Based on Rayleigh's understanding, subjugating Amphisbaena required a party of at least twenty Level 3 adventurers, accompanied by a frontline fighter capable of holding the beast back—preferably a Level 5 adventurer.
To anyone else, their current decision could only be described as reckless.
Precisely because of that, Rayleigh felt certain the rewards for defeating it would be enormous.
After all, killing an enemy above one's level usually yielded the greatest gains.
"Move toward open ground."
After exchanging opinions with Alise, the group immediately sprang into action.
The path ahead appeared deep and shadowy.
It did not look very long on the map, but once they began running, they realized that was far from the truth.
While running, Rayleigh sensed movement through the Reiraku and shouted.
"Everyone, scatter!"
Whoosh!
At the exact moment his words fell, everyone dodged to the side.
Splash!
The water exploded apart.
Amphisbaena's ferocious dragon head burst out from the depths and slammed toward the Astraea Familia.
Thanks to Rayleigh's timely warning, everyone evaded the attack in advance and escaped unharmed.
After missing its strike, Amphisbaena did not pursue. Instead, it sank back into the water once more.
"Keep running."
"Uwah, that was dangerous!"
"It is locked onto us!"
Running at the front of the formation, Rayleigh's gaze turned cold. "Good. We have marked it as our prey too."
Boom! Crash! Boom!
Along the route, Amphisbaena kept attempting sneak attacks, but the group dealt with each ambush.
Still, the Level 2 healer was already starting to pant.
There was also the dwarf girl, Asta.
As the party's tank, her equipment was extremely heavy.
Full plate armor and a massive steel shield were never meant for rapid movement.
For those two in particular, this running tactic pushed them a little too hard.
"Drink your stamina potions. Recover your strength!"
The two of them nodded and quickly pulled out their potions to drink.
"I can see it now."
Following the map's markings, the group arrived at a vast underground cavern.
Crystals glittered everywhere, illuminating the cave in a brilliant glow.
At the center of the cavern sat an enormous lake.
According to the map, the water measured thirty-five meters deep, with terrible underground currents running beneath the surface.
The lake covered an area of roughly eleven hundred square meters.
"Everyone, prepare to fish that thing out."
"Leave it to me!"
Kaguya stepped forward and volunteered to act as bait.
Rayleigh nodded and drew the Zanpakutō with the blue-gray hilt from his waist.
"Sit upon the frozen heavens."
The Zanpakutō in his hand did not change much in its overall shape, but its guard shifted form, and a chain resembling a dragon's tail extended from the hilt.
At the end of the chain hung a crescent-shaped ornament.
"Hyōrinmaru!"
A biting chill radiated from the blade in Rayleigh's hand.
With a single swing, a lifelike ice dragon formed along the steel and shot across the lake's surface, freezing a solid path of ice in its wake.
Kaguya separated from the others and sprinted alone along the icy trail.
Splash!
Beneath the water, a massive shadow slowly emerged. It tracked Kaguya's movements.
As she neared the center of the lake, she noticed the shadow beneath her shrinking rapidly.
She understood at once that the moment had come. Amphisbaena had dived deeper in order to launch its attack.
The strike that followed would undoubtedly be a thunderous one.
"Kaguya!"
At that moment, Rayleigh—tracking the beast through the Reiraku—called out to warn her.
Kaguya smiled faintly at him.
Then her whole body suddenly disappeared. She had slipped directly into the shadows!
Boom!
The water's surface exploded.
Amphisbaena's savage dragon head lunged upward with its jaws wide open—
But it bit into empty air.
"We have been waiting for you."
At that moment, Lyra, who had already prepared the trap, raised both hands.
Her Zanpakutō had already entered Shikai.
Spider silk, as tough and rigid as steel wire, rapidly drew tight and bound the massive twenty-meter-long body of the two-headed dragon in an instant.
Rayleigh used Shunpo to arrive directly beneath the dragon. He drove Hyōrinmaru downward into the surface of the lake.
"Freeze."
Shhhk!
Terrifying cold spread out in a single burst, until even the air seemed to crackle with frost.
The moisture here was extraordinarily dense, Hyōrinmaru's power had practically reached three hundred percent of its normal strength.
The lake's surface froze over in an instant, and the solid ice spread across the entire lake in the blink of an eye.
"That gives us our footing."
At the same time Rayleigh froze the lake's surface, he also sealed Amphisbaena's lower body together with the water.
Only then did he finally get a clear look at the creature's full appearance.
Its defining feature was the pair of enormous heads branching from the front of its neck, both covered in thick dragon scales.
The head on the left was azure blue, while the one on the right was crimson red.
Behind the long neck of the blue dragon head sat crystalline growths like chunks of ice.
It let out a series of furious roars, clearly trying to break free.
But with the spider silk binding its frame, it could not exert its brute strength properly.
"Everyone! Attack together!"
Following Alise's command, she was the first to move. Engetsu blazed in her hand.
"Try this—Heavenly Flame Rain!"
With a swing of her blade, she hurled out a great mass of flames, then manipulated them into arrow after arrow of fire.
"Go!"
The countless flaming arrows fell like a rain of fire from the sky.
As they struck Amphisbaena, Alise activated an explosive spell, causing each arrow to detonate.
This technique was one she had created by combining her own Magic with Engetsu's innate ability.
It had originally been meant for wide-area attacks, but the two-headed dragon's body was so huge that it ended up absorbing every single scattered strike.
Boom! Boom! Boom—!!!
It was like a small-scale bombardment.
The dragon's back was blasted black with scorch marks. Alise's attack seemed highly effective.
Just then, Kaguya's figure rose out of Amphisbaena's shadow.
She ran straight up from the long tail onto the dragon's back, dashing across its massive body while continuously slashing down at it with the twin curved blades in her hands.
She quickly reached the monster's neck. Then she charged toward the head on the right.
"Red!"
Large portions of Kaguya's kimono were red.
According to the rules of Irooni, the larger the area of a color on her own body, the greater the damage dealt to the same color on her enemy.
Amphisbaena's right head and its several-meter-long neck were both red.
When Kaguya's strikes fell, the dragon scales became astonishingly fragile under Irooni's rules.
A flurry of slashes tore across the dragon's upper body, carving more than a dozen wounds into it.
Blood sprayed everywhere, staining its body an even deeper red.
Reaching the dragon's head, Kaguya leaped into the air.
"Takaoni."
The one standing higher wins.
Slash!
Empowered by that rule, Kaguya's strike shattered the dragon's scales, and the terrifying force of the blow left the right head reeling in confusion.
But at that moment, the blue head locked onto her and opened its jaws to bite.
Yet the instant it opened its mouth, Haineko's ash flew inside and slashed at the soft interior of its maw.
"!!!"
The two-headed dragon let out a cry of pain, then blasted the foreign object from its mouth with a powerful roar.
Ryuu's figure rose into the air and her chant was already complete.
"Contain the brilliance of the stars and strike down the enemy—Luminous Wind!"
---
Rule based Zanpakuto is broken!