THE LAST KEEPER

Kiana, in response, met him with a punch to his right shoulder, which sent him flying back. He twisted midair to break the fall and perched on the slanting rocky side of the cavern.

The necrotic numbness from the silver void needle spread through Sagiri’s right shoulder again, attempting to freeze the ancient vital channels of the N’folu.

Droplets of poisoned blood hissed as they dripped onto stone, burning tiny smoking pits into the shale.

The Archive was fighting hard against the archive, but he knew that with the raging fight its priorities had changed.

Sagiri did not flinch, drawing upon the searing fire of the Archive to cauterize the wound from within. Golden currents of the Archive surged through his veins, isolating the alchemical venom before it could reach his heart.

With a fluid wrist motion, he shifted the hilt of Nokai without losing a single beat of his guard. Twenty autonomous black blades detached from the bone-metal spine, fanning out into a double-ringed orbital matrix.

Kiana landed softly upon the fractured shale of the high pillar, her pale face unreadable beneath the porcelain curve of her mask.

Her dust-rose eyes remained devoid of emotion, reflecting only the flashing red runes.

She did not pause to assess the damage to her opponent, calculating the rotational speed of the floating blades.

To her conditioned mind, Sagiri was merely an objective to be dismantled through mathematical precision.

In the next instant, she initiated the Void Steps of the Silver Mask, disappearing without generating a single acoustic ripple. The space where she had stood did not even rustle with the draft of her departure.

Sagiri’s eyes burned with concentration. He plunged his sensory awareness into the weightless depth of the Deep Sea trance.

The chaotic noises of the cavern war faded, replaced by the wind and every air particle surrounding Kiana.

Since he could not sense her presence at all, he could listen to the wind and air’s heartbeat.

She was indeed a deadly opponent and not a person living could be able to go against her and win. Too bad he was now less human and more an ancient relic

He felt a microscopic drop in temperature thirty paces to his left, spinning on his heel as two silver needles lunged from shadows. The needle points whistled with high-frequency resonance, aimed directly at his neck.

Nokai’s outer ring of blades intercepted the silver points in a burst of sparks, deflecting the lethal thrusts by millimeters.

The screech of steel against silver echoed across the amphitheater like the shriek of a dying raptor.

Kiana rebounded off the stone with inhuman agility, twisting in mid-air to unleash a rapid succession of thirty-two needle strikes. Each thrust was calibrated to target the vital nerve junctions connecting the mortal vessel to the Archive.

Sagiri met the assault with the refined elegance of the Fifth Blade Dance incorporated with the desert dance and the archive power, executing circular parries with surgical calm.

Dark steel clashed against moonlight silver, creating a dazzling dome of sparks that illuminated the dark hall.

The rhythmic percussion of their collision sounded like a continuous drum roll, moving across the ruined pedestals at blinding speed. Neither combatant gave up ground, their strikes and counters flowing in unbroken harmony.

Across the flooded chamber, iron sirens wailed as heavy blast doors ground open along the lower walls.

The hydraulic hinges groaned under the strain, releasing hundreds of Soulless shock troops into the hall.

The grey-coated enforcers surged forward in eerie silence, their three-pronged spears leveled toward the stone pillar where Lira lay dying. Their iron masks reflected the burning ruins of the array as they closed in.

”They are swarming the lower terrace!” Kiuga shouted, throwing three steel anchor daggers into the lead enforcers. ”Kaka, Maita, close the gap and form a perimeter around Lira and Rika!”

Kaka roared a fierce northern battle cry, stepping into the breach with heavy war axes whirling in bone-cleaving arcs. The kinetic weight of his charge shattered the front line of spearmen, sending broken bronze shafts flying into the water.

His broad axe blades severed armor and flesh with brutal efficiency, cleaving three enforcers in half with a single strike. ”Get behind my boots, Kiuga!” Kaka bellowed, planting his boots into the flooded floor.

”No mindless corpse touches the girl,” Kaka rumbled, his voice shaking the stone. He swung his secondary axe like a scythe, decapitating two advancing troops.

Maita darted along the perimeter of the horde, his short swords flashing in blinding strokes that severed weapon straps and tendons. He moved with fluid agility, catching enforcers on their blind spots before they could raise shields.

Zolinka supported the line from the higher stone steps, hurling calibrated explosive pellets that detonated among the charging ranks. The concussive blasts tore through armor, throwing enforcers into the flooded trenches and keeping the southern corridor clear.

”There are too many pouring out of the lower barracks!” Maita yelled over the deafening din of clashing metal, dodging a barbed pike. ”Lira’s pulse is growing fainter by the second, and her breathing has almost stopped!”

”We cannot move her until Sagiri finishes that silver ghost!” Kiuga shouted back, his hands pressed firmly against Lira’s forehead. ”If we lift her now without stabilizing her internal hemorrhaging, her lungs will collapse completely!”

