Narrator's perspective:
Emilia finally realized that everything happening there wasn't a joke; it was real. She didn't know what to do and didn't even want to think about it. She didn't have any idea about everything happening and didn't understand the weight of what had happened. Then Edward smiled in a devious way and said, "Ohh~ my dear sister, in these kinds of situations, I think we should fight to the death against each other. Don't you think?" He said this in his usual silly voice, but now he was just making fun of his sister.
"Don't worry, I'm gonna beat the hell out of you so that you explain this bad joke of yours and the reason behind it," she said in a made-up energetic tone.
"Ohh, you don't need any of that to know the reason; I'll tell you." He looked straight into Emilia's eyes, terrifying her, then he continued:
"Well, there is something the demon lord is known for, the only attribute normal humans know about him…"
Emilia knew what he was known for: Yes, trustworthiness. He's always trustworthy, whatever the situation. Then Edward said exactly what she expected him to say:
"Yeah, he's trustworthy, so everything is about the fact that he'll give me a crazy amount of gold, and the price I have to pay is pretty small—killing everyone in this village, including you and my parents—the one I killed just now," he focused his speech on the last thing he said.
"Wait! Everyone?" she said, her jaw dropping at the idea of killing everyone in the village for just money. She knew what money was actually worth from her experience in her last world but still couldn't feel any sympathy towards what he did.
"Umm, I'm not going to question the number of people that will die because of this, since it won't gain me anything. I'm not gonna deal the killing blow; don't worry, I'll only be the reason for their death."
He changed his look from Emilia, who was laying down on the floor cluelessly, to the core, the magical item, and smiled after gazing at it the same way he had when killing Emilia's parents. Then she finally understood what he was after—destroying the magical item that was making the barrier work—the core—so that demons could enter the village and destroy it. Then he started walking at a slow pace toward that core. Emilia stood up and attacked him with a strong magic attack. She didn't have time to focus a lot of mana on it, so it wasn't that strong; even though it looked like it hit him from afar, he dodged it. As Emilia realized he was way too fast for her, she decided to start using a lot of mana on reinforcement magic, even though using another mana type would be hard, and began using pain absorber on herself so that the pain from battle would be much less. She reinforced her sword, the one she had just received from her mother.
But he didn't do anything. He did only one thing; he used his elemental power—electricity—on his body, not harming it but making it merge with him.
As soon as Emilia moved a bit, Edward, at an impossible speed, got behind her. At that moment, Emilia realized that he was way out of her league, but she didn't give up. Not because she had hope; the reason was that she didn't want to think about anything that had just happened. She knew before even starting the fight that she couldn't win against him since she understood how fast electricity actually was from her previous world's knowledge.
But before Emilia had the time to react to Edward's movement, he punched her in the back of the head. He was focusing all his mana on strength only, so it was strong—way too strong. He ended up slamming her into the ground hard enough to destroy her surroundings and feel a strong pain even with the pain absorber. In that same second, he pulled her by her long hair, holding her in the air. She tried to attack, but she couldn't reach him with her hands since he was much bigger than her, and using elemental magic would harm them both. So she decided to kick him, but he just stopped the attack with his hand, letting go of her hair. At the same time, he held her leg and then threw her at the wall with impossible speed, breaking the wall she hit and making its remains fall on her. The amount of pain she felt was horrendous. She was still in that abandoned house since it didn't have just one room. Even though Emilia had focused most of her mana on her body's durability and pain absorption after seeing it was a very dangerous situation, she got damaged a lot; the attack was worse than she thought it would be. She tried to fight more, but she lost consciousness.
Edward then launched an electric attack at the core and it broke, resulting in the destruction of the barrier. After all, magic items are just normal items that have the capability of performing magic, and their destruction means stopping the function of their magic. So he got out after that, leaving her and the village to face tens of demons.
In another place, someone was coming to check the unfortunate incident that occurred in a small village in the Silvergrove region—the one where the Lockhart family resided—as it was reported that every human there was killed by demons. For some reason, they came back to where they belonged after destroying the village. The person coming was the one responsible for this region, a prince named Sebastian.
After 2 days of the incident, the prince with a couple of high-level soldiers arrived at the village. It didn't even have a name, so it wasn't that big of a deal for them, but they needed to check it and try to discover how the demons managed to enter. So they decided to start searching for any evidence. What they saw was just pure destruction; everything was burned down to ashes. Nothing remained as it was before. Everyone felt bad for them, but they all kept a neutral expression on their faces, even though they had helmets hiding their features. They kept looking for anything or anyone that could provide a clue, but nothing. Everything was destroyed, and everyone had been killed in a very gruesome and gory way. So they decided to go to the dungeon that contained the core.
