BLOOD OF BORNEO

CHAPTER 6: THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE

Black slime and sulfur-smelling moss greeted Damang’s face as he slammed into the bottom of the ravine. His body no longer felt like flesh and bone, but rather a collection of explosive pain. His ribs, broken from Richter’s impact, felt like sharp knives piercing his lungs every time he tried to breathe.

"Ugh... damn you, Thorne," Damang hissed. He spat out a thick, dark red fluid mixed with mud.

High above, the searchlights of Thorne’s camp looked like demonic eyes mocking his failure. The tattoo on Damang’s back began to pulse abnormally. The black lines on his skin stood out, turning red and emitting a searing heat. The negative energy of this Black Forest was poisoning his spiritual channels.

Woof! Awooooo!

The sound shattered the silence of the night. A horrific fusion of a dog’s bark and the screech of unlubricated machinery.

"Hounds," Damang muttered. He closed his eyes, counting the rhythm of metallic footsteps in the distance. "One... two... four of them. They really want to make sure I’m dead."

Damang tried to stand. His left knee trembled violently. He reached for his back, but it was empty. His ancestral mandau was gone. Now, he had only his bare hands and broken bones.

"Focus, Damang. Visualize the terrain," he commanded himself.

He dragged his feet toward an ancient ironwood tree that oozed sticky black sap. With his remaining strength, he scooped up the sap and smeared it all over his body, covering his tattoos and his wounds.

"It smells foul, but this sap will mask my heat signature from their infrared sensors," Damang whispered, suppressing a groan of pain as the toxic sap touched his open wounds.

Rustle! Rustle!

A figure emerged from behind the mist. It stood as tall as an adult man’s waist, with fiber-optic cables pulsing beneath red muscle. Its eyes were blood-red sensor lenses that rotated, searching for a target.

"Come closer, scrap metal," Damang challenged internally. He gripped a piece of ironwood with a broken, sharp end.

As the Hound stopped in front of him, Damang leaped out from the shadows.

STAB!

"Die!" Damang roared. The sharp wood struck the gap between the metal neck plate and the dog’s muscle tissue.

The Hound shrieked with a broken electronic sound. It tried to bite Damang’s arm, but Damang used his body weight to pin the creature to the ground. He twisted the wood inside the wound, tearing through the main circuit cables. Electrical sparks struck Damang’s hand, delivering a shock that made his muscles spasm.

A few seconds later, the Hound went dead. Its sensor lights dimmed.

"One down," Damang breathed heavily. "Three more to go."

Awoooo! The barking of the rest of the pack sounded much closer.

"You want to play? Let’s play by the true law of the jungle," Damang growled.

He moved toward a deeper area. While enduring the pain that made his vision swim, he broke several hard black bamboo stalks and sharpened them with the small dagger in his boot. He dug a shallow hole and planted the bamboo stakes, which he had coated with Upas tree sap—the deadliest nerve poison in Borneo.

"Let’s see if your circuits can withstand my ancestors' poison," Damang whispered as he climbed a low tree branch.

It didn't take long. Two Hounds darted in a pincer formation. As they caught the scent of the artificial "heat" Damang had deliberately left behind, one of the dogs leaped with predatory lust.

CRACK!

The ground gave way. The Hound fell into the pit. The sharpened bamboo pierced its organic belly and the gaps in its armor. The creature howled horribly as the Upas poison began to attack its bio-electric transmissions.

"Damn, the third Hound’s sensor has already detected the hole," Damang grumbled as he saw the third Hound stop at the edge of the pit. Its eye sensor blinked bright red, transmitting an emergency signal to headquarters.

"Now!" Damang dropped from the tree right onto the back of the third Hound. He wrapped his arms around the creature’s steel neck. "Argh! It burns!"

The tattoo on his arm reacted to the metal friction, sending an extraordinary burning sensation. But Damang didn't let go. With strength fueled by adrenaline and mystical impulses, he twisted the dog’s head.

CRUNCH! Metal and bone broke simultaneously.

Now there was only one left. The pack leader.

Damang rose with great difficulty. His world began to sway. Blood loss was taking its toll. But as he stood there, he began to hear something. A pulse from beneath the earth.

Thump... thump... thump...

The tattoo on Damang’s chest blinked in rhythm with that pulse. The pain that had been agonizing suddenly turned into a wave of cold energy that spread to his damaged nerves.

"This forest... it’s still breathing," Damang whispered in disbelief.

He closed his eyes. In his inner darkness, he could "see" the vibrations above the ground. Fifty meters behind him, the last Hound was preparing to ambush in stealth mode.

"I can hear you, you bastard dog," Damang smiled faintly. His blood-covered face looked terrifying.

The last Hound lunged silently. Its steel jaws opened wide, aiming for Damang’s neck. Without turning, Damang shifted his body as fluidly as water. He caught the dog’s upper and lower jaws with both hands.

The tattoo on his hands ignited with a blinding purple light.

"Eat this!" Damang roared.

He exerted brutal force. He pulled the jaws in opposite directions with all his might.

KRAAAKKK!

The sound of tearing metal echoed. Damang split the Hound’s head into two pieces. Artificial black blood sprayed, drenching his face. He stood tall amidst the mechanical ruins of the dogs.

"Is this all your toys are capable of, Thorne?" Damang asked the silence of the forest.

He stared at his palms. The pain was still there, but he was no longer fighting it. He was beginning to enjoy it.

"Sir... the signals for all Hounds in the Black Sector have been lost," reported a technician at Thorne’s command center.

Elias Thorne, who was sipping coffee in the cold control room, fell silent for a moment. His fingers tapped the table in the same rhythm as the forest’s heartbeat that Damang had felt.

"Lost?" Elias asked calmly. "Interesting. Very interesting. It seems our lab rat is starting to learn how to bite." He leaned back into his luxurious leather chair, trying to maintain the posture of a conqueror. However, his finger tapping on the table slowly slowed down, then stopped completely. There was something odd about the rhythm. A resonance that felt foreign to his technological logic.

"Send a recovery team to that sector!" he ordered his assistant, his voice remaining flat, though there was a suppressed low tone. "I want the sensor data from that tattoo fully downloaded. Don't let a single bit be lost."

Behind his ice-calm face, Elias felt a glimmer of unease creeping up his neck. It wasn't the fear of death, but the anxiety of a scientist seeing his experiment begin to exceed his control. He had always considered the spiritual power of Long Baram to be a wild energy that could be tamed with algorithms.

Elias smiled faintly, a smile that looked more like the grin of a challenged predator. He convinced himself that unexpected variables were just spice in a victory. Even so, his hand hidden under the table clenched slightly, resisting a subtle vibration that came from either the machines beneath their feet or the black forest that was now staring back at him through the digital screens.

Meanwhile, in the depths of the Black Forest, Damang kept walking. He didn't need a compass. The heartbeat of the forest was his guide.

"Thorne," Damang’s voice sounded like the whisper of a thousand dying trees. "I’m starting to get used to this pain. And I’m going to share it with you. Slowly."

The law of the jungle never changes. The strong eat the weak. And tonight, the jungle has decided who the real predator is. Damang is no longer a soldier. He is a walking destruction heading toward the center of the village.