At this moment, among everyone present, only Rayleigh, whose soul coexisted with Hyōrinmaru's, was unaffected by the brutal cold.
As far as the eye could see, a sea of men surged toward him, piling forward like a living mountain.
Every one of them was in terrible condition.
Yet even with their minds clouded, they still charged at him with weapons raised.
Rayleigh held Hyōrinmaru in one hand and Sakanade in the other.
Quietly, he activated Sakanade's Shikai, then he was swallowed by the crowd.
He stood like a protruding rock in the middle of a flood.
The human tide crashed against him, split apart, and immediately closed in again.
Whoosh!
With a single slash across the torso, whether it was three people or four, several men were cut in half at the waist.
But the crowd pressing against him did not change at all.
Rayleigh's twin blades danced wildly.
Sword slash flew from his Zanpakutō with every swing. Each slash killed at least several people and wounded more than a dozen.
The enemies who got close to him could not keep their limbs intact.
Arms and legs flew everywhere, occasionally mixed with one or two severed heads.
Even with Sakanade distorting the directions of every enemy around him, stray attacks that had gone off-course still landed on him two or three times every second.
Thud!
One soldier gritted his teeth and struck with all his strength.
His broad-bladed scimitar came down hard, landing directly on Rayleigh's chest.
But whether it was the sound it made or the vibration that traveled back into his palm, none of it felt like he had cut into flesh.
The soldier was already dizzy from hypothermia!
This had been a blow made with every last bit of strength he had.
Yet when he saw what had happened to Rayleigh, he froze.
The broad-bladed scimitar that should have been able to split a bull in half had landed on Rayleigh's chest without injuring him in the slightest!
It had only cut open his shirt.
Where the blade had struck, forget a wound, there was not even the faintest mark.
'Was this really human skin?'
'Even the scales of a legendary dragon could only be this tough, right?'
'After struggling so hard to reach this point, all of it had been useless. Wasn't that just too damn unfair?'
'Huh?'
'Why am i flying?'
"..."
'That looked like my body.'
'Oh, so my head had been cut off.'
'Haha.'
Rayleigh had no time to study the psychological changes of a man who died with a smile on his face.
The enemy was not stupid either.
When they realized their blades could not injure Rayleigh at all, they did fall into despair for a short while.
But soon, they pulled themselves back together.
Or rather, they threw caution away completely.
One large man abandoned his weapon.
Using his comrades as human shields, he seized an opening and threw himself onto Rayleigh, wrapping both arms around one of his arms and locking it down with all his strength.
Even with one arm restrained, Rayleigh could still swing the sword in his other hand.
Sword slash swept out, and several more men died on the spot.
But immediately after that, even more people hurled themselves at him.
Because of Sakanade's effect, they were technically lunging in the wrong direction, yet in the press of bodies, they somehow stumbled into him by accident and piled on.
Rayleigh exerted strength, trying to throw them off.
But one enemy after another pressed down on him, and within just a few seconds, they had built into a mountain of flesh!
'Tch.'
"Senbonzakura."
Rayleigh released Sakanade, opened his palm, and with a clear ring, Senbonzakura flew over and landed in his hand.
"Scatter, Senbonzakura."
Whoosh!
The scattering cherry blossoms interwove into a net, forming an incredibly sharp barrier.
Then Rayleigh temporarily stopped using Zero Degree Release.
Everyone touching him was instantly frozen into blocks of ice.
After that, he erupted with Reiatsu, shattering those ice statues and breaking free from the restraints.
Under his control, Senbonzakura circled around him, leaving only Rayleigh himself standing inside the safe zone.
The so-called safe zone was the area a wielder of Senbonzakura had to leave open while controlling the blades.
No blades would pass through that area, so there was no need to worry about the sword's master being harmed by his own weapon.
At this moment, standing within that safe zone, Rayleigh looked somewhat disheveled.
His coat being torn apart was still fine.
After all, it was only an ordinary coat, not a Shihakushō, so it was perfectly normal for it to be ripped to pieces.
But...
"There are too many of them."
A faint sheen of sweat appeared on Rayleigh's forehead, and he wiped it away with a casual motion.
Against such overwhelming numbers, this much was only natural.
If he were Level 6, things might be different.
But with his current strength, truly fighting twenty thousand men alone—and every one of them soldiers with Falna—was still unreasonable, no matter how one looked at it.
For some reason, all the ones charging at him were ordinary Level 1 soldiers.
From Rayleigh's observation, there were very few who had even reached the upper ranks of Level 1.
Since they had deployed an army of this scale, surely they did not think this alone would be enough to capture him.
Was the goal a battle of attrition?
If so, that was probably Marius's strategy.
It seemed he trusted that cursed magic item a great deal.
'So they plan to exhaust my Reiatsu with sheer numbers.'
Having figured that out, Rayleigh brought one faintly glowing petal between his fingers to his mouth.
If that was their strategy, then they had better not expect him to run out of stamina until he could no longer swing his sword.
Because as long as he had Ruri'iro Kujaku, his Reiatsu could continue to recover while theirs declined, giving him a steady flow of power.
"Well, that said, sorry. I'm not kind enough to go that far for you."
'Shunkō!'
Rayleigh's Reiatsu erupted.
In the next second, he shot forward like a cannonball, charging straight toward the chariot where Ares and Marius were.
The obstacles in front of him were blasted away by the explosive force of Shunkō.
Before he could be surrounded again, Rayleigh used Shunpo and appeared in the air.
Then, using Reishi to create footholds invisible to the naked eye, he swept through the sky toward Ares.
Whoosh!
A sound tore through the air.
Rayleigh twisted his body in midair, calmly avoiding the thrown weapon.
He even had time to glance at its full shape.
'This was... a halberd?'
So there were people in Rakia who used such vicious weapons!
It was over two meters long, roughly four centimeters in diameter, and had little flexibility.
The tip was not only a double-edged blade serving as a spearhead, but was also attached to a sharp axe blade.
It was a polearm capable of both thrusting and chopping.
Judging from the sound of the wind, the weapon weighed around one hundred kilograms.
With that kind of weight, combined with its forward-heavy balance, even without much strength behind it, simply being able to swing it was enough to make it dangerous.
And someone capable of throwing such a thing like a ballista bolt had to be at least mid-tier Level 3.
Rayleigh swept his gaze across the battlefield, trying to find the person responsible.
However, at that moment, his sense of danger suddenly intensified, warning him.
A sound came tearing through the air from behind!
Rayleigh instantly turned around.
"Bakudō #39: Enkōsen."
With the incantation abandoned, the spell activated instantly.
Clang!!
The violent impact slammed Rayleigh backward through the air.
When he took a closer look at what had struck him, his eyes widened slightly.
It was the same halberd he had just dodged.
'It came from behind?'
'Was it a tracking attack, or had someone relayed it through the air?'
On a battlefield of twenty thousand people, Rayleigh's perception and insight were both being heavily disrupted.
He could not notice everything.
Crack.
A sharp sound rang out.
A fracture appeared on Enkōsen, spreading outward from the point of impact.
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