The Three-Headed Demon had fled. The Jumping Demon was dead. Even the Spider Demon, the last of the three, had started showing fear, pinned between Kimura and Akino; it was leading the last seven or eight demons in retreat toward the hillside.
The numbers had flipped. Contestants now outnumbered demons, and it showed the fight had turned bolder by the minute, while the demons had nothing left to answer with. Some had already broken and run the moment the Jumping Demon went down.
The Spider Demon wanted to run too, but Kimura and Akino wouldn't let it loose. All it could do was call the rest together, clearly hoping to amass enough strength to punch through toward the hillside.
With the Jumping Demon dead, Noe threw herself into clearing the rest. She'd expected killing it would be hard for her.
But when she'd pulled the hilt back and taken its head, she'd felt nothing at all. Like she'd done something completely unremarkable.
She knew, even so, that she'd never be quite the same person after that cut.
With her in the fight now, the demons' collapse only sped up.
The Spider Demon wasn't especially strong on its own; its size was the problem. Small, fast on six legs, and hard to pin down, it had gotten away with every ambush so far thanks to how little anyone could see at night.
With Kimura and Akino watching it closely now, that advantage was gone.
Every time it lined up a target, the two of them stuck to it like leeches, one attacking, one covering, until it had no choice but to drop the hunt and go fully defensive.
It didn't take long for the Spider Demon to catch on to what they were doing.
It watched its companions fall one after another and wanted to help, but every time it tried to break away, the two of them were there to cut it off. It couldn't beat them quickly, so it tried to run instead, and they cut that off too.
Worn down and furious, it let out a string of broken, strangled cries.
Three more demons slipped away in the confusion, and the fight tipped fully one-sided. What had started as just Kimura and Akino against the Spider Demon grew fast, as more Contestants freed up now that the other demons were dead or gone and joined in to box it in.
It grew more frantic, twisting through the ring of Contestants, hunting for any gap to slip through.
For the first time, it understood what it felt like to go from hunter to hunted.
Someone in the crowd shouted.
"This thing's too fast; blades can't touch it! We need to pin it down, or we're letting our dead down for nothing."
"I've got it. Everyone else, hold the line. We are not letting this thing go."
A big, broad-shouldered Contestant planted his blade in the dirt outside the ring, rolled his sleeves up, and stepped into the circle, dropping into a low, wide stance, arms spread, clearly someone who'd wrestled or grappled before.
Facing him, the Spider Demon bared its fangs and let out a hissing warning, fear plain in the sound of it.
Everyone there remembered the first night it had broken into their circle. This felt, finally, like getting some of that back.
He advanced slowly, testing, in a wrestler's crouch.
The demon snapped and hissed at him a few times, trying to scare him off. When that didn't work, it started giving ground.
It kept its distance as it circled, hunting for any way out, but every time it neared the edge of the ring, it ran straight into a wall of blades.
Then the man moved, caught it in a half-turn, and lunged, arms out, but missed.
The demon hissed another warning.
He lunged again, and again, and it dodged every time.
But dodging him wasn't the same as dodging the blade that came in from behind each time he missed. It took several cuts in a row, and if not for how fast it healed, it would already have bled out.
Both the demon and the Contestants ringing it were running out of patience.
"Let me in." Another Contestant stepped forward.
By now, everyone watching had figured out the truth: the Spider Demon had never been as dangerous as it looked. What had scared them before was how silently it hunted. Now that it was cornered and visible, people were eager for a shot at it.
The two men worked together, and with the rest of the ring closing in to harass it from every side, they finally caught it in a proper pincer. The first man got behind it and tackled it to the ground.
It screamed and thrashed, trying to throw him off, but the struggle slowed it down just enough, and the crowd swarmed in.
Seven or eight people piled on, an arm here, a leg there, until it was pinned flat under sheer weight, unable to move no matter how hard it fought.
Someone shoved both hands down on its head. "Now cut its head off, now!"
Kimura raised his blade over its neck and brought it down with everything he had every ounce of the anger and helplessness that had built up over seven days behind the swing.
A scream tore through the clearing as the blade opened its throat. Then, impossibly, the demon found one last burst of strength and threw everyone off at once. Risking its own hands to do it, it grabbed the blade still lodged in its neck and shoved it and Kimura down into the dirt.
Nobody had expected that, not with its neck already two-thirds severed. But an animal fighting for its life has no ceiling on what it can do.
With so many people knocked down all at once, and everyone caught off guard by the sudden reversal, the outer ring thinned out fast.
The Spider Demon found its gap, clutched its half-severed head in both hands, and bolted for the hillside.
"Don't let it get away; go chase it!" someone shouted.
The crowd, still catching up to what had just happened, snapped into motion. Eimi, who'd just finished off the last ordinary demon nearby, turned at the noise, saw it running, and took off after it with her blade drawn. Several others followed.
The ones too hurt to run stayed where they'd fallen, chests heaving, taking in the wreckage around them with something like a smile.
We won. We actually won.
Noe had started to chase after the Spider Demon too, but stopped halfway, hit by the sense she'd forgotten something. She turned and realized Cold Cry, still in white, wasn't anywhere in sight. She spun and ran for the treeline instead.
Akino let his blade fall where he stood and crossed to Yuka. They looked at each other, eyes wet, and pulled each other into a tight hug, crying with relief.
"It's over."