I shoveled with steady rhythm, each motion sending sand, roots, and pebbles flying over my shoulder. The sun beat down on my back, sweat pooling under my collar and dripping into my eyes. I didn't stop. I couldn't afford to.
This trap needed to work.
The hole grew wider, deeper with every pass. After about an hour, I had something sizable—a crude but effective pit, wide enough for a boar's bulky body, deep enough to turn speed into disaster.
I tossed the shovel aside and knelt down inside, wiping my brow. With my dagger, I got to work on the spears—splintering thick branches into sharpened stakes. I took my time with the points. I didn't just want them sharp—I wanted them deadly.
I tested the tip of one against my forearm. A bead of blood rose instantly.
Good. That would do.
One by one, I drove the wooden spears into the base of the pit, their tips pointed upward like teeth. By the time I was done, it looked like a mouth hungry for violence.
Climbing out, I scanned the nearby foliage and began covering the trap. I wove together banana leaves, broad palm fronds, and whatever thick foliage I could find. I layered the cover carefully, placing smaller leaves on top of larger ones and sprinkling dirt and twigs to mask the texture.
From a glance, it looked like forest floor. From underneath, it was death waiting for a misstep.
I stood over the trap, memorizing its placement: five steps from the crooked banyan tree, just past the slope of the embankment, facing west. I mentally etched every marker.
Then I smeared mud across my arms, neck, and legs—thick and wet. It smelled like wet rot, but it would mask my scent. Hopefully enough.
I moved into the jungle.
---
The forest was dense. Humid. Alive.
Birds screeched above me in fits and songs, their sharp notes cutting through the air. Leaves rustled high in the canopy where monkeys leapt from branch to branch, their hoots carrying warning calls. I listened closely.
The jungle had its own language. If you were quiet, if you really listened, it spoke.
I crouched low, stepping gently. No heavy strides. No snapped twigs. I moved like a shadow among roots and vines. My eyes flicked across the ground—looking for droppings, hoof prints, disturbed foliage. I spotted a patch of overturned earth, still damp. Something had rooted here.
Boars.
I remembered the droppings I'd seen near the shore when I first landed. A fresh trail. I was close.
Then came the monkey screams—frantic, rhythmic, alarming. They were alerting the others. Of me.
So much for stealth.
I ran towards the sound. With luck I could catch some small animal that didn't catch the warning and ran away.
My steps stopped even before I went in.
I heard it before I saw it. Branches cracking, birds flapping violently into the sky, and then—
There they were.
A boar herd.
Maybe seven, maybe more. The adults stood wide and heavy, muscular slabs of muscle and instinct. Their eyes watched from behind tusks, wary and waiting. At the center, the dominant male—thicker, darker, meaner. Scars on his snout. His gaze locked on me.
I stepped forward slowly. Showing fear meant being an easy prey.
I wasn't one.
The male rose to his feet.
A long, low snort.
His front hoof scraped the earth, back arched and tense.
I didn't blink.
"Come on then." I whispered.
With a roar—yes, a roar—the boar lowered its head.
The others followed, kicking up dirt, shrieking in that deep, guttural way only cornered wild pigs can.
And then they charged.
I bolted.
Branches whipped past me. Roots tried to trip me. My breath came in ragged bursts. The ground blurred beneath my feet.
The herd thundered behind me.
The sound of them was terrifying—hooves pounding earth, tusks cracking bark, bodies crashing through underbrush like nature itself had turned into a battering ram. I swerved left, then sharply right, darting between trees. It bought me seconds, but not more.
The dominant male wasn't slowing. He barreled through trees like they were matchsticks. I could hear his breath. Feel it almost. The heat of him.
I pulled out my pistol.
Didn't stop running.
Held it backward over my shoulder and squeezed the trigger.
Bang.
The shot cracked the air. I didn't turn to see if I hit.
I heard a high-pitched yelp, then crashing.
I looked back—the herd had stumbled. A boar crashed, rolling into the brush, and the rest of the herd tumbled over and around it in a confused pile.
I didn't wait to celebrate.
I ran harder.
Branches clawed my arms. Mud splashed up my legs. My lungs were fire.
I could see the banyan tree now. The slope. The telltale rise in the ground.
The trap.
I sprinted toward it. Checked over my shoulder.
The lead boar had recovered. He was furious now—charging with blood in his eyes, foam spraying from his mouth.
I stopped five meters short.
Waited.
The boar didn't hesitate.
Full sprint.
A battering ram of tusks and anger.
I waited a heartbeat longer—
And ran.
Then I jumped.
Too slow. I could feel it in slow motion.
I got yanked back by force. I looked back to see...
Its teeth snagged my pants—ripped the cloth, yanked me off balance.
We fell together.
Right into the trap.
--------------
Pain.
Instant. Sharp. Total.
The air left my lungs in a punch of force. We hit the spears.
The boar shrieked, its weight impaling it deeply. Blood sprayed my chest. One of the stakes tore through its hindquarters, locking it in place. Its legs kicked—blind, spasming fury.
My back ached from the impact as I hit the boar first and then the spears. The wooden spears pierced my chest, and legs. My heart had a spear lodged deep within. I wasn't dying.
The boar was dying. Not fast. But inevitable.
I scrambled away, breathing hard, chest heaving. My legs were shaking. One of the tusks had cut across my thigh—not deep, but enough to sting. I pulled myself up on the spears, trying to take it out.
Not before I heard a voice, boar noise. The remaining boar jumped into the trap pushing me further down the spears as they fell on me.
