The jungle was no longer theirs.
Week one was a war of confusion. The Kumate did not understand what was happening. They sent out war parties—groups of twenty, loud and angry—beating the bushes, hunting for the intruder.
They found nothing but silence and corpses.
Argentus did not fight twenty men at once. He was patient. He watched them from the canopy, counting their numbers, memorizing their patterns. He waited for the heat of the midday sun to sap their strength, for their tongues to grow thick with thirst.
He waited for the straggler who stopped to tie his sandal. He waited for the scout who wandered five feet off the trail to relieve himself.
Those men simply ceased to exist.
No screams. No struggle. Just the wet sound of a blade finding flesh, and then silence.
By the second week, the confusion turned to paranoia.
The war parties stopped chanting. They walked back-to-back, their identical bulbous noses twitching frantically at every shadow. They flinched at the sound of falling nuts. They shot arrows at rustling bushes, wasting ammunition on phantoms.
Argentus escalated.
He stopped using simple bamboo stakes. He began to weaponize the island itself, turning their home into a labyrinth of death.
He found a hive of Bullet Wasps—insects the size of a thumb with stingers that delivered agony like molten iron injected into the veins. He didn't burn the nest. Instead, he spent an entire night carefully cutting the branch, lowering it via vine until it hung directly above the morning patrol route.
When the sun rose and the patrol passed beneath, Argentus severed the vine.
The screams that morning echoed across the entire island. Men rolled on the ground, clawing at their own faces as the wasps burrowed into their flesh. When the survivors finally stumbled back to the village—swollen, blinded, and weeping—they spread a fear far more potent than any arrow could deliver.
The demon in the jungle didn't just kill. It tortured.
By the third week, the drums—once a thunderous roar that shook the leaves and announced the tribe's dominance—began to lose their rhythm.
There were simply fewer hands to beat them.
Argentus sat in his cave, methodically stripping the bark off a fresh spear shaft. The wall behind him was covered in scratches—a ledger of the dead, carved with obsessive precision.
Forty-two.
He had changed. The baby fat of childhood had been burned away completely, replaced by wire-taut muscle that shifted beneath his skin like cables under tension. His ribs pressed against his torso, each one visible. He was covered in infected scratches and insect bites that he had stopped bothering to treat. He hadn't slept for more than two hours at a time in twenty days.
But his eyes were clear. Sharp. Focused.
He began to raid their minds.
At night, he would creep to the edge of the village perimeter. He didn't kill the sentries—not yet. Instead, he used his growing speed to dart from torch to torch, snuffing them out with wet rags, plunging sections of the wall into sudden, suffocating darkness.
He let them scream into the void. He let them waste their arrows shooting at shadows. He let the lack of sleep rot their minds, turning warriors into trembling, paranoid wrecks.
They began to fight amongst themselves. Argentus watched from the ridge one afternoon as two tribesmen brawled over a scrap of dried fish, their tempers frayed to breaking by the invisible demon haunting their woods. One stabbed the other with a bone knife. The tribe did nothing to stop it.
"Good," Argentus whispered, his voice a rasp of disuse. "Starve. Fear. Weaken."
By week four, the patrols stopped entirely.
The Kumate surrendered the jungle. They retreated into their village, fortifying the perimeter with sharpened wooden spikes—ironically, copying the very traps Argentus had used to slaughter them.
They huddled around the great fire, too terrified to venture beyond the walls even for water. The green wall of trees had become a prison, and they were the inmates.
The cave was silent, save for the rhythmic drip of condensation hitting stone.
Argentus sat in the center of the chamber, legs crossed, breathing shallow and controlled. His eyes were closed, but he wasn't sleeping.
For the last month, he had lived with a knife pressed to his throat. Every snapping twig could herald a spear. Every shadow could conceal an ambush. The constant, crushing paranoia had stripped his nerves raw, peeling away the layers of his consciousness until only a raw, vibrating sensor remained.
He wasn't meditating. He was expanding.
In the darkness behind his eyelids, the cave wasn't black. It was a fuzzy, static-filled map of sensation. He could feel the spider weaving its web in the far corner, each strand vibrating with purpose. He could feel the bat hanging five meters above him, its heartbeat slow and steady in sleep. He could feel the tension in the sapling he had bent back near the entrance, ready to spring.