In the center of the hall, the duel between Sagiri and the Apex Soulless reached a terrifying intensity.

The air around the high pillars grew heavy with static electricity as ancient bloodline arts collided without mercy.

Realizing that Sagiri’s floating blade matrix could not be pierced through frontal attacks, Kiana altered her tactical approach in a split second. Her body phased through the air, vaulting thirty feet straight up toward the vaulted granite ceiling.

She kicked off the high stone arch, driving her silver needles directly into the high-pressure geothermal pipelines running overhead.

The tempered iron casings ruptured under her strikes, releasing thousands of pounds of volcanic pressure.

Superheated volcanic steam erupted from the ruptured pipes with an ear-splitting shriek, flooding the entire chamber in scalding white vapor.

The temperature in the amphitheater skyrocketed within heartbeats.

Kiana dropped through the blinding whiteout without hesitation, her conditioned flesh numb to the blistering heat.

She used the whiteout to mask her lethal downward trajectory, aiming her twin needles at the base of Sagiri’s skull.

Sagiri did not attempt to clear the steam with wind arts, standing perfectly still upon the pillar as the scalding mist enveloped his body. He closed his physical eyes, relying entirely on the spatial awareness of the Archive.

He tracked the minute cold draft created by her void displacement, feeling the air currents part an arm’s length above his head.

The moment her silver needles emerged from the mist, Sagiri shifted his torso by an inch, letting the needles graze his collar.

He stepped inside her striking arc before she could recover, driving the heavy pommel of Nokai directly into the center of her guard. The blow landed with a dull thud, breaking her kinetic momentum and exposing her chest.

Before Kiana could execute an automated recovery roll, Sagiri channeled a massive kinetic pulse from the Archive through his open left palm. The ancient power roared through his arm like a breaching ram, glowing with incandescent light.

The focused kinetic shockwave slammed into her chest, launching Kiana thirty paces across the amphitheater. Her slender body tore through the air, trailing a shockwave of parted steam and flying stone.

She crashed directly through a massive, five-foot-thick load-bearing granite column, pulverizing the ancient stone support into powdery white dust.

The impact shook the mountain to its roots, echoing through every cavern in the Bleeding Gorge.

The destruction of the central pillar triggered an immediate chain reaction throughout the subterranean foundations. Deep, jagged fissures ripped across the bedrock from floor to ceiling, groaning under millions of tons of tectonic pressure.

Massive slabs of granite broke away from the vaulted roof, crashing into the amphitheater and crushing dozens of Soulless troops beneath avalanches of stone. The iron catwalks warped and snapped, dangling into the abyss below.

Sir Black scrambled frantically across his crumbling observation dais, clutching his iron staff as his master laboratory collapsed around him.

”The structure is compromised!” Sir Black shrieked in terror, his arrogant composure shattered.

”You are insane, Last Keeper!” Sir Black screamed, scrambling toward the private rail car behind his chambers. ”You have brought the entire mountain down upon our heads! You will bury us all alive!”

Kiana emerged from the pulverized rubble of the collapsed column without a single speck of dust upon her silver mask, her dust-rose eyes burning with cold focus.

She assessed the collapsing subterranean environment in a fraction of a heartbeat, calculating that the falling ceiling restricted her trajectories. She needed open space and unrestricted vertical clearance to execute her lethal arts.

Lowering her center of gravity, she kicked off the shattered stone with explosive force, launching her body vertically into the central cargo flue. Her silver silhouette rocketed upward through the vertical shaft like a shooting star, tearing through the metal catwalks. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ

Sagiri turned his gaze toward Squad 25, seeing his companions holding their locked formation around the dying Lira amidst the falling boulders. Kaka’s armor was dented by falling rocks, but the northern giant stood immovable over the wounded girl.

”Kiuga, keep Lira stabilized and guard Rika with your lives!” Sagiri commanded, his voice echoing across the collapsing hall with undisputed authority. ”Get them into the secondary drainage tunnels the moment the main gate falls!”

”What about you?” Kiuga yelled across the falling stone, dodging a massive boulder that crashed into the chemical trench.

”I am drawing the apex weapon out of this mountain before she collapses the foundation on your heads!” Sagiri answered, his eyes blazing with golden-crimson fire. ”Survive, and meet me at the canyon rim!”

Sagiri bounded onto the edge of a shattered stone pedestal, launching himself upward into the dark cargo shaft with all the explosive power of the Archive.

The twenty floating blades of Nokai swirled around him like a dark comet, propelling his body at terrifying velocity.

He rocketed toward the surface in relentless pursuit of the silver phantom, bursting through the upper maintenance grates as the mountain groaned behind him.