Re:Zero: Wrath Route Yandere Emilia Watches the Projection Chapter 6 6: Elsa Granhiert

Puck still lay draped across Emilia's shoulder, his small body rising and falling gently with her stride.

Those cat-like eyes glead with sharp vigilance in the dim light, scanning their surroundings just as alertly as the others.

"Mm, I know, Subaru."

Emilia's voice was soft, carrying a trace of tension she couldn't quite hide.

The slums' suffocating atmosphere and the latent malice pressing in from all sides were worse than any words could describe. But that wasn't truly what weighed on her mind — it was who was about to appear at the loot house. The Bowel Hunter.

Her fingertips unconsciously gathered the hem of her skirt, and deep within her violet-blue eyes, a shadow settled that refused to dissolve.

She had seen it. In those countless loops — how the Bowel Hunter had slaughtered Subaru, again and again and again.

"Unforgivable."

Emilia ground the word out through clenched teeth, wishing she could freeze that woman solid right now — and then shatter her into a thousand pieces.

Puck sensed the storm of emotion rolling through her. He swept his tail lightly across her neck — a silent, wordless comfort.

"The loot house should be just up ahead..."

Natsuki Subaru was retracing the route from his past life in his mind, about to point the way forward, when a bone-deep chill shot up his spine without any warning — all the way to the crown of his head.

It wasn't the cold of the environnt. This was sothing purer. Sothing more lethal. A hostility that felt sickeningly, intimately familiar — like ice needles of pure malice driving straight through his skin.

He froze mid-step, every muscle in his body snapping taut as a bowstring.

Almost on pure instinct, he thrust his arm out in a signal to stop and stepped in front of Emilia.

"Subaru?" Emilia's voice rose in puzzled concern.

At that sa instant, a wraith-like silhouette drifted soundlessly out of the shadows at the mouth of a narrow alley just ahead.

The figure was tall and lithe — a sleek black outfit wrapped around curves that radiated coiled, explosive power, like a viper lurking in the dark, waiting for the perfect mont to strike.

Loose, lightly-curled black hair spilled over her shoulders. Those dark-red eyes burned with a hunger that turned the stomach — a ravenous, obsessive gleam — and they were locked, unblinking, on Natsuki Subaru.

"Oh my..."

A voice like raw silk — husky, carrying a strange, magnetic resonance, saturated with a satisfied sigh — drifted out, as languid as a lover's whisper, and yet soaked through with sothing lethal.

"I've finally... found you, haven't I? My dear, one-of-a-kind prey."

An icy fist seed to close around Natsuki Subaru's heart. A tide of dread surged up from sowhere deep inside him, so powerful it nearly swallowed him whole.

Elsa's lips curved into a slow, bewitching arc. The scarlet tip of her tongue dragged, almost invitingly, across her full lower lip.

"How wonderful~"

"My accomplice. My one and only kindred soul — Subaru."

"You belong to ... and only to . This ti, I won't let you slip out of my 'collection' again."

Natsuki Subaru forced the Bowel Hunter's na out from between clenched teeth:

"Bowel Hunter — Elsa Granhiert!"

A wave of cold dread washed through him, because the way she was looking at him was not the feverish excitent of a hunter eyeing prey.

It was sothing else entirely — sothing closer to a pathological, consuming possessiveness.

A greed that looked as if it wanted to devour his very soul.

"But why does Elsa even know who I am? Why is she saying these things to ?"

Natsuki Subaru's thoughts were spiraling. Ever since he'd crossed over and first encountered Emilia, everything had been careening off the rails — and it hadn't stopped since.

Even from a distance, Emilia could feel the nauseating aura radiating off Elsa like a physical force.

She looked at Natsuki Subaru, still frozen in shock — and in that instant, a fierce surge of fury and protectiveness blazed up inside her.

"Bowel. Hunter."

"Stay away from Subaru."

She stepped forward — not retreating behind Natsuki Subaru, but moving to stand squarely at his side, shoulder to shoulder.

