The four demons launched an attack on the three people inside the circle simultaneously.
"You two just focus on protecting yourselves; don't worry about me."
"Understood. Take care of yourself."
The four demons and the three people were soon locked in battle. The demons knew that Noe was the strongest of the three, so they assigned three to deal with her alone while the remaining one handled the other two. Gradually, the three were separated.
Akino and Yuka were already injured, and after running such a long distance, even working together against a single demon left them struggling and in constant danger. They were often caught off guard by the demons' chaotic, irregular attacks, but they were barely managing to hold on.
On Noe's side, the situation was no more optimistic. Her actual combat experience was nearly zero, and being forced to handle three demons at once sent her into a fluster.
Fortunately, she possessed a rare constitution — muscle density six times that of an ordinary person. Combined with her unusual Breathing Technique and her segmented nichirin blade, she looked as though she were performing with a ribbon. Her flexible body constantly dodged and struck in wildly exaggerated poses.
Watching this made Cold Cry's scalp prickle and cold sweat break out down his back — not because he was worried about Noe, but because he could barely stand to watch her moves. He felt embarrassed on her behalf.
He secretly vowed that, no matter what, he would never accept a mission with Noe again. Otherwise, he would surely be nailed to a pillar of shame.
"Love Breathing, First Form: Tremor of First Love."
Noe swung her nichirin blade in a fierce, cracking arc. The segmented blade lashed hard against the shoulder of a demon charging at her. Instantly, a wound deep enough to expose bone tore from its shoulder down to its abdomen, nearly splitting it in two — yet it healed at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The demon howled and continued to pounce, while the other two attacked from different directions simultaneously. Noe was about to be surrounded.
Suddenly, she executed a 360-degree flip, shattering the jawbone of the demon in front of her with a kick. Then she landed on the back of the demon behind her and drove it violently into the ground with both feet.
Cold Cry, watching from the stone platform, saw it all clearly. He marveled inwardly at how favored by heaven Noe truly was, and finally understood what muscle density six times that of a normal person actually meant.
Even with rigorous training, an ordinary person's muscle density could at most reach two or three times the norm, with obvious changes to their physique and appearance. But Noe had been born with a density no amount of training could replicate. It would only continue to grow as she aged — and, most remarkably, it required no deliberate effort to maintain.
In her usual state, she looked no different from any ordinary girl — perhaps slightly fuller in build, with slim arms and legs. But the moment she exerted force on any part of her body, the muscles there would instantly swell to two or three times their resting size. It was, frankly, terrifying.
Shattering a demon's jawbone with a casual kick and stomping another flat into the earth made it easy to imagine the force concentrated in her legs at that moment.
The trouble was that the girl's heart was far too soft. She actually felt pity for these bloodthirsty, merciless demons. That was why Cold Cry had said what he said to provoke her earlier.
He chose not to intervene because he wanted the reality of the situation to teach her what words could not: these demons were no longer human. Every action they took was driven purely by bloodlust. Only by killing them completely could she escape danger. If she dragged this out until her stamina gave out, she would be the one who died.
She understood this, it seemed — yet she still couldn't bring herself to do it. Perhaps not enough time had passed, or she hadn't witnessed enough, and so she couldn't steel her heart when the moment came.
"Love Breathing, Third Form: Love's Cat Shigure."
Facing the encirclement of three demons, Noe moved like an agile, restless cat — darting left, then right, feinting into the circle before springing back out. She seized the opening in every jump to deliver a slashing strike, her blade swinging in unpredictable, winding trajectories. The nichirin blade, which one tends to remember as a rigid sword, had become something closer to a crack of a whip in her hands.
In the span of a few breaths, all three demons were drenched in blood, their bodies covered in wounds of every size.
Noe grew increasingly fluent in both offense and defense — but she still refused to take their heads, allowing the wounds to close again and again.
The three demons were driven to distraction by her agile figure and sharp strikes, howling with each blow, yet unable to so much as graze the hem of her clothes.
At last, the demons seemed to recognize that this prey was not easy prey at all. Their intelligence was low, but even animals know to seek advantage and avoid harm.
In the middle of the battle, one demon let out a low, drawn-out sound — something between a groan and a signal. It was not the roar of frustration, nor the cry of pain from a wound. Noe didn't recognize it, so she paid it no attention.
As the fight continued, she noticed the three demons' attack intensity had shifted. They no longer lunged recklessly, no longer held their three-point encirclement. Instead, they clustered together and attacked from a single direction.
Fighting off attacks from three sides at once had been taxing, but a concentrated assault from one direction brought its own difficulty — three demons taking turns in rapid succession was effectively one demon attacking with relentless frequency. The pace was nearly as hard to manage.
The sudden shift in formation threw off Noe's rhythm, and she began to give ground under their joint assault. Worse, she noticed the demons had grown smarter. Where before they had committed fully to each strike, they now pulled back at the last instant, attacks shallow and withdrawn halfway through. Many of her defensive responses hit nothing, leaving her frustrated and off-balance.
What she didn't notice was this: ever since that low signal, she was no longer the target.
The three demons had clustered together deliberately, using rapid, shallow strikes to keep Noe occupied — and all the while, they were angling their position. Behind them, not far away, stood Akino and Yuka.
Then all three demons attacked at once. One high. One center. One low.
Noe couldn't answer all three with two hands. She managed to slash through one demon's arm, then threw herself into a backward flip to escape.
That was exactly what the demons had been waiting for.
One had sacrificed its arm to drive her back. The moment she flipped clear, all three demons wheeled around in unison and lunged toward the man and woman behind them.
By the time Noe landed and understood what was happening, it was already too late. She had only one option left — the fastest form she knew.
"Love Breathing, Second Form: Love's Remorseful Languish."
A streak of pink light tore across the open ground, the segmented blade swinging left and right at blistering speed. She reached them almost at the same moment as the demons. The blade severed the legs of two — but only the legs. Severed limbs did not stop their momentum, and two demons remained uninjured entirely.
She had spent her move. She was now behind the two lunging demons, at point-blank range, with no time and no room to strike again — not with Akino and Yuka directly ahead of her.
Cold Cry read her intention in an instant. She was going to use her own body to shield them.
A nameless anger ignited in his chest.
Truly foolish.