He opened his silver eyes. They didn't look tired anymore. They looked terrifyingly sharp, like polished mirrors reflecting a predator's focus.
He stood up slowly, his joints popping from hours of stillness.
In front of him, stretched across the cave floor, was a tripwire he had rigged himself earlier that day. It was connected to a bundle of three crude bows, their arrows aimed directly at the center of the room where he had been sitting. A suicide test.
He didn't hesitate. He reached out with his knife and severed the wire.
SNAP.
The tension released with a violent twang.
Three bamboo arrows hissed through the air, traveling at lethal speed toward his unprotected back.
Argentus didn't turn around. He didn't flinch.
In his mind's eye, the trajectory of each arrow appeared as bright red lines cutting through the darkness. He felt the displacement of air before the projectiles even reached him, the faint pressure against his skin like the breath of a predator.
He tilted his head two inches to the left. An arrow buzzed past his ear, close enough to ruffle his hair. He shifted his torso slightly to the right. Two arrows passed through the space where his ribs had been a millisecond before. He lifted his left shoulder with minimal effort. The final arrow sailed harmlessly beneath his arm.
Whizz. Whizz. Whizz.
All three arrows slammed into the rock wall in front of him with violent cracks, their shafts vibrating from the impact.
Argentus stood perfectly still, staring at the embedded arrows. A thin smile touched his lips—not one of joy, but of grim satisfaction.
"So this is it," he whispered, clenching and unclenching his hand, feeling the new awareness flowing through him like a sixth sense. "The power the old man talked about."
Observation Haki. Kenbunshoku.
He closed his eyes again, focusing on the sensation. The bubble of awareness expanded around him like ripples on a pond. Five meters... eight meters... ten meters.
Within that invisible circle, nothing could hide. He could feel the heartbeat of a lizard buried under a rock outside the cave. He could predict the moment a drop of water would fall from a stalactite. He could sense the flow of wind through the tunnel entrance before it touched his skin.
"I can see them now," Argentus murmured, turning his gaze toward the cave entrance and the jungle beyond.
He looked in the direction of the village. He couldn't physically see it through the dense trees, but he knew that once he got within range, the walls, the huts, and the terrified cannibals cowering inside would light up in his mind like fireflies trapped in a jar.
He walked to the corner and picked up his spear—the iron shaft scarred and dented from weeks of brutal use, but still serviceable.
"Time to end this," he said to the empty cave.
He stepped out into the humid jungle air. He didn't need the cover of darkness anymore. He didn't need the element of surprise.
He walked straight toward the village, his footsteps deliberate and unhurried.
The rain had stopped hours ago, leaving the jungle dripping and heavy with humidity. A thin mist clung to the ground, swirling around Argentus's boots as he emerged from the treeline.
He stood in the center of the muddy clearing that led to the village gates, making no attempt to hide. The fortifications the Kumate had erected were crude but functional—sharpened logs lashed together with thick vines, forming a wall three meters high and reinforced with diagonal support beams.
Torches flickered atop the barricade, casting dancing shadows across the frightened faces of the sentries who spotted him.
Argentus didn't crouch. He didn't draw a weapon.
He simply stepped into the ring of torchlight and stopped, his silver hair catching the firelight like a beacon.
For a moment, there was only the sound of the wind and the distant crash of waves.
Then—
"He's here!" one sentry shrieked, his voice cracking with terror. "The Demon is here!"
Inside the village, the huddled mass of survivors erupted into chaos. Footsteps pounded on packed earth. A dozen archers scrambled to the wall, their hands shaking so badly they dropped arrows as they tried to nock them.
"Kill it!" someone screamed from inside. "Kill it now before it gets in!"
Thwip. Thwip. Thwip.
A ragged volley of twenty arrows arced through the night sky, raining down on the lone boy standing in the mud.
Argentus didn't move his feet.
He simply closed his eyes.
In the dark void of his mind, the world exploded into clarity. The air rippled with information. He saw the trajectory of each arrow as a bright red line cutting through space, their paths as clear to him as if they were painted on canvas.
One aimed at his left shoulder. Two at his chest. One at his knee. Three more wildly off-target, fired by trembling hands.
He opened his eyes.
Time seemed to slow.
