The moment she pushed open the door, what struck her senses first wasn’t the scene in the darkness, but a thick, pungent stench of blood.
Emilia’s pupils contracted sharply.
Without hesitation, she channeled the mana around her, causing glowing blue ice spikes to coalesce all around her body.
Although the light from the ice spikes was not dazzling, it illuminated the narrow wooden shack, allowing her to finally see the scene inside clearly.
Her eyes widened in disbelief, and she stumbled backward.
Ahead, an elderly man lay motionless on the ground.
Blood flowed continuously from his split skull—he had clearly been dead for quite some time.
On the left wall, the blonde girl Emilia had been searching for for so long was pinned, a dagger pierced straight through her heart.
Blood trickled down like a stream, dripping from her toes onto the floor.
What is going on?
What happened?
Emilia was so shocked by the sight before her that she couldn’t recover her senses, before suddenly realizing that there was immense danger here.
Just as she was about to back out of the wooden shack, a female voice suddenly sounded from behind her.
“Ara ara.
A silver-haired half-elf lady, how rare.
I’m so curious, what do your bowels look like?” In the next instant, a sharp blade rapidly enlarged in her vision.
Caught in such a sudden ambush, Emilia didn’t have time to form an effective defense.
The ice crystals had barely materialized on her abdomen before being shattered to pieces by the dagger.
Pfft!
As ice splinters scattered, she coughed up blood and collapsed in disbelief, clutching her stomach.
Elsa stuck out her tongue, licking away the bright red blood on the blade, a dangerous glint flashing in her eyes.
“It seems your bowels are no different from a normal human’s.
What a shame, young lady.” Emilia struggled on the ground, seemingly trying to prop herself up with her hands, but having lost too much blood, she was utterly weak and couldn’t even manage to push her body up.
The mana around her flickered erratically.
Ice crystals dispersed as soon as they condensed.
The intense pain and approaching death turned even channeling mana into a distant dream for her.
Am I going to die?
I can’t die yet.
I haven’t competed for the Royal Selection yet.
I haven’t saved everyone in the forest yet.
Seeing Emilia’s fierce desire to survive, Elsa squatted down in surprise and gripped her dagger once more.
“Your vitality is beyond my expectations.
To endure even more pain, what a tenacious girl.” She swung her blade down once again.
…
On the outskirts of the slums, atop the tallest clock tower.
A cool night breeze blew by as Kenma sat on the very top of the clock tower.
He pulled an appa out of his bag and began munching on it, lost in thought.
Calculating the time, it should be about that moment now.
According to the original plot, if Natsuki Subaru didn’t intervene, Emilia would eventually follow the clues to the slums anyway and end up killed by Elsa who lurked there.
Having replaced Natsuki Subaru without choosing to participate in the story, Emilia’s death had become a high-probability event.
This was precisely the effect Kenma wanted.
If being killed for the first time by a key story character granted bonus rewards, then Puck was definitely the top choice.
As a Great Spirit, once Emilia died, Puck would fulfill his contract, descending in his true form to unleash a world-ending cold wave.
It wouldn’t last long before this so-called Beast of the End would be chopped into cat treats with a single sword strike from Reinhard, who would rush over upon hearing the news.
But the window before he arrived would be more than enough time for Puck’s world-ending cold wave to kill him.
Right at that moment, an unexpected change erupted at the very center of the slums.
A streak of blue light suddenly erupted, turning into a blue pillar of light that soared into the sky.
Immediately following it was a surge of vast mana, blanketing a radius of tens of kilometers.
In just a few short seconds, the climate underwent a drastic shift.
The cold wave frantically spread outward from the center of the slums in all directions.
The civilians inside their homes didn’t even have time to let out a scream before they were frozen into ice sculptures alongside their houses.
In an instant, the once-mild area was transformed into a white world engulfed in a raging blizzard.
Sitting atop the clock tower, feeling the ambient temperature plunge wildly, Kenma’s body began to grow stiff.
He sighed and wanted to take another bite of his appa, only to find that it had frozen solid into a block of ice, covered with a thick frost.
“Damn it, can’t even let a guy eat an appa.” Cursing a few times, he helplessly tossed the frozen appa down below.
The sweeping wind and snow struck his face, thick frost rapidly forming on his skin.
Vaguely, relying on his formidable eyesight, Kenma caught sight of the colossal silhouette inside the cold wave.
Tsk.
My current body is too strong.
Realizing that he couldn’t freeze to death from several hundred meters away, Kenma laughed out of frustration, feeling for the first time that having stats that were too high wasn’t a good thing.
He leaped down from the clock tower, slamming heavily onto the ground, feeling a numbness in his legs.
Walking forward for several hundred meters, he spotted an exquisite ice sculpture frozen mid-escape.
Staring at the black-haired woman trapped inside the ice block, Kenma was amused.
Who would have thought that the Bowel Hunter Elsa, a notorious criminal wanted nationwide, would actually be turned into an ice sculpture in the slums?
Suddenly, Elsa’s eyeballs shifted slightly within the ice layer, her gaze drifting toward Kenma outside, who was on the verge of freezing solid, shock evident in her eyes.
Kenma smiled and waved at Elsa, completely unbothered by the layer of ice rapidly forming over his own body.
“Hello.
Let’s become frozen statues together right here.” Elsa didn’t understand what the man in front of her was talking about, nor did she understand why he could smile and greet her so casually when he was clearly about to freeze to death.
As her consciousness faded, the corners of her lips curled up slightly, as if she had found something quite interesting.
A man who isn’t afraid of death, huh.
He shares a bit in common with me.
Kenma wanted to say something more, but the colossal figure within the cold wave had already turned toward them, an even fiercer surge of freezing cold transforming into a vast white deluge rushing straight at them.
His final words stuck in his throat as his entire body was frozen into an ice figure on the spot.
In his fading consciousness, Kenma saw a red-haired figure descend in a straight line, slamming onto the frozen earth.
“That’s enough!” Kenma—dead.