Lotaga was waving madly. More beats were still coming, and sagiri took the divergence of them defending him to make his own call for more sand for more pillars to reach them.

"What is a southerner doing in Tagayia?" Salka said in a serious tone when Sagiri was finally standing in front of him.

"Good to see you again, Captain..." Sagiri said with a little salute. He was barely done when he was tackled so hard he almost fell over. Lotaga had him airborne and in a tight hug, so much so that it could crush him.

"I thought you abandoned me, but as soon as you knew Salka had forced me into this damned valley, you came to save me." Lotaga cried, squeezing the hell out of Sagiri. He had not changed one bit and had grown even worse and more shameless. A man showing so much affection to another man?

Shameless!

Sagiri tried to struggle out of it, but it was futile. The man had grown stronger and more bothersome.

"I-I..." Sagiri wanted to say he had actually not come to get him, but Lotaga cut him off.

"I knew you still saw me as your favorite instructor." Lotaga wept again. Sagiri quit struggling and just let the torture happen. There was no stopping Lotaga.

A blade hand to the middle of Lotaga’s head from Salka was the one thing that saved him.

"Can you have even a little dignity? A man acting like a child." Salka humphed. Lotaga groaned but stepped back, wiping a tear.

So dramatic.

"I see you managed to offend even the rock beasts. We have been here longer than you, I assume, and we have managed to avoid them." Salka said, watching the carnage with the beasts and Nokai.

"Well, they wanted to bury me alive. What are you doing here anyway?"

"I am wondering the same question. The captain here brought us into this death trap to chase a bird." Yavaga said his face pulled into a pout.

"A bird?" Sagiri asked.

"Yes, the bird looked to be from the Anku clan with a collar on it. It came into this valley, and it looked distressed. The owner must be in here." Salka said.

"Ooh, that Pavire’s bird. Galka 25 and Kafika 1 squads sent the bird south, so I came to find them," Sagiri said, and Lotaga gasped.

"So you didn’t come for me?" Lotaga’s jaw hung open as if this were the betrayal of the century. Sagiri wanted to roll his eyes, but he was glad to find familiar faces.

"You too," Sagiri said, his eyes not leaving Salka.

"Don’t enable him." Kolu groaned and slapped his face.

"What could college squads be doing in this valley?" Salka shook his head. "Did I really fail that much as a marshal and captain?"

"Don’t tell me it’s for the college merits and privileges," Matasi asked as if that could be furthest from the truth.

When sagiri remained silent, the five men sighed in unison.

"So you haven’t been able to find them?" Salka asked.

"I have. I have to go now before the hornet’s nest I just poked reaches them."

" Nokai!!" Sagiri called, and the blades whooshed through the air. They were still split into ten.

"These beasts don’t get affected by normal blades? Want mine?" Sagiri asked.

"We don’t need to cut their shells. Besides, they are scared of my pets. My pets are still the deadliest beasts in the animal hierarchy. Even a gravescale could do well to stay away." Salka bragged.

"Fine then. Go east, I will catch up after I bury these beasts," Sagiri said. The archive stirred to answer to his inner resolve. Now that he knew his squad was not in the close vicinity, he was going to deal with the rock crawlers accordingly. Since Salka and his squad were self-sufficient, he snapped Nokai into one before he swirled around. Salka and his cats and squad were already pulling away.

"Don’t die, kid," Lotaga said, being the last to join his squad.

The moment they gained distance, Sagiri turned to the hundreds of beasts who were approaching. They seemed to have a personal grudge against him. He just killed one of their own, and the beasts were vindictive, it seemed.

"Now then..." Sagiri said, jumping onto a sand pillar, then another. He made sure to go a little west so that the impact could not touch Salka’s team. The markings on his body stirred and crawled to his arm. He let them form rings around his fist, and Nokai too. They were made of rocks, so it could take double strength to vanquish them. Sagiri’s pillar grew higher and higher this time, lifting him high above the valley floor, till he was standing well over the peaks of the place. The archive hardened around him, forming a shield to welcome his intended descent.

Rock Crawlers swarmed around its base in endless numbers. Sand cascaded down the sides in roaring streams as the creatures climbed over each other trying to reach him, their claws tearing through the shifting surface only for more sand to collapse beneath them. Sagiri stood motionless at the peak, dark robes swirling in the wind while Nokai burned in his grip, the blade flooding with the full force of the Archive.

Thin fractures of light crawled along its edge, spreading into the air around him as the pressure thickened so heavily that even the valley itself seemed to groan under it. The ground below began to tremble. Cracks spread outward through the floor around the pillar while the Crawlers shrieked and surged upward faster.

Sagiri stood still for one moment at the peak of the sand pillar, for a moment taking in the details before he moved closer to the edge of the pillar.

Then Sagiri raised Nokai slowly overhead before he jumped off the pillar. He made his descent forceful so it could tear down with so much force to aid whatever he intended to do, and brought it down in one absolute motion when he was close enough to the floor, which he could not even see with how packed the rock crawlers were.

The world split. A massive rupture tore across the valley floor from the base of the pillar, ripping forward with explosive force as sand, rock, and entire sections of earth were thrown into the air. The shockwave swallowed the swarm instantly, carving a colossal scar straight through the land while Sagiri collapsed into the chaos below.

He did not stop there. They could just climb up. He called for more sand and jumped onto a sand pillar. The sand began to rise and bury away the beasts until there was flat sand for 20v at least. That could keep them grounded for weeks if not months.

It was now time to go and beat some sense into squad 25.