He tilted his head two inches to the right. An arrow buzzed past his ear with a whisper, so close it severed a single strand of silver hair that drifted down to the mud. He twisted his torso with minimal effort.
Two arrows passed through the space where his heart had been a millisecond before, continuing harmlessly into the darkness behind him. He lifted his left leg slightly. An arrow struck the mud where his foot had stood, embedding itself with a wet thunk.
To the Kumate watching from the walls, it looked like sorcery. The boy stood in a storm of death, swaying like a reed in the wind, every movement impossibly precise. Not a single arrow touched him.
"Impossible..." a sentry whispered, his bow slipping from nerveless fingers and clattering to the ground.
Argentus stopped swaying.
He began to walk forward, his pace unhurried and deliberate.
More arrows came, launched in panicked desperation. Spears were hurled from the walls. Argentus didn't break stride. He slapped projectiles out of the air with his bare hands, the impacts barely slowing him. He sidestepped others with bored efficiency, his Observation Haki painting a perfect map of every threat.
His awareness pulsed outward—a ten-meter sphere of absolute perception.
He knew when they were reloading before their hands touched new arrows. He knew which sentry was about to throw his spear before the man's muscles even began to contract.
He reached the heavy wooden gate.
It was reinforced with ironwood beams, thick enough to stop a charging boar or a battering ram. Iron bands held the planks together. It was the village's final defense, built to withstand a siege.
Argentus didn't look for a latch or a weak point.
He planted his feet in the mud, shoulder-width apart, and pulled his right arm back. His muscles—dense and corded from months of brutal training—coiled like steel cables ready to snap. He didn't know how to coat his fist in Armament Haki yet, but he didn't need to.
Bone and trained strength were enough.
"Open," he said quietly.
BOOM.
The punch connected with the center of the gate with the force of a cannon blast.
The wood didn't just splinter—it exploded. The massive ironwood planks shattered inward in a spray of jagged shrapnel. The force of the impact tore the iron hinges clean off the support posts with a metallic screech. The entire gate collapsed inward like a felled tree, crashing into the village square and kicking up a cloud of dust and debris.
Argentus stepped through the smoke.
Inside, fifty armed cannibals stood frozen in a semicircle around the destroyed gate. They held clubs studded with bone, crude knives made from sharpened shells, and a few stolen cutlasses from previous victims. They outnumbered him fifty to one.
But as Argentus walked through the settling dust, cracking his knuckles with slow deliberation, the air in the village changed.
The Kumate's bulbous pink noses twitched frantically, sniffing the air. Their primitive instincts, honed by generations of hunting, were screaming a single message into their brains:
Predator. Apex. RUN.
"Attack!" the new leader screamed—a frantic man with a blue feather tied into his antenna-hair. His voice was shrill with fear, but he forced it into command. "All at once! Surround him! EAT HIM!"
They charged.
A wave of screaming, hungry bodies rushed forward, desperate to overwhelm him with sheer numbers.
Argentus didn't retreat.
He stepped into the tide.
A club swung at his head. He ducked beneath it, driving his fist into the attacker's liver with surgical precision. The man's eyes bulged, and he folded instantly, vomiting as he collapsed. A spear thrust came from the left. Argentus sidestepped, grabbed the wooden shaft, and used it as a pole to vault himself into the air.
His boot connected with another attacker's jaw mid-flight, the crack of breaking bone audible over the chaos. He landed lightly, spun, and grabbed two rushing tribesmen by their antenna-ponytails. With a grunt of effort, he slammed their heads together. CRACK. They dropped like sacks of grain.
It wasn't a battle.
It was a rhythm.
Dodge. Strike. Crack. Step.
His Observation Haki flared constantly, painting threats in his mind before they materialized. Behind me. Argentus ducked, and a machete wielded by a cannibal swung through empty air, embedding itself in the skull of the man standing behind him instead. Left side. Argentus leaned back, and a spear tip grazed his chin, close enough to draw a thin line of blood but missing anything vital.
He moved through the mob like water flowing through a sieve. Every time he struck, a body fell. He broke arms with precise elbow strikes. He crushed windpipes with open-palm hits. He shattered kneecaps with low kicks that left men writhing on the ground.
Ten down. Twenty down.
The screaming changed tone. It shifted from battle cries of aggression to shrieks of pure terror.
