THE LAST KEEPER

The four-inch reinforced iron blast doors at the far end of the lower gallery groaned under the weight of catastrophic internal impacts.

Deep dents bulged outward through the heavy steel plating, each successive blow warping the metal as red-hot rivets popped from the granite ceiling and clattered loudly across the wet floorplates.

Squad 25 immediately dropped into a tight hexagonal defensive formation, their blades drawn and glistening under the red runes while their boots braced against the violently vibrating floor.

”Whatever is behind that gate has the physical strength of a mountain titan,” Kaka warned, locking his heavy tower shield into the steel grating as his jaw set in iron resolve.

”Just like you,” Kiuga whispered loudly, and Kaka grunted in disapproval

With an ear-splitting shriek of tearing metal, the massive hinges snapped, sending the two-ton iron door flying fifty paces across the chamber. The door crashed violently into a row of cryogenic tanks, shattering the reinforced glass and spilling hundreds of gallons of bubbling green chemical fluid across the stone floor.

Through the rising white steam and freezing chemical vapor, a tall, imposing figure stepped into the red emergency light of the corridor. He wore the torn remnants of an imperial ceremonial robe of white and gold, his broad chest bare and marked with intricate tribal scars. A thick collar of black iron was fused directly into the base of his skull, driving five pulsing bio-neural needles deep into his spinal column.

Pitch-black beast aura swirled violently around his muscular frame, distorting the air like shimmering heat waves rising from a scorched summer desert. When he lifted his head, his eyes burned with vertical, slit-pupil amber irises that radiated pure, unadulterated predator madness.

”Ancestors above,” Kiuga gasped, stepping back a half-pace while his fingers tightened firmly around the leather grip of his curved blade. ”That is Supreme Mandra Taziraka, the sovereign master of the High Council and ruler of Tagayia!”

”His consciousness has been completely overridden,” Sagiri analyzed, his crimson eyes tracking the dark corruption pulsing through the neural collar. ”Sir Black bound him with dark bio-neural seals, trapping his mind inside an induced nightmare to unleash the primal Art of the Beast.”

The Mandra let out a guttural, bone-chilling roar that rattled the teeth in their jaws, vibrating directly through the solid bedrock beneath them. In the next instant, the air warped violently around the imperial master as he vanished from their sight, bending local time through predator dilation.

Sagiri stepped forward without hesitation, planting his boots firmly into the steel grating as he raised the dark flat of Nokai to meet the charge. The Mandra’s black-clad fist crashed into Nokai with the force of an avalanche, unleashing an explosive shockwave that parted the flooded floor in all directions.

Sagiri did not budge an inch, his internal Archive pulsing with cold equilibrium as he absorbed the titanic kinetic impact through his bones. Before the echoes of the collision could settle, the Mandra pivoted with feral agility, driving a heavy roundhouse kick directly toward Kaka’s flank.

Sagiri flicked two floating black blades of Nokai into the trajectory, intercepting the blow and dispersing half its kinetic momentum before it connected. Even with the force halved, the impact slammed into Kaka’s tower shield with a thunderous clang, driving the northern warrior two paces backward across the shale. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ

”He hits like an iron battering ram!” Kaka grunted, shaking the numbness from his forearms as he reset his locked defensive posture.

Maita and Zolinka flanked the charging sovereign from opposite sides, attempting to loop weighted steel capture cords around his thighs to bind his movement. The Mandra swept his left arm outward with a ferocious burst of compressed wind, launching both warriors across the room into an iron support pillar.

Maita rolled across the floor with a painful gasp, coughing up a spatter of blood before scrambling back onto his feet with drawn daggers. ”His speed is unnatural,” Maita cursed, wiping his bloody chin. ”I could not even see his shoulder move before the strike landed!”

”That is the primordial Art of the Beast,” Kiuga yelled, firing three whistling iron darts toward the Mandra’s knees to slow his advance. ”He perceives the world in slowed time, predicting every muscle twitch before we can even begin to complete our movements!”

The Mandra swatted the steel darts out of the air with his bare hand, crushing the hardened metal into twisted scrap within his palm. He locked his burning amber gaze onto Sagiri, sensing the ancient, resonant authority of the Living Memory pulsing within the young Keeper.

With a deafening roar, the Mandra launched himself across the flooded laboratory, unleashing a relentless tempest of ferocious fist strikes. Sagiri moved with effortless grace, weaving his head and shoulders by mere fractions of an inch as the blistering punches tore through the air.

Every savage strike whistled past his cheeks, shattering the iron consoles and stone pillars behind him into clouds of jagged shrapnel. Four black blades of Nokai circled Sagiri’s body like a living vortex of dark steel, parrying each crushing blow with surgical precision.

’If I unleash the Archive or strike him with full force, I will shatter his ribcage and kill him on the spot,’ Sagiri thought grimly. ’He is the sovereign ruler of Tagayia and an innocent victim of Sir Black’s treason; I have to keep him alive and sever the seal cleanly.’

Sagiri leaped backward onto the elevated rim of a chemical vat, his twin crimson eyes narrowing as he locked onto the pulsing black collar.

”Kiuga, Kaka, listen to my command!” Sagiri shouted, his voice ringing with absolute sovereign authority across the ruined hall. ”We are not here to destroy the Supreme Mandra; we are here to wake him from this nightmare before the poison claims his mind!”

”We need a three-second window to immobilize his upper torso,” Sagiri explained, pointing Nokai toward the dark needles behind Taziraka’s skull. ”If I can strike the central neural node with the tip of Nokai, I can shatter the corruption without harming a single hair on his head!”

Kiuga’s sharp eyes flicked across the damaged room, quickly calculating the angles of the remaining support pillars and heavy iron chains hanging from the ceiling rafters.

”Kaka takes the front with his shield to lock his charge,” Kiuga barked, drawing two heavy grappling cables from his combat belt. ”Maita, Zolinka, and I will drop the overhead cargo chains to bind his arms for three heartbeats while Sagiri makes the precision strike!”

Maita and Zolinka nodded with grim determination, scrambling up the maintenance ladders toward the winch controls as cold determination replaced their earlier shock.

Kaka slammed his war axe against the face of his tower shield, stepping directly into the center of the flooded chamber with an unyielding grin.

”Come then, Supreme Mandra!” Kaka challenged, his voice booming across the subterranean hall like northern thunder. ”Show a son of the northern clans what the strongest warrior in Tagayia can do before we drag you back to your senses!”

The Mandra lowered his center of gravity, his amber irises narrowing to razor-thin slits as the dark beast aura erupted in a towering black vortex. The sheer pressure of his release blew the surrounding water into a mist of vapor, cracking the stone floor under his bare feet.

Sagiri crouched along the narrow lip of the vat, his hand gripping the hilt of Nokai as the silver-black light of the Living Memory gathered at the blade’s razor tip.

He watched the coiled muscles along Taziraka’s broad back bunch with terrifying, feral power, timing his breath with the impending kinetic eruption.

In the next heartbeat, the imperial sovereign lunged forward with blinding, catastrophic velocity, aiming his devastating fist directly at Kaka’s iron shield as Squad 25 braced for the ultimate clash of wills.