The air around Emilia dropped sharply. Moisture in the atmosphere crystallized in an instant, condensing into countless tiny, razor-edged shards of ice.

"Hmph..."

A cold, contemptuous laugh escaped Elsa's throat. Her gaze finally peeled away from Natsuki Subaru and ca to rest on Emilia.

The hunger in her eyes didn't dim — but it was joined now by a cruel, toying amusent.

"So it's you... that troubleso little girl. No matter. Dead people won't be standing between Subaru and for much longer."

The words were barely out of her mouth when Elsa's figure simply vanished — dissolving into the shadows as if she had never been solid to begin with.

"Lia, watch out!"

Puck's voice rang out with a gravity it had never carried before. He launched himself from Emilia's shoulder in an instant, his tiny body erupting with a shockwave of magical energy.

The next heartbeat — murderous intent slamd in from the blind spot behind and to the side of Emilia!

Elsa's figure materialized like a phantom. The strangely-shaped curved blade in her hand glead with a sinister, dim light as it drove silently and directly for the vital points at Emilia's flank and abdon.

"Ice Shield!"

Emilia reacted with stunning speed. A solid, diamond-shaped crystal shield snapped into existence at her side in an instant.

Clang—!

The shriek of steel on ice rang out like an explosion in the narrow alley.

The curved blade slamd into the diamond-shaped ice shield with full force.

Ice chips flew in every direction — but the shield held, deflecting what should have been Elsa's killing blow with pinpoint precision.

"As long as I'm here, you will not lay a hand on my daughter!"

Puck's childlike voice rang out now with absolute authority. His tiny body hovered in midair, both forepaws splayed wide.

An intricate magical array, built purely from elental energy, unfolded in an instant directly in front of the Bowel Hunter.

Countless sharp spears of ice erupted from the array, jostling each other to surge forward and pierce anything in their path.

Elsa twisted and dodged with blinding speed — but not quite fast enough. One grazed her arm, drawing a thin red line of blood.

"Nuisance of a cat!"

The crimson in Elsa's eyes flared brighter. Puck's interference had drawn open, undisguised displeasure and killing intent.

She coiled her body like a creature without bones and snapped back, putting distance between them in an instant.

Both curved blades spun and flashed nimbly in her hands, and those scarlet eyes swept back and forth between Emilia and Puck.

The unnatural smile on her face stretched wider — carrying the cruel, savoring pleasure of a cat playing with trapped mice.

"It seems... I'll need to deal with this unnecessary little thing first."

She ran her tongue along the flat of one blade, and her gaze settled at last on Puck, hovering in the air.

"I wonder — what do a spirit's intestines look like?"

"What a sha. You won't ever get the chance to find out, villain."

Emilia's violet-blue gaze sharpened to a single, razor-fine point — fixed on the wound Puck's ice spike had carved into Elsa's arm, the one that was already beginning to close.

She curled her slender fingers into a fist.

The blood seeping from the Bowel Hunter's wound stopped falling — and in the instant it touched the frigid air, it froze solid.

No — it was being forcibly frozen by sothing purer, sothing more absolute: a dominant ice magic that brooked no resistance.

"Gh—!"

Elsa's lunge toward Puck lurched to a dead stop. She looked down at her own arm.

An eerie, translucent flower of ice was blooming across the wound on her arm at a terrifying speed.

Its petals were ford from frozen droplets of blood — their edges as sharp as blades — and at the flower's core pulsed the cold blue glow of Emilia's magic.

But that was only the beginning.

The ice elent moved as if alive, forcing its way through the frozen wound and burrowing into her body.

Elsa could feel it with perfect, horrible clarity — a raging torrent of cold, like countless tiny ice needles and venomous serpents, tearing madly through her veins and ridians against the current of her blood.

Everywhere they passed, they left behind tearing agony and the spreading numbness of frozen flesh.

They ravaged her from within — destroying her muscle tissue, freezing her blood solid.