As they looked for evidence in the dungeon, they realized that a fight had occurred there and saw that there were two corpses. Sebastian's expression darkened when he saw who the two dead people were. He looked directly into Louis's eyes, which were still open, and then said in a humiliating voice before crushing his head:
"Pathetic."
Sebastian quickly deducted everything that had happened, and what he thought had transpired was mostly accurate. The soldiers were disgusted by what the prince did, as he wasn't normally this cruel. He then exited the dungeon, but as he walked out, he saw a petite, beautiful young girl sitting against the wall of the dungeon. She had lifeless eyes but not a lifeless body, and in front of her was a dead demon. He walked up to her, but she didn't move at all; there was no reaction. He checked the demon; it was a low-level demon, but still impossible for anyone not at least at the master level to defeat—and she wasn't hurt that much as well.
Then one of the soldiers spoke up to the girl: "Young girl, are you okay? Who killed this demon and saved you?" He said in a kind tone that was obviously fake. After she didn't react at all, he continued, "Yoo! I'm talking to you; are you dead?" He said loudly, then turned his gaze to the prince: "Master, I'm pretty sure her mind is broken."
"No, she isn't yet; she's on the verge of breaking," Sebastian replied.
"Then what should we do?"
Sebastian put his finger on the soldier's mouth, telling him to be silent for a moment, and then the prince bowed to her, introducing himself in a very welcoming way: "Hello! I'm Sebastian Vilcoria the Fourth; may I please have permission to talk to you?"
Everyone's jaw dropped after seeing what he just did; he was usually quite egotistical and would never do something so shameful. But the one he meant to surprise didn't even look his way nor react. The soldiers thought she was truly broken, but Sebastian was sure she wasn't. He saw tens of thousands of people who were actually broken.
He did many things similar to this to get her attention but failed every time. So he said what he had deducted: "I think you're now doing exactly what he wants."
He finally got her attention; she looked at him. She wanted to talk but couldn't, her voice failed her. He then indicated to the soldiers to give them some space, and they complied.
"If you're asking how I knew this, I just thought that was the most logical thing, and based on your reaction, I think I hit the right spot. So you and your family came to here, but someone from your family betrayed you all and killed the rest of the family, then destroyed the core, right?" he said in a serious voice.
She nodded.
"Well then, if he was strong enough to kill all of you; since you have the strength to end a demon, then why did he leave you this way? It's most likely because he wanted you to suffer and give up, and this is what you're doing right now."
She finally spoke up, her voice desperate and quiet: "I know, but why shouldn't I give up? I lost everything. I have nothing left to fight for."
"You shouldn't give up. You still have hope—"
"NO, I DON'T! I KNOW MORE THAN ANYONE THAT HAVING HOPE IS JUST FAKE HAPPINESS THAT HAS ONE PURPOSE: to be replaced by despair. Even if I follow this 'hope' thing, I don't want to fight alone like I used to do. It's scary. Please, I just want to not think, thinking makes it more painful."
She said this desperately, pouring all her heart into her words. After all, she knew what it meant to fight life alone and to fight it with someone; she experienced them both. She was alone in her previous life, and following hope only led her into more difficulties. So in this life, she always wanted to be with people who loved her and whom she loved—her family—and face all difficulties together to have hope in the people she trusted. But it had all been destroyed, putting her in the same situation she had faced in her past life.
"I get your feelings, but it's easy if you just do one thing: make all that fear and sadness into madness, into the will for revenge. This way, he'll feel all your emotions after you give him worse suffering. But even if you don't want revenge, don't give up. If life was supposed to be impossible at the end, then why are we even here right now? It's to fulfill our purpose in life, and the answer to this question is definitely not giving up."
"It's hard, it's hard, it's hard..." she kept repeating while finally starting to cry.
"Never give up, okay? Falling isn't giving up; it's just an opportunity to rise even stronger. So cry; crying is better than keeping all your emotions locked up inside of you, they'll end up exploding."
She nodded while sobbing, then he continued, "I'll help you. I'll state that your parents are the ones that destroyed the barrier so that you get the chance to confront the person who made you go through all of this, because he'll probably get caught pretty quickly if I report that he's the one who did this, and you won't get the chance to make him suffer as you suffered, if he's caught, he'll only get normal execution." He said this with his normal devious and evil smile, and then she nodded again.
He looked at the soldiers, who were quite far away, and pointed that they would go now. They started heading toward the village again to retrieve their horses so they could return.
But, what Emilia didn't know is that the only thing Sebastian was thinking off while talking to her was:
"YES, YES, she's so special, I can feel it, YES, I want her, she seems the perfect body, mind and mana for my experiments."