Jungle Corp – CEO on Death Island

Chapter 5

 

Zane stared at the dead warrior at his feet. The sound of war drums from behind the forest grew increasingly deafening. The village that had just started to become organized was now struck by absolute panic. The women and children ran around looking for places to hide, while the Acquisition Department warriors ran in a panic to the middle of the square with their rusty machetes.

"Grok! Situation report, now!" Zane snapped.

Grok ran closer. The giant's face was deathly pale. "It's the Blood Skull Tribe, Mr. Boss! They are the most brutal tribe on this island. Their numbers are three times ours!"

"What do they want?" Zane asked coldly.

"Taxes! They must have smelled our roast boar last night, and they know we have a new catch!" Grok pointed at Avery, who was trembling while hugging the hut's porch pillar. "They are demanding half of the harvest, all the hunted meat, and that white woman!"

Zane clicked his tongue softly. "In business, this is called a Hostile Takeover threat. And I never let my company be forcibly acquired by cheap competitors."

Suddenly, Xara jumped from the roof of the hut and landed right next to Zane. Her hands gripped two wooden spears. Her muscles tensed, ready for battle.

"My Husband, get inside the hut!" Xara ordered loudly. Her eyes flashed fiercely, staring toward the forest. "Let me and the warriors face them. If I die, at least you can still run!"

"Don't be ridiculous, Xara," Zane flatly refused. "If you die, who's going to wash my clothes? Besides, handing over valuable assets to jungle thugs is a violation of my company's SOP."

Zane climbed onto the flat rock in the middle of the square. His aura instantly shifted into a CEO ready to lead a corporate crisis meeting.

"All warriors, listen to me!" Zane shouted, his voice overpowering the enemy's drumbeats. "We will not hand over a single yam to them! We will fight back!"

"But Mr. Boss, their weapons are better! Their arrowheads are made of sharp black obsidian!" Xylok protested from the back row. "Fighting them head-on is basically suicide!"

"Who said we're going to fight head-on like gentlemen?!" Zane retorted cynically. "In the business world, honor doesn't pay dividends. Victory does! We won't be matching muscles, we're going to use asymmetrical warfare! Grok, bring twenty of your men now!"

"Ready, Mr. Boss! What should we do?" Grok stood at attention, his barbarian instincts immediately submitting to the CEO's orders.

"Dig a trench two meters deep in front of the main gates. Cover it with thin leaves, then fill the bottom of the trench with the wild boar feces you gathered yesterday!" Zane ordered quickly. "Make sure the feces are wet and extremely foul-smelling!"

"Boar feces? Why fill it with feces?" Grok asked in confusion.

"Bacterial infection!" Zane answered. "Even the smallest scratch that comes into contact with that feces will rot within a day. Enemies who fall in there won't be able to fight anymore! Next, you over there at the end!" Zane pointed to an agile-looking warrior. "Gather all the wild beehives you avoid while hunting! Put them in rattan baskets and hang them from the tree branches near the gates!"

"But those bees are highly venomous, Mr. Boss! One sting and the skin can swell up to the size of a melon!"

"That's the point, idiot! We'll shoot the baskets with arrows when the enemy passes underneath them!" Zane snapped. "Xylok, take the rest of the troops. Crush all the wild chilies we have to pieces. Mix them with dry sand, then wrap them in small banana leaves. We're making natural tear gas bombs!"

All the tribe members gaped. Zane's tactics were genuinely dirty, cunning, and completely devoid of the honor expected of jungle warriors. But at the same time, their primitive brains knew these tactics were incredibly lethal.

"What are you waiting for?! Execute!" Zane shouted.

In a flash, the village turned into a deadly trap factory.

Zane jumped down from the rock and walked quickly toward his hut. Avery was still kneeling there, covering her ears while crying in terror.

"Hey, Intern!" Zane called out, lightly slapping Avery's cheek to snap her out of it. "Get up! Don't just cry. I need your brain!"

Avery gasped. "W-what should I do? I don't know how to hold a weapon! I only know how to read financial reports!"

"I'm not asking you to fight," Zane retorted. "You have a Business Master's degree from an Ivy League, right? Prove that your tuition money wasn't a waste. Form the Medical and Logistics Division now!"

"Medical Division?" Avery gulped. "H-how do I do that?"

"Gather the women and children. Move all the food into the cave behind the village so it won't be robbed by the enemy. Then boil as much water as possible. Prepare clean cloths and the medicinal leaves Xylok usually uses. You'll manage the intake flow of injured warriors later. This is just like managing cash inflow, the only difference is this is human blood. Got it?!"

Avery stared into Zane's sharp and cold eyes. The man's assertiveness somehow gave her a glimmer of courage. This was no longer about elite New York drama. This was about survival.

"V-very well, Mr. Mercer," Avery answered. Her voice began to steady. She wiped her tears away roughly. "I'll manage the logistics and medicals. Everything will be organized."

"Good. Move now."

Zane turned around, picking up a wooden stick with a sharpened tip. He walked to the front of the village gates, standing right beside Xara and Grok, hiding behind the wooden barricade that had just been erected.

The sound of the war drums suddenly stopped. A gripping silence enveloped the forest.

Then, from behind the dense shrubbery, hundreds of Blood Skull Tribe warriors slowly emerged. Their faces and chests were painted in deep, foul-smelling red. In the very front row stood a giant bald man with a thick scar splitting half of his face. He was Kael, the enemy Tribe Chief.

"Surrender your village, or we will slaughter you down to your roots!" Kael roared, his voice booming across the entire forest.

Zane didn't answer. He simply gave a hand signal for his troops to hold back.

Kael snorted in anger. He raised his giant stone axe and shouted the order to attack. Hundreds of enemy warriors sprinted forward, screaming ferociously toward the village gates.

"Hold..." Zane muttered, his eyes locked on the enemy's movements. "Let them enter the trap zone."

The enemy drew closer. Ten meters. Five meters.

"Now!" Zane shouted.

The frontline of enemy warriors stepped right onto the thin leaves covering the trench.

CRASH!

Dozens of frontline warriors plummeted into the two-meter-deep pit. Horrified screams and filthy curses were immediately heard as their bodies sank into a sea of rotting wild boar feces. The enemy's attack formation instantly fell into total chaos, crashing into one another.

"Throw the chilies!" Zane ordered.

Grok and his troops threw dozens of banana leaf bundles toward the confused enemy crowd, then shot the bundles with arrows mid-air. The wild chili powder and sand dust immediately exploded and scattered in the wind, slamming straight into the enemies' faces.

"My eyes! They're burning!" shouted the enemy warriors, dropping their weapons and rubbing their eyes until they bled.

"Drop the bees!"

Arrows shot through the air, cutting the basket ropes on the banyan tree branches. The moment the baskets shattered against the ground, hundreds of angry venomous bees immediately swarmed out. The bees blindly stung the blinded and stumbling enemy warriors.

"This is what we call asymmetrical, my friends," Zane muttered with a cunning smile. The enemy forces were completely decimated before they even touched a single one of Zane's warriors.

However, Zane's smile of satisfaction did not last long.

From behind the chaos of chili dust and bee stings, Kael's giant figure pushed forward. His eyes glowed red, enduring the stinging pain, but his fury was far greater. His feral instincts immediately recognized who the mastermind behind all these cowardly traps was. The man in the torn suit standing in the middle of the barricade.

Kael stared straight at Zane. With one piercing roar, Kael threw his giant stone axe with full force, aiming straight for Zane's chest.

"My Husband! Watch out!" Xara screamed in a panic.

Time seemed to slow down, and the sharp blade of the axe was now a mere five centimeters away from Zane's forehead.