------------
The weight was unbearable.
The boars that had fallen with me—dead or dying—piled over my body like sacks of raw, breathing meat. Their fur pressed against my face, coarse and bristling with blood. The smell was suffocating—earthy, coppery, wet with death. Hot breath and cooling flesh tangled around me like a living tomb.
I couldn't breathe.
Their weight pinned my ribs, compressing my chest with every passing second. Every twitch of their legs, every final pulse of life in their bodies only made it worse. A hoof dug into my hip. A tusk grazed my thigh. One snout was smashed near my neck, limp, jaw open, tongue hanging like a grotesque banner.
I turned my face slightly, tried to shift my shoulder.
Nothing.
Blood dripped from open wounds—boar blood, thick and hot, leaking into my nose, down my throat, coating my tongue in metallic bitterness. My lungs spasmed for air, but all I got was blood-slicked fur and the stench of the dead.
Still… deep inside me… the blood stirred.
Not my own.
Not the human part of me.
The other part.
It craved. Hungered. Not in panic, but in interest. A lazy whisper rising in my chest. An impulse that throbbed just beneath the skin, like something ancient waking up to the scent of spilled life.
It wanted me to remember it. What it was. What it could achieve.
I ignored it.
I wasn't here to feed.
This was survival.
I shut my eyes tight, clenched my jaw, and reached inside—deep into that well, into the spark that held the reservoir of power I kept for moments just like this.
I burned one.
One resurrection.
Gone in silence.
My blood ignited—not in flames, but in heat and strength. A surge of vitality, of inhuman resistance. I forced my arms to move, muscles trembling, bones creaking under the boars' weight.
I gritted my teeth, coughing into fur, into gore, into suffocating pressure—and then, slowly, I pushed.
One arm broke free. Then another.
I reached under the largest boar, fingers digging into thick hide and fatty flesh. My grip slipped once. Then twice. Then I caught the curve of its ribs and heaved.
My vision swam. Dots danced in my eyes. My pulse thudded in my ears like war drums.
And with one final gasp of effort—I lifted.
The weight shifted just enough.
Air.
I breathed.
A raw, ragged breath that burned my throat on the way in. But it was clean. Fresh. Mine.
I shoved the boar's corpse aside—it landed with a meaty thud—and I dragged myself upward, inch by inch, my body screaming with each motion. Blood trickled from my palms where the wooden spears had torn at me. My back ached. My legs were shaking.
But I climbed.
I pulled myself up over the sharp tips, scraping my side against splinters and dried mud. One last push, and I was over the edge—knees hitting dirt, arms collapsing under me.
I didn't collapse for long.
The blood in me moved.
It flowed through my body in a rhythm not tied to my heart, not tied to anything natural. Like ink pulled by magnetic force. Like water finding a familiar path.
I let it work.
Another resurrection gone. I didn't sigh. I didn't even wince. I had expected the price.
I stood slowly, breathing easier now, and looked down at the pit. The boars inside were motionless. Most had died on impact. A few had bled out in the seconds afterward. All of them lay in twisted, grotesque angles over the splintered remains of the wooden spears.
I slid down the slope and grabbed the **dominant male**, the largest of the lot. I wrapped my arms under its shoulders, teeth grit, and with a guttural grunt, lifted. It was still heavy, but manageable now.
I threw it over the edge. It landed outside the trap with a dull thump.
I did the same for the others—one by one. Lifting, dragging, throwing. Their bodies hit the earth like discarded logs.
Then I felt it again.
The blood.
Pulsing. Hungry. Ready.
The ground around me was wet—dark red and sticky. The boars had bled freely in death, their wounds painting the soil like spilled ink. I felt the craving crawl up my spine again.
This time, I didn't stop it.
I let it act.
My pores opened, and blood spilled out of me in thin streams—slick, serpentine tendrils that snaked toward the ground. They writhed, slithered, and reached. Like fingers seeking spilled wine.
They found it.
Every drop of blood the boars had lost—the blood that had soaked into the dirt, that had run off the wood, that had clung to fur and skin—it began to flow backward, like gravity no longer mattered.
The blood gathered.
It flowed in rivulets across the jungle floor, pooling toward my feet. It defied physics. Refused to sink. It hovered, crawling up my legs, sliding along my skin. It didn't smear—it merged, vanishing into my pores like ink into cloth.
The blood climbed me.
It moved with deliberation, obeying no command yet serving no one else.
And then… the husks began to change.
I stood still, watching as the boars' bodies shriveled.
First the limbs, then the torsos—Flesh sank inward. Bones pressed through skin. Ribs collapsed. Their snouts caved in. Eyes dried in their sockets. The shine left the fur. What remained was a shell—thin, dry, crumbling at the edges like paper left too long in the sun.
Even the skin was ruined.
What had once been rich, dark hide now looked like ragged leather—discolored and stretched thin. No merchant would pay more than 1,000 berries, if even that. It was useless now.
All except one.
I'd spared the dominant boar.
The others? They had served their purpose.
The blood had done all it could.
The last of it slid across the grass in a crimson trail, curled once like a snake, and then slithered back into me, vanishing into my pores.
I felt a ripple across my spine.
A familiar internal shift.
The count rose.
One more life added to the pool. One more body traded for survival.
I didn't smile.
I didn't gloat.
I simply turned to the dominant boar, the one untouched, and knelt beside it.
It was time to harvest.
I drew my blade—clean steel, worn handle—and got to work.
Resurrections Count: 68.