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

Chapter 76: Investment 76: First Blood

The mercenary line broke into a full charge the moment they crossed the tree line’s shadow, boots pounding against damp earth in a rhythm that shook loose the last of the courtyard’s tense silence.

"Archers, loose!" Cassian’s voice cut through the din, and a volley of arrows arced from the reinforced wall’s parapet, thinning the front rank before they’d covered half the distance to the outer breach.

It wasn’t enough to stop them. It was never going to be enough, not against fifty disciplined attackers, but it bought precious seconds—seconds Elliot intended to use.

"With me," he said to Seria, already moving toward the newly reinforced breach point where the fighting would inevitably concentrate first.

"Obviously," she said, ice already spreading in a thin sheet across the ground ahead of them, an invisible trap waiting for the first careless boot to find it.

The first wave hit the wall like a wave breaking against rock—chaotic, brutal, immediate. A mercenary vaulted the reinforced barrier only to find his footing vanish beneath him on Seria’s hidden ice, and Elliot’s blade found him before he’d even fully registered the fall.

"Two down," Elliot called, more to keep track than to celebrate.

"Forty-eight to go," Seria replied dryly, freezing a second attacker’s blade mid-swing before driving an ice spike through his shoulder.

The fighting spread quickly along the wall’s length, guards and mercenaries clashing in the confined space between reinforced stone and open courtyard, the earlier calm of strategic planning dissolving into the immediate, desperate calculus of survival.

Elliot fought with a focus he hadn’t fully possessed even in the dungeon—not reckless fury, not desperate grief, but a steady, controlled purpose born from watching his father direct guards with the same calm authority he’d shown organizing harvests, from knowing Mira waited behind him with a single defensive ward and absolute trust that he wouldn’t let anything reach her.

[Skion’s Inheritance: Bond stability at 34%. Passive resilience enhancement active.]

The notification flickered past almost unnoticed amid the chaos, though Elliot did register, distantly, that a strike which should have staggered him—a glancing blow from a mercenary’s mace—barely registered as more than a dull ache against his ribs.

"That’s new," he muttered, driving his sword through the offending attacker’s guard before he could press the advantage.

"What’s new?" Seria called, back-to-back with him now as the fighting pressed closer.

"I think the fragment’s starting to actually do something."

"Wonderful timing," she said, freezing another attacker solid where he stood. "Only took an active siege to get it moving."

Across the courtyard, Cassian fought with the seasoned precision of a man who’d clearly seen real combat in his younger years, cutting down attackers with economical, practiced strikes while directing the estate’s guards with sharp, clipped commands between blows. Lyra held her position near the manor’s entrance with equal ferocity, her blade finding gaps in enemy guards with a speed that suggested Elliot’s parents had been considerably more capable than their quiet country lifestyle had ever let on.

"They’re not breaking," one of the guards called out, voice tight with mounting alarm as the mercenary line, despite mounting casualties, continued pressing forward with unnerving discipline. "Sir, they’re not even slowing down!"

Cassian’s expression hardened. "Then we make them slow down."

He raised his sword, calling out a rallying cry that cut through the chaos, and the estate’s defenders tightened their formation in response, funneling the attackers into the narrower kill-zone Seria had mapped out two days prior.

The tactic worked, buying breathing room, thinning the mercenary numbers steadily—but Elliot could feel, even amid the fighting, that something was wrong. The attackers weren’t fighting like men expecting to win through sheer numbers. They were fighting like men buying time.

"Seria." He caught her attention between strikes, voice low with sudden dread. "This isn’t the real attack."

Her ice faltered for just a moment as the same realization visibly struck her. "The messenger. Where’s the messenger?"

They both scanned the chaotic courtyard, and found, to their mounting horror, that the cloaked figure who’d delivered the ultimatum three nights ago was nowhere among the fighting mercenaries at all.

A sudden, violent tremor shook the ground beneath their feet—not from the battle, but from somewhere deep below the manor itself.

"The cellar," Elliot breathed, blood running cold.

They’d left the ancient chamber’s outer defenses unguarded, every available fighter drawn to the wall’s breach point exactly as the enemy had clearly intended.

"Go," Seria said immediately, already turning to cover him. "I’ll hold the wall. Go, Elliot!"

"I’m not leaving you out here alone—"

"You’re not leaving me alone, you’re leaving me with an entire garrison of guards and your father," she snapped, freezing another attacker’s blade before it could reach her. "Go! If they get whatever’s down there, this entire fight was for nothing!"

He hesitated for one more agonizing second, torn between the fear in his chest and the sharp, undeniable logic of her words, before finally breaking into a dead run toward the manor’s side entrance, shouting for his father as he went.

"Father! The cellar!"

Cassian’s head snapped up from the fighting, understanding dawning with visible horror across his face. "Go! I’ll send men after you the moment I can spare them!"

Elliot didn’t wait to hear more. He sprinted through the manor’s side entrance, past startled kitchen staff sheltering behind overturned tables, down the familiar hallway toward the cellar door he’d once hidden behind as a child—and found it already standing open, splintered clean off its hinges.

Whoever had come for it hadn’t bothered with subtlety this time. There was no lock to pick, no careful ritual to bypass—just brute force, applied with a confidence that told Elliot exactly how little the enemy feared being stopped.

His grip tightened on his sword as he plunged through the wreckage of the cellar door and down into the darkness beyond, Skion’s fragment humming with fresh, urgent warmth beneath his skin as if it too understood, finally, that the moment it had been waiting for was almost here.