Layn's frenzy had a hard limit to how long it would last. In a sense, it was similar to the idea that every human only had a lifespan of roughly a minute... But every breath would reset this limit.
The same could be applied to Layn's blood frenzy. Along with the insane power that each kill would supply him with, the demand for his own blood or energy would also continue to grow.
"DIE!" Layn shouted, slicing the head of one of the soldiers in half.
"DIE!" he shouted while depriving another man of his legs, only to have all of his blood drained out in the following few seconds.
'DIE,' Layn shouted in his thoughts due to his throat being too dry to enable him to shout.
What initially appeared like an unstoppable force capable of just steamrolling through Castor's unit turned into a blood festival solely managed by Layn and his crimson sabers.
"Just what the hell is he?" Castor muttered to himself, watching how the stranger he picked up made short work of nearly a tenth of the enemies in less than two minutes. The impact of his frenzy was so strong that the entire enemy unit ceased to advance, now fully focused on dealing with the threat ravaging it from the inside.
"Major, what should we do?" one of Castor's officers approached the man, clearly eager to join in the fray.
"We can't just stand here and do nothing," Castor replied before lowering his head. Then, after just a short moment, he raised his eyes again before bringing the handle of his sword to his chest and then swinging it forward. "Men, advance," he uttered in a low voice.
"ADVANCE!" The lieutenant that approached him repeated the order with a powerful shout. Not daring to wait, Castor's unit moved forward.
"DIE!" Layn's shouts carried across the entire battlefield.
"Make sure not to get into his area," Castor added another order, wary about the stranger. 'As thankful as I am for his help,' he looked in the direction where that stranger continued to turn the hordes of barbarians into dried-out mincemeat, 'I'm not sure if he can recognize his enemies and allies,' he thought, following closely behind the first line of his soldiers.
From then on, the battle could no longer hold such a name. Shaken by the Layn's frenzied attack, the cheaply armed and loosely trained soldiers couldn't stand against the concentrated attack of Castor's veterans.
In just a few moments, the entire battlefield split into three areas. To the sides, Castor's men pushed against the enemies. While such an order was never voiced out, the officers in charge of the operation cleverly pushed entire chunks of the enemy into Layn's range.
Rather than dealing with such overwhelming numbers themselves, Castor's direct subordinates made use of the abnormal power of this stranger.
'I need to get a hold of myself,' Layn weakly voiced in his thoughts, barely capable of even seeing what was going on around him. With all the power overflowing his veins, his body simply moved on its own, as if all the knowledge about fighting from his victims poured into his soul along with the blood drying out of their corpses.
Sadly, Layn's thoughts were no different from wishes placed upon the foothold of some ancient statue of forgotten gods. The side-effect of the blood spell was simply too strong even for the archmage like him to deal with.
'I guess I don't really have any choice right now,' Layn thought, taking a note of his surroundings before allowing all of his senses to shut down.
Right now, his body operated on instinct alone, executing various complicated attacks that Layn would be unable to execute in his normal state.
His sabers swung around without any break, claiming more and more lives from the folk around him. But rather than enjoying the constant influx of energy, Layn's mind was fully focused on constructing one of the grandest yet most useless spells he could come up with.
'The only way to get over the frenzy is to decisively cut all the magic I have,' Layn lectured himself over and over again, using this sentence like some kind of mediational mantra.
But as the battle continued, Layn quickly approached the limit. Not the limits of what his body could handle or how much energy could flow through his aura.
While this limit was a result of Layn's cold calculation, if his guess was correct, he would soon run out of enemies to kill.
'And if that happens, I won't be able to stop myself from attacking Castor's people!' he thought to himself. Sadly, rather than allowing him to work on his spell even faster, this thought only made it harder for the archmage to focus.
"He is still out of his mind," Castor muttered under his nose, watching how the battle was quickly coming to an end. In just five minutes of time, this stranger managed to cull over half of the entire strenght of the enemy unit.
'Even if I account a hundred kills to my people, he still killed nearly half of a thousand of people all on his own,' he thought, tightening the grip over his sword's handle.
"MAJOR!" A sudden shout caused Castor to look away from the battle. From the side of the plain, a lone rider on a bloodied horse was charging towards him.
CRASH!
The horse either lost its strenght or simply tripped on the uneven ground, sending its rider high into the air. But rather than panicking, the person made a roll in the air to change their position before suddenly starting to float in an unnatural manner.
"Sitra?!" Castor uttered weakly when he noticed the abnormality. While on its own, it wasn't anywhere near as spectacular as what Layn was doing just a few steps away, it was still proof that the newcomer to the battle was capable of using magic.
"Major! I almost got caught by those Geremian bastards!" Sitra reported as soon as she landed, shouting over the distance that still separated her from her commander.
"Figures," Castor muttered under his nose before raising his head and calling out to the girl, "Come here! You need to see this."
Sitra appeared to be too calm for the situation. As if she wasn't a few steps from a bloody battlefield, she just jogged to Castor's position before saluting and reporting with a sour smile.
"Useless scout Sitra reports for duty!" the girl shouted while standing at attention. But rather than keeping her posture for long, she quickly glanced to the side to where the battle was now nearing its end.
But as soon as her eyes moved towards the scene of the carnage, her entire body twitched and then froze.
"Now you know why I'm happy that you are here," Castor sighed before shaking his head. "Tell me, do you have any means of waking him up?" he asked as he pointed his hand at the bloody sphere in the densest part of the crowd ahead.
"Is that..." Sitra didn't even finish her question. Given how there were only Geremians and her own unit in place, there was hardly anyone who could be responsible for this kind of bloodshed. "I don't think I need to do anything at all," she sighed after a moment.
"What do you mean? God, that's the one thing I hate about you," Castor's expression soured even further. In a situation like the one he found himself in, Sitra's annoying character wasn't going to help him to calm down.
And how could he figure out a way to save his people from the fate his enemies met if he wasn't calm?
"I mean, if that's really our guy, then he is going to take care of himself all on his own." Sitra released another sigh before shaking her head. "Just wait for a second, and you will see it for yourself," she added, most likely in order to decrease her potential punishment for lack of discipline when answering to her direct superior.
"What do you... Oh," before Castor could finish his word, something changed. His eyes instantly wandered towards the sphere of blood that Layn was coated all over with, only to see how the crimson color of this sphere faded into pink, orange and then disappeared altogether.
"Right now, he is sucking all the mana that he can. Depending on what kind of spell he will release..." Sitra shook her head before looking at her commander with a sad smile. "Well, let's say that there is no use in running. We can only hope he doesn't hold any grudge against us at this point," she explained before falling down on the ground and hiding her face in her knees.
"I never thought I would say this, I but I guess we can only pray, then," Castor said before following the girl's example and sitting down on the bloodied ground.
'Just a bit more,' Layn muttered in his mind while converging all the mana he could in his aura. While a small part of this energy was more than enough to let him raise his cultivation by several degrees, he didn't dare to use even the tiniest bit of it.
Not when the safety of everyone relied on him successfully firing this useless spell he created.
The mana continued to converge for a few more moments before there was no more blood that Layn could use. As soon as that happened, the amount of energy Layn could hold started to decrease at a rapid pace, just to maintain his blood weapons.
"Disperse," Layn broke off the blood spell before bringing his hand together and raising them towards the sky. "RAISE!"
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