THE LAST KEEPER

”Now then, don’t keep me waiting. Show me what you got.” Sagiri said in a slightly bored tone. He mostly wanted to fight them since he had never fought a southerner before. He wanted to engage them as long as possible. Let the archive learn their moves.

Sagiri stepped into their range, yet none of them rushed him. He drew Nokai and held it low. They took their time to surround him before the first attack came in without warning. A short, direct entry meant to test distance, and Sagiri met it with a slight turn of his body, Nokai rising just enough to catch and slide the strike away rather than stop it.

Before the contact even finished, a second was already there, cutting in from the side. He shifted again, a small pivot, the blade tracing a narrow arc that redirected the attack past him while his footwork carried him out of the line of a third that followed from behind. They attacked in waves. They overlapped, each entry timed to exist within the space of the last, forcing Sagiri into constant adjustment.

Sagiri didn’t push back. He flowed between them, each movement precise. They were both measuring each other out, and it would be a tragedy if he fell for it. Nokai never struck wide, only intercepting, guiding, and defending the incoming attacks. A Veil Blade slipped inside his reach, his fist driving toward Sagiri’s center. Sagiri turned into it, shoulder shifting, Nokai cutting a tight line that forced the man off.

Another replaced him immediately. Then another. The pressure never spiked. It remained constant, suffocating in its consistency, every second filled with motion. They weren’t trying to overwhelm him. They were measuring him. Testing reactions, forcing him to reveal more with each exchange. They were becoming faster and more violent with each attack.

Nokai moved faster now, not in power but in precision, each contact sharper, cleaner. He was used to being cornered after his fight with the seventh wing. It made the fight more interesting. Sagiri blocked an attack from one of the nine. He crossed his hands reinforced with blades used for both attacking and defending above his head to fend off the contact. Nokai bounced off.

Well, if Sagiri had inserted much more power, the blades could have broken. The defence even so pushed the man sliding back on his knee. Two stepped on his shoulder and propelled themselves to meet Sagiri.

Sagiri released Nokai from his hands to meet them while he himself dodged another attack from the other two. Fighting them on the ground and in the clearing was getting lethal. They were fast, and the fight looked like a blur. No one had incurred a lethal blow yet. No one had put all his cards on display.

Sagiri broke the line, and the forest took the fight, trunks rising around them as cover and obstacle to both. The nine Veil Blades followed him quickly, flowing with him from tree to tree, never letting him create distance between them.

How persistent.

Sagiri drove off a root, hit a trunk sideways, and pushed again. Nokai was already in his hand now, after her defence. It snapped up to catch a strike that came mid-air. The impact split bark behind him as he rode it into a turn and dropped, only to kick back up as two more closed from opposite sides, one cutting high while the other drove low, their timing so lethal it forced his body to fold between them, spine bending, shoulders rolling, blade deflecting one line while his step erased the other, and before his feet fully touched, a third was already there, stepping off the first assassin’s shoulder to gain height, descending with a tight, downward cut that Sagiri met with a sharp pivot.

There was no time to catch its breath. The fight had been going on for a while now, and Sagiri almost felt reborn at how far he was being pushed. They were truly good fighters indeed.

It was a pity they stood on different sides.

Nokai flashed upward, redirecting the strike into the trunk beside him. Wood cracked as the blade bit through bark. Sagiri moved before it struck, slipping along the tree’s curve, using it to break sight. He then launched out as another pair came in. One rebounded off a trunk to his left, the other sliding low along the ground, their attacks layering in threes again.

High, mid, and low forcing Sagiri into continuous motion, feet barely landing before pushing off, body twisting through narrow gaps. Nokai never stopped either, always intercepting, always following its master’s will to defend, not leaving even a slight window for him to be touched.

The fighting field had now expanded, and Sagiri could feel Yoka and N’varu getting further and further away. He needed to return in their direction. He couldn’t afford to go too far, but as things were, he needed to keep moving.

Wherever they made contact, bark split, chips flying, branches snapping under the pressure of their movement. Just then, one Veil Blade planted a foot against a trunk and kicked off into Sagiri’s flank. At the same time, another used his partner’s back to vault over, dropping behind Sagiri at the exact moment he turned, their coordination compressing the space into a cage of moving angles.

Yet, Sagiri slipped through it, stepping onto a trunk at an angle that had him upside down for a moment before running two strides along it before pushing off into open air, twisting mid-flight as three blades met him there, his body folding around them. Nokai struck once, twice, three times in tight succession, each contact redirecting just enough to survive the next as he landed into a roll and came up already moving, the fight stretching wider through the trees, never slowing, nine against one in a constant surge of motion where the forest itself broke under their passage, and still no side gained ground.

The fight went on for a while. It would most definitely be daybreak soon. No side was giving away too much, even so. They were keeping their cards close to their chest. Sagiri was making sure not to use too much of his strength.

The stalemate was going to keep going on for a while. That was a fact.

”How weak are the veil blades that you can’t lay one hit on a sixteen-year-old boy?” Sagiri taunted. The teams had finally broken apart for a moment. Everyone was breathing hard, but the fight was still far from over. After all, it could only end when either side died.

”Don’t worry, your friends will be dead soon. ” We will be sure to make you watch,” one of them answered. And it could have been better if he had not threatened his friends.

Bad move!