BLOOD OF BORNEO

CHAPTER 8: MANDAU SYNCHRONIZATION

The Black Forest shows no mercy to the hesitant. Beneath giant canopies mutated into sharp, silvery veins, Damang crawled with bated breath. The air temperature here was unnatural—at times ice-cold, then instantly shifting into suffocating, scalding steam.

The markings across Damang’s body were no longer just ink. The tattoos pulsed in rhythm with the forest’s heartbeat. "Where are you..." Damang whispered. His voice was raspy, drowned out by the hiss of the wind.

He was searching for the ancestral Mandau that had been knocked away when Colonel Richter beat him. Through the throbbing of the markings on his palms, Damang felt a magnetic pull toward the east. There, amidst a pool of water contaminated with black oil, the blade lay.

The Mandau looked dull, covered in an unnatural black rust. Damang reached out. As his fingertips touched the cold metal, an electric jolt stung his nerves.

"Ugh!" Damang pulled his hand back. His body jerked violently.

"You are still holding it with the hand of a soldier, Damang," Indung Inan’s voice echoed in his head, cold and sharp. "The ancestral Mandau is not merely a killing tool. If you only want a tool, use that broken rifle of yours!"

"Then what am I supposed to do?!" Damang roared into the void. "It rejects me! It feels like trying to lift a ton of steel!"

"Give it what it asks for," the voice replied. "This iron thirsts for a blood oath."

Damang gasped for air. He stared at his palm, then at the silent blade of the Mandau. "You want blood, don't you? Just like Thorne, who squeezed the blood from my people?"

Without hesitation, Damang pulled a small dagger from his hidden pocket. SLASH! He sliced his right palm. Fresh blood flowed freely, flooding the gray metal.

"Eat!" Damang growled. "This is the blood of the Nyarung lineage!"

Instantly, a brutal reaction occurred. The rust on the Mandau’s blade flaked off, evaporating into black smoke that smelled of sulfur. The metal began to glow with a blinding silver light. However, Damang screamed.

"AAAAARGH!"

The nerves in his palm felt as if they were being pulled out by thousands of hot pincers. The blood became a bridge for a torturous neural synchronization. Damang’s vision shattered. A dark shadow slammed into his brain. He saw thousands of lives that had been taken by this blade. The screams, the rage, and the vengeance of the past flooded into the nerves of his arm.

"Enough... Argh... stop it!" Damang collapsed, but his hand remained locked onto the Mandau’s hilt. His body convulsed violently in the mud.

Damang’s consciousness was sucked inward, pulsing faster and faster until it reached a blinding peak. Suddenly, the noise in his head stopped. Total silence enveloped the forest. Damang rose slowly. The Mandau now felt as light as smoke, but the price was very real. Every time he moved his fingers, a stinging sensation like barbed wire being pulled through his muscles emerged.

"So this is what it feels like..." Damang whispered. "You are no longer a weapon. You are a part of my nerves."

Whirrr... Whirrr...

A Thorne reconnaissance drone appeared from behind the fog. Behind it, three Paladins in light armor surged forward.

"Target acquired! Coordinates 44.9! Execute!" one of the Paladins ordered.

Damang did not run. He stood tall, his Mandau hanging loosely. His eyes now held a cold, silver glint.

"Fire!"

Tring! Tring! Tring!

A barrage of plasma rounds streaked toward him. Under normal conditions, Damang would have been obliterated. But now, he only needed to "think." The Mandau moved with impossible speed, severing every plasma bolt in the air.

"What the hell?!" the first Paladin shouted. His eyes widened behind his helmet visor, struggling to track the black shadow that moved faster than his tracking sensors.

"How is he blocking plasma without shielding?!" His voice trembled. Before him, the Mandau no longer looked like a weapon, but a curtain of steel that swallowed every explosion of light before it could touch Damang’s skin.

"He’s not a normal human anymore! Attack at close range!" his partner replied.

Two Paladins drew their vibro-blades and lunged forward. Damang took a deep breath, feeling the energy of the earth rise through his feet, toward the markings on his back, and culminating in the Mandau.

"Too slow," Damang whispered.

He moved his wrist slightly. Just a small flick. Yet, the Mandau released a sharp, invisible wave of air pressure.

SLASH!

The titanium armor of the Paladin on the left split like paper. A diagonal wound gaped from shoulder to waist. Hydraulic fluid and blood sprayed as his body was thrown against a tree.

"D-Demon!" The second Paladin tried to retreat, terrified. His breathing was ragged, gasping behind his fogging oxygen mask. He no longer saw Damang as a man from a remote tribe, but as an apex predator born from the womb of forbidden technology and the ancient vengeance of Borneo. Every step Damang took felt like the tolling of a death knell in his ears.

"Don't go just yet," Damang growled.

He didn't swing his hand. He simply released his grip. The Mandau hovered, spinning rapidly around Damang’s body, controlled entirely by neural commands through the glowing markings on his forehead. With a single thought, the Mandau shot forward like a bullet, piercing the second Paladin’s chest plate and exiting through his back.

THUD.

The Paladin fell to his knees, staring at the hole in his chest in disbelief before his optical sensors dimmed. Damang caught the hilt of his Mandau again. His body trembled violently.

"Ugh..." Damang coughed up blood. "Every time I use this... it feels like my nerves are being torn apart."

The drone above tried to flee. Damang glared at it and swung the Mandau vertically from ten meters away. A thin silver line sliced the air, and the drone exploded instantly.

Silence returned. Damang stood amidst the wreckage of machines and corpses. He looked down, staring at his Mandau, which was now absorbing the remaining blood from his hand.

"This is just the beginning, Thorne," Damang muttered. His voice now echoed with the tones of a past thirsty for retribution.

"Are you alright, brother?" A weak voice emerged from behind the bushes. It was Dehen, who had apparently managed to crawl, following Damang’s trail with his shattered legs.

Damang turned. His glowing silver eyes made Dehen tremble. The silver light illuminated the black lines that were now creeping up from Damang’s neck to his temples. Protruding veins pulsed with black fluid inside them. "Brother Damang... your face... you look like..."

"Like what, Dehen? Like a monster?" Damang asked coldly. He stood motionless, the Mandau in his hand still dripping blood, yet he did not look the least bit tired. His human consciousness seemed buried deep beneath the layers of biological neural membranes that now controlled his body.

"No... like Commander Nyarung. But darker," Dehen whispered in fear.

Damang sheathed his Mandau. "Rest here. This forest will not touch you as long as I am breathing. I am going to the central laboratory."

"Brother, don't! There are hundreds of Paladins there! And Colonel Richter!" Dehen exclaimed.

"Richter has hit me once," Damang stepped forward silently, his feet seemingly floating above the mud. "This time, I want to see if his robot head can withstand this blade."

"But brother, what if you don't come back?"

Damang paused for a moment, but did not turn around. "If I don't return, it means I have become a part of this forest. And if that happens, run as far as you can, because there will be nothing left of Long Baram but ash."

He disappeared into the fog, leaving Dehen stunned. Damang was no longer just a soldier. The synchronization had turned him into a literal ghost of war. At the center of the laboratory, he knew his father was waiting—or at least, what remained of his father as a "specimen."

"Elias Thorne," Damang whispered as he saw the laboratory lights in the distance. "This Mandau misses your neck."

The synchronization was complete. And the storm of destruction had just begun.