Safety in the human world is a natural right, but in the world of beasts, it becomes the most lethal poison. Tranquility numbs the senses, weighs down reflexes, and turns a hunter into easy prey in the blink of an eye. This is exactly the trap Harten fell into; the intoxication of victory from securing the buffalo meat made him forget the simplest law of the jungle: Blood is the perfume of death, and its scent draws the kings of the wild from vast distances.
Harten sat by his fire, devouring the meat with euphoria. "Ah... it's delicious! Nothing beats the taste of a meal after suffering," he boasted to himself, ignoring the gashes on his hands left by sharp rocks during the butchering. "I should cure the rest of the meat... but it's fine, I'll do it in a bit. My body needs sleep." He entered his damp cave, leaving behind the remnants of a smoldering feast, oblivious to the fact that the "storm" had already arrived.
The silence of the cave was shattered by a suspicious movement outside. Harten stepped out sluggishly, only to see that the large slab of meat had vanished from above the fire. At that moment, the world turned into a black haze, and only two things remained clear: two yellow orbs, glowing like twin sword blades in the dark.
It was the Lion. The King of the Jungle who had tracked the scent of the buffalo's blood to find this "human" who dared to compete with him. Harten froze in his tracks; less than ten meters separated him from certain death. The lion evaluated its small opponent with majestic silence before launching itself like an arrow.
Suddenly, Harten's inner voice rang out with its familiar echo: "I am the monster that eats monsters!"
Harten lunged backward in the final fraction of a second, only to feel a sharp blade tear through the skin of his face—a horizontal gash that bled warm blood, obscuring his vision. He didn't scream; the suffering he had endured previously made this pain "ordinary." He took a fighting stance, his bloodshot eyes burning with a madness the lion had never seen in a prey before.
The lion lunged with a roar that shook the very foundations of the jungle. As torrential rain began to fall, the ground turned into a muddy slide. "I will kill you!" Harten screamed. Instead of fleeing, he charged toward the beast. With a clever maneuver, he slid under the lion's belly, utilizing the slick mud, and ran toward a massive tree. Infuriated, the lion lunged after him with its full weight, failing to account for the slip. In the decisive moment, Harten leaped using the tree trunk as leverage, and the lion's head slammed into the solid wood with a thunderous thud.
Harten landed atop the staggering beast's back. He dug his fingers into its thick mane until one of them snapped, and began striking the lion's eyes with a sharpened stone, using every ounce of spite and strength he possessed. For fifteen minutes, the bloody struggle raged, until the lion threw its quarter-ton body over the small boy.
Everything shattered: his left hand, his right foot, and his mind, which slipped into the darkness of a faint. Harten awoke with blood painting a miserable portrait on the dirt. The lion had regained consciousness, with one eye missing and an indescribable rage.
"Haha... damn it..." Harten laughed weakly, looking at the beautiful sky amidst the rain. "I didn't reach the strength I wanted... but at least... I won't die a coward."
He closed his eyes, awaiting the finishing blow, reviewing the short and painful reel of his life. Suddenly—a deafening boom!
He opened his eyes to a surreal sight: the lion that was about to tear him apart had been reduced to a pulp of flesh and blood beneath a giant boulder that had fallen from the top of the cliff.
Silence prevailed, and the threat of death vanished by some divine intervention. Harten looked at his wounds, then at the boulder, and smiled bitterly: "Damn it... it seems this wretched world isn't tired of me yet."