Chapter 304

Three days later, the War Game had drawn far more attention than Apollo expected.

The premise alone was absurd enough to spread through Orario almost immediately:

Hephaestus Familia, one of the city’s wealthiest Familias, had entered a War Game with only a single adventurer!

Yōtōsai—the Level Four blacksmith who forged Zanpakutō.

Crowds gathered around the viewing areas arranged by the gods and the Guild, while several major Familias sent representatives simply to see what Rayleigh intended to do.

Freya watched from Babel, Loki arrived with Finn and Ais, Astraea Familia assembled together, and Ganesha Familia had no trouble finding volunteers to supervise the perimeter.

Rayleigh ignored all of it.

He stood several hundred meters from the fortress with four swords at his waist and a light black coat over his usual combat clothes.

He wore no armor, carried no pack, and had brought nothing beyond basic healing supplies.

The Guild official near the starting line looked him over twice before checking the roster again.

“You understand that once the signal sounds, no one from Hephaestus Familia can enter the battlefield to assist you.”

Rayleigh adjusted Benihime’s sheath. “I understand.”

The official glanced toward the fortress, where Apollo Familia members crowded every battlement, then looked back at Rayleigh.

“You may begin when the horn sounds.”

Rayleigh rested his hand on Sakanade.

When the horn echoed across the field, Apollo Familia moved at once.

Archers raised their bows, mages began chanting, shield teams gathered behind the main gate, and Hyakinthos stood in the central courtyard with his sword already drawn.

They expected Rayleigh to charge. Instead, he calmly unsheathed Sakanade.

“Collapse, Sakanade.”

A strange fragrance drifted through the morning air, and Rayleigh vanished from sight.

…

The first volley of arrows struck empty ground.

Rayleigh used Shunpo once, crossing most of the distance between himself and the fortress before the archers understood that he had moved.

Their second volley came faster, but by then the fragrance had reached the outer wall.

One archer tried to correct his aim toward Rayleigh’s new position and turned the wrong way.

The man beside him shouted a warning, only to hear his own voice coming from somewhere behind him, while another adventurer stepped aside to make room for a mage and collided with the person he believed was standing to his right.

Confusion spread across the battlements.

Sakanade effect had already taken hold.

Apollo Familia had prepared formations, overlapping fields of fire, retreat routes, and carefully assigned positions, but every one of those plans relied on the defenders agreeing on where left, right, forward, backward, above, and below actually were.

Sakanade took that certainty away.

A mage cast a fire spell toward Rayleigh and sent it across the wrong side of the field, while two archers tried to compensate for the mistake and nearly shot each other before abandoning their bows altogether.

The officers along the wall began shouting orders, but with everyone hearing sounds from the wrong direction, spoken commands became nearly useless.

By the time Rayleigh reached the base of the fortress, he had not taken a single hit.

Rather than enter through the main gate, he drew Senbonzakura with his free hand.

“Scatter, Senbonzakura.”

The blade dissolved into countless pink fragments, which rose around him in a cloud before flowing over the outer wall.

Apollo Familia reacted quickly, raising shields and ordering their mages to burn away the approaching petals, but Sakanade made a coordinated defense impossible.

Their spells crossed in the wrong directions, and gaps appeared in the shield line whenever someone tried to adjust to movement their senses no longer interpreted correctly.

Rayleigh had no intention of cutting anyone apart.

Senbonzakura swept across the battlement and targeted equipment instead: bowstrings snapped, staffs were knocked from hands, belts holding Magic Items were sliced loose, and several defenders found their armor straps severed before the petals struck their legs and sent them sprawling.

Within seconds, the first defensive line had stopped functioning.

Rayleigh used Shunpo again and appeared atop the wall.

An Apollo Familia swordsman turned toward him and immediately attacked in the opposite direction, so Rayleigh struck him across the neck with Sakanade’s sheath and caught him before he could fall from the battlement.

