*
"W-wai-!" (?)
One demon noticed something was off, it realised it lost its own bodily autonomy. The others shuddered upon hearing his faintly familiar countenance. Wasn't he dead? Didn't he get split in half? It's not uncommon for demons to have a few tricks up their sleeve, but would he surface now instead of pretending to be dead? To be clear, her death served as a conceptual obstacle for all of them. The universe itself would be rearranged around with them at the centre of it all, with no more humans in existence they will revert into phenomena but they will also gain dominion over everything.
It was far better than not gaining anything of value at all, as such they teamed up begrudgingly. At first their bitter attitudes towards one another lead to the direct deaths of many of their comrades, as their numbers thinned they subconsciously grew concern and began to actually band together. That was the current result of the present, their blades poised at the ready, it wouldn't an exaggeration to call them harbingers of the end. This merry band would be one of the moste fearsome forces should it be peacetime. Though this was precisely the period where all major combat forces of this world have mutually destroyed one another, leaving the power structure on earth in a constant state of collapse and consumption of other powers.
It was the demon that got bisected. Why has he stood up once more? In his coal black muscled arm and glowing chiseled body, numerous writhing and coiling red veins bulged outwards and flickered with that ominous crimson. A deeply unsettling magic strangled their awareness, shifting away their attention at all times from its location. A psychological magic took hold, pushing their gaze towards the supposedly fallen demon, but they were demons nonetheless and psychological magic should have been largely ineffective on them. So they turned their gaze. On that same arm lay a palm submerged in wriggling crimson veins, it flickered methodically slowly and held a familiar great sword. Lastia's great sword.
When? Why? Why is he holding it? Before their thoughts could be processed, he swung. In a horizontal sweep, it bisected a few of the other demons before the possessed demon was put down by his brethren. Shit, the ones he bisected were directly holding down the magical girl with their blades. The blades were physically pinning her to the ground, surely...
He stood a short distance away, he belonged in the second wave of demons and he helped put down his possessed brethren. When he looked back at the magical girl, she was gone. In her place was a massive reddish black mass, it no longer held shape and it pushed and pull without distinct pause or reason. It writhed and pulsated in all manners of chaos, greedily sucking the environment dry of magical energy for itself. Magical particles can access all of time and space, but it doesn't hold true conversely. From a local standpoint, one can deny the access of magical energy within a certain spacial and temporal period, regardless of the method.
That's it. She casted her skill on herself from the start, even if one of the demons disabled her skill, it doesn't nullify the instance she precasted inside her body. As long as she was transformed, the precasted instance can resumed operation at any time... Perhaps it was a mere result of being born in this world without her past memories, with no semblance of civility or dependence, she truly acted like a wild animal bound only by the laws of life and death. Due solely to her instinct to live, she precasted her skill before hand in preparation for an enemy that might counter her.
Never mind the fact that they all turned their attention to the possessed demon for a second, the ones restraining her got consumed along with their weapons. There's nothing left of their vessels and maybe even their souls. They might not be able to reincarnated like other demons do, the worse part was that they couldn't be sure their souls could remain intact in that vile crimson mass. Spirits and similar beings are composed only of magical particles, it stands that beings that could survive with just the soul and without the body... Would die if they lost their soul made only with magical particles.
She.. Recycled them. Isn't that enough proof they could no longer reincarnate? Then... Then all the others that died to her blade earlier, they were consumed too. This was a nightmare, a nightmare that shouldn't have existed in the end times. All the weak humans should have been wiped out, so where did she come from? They believed she was a magical girl that survived the war by sheer luck, but really... Isn't it more likely that she was a major player in that war? A being they could never hope to defeat...
These demons were mere dregs, remnants of obscure folk tales that survived by hiding their very existence to the utmost extreme, never surfacing once out of fear. In that war chock full of S grades that can blow up countries and continents, and gods that would terraform the map out of whim, they couldn't ever dream of being a participant. Sometimes there were also beings in the other grades below S, like this girl they were an anomaly that wouldn't respond to the world's rules. Monsters that defied understanding could be explained with magic, what if they defied magic too? That would be the realm of the divine, often considered demigods but usually overlooked because they were made sparse and insignificant should actual gods come into conflict.
With nothing left to restrain her, a forest of dark red spears exploded out of her body, piercing everything in a 10 kilometre radius. The spears retracted all at once, leaving the air behind burning at a temperature supernaturally high. The surrounding forest burned into ashes and smog filled the surroundings for a while, leaving a large zone of choking gray. She examined her fingers and her limbs, bending them to see if they still worked.
Her assessment? She was completely fine. Recycling the magic of her pursuers for healing was quite wasteful, but it was necessary. Her intelligence also grew accordingly and not just awareness, she had begun to plan ahead intentionally. Setting up traps, precasting, surveying before moving. In this tumultuous era, she couldn't be prepared enough, who knows what monsters are still lurking post war. The demons were quite misguided. Was she really the last human? She doubted it. She made off and began trekking towards the outside of this decimated forest.