"Huh...?"
Camila opened her eyes again and brought a hand to her head.
It was still there.
Then she looked up in front of her and pouted.
"Took you long enough to step in, huh? You’re not a very protective big bro..."
Lars stood between her and the Demon.
He was gripping the Headless Demon’s blade firmly between his fingers, while thin streams of blood ran down his outstretched arm.
And yet, not even the slightest sign of pain crossed his face.
Lars shot Camila an icy glance out of the corner of his eye.
She immediately looked crushed and went right back to bawling her eyes out.
"I’m such a total disaster! Sigh... sigh... Because of this stupid stomachache, I got my ass kicked by that pumpkin-headed tin can... sigh... sigh..."
"With only a century of experience as a vampire, you never stood a chance against a Demon of his level. You would’ve needed at least another five hundred years. I wasn’t expecting any other outcome. The only reason I let you fight was because I was curious."
Camila sniffled.
"D-Does that mean... sigh... I’m not a complete failure...?"
She wiped her tears with the sleeve of her hoodie, then looked up at him with huge, glossy, pleading eyes, like an abused puppy.
"S-So... you’re not mad at me, onii-chan...?"
"For heaven’s sake, shut up."
The rider yanked his arm back several times, trying to wrench the sword free from Lars’s grip, but the blade didn’t move so much as an inch. In the end, he was forced to release it.
Lars then tightened his fingers around the steel with such force that it shattered.
The wound in his palm closed a moment later.
"So the big shot finally decided to step onto the battlefield," the Headless Demon said.
His metallic, hissing voice came directly from inside the pumpkin.
"I don’t have time to waste exchanging pleasantries with you. Answer my question, and I’ll grant you a quick death."
"I didn’t come here to waste time chatting with you either, Blood Demon!"
When the Demon pulled on the reins, the spectral horse reared up on its hind legs, ready to bring its heavy hooves crashing down on Lars.
But before it could complete the attack, a violent gust of wind rose behind Lars and slammed into both horse and rider.
Still balanced on its hind legs, the animal was knocked off balance by the blast and crashed heavily onto its back.
The Headless Demon barely managed to leap from the saddle in time, avoiding being crushed beneath the weight of his own mount.
The wind grew stronger with every passing second, until the more fragile trees began to be ripped from the ground one after another.
To keep from being swept away with them, Camila clung to Lars’s leg with all her strength.
"Two Demons working together... It’s so absurd I still have a hard time believing it. What’s behind this?"
As he spoke, Lars advanced slowly toward the Headless Demon, dragging Camila along behind him.
In front of him, the spectral horse kicked wildly as it struggled to get back on its feet, but Lars simply walked over it as if it weren’t even there.
With his first step, Lars shattered one of its legs, tearing a savage neigh from the beast.
It still tried to rise and bite him, but before it could, Lars drove his foot into its belly, sending yellow sparks spraying out instead of blood.
When Lars finally stomped on its muzzle and crushed its skull, the horse dissolved into a cloud of black soot and tongues of flame.
Lars took a few more steps forward until he stopped right in front of the Headless Demon.
By then, the wind was blowing so violently that the black-armored rider could barely keep his footing.
"I’ll ask nicely one last time. What. Is. Behind. This."
"I don’t take orders from you, Blood Demon!"
For an instant, Lars’s impassive expression faltered.
Coming from a human, there would have been nothing strange about those words. But they had come from a Demon.
Lars knew those creatures well, being one himself.
For millennia, Demons had slaughtered one another, each hoping to be the one who would someday rule the world when the Apocalypse came.
Cooperation. Subordination. Such concepts were completely alien to their nature.
A Demon would never speak that way.
Unless...
"You said you don’t take orders from me. So who do you take them from?"
"I don’t like repeating myself either, Blood Demon! I already told you I’m not here to chat!"
The yellow light inside the pumpkin suddenly flared brighter.
The Headless Demon was about to unleash a burst of flame, but Lars moved first.
In a lightning-fast motion, he reached out, grabbed the pumpkin, and crushed it in his hand until it was reduced to pulp.
A new pumpkin instantly replaced the one he had just destroyed, but Lars shattered it just as quickly as it appeared.
The same thing happened twice more, and each time, the mangled remains were immediately swept away by the violent wind.
"I’m almost starting to enjoy this, you know?" Lars said with a sinister grin as he wiped the remaining pulp from his knuckles.
"Y-You damned Blood Demon! You’ll pay for making a fool of me!"
The rider leaped backward and reached a hand toward the pumpkin in place of his head.
He didn’t even manage to touch it.
Lars was on him in a flash, clamping his fingers around the rider’s wrist and stopping him mid-motion.
The burst of speed was so violent that Camila lost her grip on his leg and was swept away by the wind.
"Heeeelp meeeee!"
Lars tightened his grip on the rider’s wrist even further, until the black armor began to crumple beneath his fingers.
"My patience has run out, Headless Demon. You’ll regret not cooperating."
The light inside the pumpkin suddenly flared brighter, far more intense than ever before.
What...?!
"The rumors about you don’t even come close to doing your true strength justice, Blood Demon. But no matter how powerful you are, you’re not invincible!"
The yellow light became almost blinding, forcing Lars to squeeze his eyes shut and turn away.
"...You may have defeated me, but I’m not leaving this world alone!"
And then—
BOOOOOOM!