🌿 Hunter of the Jungle - Breath of the Forest

Sasteria
Aug 31
3 min read

Updated: 1 day ago

reading in Malay? 👉 [link here]

Where modern soldier meets ancestral spirit in the heart of Borneo

🌲 The Silence of the Rainforest

In the heart of Kalimantan’s rainforest, silence is never a good sign. The jungle is alive with cicadas, frogs, and birds — but when that chorus falls quiet, it means something else is listening. Something hunting.

Corporal Lintar Sangiang, a Dayak soldier in the Indonesian army, felt this silence long before the others did. His patrol had stumbled upon a wild boar carcass, cut open with surgical precision. To the others it was just strange. To Lintar, raised on the stories of his grandfather, it was a warning: the Pemburu Rimba — the forest hunter — was near.

⚔️ Between Soldier and Ancestor

Back at camp, the officers dismissed his concerns. But Lintar turned instead to Tating Ranying, a Ngaju Dayak woman from a nearby longhouse. In the glow of dusk, she prepared panyugu markings, black spirals painted across his chest with paste made from akar kuning.

“These marks will not stop bullets,” she told him. “But they will remind your spirit where to stand.”

It was not superstition. It was preparation. For in Dayak belief, survival in the forest is never just about strength — it is about harmony with the spirits who dwell within it.

🔥 The First Hunt

The next patrol never stood a chance. Flares lit up the mist, gunfire roared, and men were dragged screaming into the canopy. Amid the chaos, Lintar fired calmly, striking something unseen. Green fluorescent blood splashed across the leaves.

For a moment, the forest fell still. Then he saw them — two glowing eyes in the mist, staring not with rage, but with recognition.

The Pemburu Rimba had found its equal.

💥 Part 4 — Fire in the Camp

That night, the storm came with fury. Plasma bolts tore through fuel drums, watchtowers exploded, tents went up in flames. Soldiers scattered in terror, cut down one by one.

Lintar stood firm in the inferno, mandau sword in hand. Across the flames, the creature appeared—tall, armored, its mask glowing, mandibles clicking in dreadful rhythm.

Neither moved. They only stared at one another.The hunter had chosen its prey.And the prey was ready to hunt.

🌌 Voices of the Ancestors

That night, Lintar knelt beneath a belian tree, mandau sword across his knees. The mist thickened, and in the silence he heard his grandfather’s voice:

“You are both soldier and son of the forest. Patience cuts deeper than rage.”

Beside him, Tating prepared Kaharingan charms — salt, charcoal, and feathers tied with rattan. She pressed them into his palm. “This will not hide you,” she said. “It will remind you that the ancestors walk with you.”

Above them, hidden in the canopy, the Predator circled once more. It did not strike. It was waiting.

⚔️ Duel in the Rainforest

The storm came with fury. Rain lashed the jungle as lightning tore the sky apart. From the shadows, the Predator emerged, uncloaked, its plasma cannon lowered. It wanted no more tricks. It wanted the duel.

Lintar rose, tattoos glowing faintly under the stormlight. In his hands, the mandau gleamed with ancestral fire.

Mud, rain, blood. Steel met alien blades in a battle raw and primal. Again and again Lintar rose, until at last he drove the mandau into the Predator’s chest.

The creature staggered, green blood pouring into the mud. Then it looked at him — not in defeat, but in respect. With one final click, it activated its wrist console.

Lintar pulled Joko, his wounded comrade, into the river as white fire consumed the clearing.

🕯️ Aftermath

At dawn, the jungle smoldered. Survivors sat broken, their rifles useless in the face of what they had seen.

Colonel Faizal muttered hollow words: “We held ground.” But Lintar knew the truth.

On the riverbank, he sat with his mandau across his knees, staring into the endless green. Tating Ranying placed a hand on his shoulder.

“You now carry two deaths,” she said softly. “Theirs… and his.”

It was not victory. It was recognition.

🌿 Reflection — The Spirit of Pemburu Rimba

The Pemburu Rimba is no ordinary alien in this reimagining. It becomes the embodiment of the forest hunter in Dayak belief — a test, a trial, a recognition of worth.

Lintar’s survival is not through bullets or modern strategy. It is through balance:

The discipline of a soldier.

The patience of an ancestor’s son.

In Dayak culture, the mandau is not just a weapon — it is a spiritual extension of its bearer. In Lintar’s hands, it became the bridge between worlds: the living and the ancestral, the human and the alien.

And so the rainforest breathes on. Because the hunt never ends.

It only waits.