Too Early to Win, Too Late to Know

Senjumaru Shutara notes that she had just been discussing bad habits, admitting hers is neglecting to pull the sewing needles from her handiwork. As those spikes slide back out of Nianzol Weizol, his body drops and stains the Vestibule Road with blood. More Divine Soldiers gather at her side and she observes that their blades can at last strike Yhwach. He merely asks whether that is so, then opens a Shadow that spills out several Soldat to occupy her soldiers.

To Senjumaru's alarm, Yhwach draws four more figures from another Shadow, the Sternritter Lille Barro, Gerard Valkyrie, Pernida Parnkgjas, and Askin Nakk Le Vaar, and names this Royal Guard of his as her true opponents. As three of them lower their hoods, Askin realizes he alone was raised up from the fighting below and must prove his worth, which a booming Gerard confirms while vowing to strike Askin down himself should he falter. Gerard then unsheathes his Spirit Weapon, Hoffnung, and charges, shattering the needle Senjumaru raises in defense and drawing her blood while jeering that a woman's thin arms cannot stop his blade.

Senjumaru springs clear and calls forth a Second-Level Divine Soldier, whose landing shakes the platform. Pernida murmurs something, and Lille translates that its size is meaningless before a slender arm reaches from beneath Pernida's cloak, inhales, and twists the giant into a crushed ball through The Compulsory. Casting off his own cloak to bare his Spirit Weapon, Diagramm, Lille declares that the defeated are always slow to notice, insists the palace fell the instant Yhwach entered it, and fires a bullet-like Heilig Pfeil that punches straight through the crown of her skull.

Nianzol Weizol dies from the needles Senjumaru sewed into his robe. Yhwach summons his elite guard, the Schutzstaffel, comprising Lille Barro, Gerard Valkyrie, Pernida Parnkgjas, and Askin Nakk Le Vaar, and sets them against Senjumaru. Pernida crushes a Second-Level Divine Soldier with a single motion, and Lille apparently kills Senjumaru with a shot to the head.

The chapter runs in the sixty-sixth collected volume, SORRY I AM STRONG. Its events were dramatized in the anime during episode 390, from which the volume takes its coverage of the Royal Guard clash.