Elsa was confident in her disguise. A street rat like Felt should never have seen through her, and Emilia, who had no prior connection to her, shouldn't have been waiting with an organized strike team.
'Is there someone else?'
Elsa scanned the room, but her heightened senses detected nothing. She quickly dismissed the thought. "Fine. If the answers won't present themselves, I'll find them inside your bellies once I've spilled your guts."
Despite being outnumbered, Elsa didn't show a flicker of doubt. Instead, a twisted, uncontrollable excitement gleamed in her eyes. The killing intent radiating from her was so thick it felt physical, making Felt and the others shiver.
"This is cheating!"
Inside Hyakkaou Private Academy, Ryota Suzui gripped his fists until his knuckles turned white. "Even with all that preparation, the way she moves... she's a monster. Can they really take her down?"
"Don't be so impatient, Ryota," Yumeko Jabami purred next to him. She sat with her legs crossed, her eyes glowing with a manic thrill as she watched the screen. "It's exactly this scent of danger that makes it so addictive. Until the final card is played, nothing is decided."
Ryota swallowed hard, returning his gaze to the screen. He realized that through all the chaos, Ayanokoji had yet to physically step into the fray.
"Who sent you?!" Emilia demanded, her voice sharp. She finally understood that this wasn't just about a stolen badge.
"Elsa Granhiert, the Bowel Hunter," Elsa replied with a smile, dropping into a low, predatory stance.
"Who is your employer?!"
"Sorry, that's a professional secret~"
In that exact moment, the air behind Elsa hissed. She spun her head toward the sound—the snap of a bowstring. A razor-sharp arrow was already inches from her chest, aimed precisely at her heart.
Even at point-blank range, Elsa's reflexes were supernatural. She twisted her torso. The arrow missed her heart but buried itself deep into her shoulder.
"A fourth player?" Elsa hissed, her smile turning cold. She looked toward the shadows. Even she hadn't sensed a presence there.
Ayanokoji stepped out of the darkness, bow in hand. "You dodged that? I was aiming for the center of your heart." His voice was flat, devoid of frustration or surprise. It was the tone of a man noting a minor technical error.
"How?" Elsa studied him. She could read emotions and bloodlust like an open book, but from Ayanokoji, there was... nothing. He was a void. He had fired a lethal shot with the same emotional investment one uses to discard a piece of trash.
She didn't know that to Ayanokoji, people were merely objects. Removing an obstacle was no different from throwing away a broken tool. This lack of "humanity" made him invisible to her predatory radar.
"Surrender. You have no path for escape," Emilia declared. Her ice shards hovered menacingly, and Puck sat perched on one, looking relaxed. To them, a wounded assassin against a team of four was a finished game.
Elsa didn't look worried. She reached up and ripped the arrow from her shoulder, blood spurting from the wound. She licked a drop from her fingers. "Surrender? No, no... I'm just starting to have fun!"
She vanished, leaving only a black blur. Her speed was now beyond the limit of human sight—faster than in the previous loop. This was Elsa at full throttle.
"Puck, defend," Ayanokoji commanded instantly. He couldn't see her, but he didn't need to.
CLANG!A massive ice shield manifested in front of Emilia just as Elsa's blade struck. The impact was so cold it froze the metal of her dagger to the surface.
"Close one! Thanks for the heads-up!" Puck chirped.
'He saw through that?' Elsa was stunned. How could this boy track her? In reality, Ayanokoji couldn't see her at all. He simply deduced that Elsa would prioritize Emilia as the only "real" threat capable of killing her.
Rom and Felt lunged, but Elsa abandoned her frozen blade and flipped away with feline grace. Ayanokoji fired again, but now that Elsa was aware of him, she drew a second hidden blade and sliced his arrow perfectly in half mid-air.
"She has another one?!" Felt yelled. Ayanokoji's expression didn't change; he had already factored multiple weapons into his mental simulation.
Puck didn't give her a moment to breathe. He clapped his paws, and a rain of ice needles saturated the room. The temperature plummeted. Elsa was forced into a desperate dance of evasion. She was graceful, but she was being herded.
'She's composed,' Ayanokoji noted. 'She's waiting for Emilia's mana to run out or for Puck to hit his time limit.'
Suddenly, Elsa stumbled. A jagged line of red appeared on her thigh. She had been nicked by one of Puck's shards—a move she was certain she had dodged.
Then, the world began to tilt. Her vision blurred, and her limbs felt as though they were filled with molten lead. Her heart rate slowed unnaturally.
'Poison...?' Elsa struggled to keep her head up. She looked at the wound on her shoulder. 'The arrow... was it the arrow?'
Ayanokoji had coated every weapon in the room—his arrows, Rom's club, and Felt's daggers—with a massive dose of sedative and neurotoxin from the warehouse. He knew he didn't need a kill shot. He only needed a scratch.
As the drug took hold, Elsa's consciousness flickered. Her body collapsed, pinned to the floor by a ring of ice spikes.
"Was it... all you?" she mouthed toward Ayanokoji, her voice failing. He looked down at her as the ice locked her in place.
"He actually did it."
"He used the tea as a feint just to hide the poison on the weapons!"
The classroom was in an uproar. Students were looking at Ayanokoji with a mix of awe and a new, distinct type of fear.
Horikita Suzune looked at the boy beside her. She remembered how he always solved their problems at the last second. But seeing it like this—the cold, calculated way he used his allies as bait and the enemy's own arrogance as a trigger—made her realize she didn't know him at all.
"It was a logical conclusion," Ayanokoji thought to himself, ignoring the stares. "If the first plan fails, the second must be already in motion."
"She's quite durable. I expected the toxin to kick in sooner," Ayanokoji said, his voice as dry as a textbook. He didn't celebrate. He simply walked toward the fallen assassin.
Between the tea, the arrows, the traps, and the poisoned blades of his "allies," he had created a situation where Elsa had to be 100% perfect to survive. And in his world, nobody is perfect.
The hunt was over.