THE LAST KEEPER

Chapter 129: 129. CHAOS

So that was the reason the archive had been stirring earlier. They had been there all along. As if knowing his perception range, they had stayed hidden. And now they were trying to run. Sagiri knew well the arrows were made for him, and that angered him more. A man had died so that someone could get to him yet again. When does this ever end?

He jumped from the high wall and landed on the ground hard from the high roof, creating a small depression on the ground where he landed, but with the archive powering his every move, it felt as if he had landed on cotton.

He moved so fast as he moved east and even further out of the dead district and closer to the wall. He could now perceive them properly. Seven vermin were already a few feet from the wall. So this is where the hole was. But the wall had been there long before he arrived. It could not have possibly been made to kill him. Eight had said that some boys from the dead district had disappeared. His benefactor already knew where to find him. It could not possibly be that he was searching for him again among random boys.

Something was not adding up.

He reached the wall in no time, but now he could perceive them outside the wall. Even the hole barely visible on the wall was left gaping. The seal made of concrete that looked so uniform with the wall that must have been used to close it was lying carelessly on the ground as if they had intentionally left it for him to follow. He intended to. He really intended to follow them till he caught them, whether it was a trap or not.

He moved through the crack that must have been made for only fit or small people, because someone like Salka could not even fit half his body. At least he could say that the person who shot him was not from the Bami clan. That, however, left more than a hundred tribes with a culprit who could have shot him, and that could not cut it. He needed to find them now. They needed to pay for what they had done before the sun came up.

Stepping outside the wall on the far east of Ko’alsi, it almost felt like Sagiri had stepped into a new world. Something was different, too. I was as if their presence was quickly disappearing, too.

”Nokai!” Sagiri said as he held the handle of his weapon in his hands.

The blades snapped out and sizzled in response to his burning need to punish. It was so intense he could taste their intent.

The woods in front of the eastern wall were thick, and sagiri charged without hesitation.

He did not need hooked ropes to move in the unfamiliar woods. Nokai was all he needed, and he used it to move when necessary. He had never seen those woods before, yet he moved as if he had known them all his life. That is how charged with rage he was.

Suddenly, the presence of the seven disappeared, and he stopped suddenly. He had been right a few feet behind the last one, and then they were suddenly gone. People don’t just disappear, he thought of that statement, and he had used the same statement on Eight. Just thinking of Eight and how he looked when he died made the ache inside him swell to the point he felt like he could burst.

He let out a sound from deep in his throat, or it escaped his throat. It was close to a howl of rage and that of a wounded beast. It was foreign to him, and as if everything he felt in that moment was spilling out of him.

They couldn’t just get away! They couldn’t just escape after what they had done!

The markings on his body glowed and slithered to his right hand, while with the left, he tightly held Nokai. He lifted his hand in the air and, with an open arm charged full with the archive’s power, he slammed it to the ground hard with rage. And like a cloth in front of a razor, the ground gave way at the impact of his punch with lethal force, forming a big depression on the ground as it went and swiping trees from root in its wake until it finally stopped.

His eyes had not blackened till slime, but he could feel something odd with his veiled eye. It was eating away at the veil. That did not matter, however, because something that seemed hidden underground had come to light. Deep underground, where his punch had split the earth, was a tunnel. Well, there was because now the entrance and some of it had been crushed, and he could see an opening.

The tunnel had been so deep underground, and they must have been moving quickly. He, however, could feel them now as they ran deep in the earth.

Sagiri jumped into the tunnel, and although it was dark just then, he realised he did not just need to use his perception to move because he could see. His right red eye pupil, as if it had finally awoken, could see perfectly in the darkness inside the tunnel. With that, he did not need to slow down a bit, and he moved like a blur through the winding path of the cave, which kept getting wider the deeper he went.

The eye must have awoken and eaten through the veil. Bakuru had always instructed him not to take off the pupil veil, and for all those years, he had listened. Not that he cared to remove it anyway, but now it had come off on its own. It’s not as if he wanted to reveal himself even further and attract the attention of his benefactor.

He would find a way to rectify the situation later. Right now, however, someone needed to pay for killing a good man, and they were trying to get away.