift barrier considerably sturdier than what had failed to stop the first attack. Mira sat nearby on an overturned crate, uncharacteristically quiet, watching the preparations with wide, solemn eyes.

"She hasn’t said much since yesterday morning," Seria observed quietly, following Elliot’s gaze.

"I know." He set his sword down and crossed the yard toward his sister, settling onto the crate beside her. "Hey."

"Hey," Mira echoed, not looking up.

"You want to talk about it?"

She was quiet for a long moment, picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. "Is it going to happen again? What happened to Old Harmon?"

Elliot felt his chest tighten. There was no version of an honest answer that wouldn’t frighten her further, and he refused to lie to her outright.

"I don’t know," he said finally, choosing honesty delivered as gently as he could manage. "But I promise you, Mira—I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Neither is Father, or Mother, or Seria. You’re the most protected person on this entire estate right now."

"That’s not really an answer."

"No," he admitted. "It’s not. But it’s the truest thing I can tell you."

She considered that, then finally looked up at him, some of her usual fire returning to her expression. "Teach me something. Not sword stuff. Something that’ll actually help if—if it happens again."

Elliot hesitated, glancing back toward Seria, who gave a small, approving nod.

"Alright," he said. "There’s a basic ward. Nothing fancy, just enough to buy you time to run if something ever gets past the guards. Won’t stop a real attacker, but it’ll knock aside most opportunistic strikes."

He spent the next half hour walking her carefully through the spell’s basic form, patient in a way he hadn’t quite managed with his own training moments earlier, watching something steady and determined settle into his little sister’s expression with each small success.

"Again," Mira said, planting her feet with fresh determination once the lesson concluded, small hands still glowing faintly with the ward’s residual light. "I want to make sure I actually have it before you go do whatever scary thing you’re going to do next."

"That’s fair." Elliot smiled despite himself, watching her run through the motions a second time, then a third, her form growing steadier with each repetition. There was something quietly reassuring in it—in watching her channel her fear into something productive rather than letting it swallow her whole. It was, he realized, exactly the same lesson he’d learned from Leonard’s speech in the dungeon, passed down now without either of them fully realizing it.

"She’s got your stubbornness," Seria observed, watching from a few paces back.

"She’s got Mother’s stubbornness," Elliot corrected. "Mine’s a distant second."

"I’d argue otherwise, given you bonded your soul to a primordial fragment with roughly four seconds of deliberation."

"That was efficient decision-making."

"That was reckless decision-making that happened to work out," Seria said, though there was no real heat behind it—only the lingering echo of the fear she’d felt watching him go still and unresponsive in that chamber.

He reached over and squeezed her hand briefly, a silent acknowledgment of everything neither of them had fully said aloud since returning from the cellar. She squeezed back, just as brief, just as understood.

By late afternoon, Cassian called them all together in the manor’s main hall, where a rough map of the estate grounds had been sketched across the largest table, marked with troop positions, likely breach points, and fallback routes.

"The garrison captain from the capital sent word," Cassian said grimly. "Reinforcements won’t arrive for another four days at minimum. We’re on our own until then."

"Two days until the deadline, four days until help," Seria said flatly. "That math doesn’t favor us."

"No," Cassian agreed. "It doesn’t. Which means we need every advantage we can manage before then."

He looked to Elliot, something both hopeful and apologetic in his expression—the weight of asking a seventeen-year-old to carry a defense he shouldn’t have needed to shoulder alone.

"How close are you to understanding what that fragment can actually do?"

Elliot glanced down at his own hands, at the faint golden warmth still pulsing quietly beneath his skin, patient and maddeningly silent.

"Not close enough," he admitted. "But I’ve got two days to change that."

"Then I suggest," Seria said, studying the crude map with the same tactical focus she’d once used to plot the defense of a dungeon throne room, "we stop treating this like a siege we simply need to survive, and start treating it like a fight we intend to win outright."

Cassian glanced at her, something like respect settling into his expression. "You have a suggestion, Lady Migalison?"

"Several, actually," she said, already reaching for a piece of chalk. "Starting with the fact that your guards are spread far too evenly across the perimeter. If we know roughly where they breached last time, we concentrate our strongest defenders there, and let the weaker points serve as controlled funnels instead."

Elliot watched her work, sketching adjustments across the map with brisk, confident strokes, and felt a fresh wave of gratitude settle over the lingering dread. Whatever came in two days, at least he wouldn’t be facing it without people who refused to simply wait for the worst to happen to them.

Outside, beyond the reinforced wall, the sky had begun to darken early again—the same unnatural gathering of clouds that had preceded the first attack, patient and watchful, counting down the hours alongside them.