THE LAST KEEPER

Chapter 146: 146. CLOSE CALL

The men and women watching the creature were still under myama’s hypnosis, but now it was as if myama was telling sagiri to move first. The beast could have had no trouble holding the hypnosis for the whole night, but sagiri could tell that it had been weakened by being kept in a place with just water and no sand. Poor beast. There was no time to dillydally, however. He needed to get out there. Being caught inside the confinement wing could cause trouble for myama and he did not want her to suffer even more.

The only reason she had suffered was that she had to deliver a message to him, and he did not want her to suffer anymore. After the second door, he slowed down. He could hear the heartbeats of the warriors watching the beasts stabilize as if they had just woken up. To them, it could seem that they just blinked. sagiri pushed the third door open and suddenly stopped. Another presence had joined in. From the heavy footsteps, it could only be one person.

Nokai snapped out its blades, tearing through the silence. There was no place to hide, and sagiri looked up and down rapidly, but there was no place to hide. He wished he could disappear just like the egg inside the archive and be invisible. There was no going back unless he wanted to risk getting caught, and there was no going forward unless he wanted to engage in battle with Division Commander Loku Asakana, and if he was being honest with himself, he did not know whether he was ready to take on any of the bami beasts, especially those of the Asakana clan. They were genetically strong and bigger than normal, and it could be wiser not to test the theory with loku especially. To add to that, it seemed that he had exhausted the archive.

The footsteps got closer and closer, and sagiri shifted uneasily, trying to figure out what to do. Another couple of footsteps and he could be right on top of him. Nokai hummed before it launched itself out of his grasp and embedded itself deep in the wall nine feet off the ground. Sagiri understood immediately and moved back a few steps. He then ran and tapped the heel of his feet on the wall. He used the momentum to launch himself at the handle. He caught it and twisted his body using all his strength as if he were swinging on a branch before he landed softly on the handle.

Just as he landed, Loku rounded the corner, and he seemed like he had heard a sound as his eyes searched the now-empty corridor. If he looked up, he could definitely see him. Sagiri was sweating too from running up the hundred steps from level black, and added to how hard he had pushed himself, his brow was covered with the salty liquid.

One stubborn drop slid down his forehead band above his mask, and it was now dangerously dangling out to fall on Division Commander Loku. Three heartbeats utmost, and if he did not move, then the drop of water could fall off him.

”I could have sworn I heard something,” Loku said to himself, and right then the liquid left sagiri’s nose tip and started falling. Just then loku stepped away, but the drop managed to hit the floor right behind him. sagiri had never thought that a drop of sweat could make that much noise in an empty, wide hollow corridor.

Sagiri felt Loku’s killing intent before the man moved. And for a man his size, he was pretty agile and fast. Sagiri almost missed him while retrieving a blade. Two things happened simultaneously. Just as Loku turned around the blade in his hand, tearing through the air, the archive moved as well. faster than when it had absorbed the egg into itself. In a moment, Sagiri was swallowed inside the archive pocket together with Nokai.

Inside the archive pocket was something else entirely. It seemed to sagiri that the place was never meant for keeping a whole person, let alone a living one. Sagiri realized he could not breathe, and the hideout was only temporary. If the situation went on for long, then things did not look good for him.

The knife loku threw tore through the air with so much force that sagiri thought it could pin a grown man to the wall. Its speed was so fast that sagiri was sure that if it had not been the archive’s reaction time, the blade could have torn cleanly through him and still pinned him to the wall. The knife whizzed through the air slowly, but to the normal eye, it was still fast. It hit the wall right behind sagiri and penetrated through the wall together with its hilt and still made a noticeable crack in the wall. The Asakanas were truly superior in strength. If he could inflict such damage with a small blade, Sagiri wondered what he was capable of doing with the bow in his other hand if he used an arrow.

Loku turned around, ready to launch another knife, but when he noticed his knife had not hit anything, his brows furrowed. The man, having taken care of such a lethal beast for years, must have been very sensitive to any movement, and now it looked to Sagiri that the man’s strength was the only thing about him. His senses had been sharpened through the years, and if the archive ejected him at the moment, then he would be dead indeed.

Loku looked up and down the wide corridor and to the ceiling, his eyes narrowing on every crevice. The process lasted a few minutes before he was finally satisfied. On the other hand, sagiri’s lungs burned with the lack of oxygen. On a normal day, he could have been able to hold his breath for a long time since he was used to diving so deep in water and holding his breath, but now he had just used more than three-quarters of his strength, run up a couple vaara of stairs, and also, to that he was out of breath.

He needed to breathe and he did not know how long he was going to last if Loku Asakana did not move.

Finally, after another torturous minutes loku was finally satisfied and he made a move on. That was not, however good enough because considering the man’s sensitivity Sagiri had to wait till he was beyond the third door before he got out.