Men began to flee, shoving each other aside in their panic. Others dropped their weapons, falling to their knees with their hands raised in surrender.
Argentus walked through the carnage and grabbed the leader—the one with the blue feather—by the throat. He lifted the man off the ground with one hand, his fingers digging into flesh, and stared into his bulging, terrified eyes.
The rest of the tribe stopped moving. They backed away, dropping whatever weapons they still held, trembling like leaves in a storm.
Argentus looked around the circle of terrified, identical faces. He tightened his grip on the leader's throat until the man's struggles weakened, his eyes rolling back. Then he dropped him like garbage.
The leader hit the ground and didn't get up, unconscious or dead—Argentus didn't care which.
"This island," Argentus announced, his voice cutting through the sudden silence like a blade, "now belongs to Argentus D. Drake."
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the crackling of torches and the labored breathing of the wounded.
Then, the sound of running feet.
A few villagers at the back of the crowd turned toward the path that led to the docks, their instinct to flee overwhelming their fear of punishment.
"Halt."
Argentus didn't shout. The single word carried a weight that froze them mid-step as if invisible chains had wrapped around their ankles.
"Nobody leaves," he continued, his silver eyes scanning the crowd with cold authority. "If I see a single sail touch the horizon before I'm finished here, I will burn this entire rock to the waterline. Every hut. Every boat. Every. Single. One of you."
He stepped over the unconscious body of the former leader, his boots squelching in the blood-soaked mud.
"You have work to do," Argentus said, his tone shifting to something almost businesslike. "I require a vessel. Not a lumbering cargo ship, but a sloop—small, sturdy, and fast enough to outrun anything in these waters. And you will fill its hold with every ounce of gold this miserable island possesses. Coins, jewelry, trade goods—I don't care. Don't hold back a single piece."
He looked at the nearest tribesman, who flinched violently.
"You have three days," Argentus said. "Get to work."
For the next seventy-two hours, the island became a hive of terrified, exhausted activity.
While the villagers scrambled to reinforce a suitable boat and drain their hidden treasury, Argentus lived like a conquering king.
He commandeered the headman's quarters—the largest hut in the village, built on stilts with walls decorated in faded war paint. He devoured the finest cuts of meat from their stores, drank their oldest fermented wines, and slept in the softest hammock they possessed.
To any observer, he seemed completely at ease. His snoring echoed through the house at night, a rhythmic sound that projected an image of total vulnerability.
It was too tempting for one of the former leader's most loyal guards to resist.
On the second night, under the cover of a moonless sky, the guard crept into the room. He moved with the silence of a lifetime predator, his bare feet making no sound on the wooden floor. In his hand, he clutched a serrated dagger—its edge coated in a paralytic poison harvested from the island's tree frogs.
He stood over the hammock, watching Argentus's chest rise and fall in the steady rhythm of deep sleep. The boy looked defenseless. Unarmed. His weapons were stacked carelessly in the corner, too far to reach.
I have you, the guard thought, a vicious grin spreading across his face. The demon sleeps like any other man.
He raised the blade high, both hands gripping the hilt for maximum force.
He brought it down with all his might, aiming for the heart.
The blade never made contact.
In fact, the guard never even saw Argentus move.
Argentus's Observation Haki had painted a vivid, perfect image of the room in his mind's eye the moment the guard's foot crossed the threshold. He had felt the man's intent—a sharp, burning spike of malice and murderous resolve—long before the assassin was even within striking distance.
His eyes hadn't opened. His breathing hadn't changed. To the guard, he had appeared completely asleep.
But his hand had moved.
There was a singular, wet thud.
The guard's body remained standing for a split second, the dagger still raised high above his head in hands that no longer received signals from a brain. Then, his head slid cleanly off his shoulders, the cut so precise it looked like a magic trick. The head hit the floor with a dull thunk, rolling slightly before coming to rest against the wall. The body followed a heartbeat later, collapsing in a boneless heap.
Argentus, who had drawn and re-sheathed his knife faster than the human eye could track, finally opened one eye. He looked at the mess on the floor—blood slowly pooling across the wooden planks—and let out a disappointed sigh.
"Now I have to move hammocks," he muttered.
He rolled over and went back to sleep.
(END OF CHAPTER)
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