Behind the others, Noe finally decided to move.
In just that short stretch of time, another Contestant had already lost their life to the Jumping Demon.
One second they were fighting for their life, and the next they burst apart like fireworks, leaving only half a body that swayed for a moment before dropping. Maybe even at the end, some part of them was still hoping to see tomorrow.
Facing down a blade swung at it, the Jumping Demon spun twice, tore itself free of the fight, and went hunting for a new target.
This time it settled on Eimi. Demons seemed to have a taste for women's blood in particular.
She had no idea she'd already been marked. She kept swinging, her clothes soaked through with blood and grime, nothing left of the confident, radiant girl who'd stood in the plaza on the first day.
Outside of Noe and Yuka, she was the only other woman left in the group.
The Jumping Demon leapt.
By now, every contestant had bloodlust running the show. Any demon in reach got hacked without hesitation. Nobody was tracking who might die next, or when, so nobody was watching the Jumping Demon.
Eimi swung at the neck of the demon in front of her.
It sensed the blade coming and jerked its head aside on instinct. The cut opened its chest instead, and cold blood sprayed across her face.
She spat out a curse, kicked it away, and wiped the blood from her eyes with her sleeve. Her vision cleared, and she was already turning to find the next one.
Then a shadow dropped out of the sky and blocked her path.
A rank, foul smell rolled off the thing in front of her, thick with something wrong.
She'd never smelled anything like it. It hit her like a wave of dizziness and nausea.
The strange thing was that the fear she'd carried around this monster for days had gone quiet. Standing in front of it now, she felt almost nothing. Numbness, probably the only thing left after this many days.
Is it finally my turn? she thought.
A pair of huge feet, caked in blood and mud, planted themselves in front of her; a scrap of cloth caught under one nail. The calf muscles sat tight and hard under the skin, gone a deep red, and for some reason her mind went, absurdly, to roasted chicken legs.
She almost laughed at herself. Thinking about food, now, of all times. Maybe she really was just that hungry.
She raised her head slowly and met a pair of eyes with nothing behind them.
In that stare, she was already dead.
The thought settled something in her. A small, tired smile crossed her face. She could accept this. She could see it without flinching.
Two huge, reddish hands reached for her waist. Her first real embrace, and it wasn't going to come from someone she loved; it was going to be stolen by this thing instead.
Just as she braced to let it happen, a sharp voice cut through the moment.
"Love Breathing, Second Form: Love Pangs."
White light flared across her vision, and she flinched her eyes shut on instinct. A wet crack reached her ears, then two heavy sounds hit the ground.
When she opened her eyes, the Jumping Demon was gone; only two severed arms and a spreading pool of blood were left where it had stood. Someone stood in front of her, half-familiar, half-strange.
"...It's you?" Eimi blinked. She hadn't expected her rescuer to be the girl nobody had paid attention to back in the plaza, Noe Kanroji.
"Are you okay?" Noe asked, worried.
"I'm fine." Eimi shook her head.
"Good."
Noe pressed her lips together, rose on her toes, and craned her neck to scan the crowd for the Jumping Demon, still circling somewhere outside the ring. "Cold Cry wants me to kill it. It's not going to just stand there and let me," she muttered. "This is going to be a problem."
Kill it. Alone?
Eimi was starting to think both of them had lost their minds.
"Watch yourself. I have to go if I don't kill it; Cold Cry really won't talk to me again." And with that, under Eimi's stunned stare, Noe shoved back into the crowd and walked straight toward the Jumping Demon.
Insane. Completely insane.
A scream nearby snapped Eimi out of it. She turned to see another Contestant down in a spreading pool of blood.
Right. She wasn't the only one who'd lost it. Everyone had.
She watched Noe's back get smaller and smaller and made her peace with whatever came next. Looking at the carnage around her, nothing in her stirred anymore. Death had stopped meaning much to any of them a while ago.
She raised her blade and threw herself back into the fight. By now, the line between human and demon barely felt like it existed.
Cold Cry kept his blade moving, driving forward without pause. Frost crept from the Three-Headed Demon's palms up into its arms, its blood freezing as it went, its movements slowing with every second. Even the reach of its arms was starting to give out.
That was exactly what he wanted.
Lock down the arms, and it couldn't shield its neck the way it had before.
He closed to within two meters and stopped. Above him, the face on its chest twisted with fury. He used the frozen arms on either side as footholds and climbed toward the heads.
It seemed to sense what was coming and thrashed harder, roaring, trying to wrench its arms back to guard its neck, but the frozen limbs no longer answered.
"Ice Breathing, Second Form: Drifting Snow."
The two heads faced away from each other, mouths opening and closing on garbled, panicked sounds, straining to split apart along the frozen line between them and flee in opposite directions.
Its scream ripped through the whole clearing. When the two heads went flying, a cheer went up through the crowd of people who hadn't had anything to cheer about in days.
The Three-Headed Demon had been a weight sitting on everyone's chest since this started. Kill it, and passing this assessment suddenly looked a lot more possible.
But even with both heads gone, it didn't die. Just as he'd suspected, the face on its chest really was the vital point.
For the first time, it looked afraid. It roared and swung its frozen arms wildly, six blocks of ice smashing in every direction at once.
After a few seconds of that, it dragged those six frozen arms with it and bolted into the forest, not looking back. Trees cracked and splintered in its wake.
Cold Cry glanced over at Noe, still locked in her fight with the Jumping Demon.
The Jumping Demon's whole danger was in its legs, and she'd taken a direct hit from them and walked away fine. Whatever it threw at her, it clearly wasn't going to be enough to kill her.
The only thing left worrying him now was whether she'd freeze up before she could finish the job and let it slip away.