"Stay your ground!" Castor shouted as soon as the illusion broke apart, revealing the charging mass of the enemy.


    Whenpared to the cavalry force Castor''s unit shed initially, the numbers of the enemy only increased. Without counting the losses from the sh before, it wouldn''t be a stretch to im that Castor''s force was outnumbered ten to one.


    ''But those guys don''t have me,'' Layn thought, spreading the newly found energy across his entire body.


    With what was going to happen soon, Layn did not need to treat this little magic he recovered sparingly. Rather than that, the habit of spreading his mana around was aimed at keeping him ser on, when his blood saber would stuff him beyond what should be his natural limits.


    "Stay your ground!" Castor shouted again, repeating his order. Layn nced at his face. As expected, below theyer of confidence that he as amander had to disy, Castor appeared to already make peace with what the overwhelming disadvantage of numbers dictated for everyone in the in.


    ording to all the rules of logic, there was no escaping the inevitable. With just the simple math, the quality of Castor''s troops couldn''t match the disadvantage of their numbers.


    In other words, this nameless in was where Castor had no other choice but to rest his head along with every single man of his unit.


    "I wonder why you didn''t sound the retreat," Layn suddenly spoke up, breaking the formation and approaching themander without care.


    "Go back to your... Or fuck it. You are not one of us, so I can''t ask you to risk your life for our cause," Castor said, quickly changing his initial intent.


    "Well, that''s not exactly true," Layn said as a gentle smile appeared on his lips. "But I don''t think we have the time to talk this through right now," he added as his head turned towards the approaching enemies.


    The illusion broke when they were roughly a hundred meters away from Castor''s unit. However, while most of them went by foot, their speed wasn''t slow at all. And as for now, the sh between the two forces appeared to be inevitable.


    "The hell are you talking about?" Castor asked, clearly distracted by Layn''s words away from the battle.


    "Well, just keep in mind to leave me alone for a day or two once I''m done, okay?" Layn asked, swinging his crimson saber a few times. "Dang, it doesn''t fit that well. Let''s try something else," he said before closing his eyes for a moment.


    The next moment, the single de in his hand suddenly multiplied before dropping to the ground, only to hang on what looked like a chain attached to the back of the original saber.


    "That''s more like it," Layn said, ncing towards the approaching enemy once again. They were now only twenty meters away or so. "Well, it''s time to get back to work," he added before lowering himself on his knees.


    Layn jumped forward. Straightening his legs in a single go, he even went as far as to add a little bit of mana to further his lunge. Then, in the middle of the air, Layn took aim and threw one of his sabers forward.


    Hit.


    The de slid through the simple armor of the enemy as if it was made from a paper mache. Once it sunk into the man''s chest, a cortex seemingly appeared in the middle of the man''s body, sucking all the blood he had to offer.


    Pull.


    Using the mana that the blood saber converted the enemy blood into, Layn rooted the corpse into the ground before pulling on the other saber, instantly appearing beside the corpse.


    "Hello everyone," he said with a huge smile on his face, kicking the dried-out corpse away to free his weapon. Layn swung his right hand to the side, depriving two more people of their heads.


    The surge of mana in Layn''s system followed, bringing him back to the average amount of energy he would keep on a daily basis.


    The blood weapons were insanely taxing to get invoked. Many of the weaker mages would easily sumb to the burden before actually managing to pay the price of invoking them. By itself, the weapons weren''t all that strong either.


    In the end, there was only a single reason why anyone would bother to use this forbidden spell.


    "AH!" Layn couldn''t help but moan when the surge of energy filled his veins. Roughly a thousand people were charging at Castor''s unit. Only three of them have died so far. Yet, their blood was already enough to recover the major part of Layn''s magical power.


    The archmage smiled.


    "KILL!" The loosely-armed soldiers attempted to add some more courage to themselves. After all, this man with crimson sabers was just a single opponent! Not only that, he even broke the formation, so just how hard could it be to kill him? Even if one, two, or ten of them died, with such an overwhelming number, how could they end up in any other way but crushing him with their sheer mass?


    "Die," Layn couldn''t be bothered to deal with each of the opponents on their own. ''I''m not a warrior, to begin with,'' he thought, raising his hand at the charging enemies before invoking quite a simple yet demanding spell.


    "st away," Layn said in a silent voice. One of the soldiers swung his weapon at the archmage right when he brought the spell to its fruition.


    A gale appeared out of nowhere. It appeared as if a powerful storm brewed behind Layn''s back, only to concentrate all its might at his hand. And from Layn''s hand, the gale exploded right in the faces of the people who were unlucky enough to stand in front of him.


    The one soldier who swung his weapon at Layn was particrly unlucky. With how his body was just outside the st zone of Layn''s spell, he only had his arm torn apart from his body, along with a sizeable chunk of his shoulder.


    He was unlucky, as he wasn''t granted the mercy of a quick death.


    Layn didn''t waste the opening that this simple spell gave him. He used nearly half of the freshly recovered mana to invoke it, putting him in a dire need to recover it.


    Thankfully, the gorefest caused by such a concentrated shockwave was more than enough to sate the thirst of his weapons.


    For a moment, the entire battlefield turned stale. Surprised by the sudden devastation, both sides didn''t dare to do a thing, as if the entire act was a doing of some kind of vengeful god.


    But Layn didn''t wait for anyone to regain their senses. He grabbed his sabers by the chain that held them together without any hurry before pulling his hands apart. As if following his intent, the chain in his hands turned far longer than before, amounting to four times the length of each of the sabers.


    "It''s time," Layn said, fixing his hold over the chain before starting to spin its ends in opposite directions. The crimson sabers started to cut in circles close to his waist. And then, he started to move forward.


    Cleaving anything and anyone that stood in his path, Layn used the momentum of his swinging weapons to cut in pieces everything ahead and behind him.


    And little to say, whenever his weapon would result in as much as a small scratch, the curse embedded into them would suck all the blood out of the target. Typically, the user of the blood weapons would allow the de to sit in the body for a moment for the psychological effect of the body drying up.


    But Layn just didn''t care enough to waste time like that.


    ''To be fair, I believe that blood flowing in a simple pattern after the weapons in an attempt to enter them looks far more menacing,'' Layn thought to himself. The raging energy that continued to flow into his flow only made it harder for him to keep himself sane.


    The feeling of all the mana being forced into his body was just too intoxicating. And there came the side-effect of the blood-ss spells, one that was the main reason for the spell finding itself on the forbidden list.


    Despite what the public believed at the moment when the limitation was announced, the blood weapon spells or blood spells, in general, were fine on their own. With so many kinds of magic aimed at taking the lives of others, the magic capitule would never bother to ban one of them just for that.


    The blood ss of spells was curbed out of all the schools and turned into an illegal and persecuted art because it would heavily affect the mindset of its user.


    "Hahahaha," Layn started tough while culling his way forward through the enemy formation. But, in just a few steps, his sense of self was already lost to the blood frenzy.


    Right now, the crowds of people all around didn''t appear like people to the archmage anymore.


    Right now, they were nothing more but bags of the intoxicating energy waiting to be ughtered and made useful!