A second adventurer charged from behind, only to swing past Rayleigh when his sense of distance betrayed him.

One precise blow put him down as well.

Rayleigh moved through the wall without killing anyone.

Every defender he passed either lost a weapon, collapsed under Bakudō, or took a controlled strike strong enough to remove them from the fight.

The fortress had been prepared to stop a single man, and that was exactly why Sakanade was so effective.

Rayleigh had no allies whose senses he needed to protect and no one beside him who might mistake a friend for an enemy.

For once, he could spread Sakanade as widely as he wanted without turning it into a liability.

…

Hyakinthos understood the problem almost immediately.

Reports from the outer wall had stopped making sense; one messenger claimed Rayleigh was attacking from the east while pointing west, while another insisted that the enemy had already crossed the wall despite staring directly at the gate.

Hyakinthos caught the second man by the shoulders.

“Stop trusting your senses. Fall back to the inner courtyard and follow the guide ropes.”

The ropes had not originally been intended as a countermeasure against Sakanade.

Apollo Familia had installed them along several routes because smoke and fire from their own traps could obscure visibility, but now they became the only reliable way for affected defenders to move.

Hyakinthos ordered the outer wall abandoned.

Apollo stared at him. “We’re giving up the first line already?”

“We’re preventing him from turning the entire wall into hostages. That sword is the same one he used against Allen years ago. Fighting inside its range while trusting normal directions is pointless.”

The explanation stripped away Apollo’s remaining confidence that the opening confusion would simply pass.

He looked toward the wall, where pink petals were already spilling across the battlements, then watched a section of the outer gate explode inward.

Rayleigh had not bothered to open it; a Hadō blast tore through the reinforced wood and scattered broken pieces across the empty entrance passage.

Apollo smiled again when he saw where Rayleigh appeared to be heading.

“Good. Let him enter the courtyard.”

Hyakinthos did not return the expression. “He won’t.”

Apollo turned toward him, and Hyakinthos pointed upward.

The cloud of Senbonzakura had already passed over the gate.

…

From the outer wall, Rayleigh looked down into the fortress.

The courtyard appeared empty, which only confirmed Cassandra’s warning.

Apollo Familia had defended every other important position heavily, yet the broad stone courtyard beyond the gate contained almost no one.

He could also smell oil.

Rayleigh raised two fingers, and Senbonzakura moved first.

The petals swept into the courtyard, skimming over the stones without touching them as they searched through cracks in the paving, severed exposed wires, and struck several hidden mechanisms beneath the surface.

A second later, the entire courtyard erupted.

Fire burst through the paving stones in dozens of places as prepared Magic Items activated at once, flooding an area large enough to engulf an entire attacking force in flames.

The people watching from Orario saw the explosion consume the center of the fortress, but Rayleigh remained on the wall and let the trap burn itself out.

Then he resealed Senbonzakura.

‘Cassandra saw that perfectly.’

The fire would take time to die down, but Rayleigh had no reason to wait.

Drawing Benihime, he formed a red shield beneath his feet and extended it over the burning courtyard in a narrow bridge.

He stepped onto it and crossed above the flames.

From the keep, Apollo watched Rayleigh walk over the trap his Familia had spent three days preparing.

For the first time since issuing the challenge, the god stopped smiling.

Hyakinthos tightened his grip on his sword.

“The outer defense is finished. Pull everyone into the keep and switch to the close-range plan.”

Apollo Familia began retreating toward the central structure.

Rayleigh reached the far side of the courtyard and stepped down from Benihime’s barrier as the last defenders disappeared through the keep’s entrance.

The War Game had been underway for less than fifteen minutes.

Rayleigh had crossed the walls and neutralized the courtyard trap without using Bankai.

He looked up at the Apollo flag flying from the highest tower, then toward the dozens of adventurers preparing within the keep.

Reaching the fortress had been the simple part.

He sheathed Benihime, kept Sakanade in hand, and walked toward the entrance.