Lu stands unchallenged by the 20 knights in front of her who, rather than becoming enraged from witnessing the deaths of their comrades, have instead lost all hope. The archdemon sees the despair and terror in their eyes which made her consider for a moment on letting some of them go under a condition, but she doesn't follow through with that idea as she believes that to some degree the soldiers in front of her have steeled themselves for a situation like this.
Looking at the 20 that remain, she notices that most of them are young adults, even the ones she's already killed. However, she didn't feel anything new about this discovery and it won't change her mind. She just thought that it's such a waste for them to die young and naïve while pretending to be heroes.
'And you're no different. One of these days you'll run into something like me and what would you do in the face of death, Andrew?' Lu scowls as she remembers that Andrew has already and that he narrowly avoided death because Lu took on his wounds to heal him.
The archdemon starts moving towards the remaining knights while pulling out the swords and knives that are still in her. Even though it's no use putting up their shields, the knights still raise them to prepare to fight Lu, and to their surprise, the blonde-haired knight stands his ground in front of all 20 of them.
Seeing their commander's steadfast back instills a bit of courage and hope for the remaining knights, as they can see that neither his will nor his hope shattered under the overwhelming pressure that is the archdemon Lucifia.
"Sir Illiam…!" Some of the knights gasp at the unbelievable amount of courage that their commander Illiam is showing, putting them to shame.
"… If Sir Illiam can stand unbroken like that, what're we doing here putting ourselves to shame!? Do none of you have any backbone!?" One of the knights shouts as he pounds the flat-end of his sword against his plated chest.
"Sir Illiam! Your orders!" And just like that, the morale of the 20 remaining knights was restored. They now believe that if they're going to die, they ought to at least die with pride.
Lu allows this to play out but as the knights recover their fighting spirit, the archdemon is also using the time to cast a spell.
While holding her right hand out she begins to recite an incantation.
Blut Sammeln in ma main-
"Gather split blood over my palm,"
Illiam aims his sword forward, pointing it at Lu who has a pulsating red orb in her hand that's pooling in blood from the corpses of Illiam's fallen brothers. She smiles at Illiam as if to say what he plans to do with a flimsy broadsword like that.
Taking a deep breath, Illiam scowls at the archdemon.
"Before any of this demon, I want to ask you to let some of us go!" Illiam looks over his shoulder. "If there's anyone who wants to surrender, now's your time! I won't chastise you for it! If you have a reason, a family, loved ones, or simply self-preservation, now's the moment to speak up!"
Only a few of the knights in the 20 that remained are sighing in relief and that few raise their hands as a sign that they want to surrender.
"Please, I want you to find it in your heart to spare the people who surrendered, let them leave with their life-"
-zu karmesin lanzen formen das wird beseitigen ma ennemi
"and form into red lances that will eliminate the targets before me."
Lu smiles at Illiam who's wide-eyed from the terror of realizing that Lu didn't have any plans to negotiate terms with him. His voice couldn't come out faster than the archdemon's crimson lances firing out from the blood orb hovering over her palm. It razes the tranquil white snow under the knights, kicking it up into the air and blinding Illiam from seeing anything.
The high-pitched sound of the crimson lances cutting the air as they shoot towards their targets is unfortunately not loud enough for Illiam to not hear the crimson spears burying into the knights through their full plate armor. It rings louder than any bullet hitting its target, it whistles higher than a songbird, and it butchers meat sloppier than any rabid canine could.
It also wreaks more havoc than any natural disaster.
Illiam finds himself still standing, completely unscathed after Lu's attack. For a moment he assumes that Lu's attack was a feint to test his courage, however, that little hope he has is broken when he hears the wet sound of organs and flesh falling to the ground. Illiam looks over in horror as he sees that somehow, in some way, a few of the knights are still standing when they really shouldn't be as they have multiple large holes that erased chunks of their bodies.
"Commander?" Unfortunately one of the few knights that should be dead still retains a bit of its conscience before dropping dead into a pile of red and viscera.
The blonde-haired knight feels every organ in his body attempt to exit from his esophagus, but it turns out to be just the contents of his stomach.
"W, -Why!? Why didn't you spare them!? Why did you spare me!?" Illiam shouts at Lu as he loses grip on his sanity from seeing the knights that were behind him become nothing more than mincemeat.
Yet for some reason, he can see their pristine eyes glaring at him through that pile of flesh.
"Tell me, blondie, have you heard your own words from a witch? 'Please, I want you to find it in your heart to spare the people who have surrendered'~" Lucifia mockingly mimics Illiam, doing her best to sound as self-righteous and self-serving as him while approaching him.
"What does that have to do with this!?" Illiam roars out and in-between the shouts he would pant and heave has he tries to calm not just his nerves but his body.
"It has everything to do with it because the witch you're after has a father and I've heard that even if a witch pleads and cries to spare their family they would still be killed with them as a witch-sympathizer." Lucifia looms over Illiam, her blue eyes glowing as they stare down at Illiam's insignificant and hypocritical existence.
"You have no right to negotiate with me, as I bet you turned a deaf ear to the witches that you have captured, the ones that begged not for their lives but the lives of their loved ones. I'm merely showing you how it feels~" Lucifia whispers into the commander's ears further eroding whatever sanity Illiam has left as well as shattering his preconceived notion of righteousness.
As Lu pulls her head away from Illiam's ear, she sees that he's wearing a pendant with the symbol of the church hanging from it.
"Quit your dreams of dying as a hero~ because knights like you, die as hypocrites~" Lu then proceeds to hammer the final nail in the coffin for Illiam by chanting the same spell as before. This time the blood of all 50 knights begin pooling into Lu's hand, forming a large blood orb.
"I'll give you time to pray to your goddess. Maybe she'll hear you this time~" Lu taunts Illiam, testing if his faith has been broken, and it has.
He grabs and pulls the pendant off his neck and casts it to the snow. Like with Hagurd who tore his coat-of-arms and tossed it away to renounce his fealty to Aspen, Illiam cast the pendant in the same respect, to abandon the faith he once held.
"I won't pray," Illiam says to the archdemon, and with a gesture of Lu's index finger, the blood orb breaks into multiple crimson lances that tear Illiam's body to shreds, making him just another pile of flesh in the viscera of 50 knights.
…
By the time Lucifia realizes it, the afternoon had passed and the grey sky she was looking up to, has now become a black cosmos studded with bright stars. Longingly, Lucifia stares at the starry night sky while her mind is full of thoughts about Andrew.
'How is he doing? Why isn't he here yet? Should I risk leaving them behind to save him?' As she contemplates her options while sitting alone in the cold and snow-covered picnic table, she feels a presence approaching her from the forest, three in fact.
Lu's passive expression immediately warps into a scowl as one of the three unwanted visitors made themselves clear to her.
A woman in black clothes stands in front of Lu, sharing the same hair color and eye color as the archdemon.
"Good evening~ It's a fine night isn't it?" Adela says to Lu as the two people behind are keeping their distance, but one of them is the murderer Drew had confronted and the other is a witch with a flute in her hand.
Lu's scowling eyes focus on the flute witch as she distinctively remembers the hymns of a wind instrument playing which lured her into Aspen in the first place.
"What do you want, Adela?" The archdemon asks, wanting not to beat around the bush.
Adela smiles at Lucifia before holding her hand out for the archdemon to grasp.
"An alliance~ After hearing what you said this afternoon, I couldn't help but fall in love~ You've taken my maiden's heart, Lucifia~," Adela says and even though her words are loaded with sarcasm, there is genuine truth to them.
Before Lu would even consider touching Adela, she wants to make something clear to the Cerulean Witch.
"What's in it for me?"