◉◉◉◉◉
Jack's utter disregard for human life sent a chill straight through Gordon.
For a moment, Gordon was stunned.
Then he forced himself to calm down.
"No," he said quietly but firmly. "I'm not standing here and watching everyone walk into a grave. This jungle is out of control. We need to get out, now!"
With that, Gordon lifted the satellite phone and started to dial.
Something suddenly dropped onto his arm.
A spider.
Before he could even react, it sank its fangs into his skin.
"Aah!"
Gordon did not become Spider-Man.
What he became was completely rigid.
The venom locked his muscles in place, freezing him mid-motion, mid-breath, mid-thought.
The creature was a stone spider, known locally as Rababatu.
Its bite was not lethal.
But it paralyzed the body for two full days.
No movement.
No speech.
No defense.
"Sorry, Gordon," Jack said quietly. "I have to get the Blood Orchid."
He calmly took the satellite phone, secured it inside his pack, grabbed only the essentials, and walked out.
In a jungle this dangerous, leaving someone helpless like that was not an accident.
Jack knew exactly what it meant.
Venomous insects.
Predators.
Giant pythons.
A man who could not move or cry out had almost no chance of surviving.
This was not abandonment.
It was execution.
And Jack did it without hesitation.
At this point, he had no allies left.
No retreat.
Only one path forward.
To him, great achievements were always paved with blood.
Every discovery demanded sacrifice.
And sacrifice never meant himself.
Jack had already crossed the line into obsession.
To him, the company was his entire world.
And the Blood Orchid was the only thing that could save it.
As for the stone spider.
It was partly a precaution.
Partly an excuse.
The investors believed the Blood Orchid story was only a stalling tactic to delay capital withdrawal.
Now, at least Jack had a venomous specimen as proof of jungle dangers.
But what they did not know was that the Blood Orchid was real.
Not a myth.
Not a bluff.
A genuine breakthrough.
As for human trials.
That problem would solve itself.
Plenty of wealthy men terrified of death would volunteer once the data looked promising.
All Jack needed was one convincing set of results.
A group full of schemers, each with their own agenda.
The fact that anything functioned at all was already a miracle.
And if the orchid failed.
The stone spider would still make a convenient story.
Now it came down to ruthlessness.
Whoever was cruelest would survive.
Whoever died.
Well.
He was not the one who killed them.
While the others rushed back to Gordon's side, Jack quietly untied the rope bridge, leapt across, and continued deeper toward the orchid's location.
By the time the group ran outside.
Jack was already gone.
Not even a shadow left behind.
---
On the riverbank, technician Cole Burris was losing his mind.
Gesturing wildly, shouting nonstop, unleashing a continuous stream of creative profanity aimed at the empty jungle where Jack had vanished.
With a little rhythm and refinement, he could have turned it into a fifteen-minute spoken performance filled almost entirely with words starting with F and B.
Turning swearing into art was apparently a rare talent.
---
"Oh God. Help. Someone help."
A massive snake slowly slid across the roof beams of the Ropa tribe's main hall.
Gordon saw it.
But his frozen body betrayed him.
He could not move.
Could not shout.
Could not warn anyone.
Only his eyes could move.
Only fear could speak.
Gail was still beside him, trying to check his pulse, trying to understand what had gone wrong.
Gordon stared at her desperately, eyes wide, begging her to look up.
She did not understand.
Then the wooden beams creaked.
The roof groaned under sudden weight.
She finally glanced upward.
The python's head punched through a hole in the roof.
"AHHHHHH!!"
Gail screamed and ran for help.
Leaving Gordon alone.
Completely paralyzed.
Directly beneath the descending jaws of the monster.
The python seemed to hesitate for half a second.
Then, as if making up its mind.
It's Dinner time!
It clamped its jaws around Gordon and hauled him upward.
This snake was even larger than any they had seen before.
The first man to burst into the hall was Bill Johnson.
He froze.
Looked at the knife in his hand.
Then, there was a massive python coiled around the rafters.
I did not need to be the first one in here.
"Fall back, Everyone out! Now!"
Bill struck a torch against the wall and flung it into the hall.
Flames erupted instantly.
The sudden fire startled the snake.
With a violent hiss, it released Gordon's body and vanished through the roof, disappearing into the darkness.
---
Not far away.
Jimmy was cutting through thick undergrowth, Ben struggling behind him, talking nonstop as he went.
"Mr.... Alright, Jimmy. It's definitely night now, It's pitch black. I really think we should stop and rest for a bit."
He hesitated. "Not because I'm scared of the Ropa tribe. I'm worried they won't see us clearly in the dark and mistake us for animals."
He lowered his voice. "Even if they stopped headhunting, accidents happen. And I'm pretty sure they don't follow the same legal system we do."
Jimmy glanced back at him. "Ben, are you panicking?"
"What! M-Me? No chance! I used to play college football, I don't panic."
He reached for the blade. "Here, I'll clear the path."
"No," Jimmy said, pulling it away. "Stay behind me and keep close."
His tone hardened. "We're speeding up, I've got a bad feeling. If we don't reach the settlement soon, something ugly is going to happen tonight."
Turns out the old tactic of provoking pride worked wonders.
With people like Ben, no complicated strategy was needed.
One challenge was enough to drag him forward. Jimmy even suspected that a pretty face would work just as well.
---
They had barely gone another hundred meters when a glow appeared ahead.
Fire.
Bright.
Roughly five hundred meters away.
Jimmy stopped cold.
"Not good."
He dropped his pack, lifted Horus into the air, and said quickly, "Ben, stay close, I'm going to check the fire; Horus stays with you, Protect him."
Before Ben could protest, Jimmy sprinted off with the Cloud Cutter blade in hand.
Leaves rustled.
Shadows shifted.
And then he vanished into the jungle.
---
"Jimmy! Jimmy!"
Ben stared after him helplessly.
He looked down at Horus.
"That's great, you're tiny. How exactly are you supposed to protect me?"
He sighed. "Looks like I'm on my own."
After some thought, he hauled Jimmy's massive pack onto his back.
Then he grabbed two thick branches and wedged them in an X shape between the pack and his spine.
Movement became slow.
But Ben felt proud.
'Now I'm huge,' he thought. 'No snake in the world can swallow this.'
He paused.
Unless there is.
Then again.
'Even if they cannot swallow me, they can definitely crush me.'
That thought was carefully ignored.
---
Jimmy sprinted straight toward the fire.
To the right.
Something big was moving there.
Very big.
He veered instantly.
A moment later, he spotted it.
The Python.
The same one that had just swallowed Gordon Mitchell.
It was sliding lazily through the brush, searching for a quiet place to digest its meal.
Steel flashed.
The blade cut through half its skull in a single stroke.
Before it could even twitch, a second strike severed the body behind the head.
The massive coils collapsed into the dirt.
Dead.
Silence returned to the jungle.
For now.
◉◉◉◉◉
~Support with 200 PowerStones = 1 Bonus Chapter
◉◉◉◉◉
For early access to advanced chapters on P-atreon:
P-atreon/iamxeno
(Just remove the - hyphen to access Patreon normally)
Thank you so much for your support and for reading! Cr