Code of the jungle

'I'm so lucky!'

The slither wiggled its tail in excitement and shot out of the water and into a gap in the roach's neck. Its drill-like tail punctured the soft tissue and dug its way to the ventral nerve cord. Then it climbed up to the roach's brain in the head (roaches have a more primitive brain in the body that reacts to simple stimulus). Tiny tendrils attached themselves to the brain. The dickroach seized for a while and then stood back up.

'My first host, I'm now a full-fledge slither.'

The roach gleefully ran around with its amazing speed and then soon found another swamp.

'Kin... It's too bad I can't talk to them. They wouldn't understand me."

He turned around from looking at his reflection in the water and then saw a pack of roaches staring at him.

"He-hello! How are you?"

They didn't reply and watched his every movement.

'Hm, I can definitely tell we're the same species of roach. These receptors are so sensitive I could even tell we're closely related in the family.'

His body reflected off their black eyes.

"Hm? Have you guys eaten? You look very hungry- Woah!"

They suddenly charged at him and flipped him over on his back. They then bit into his soft tissue.

"GAHHHH! What are you doing!"

'Did they see me infect one of their family members? How could they be so cruel to kill me!'

Even if members of a species witnessed another becoming infected, usually they would just keep their distance or banish the infected to protect against cannibalism.

"Sorry, Lil bro, you're the smallest which makes you an easy target"

"Don't take this personally, we're just hungry." His big brother said as he ripped out an antenna.

"F**k!"

He screamed in agony as they ripped him apart with no remorse. Slithers cannot survive following an ejection from the body just like how bees will die after losing their stinger. Only the royal blooded can.

This one was a rare exception. It slithered out of its host's neck and snaked along the ground with the swamp as its destination.

One of the roaches saw this and tried grabbing it with its mandibles. The slither rocketed over the mandibles and into the water. It fell miserably to the bottom of the swamp.

***

"Gah gah gah gah!" It laughed while undulating its body.

"Sorry, sorry. We wouldn't be laughing in front of you if we heard about the story but we were there!"

The trio and several other slithers were near the surface that time when they saw him approach the swamp.

They knew the dickroach was an infected because when a slither hijacks the body, they begin secreting a cocktail of biochemicals into the circulatory system of the host like hormones, neurotransmitters, DNA, RNA and a wide range of molecules and chemicals used for manipulating the genome at the transcriptional, pre-translational and post-translational level, e.g. alternative mRNA splicing, histone acetyltransferases (HATs), histone deacetylases (HDACs), transcriptional factors, Long non-coding RNAs, small interfering RNA, micro RNA and piwi-interacting RNA non-viral delivery systems, enzymes and proteins for DNA methylation, histone modification (acetylation, phosphorylation, methylation, sumoylation and ubiquitylation) and chromatin remodelling e.g. DNA methyltransferase and small ubiquitin-like modifier proteins.

One of the chemicals is a pheromone secreted in the bodily fluids. This pheromone allows free slithers to recognise that the body is host to one of their kin.

In case, the host species lacks skin glands e.g., apocrine sweat glands, eccrine sweat glands and sebaceous glands etc. the pheromone is so potent that as long as it is in the circulatory system, slithers can smell it from inside the body in a five-metre radius.

They saw his host body get eaten and that he had narrowly escaped into their swamp.

"You're lucky that we pity you. We'll forgive you this time if you mind your own business. Mess with us and we'll kill you too!"

"Have you slithers feel no shame! Ganging up on one guy is cheap! A worm must fight another worm chivalrously in a one-on-one duel!"

"Hah? You're upset because we're ganging up on him? Not because we're going to kill him?"

"I'm not an idiot to not know of the law of the jungle. If you're going to take someone's life, you better do it fair and square."

As long as one is strong, they can do anything. The weak who can't defend themself have no choice to be killed, eaten or raped.

"To be outnumbered and killed... is a cowardly thing to do! It doesn't give the victim any chance. It breaks the code of the jungle!"

"..."

The trio fell silent and even though the royal slither hadn't said anything, a heavier silence fell on it too.

'So, he adopted this philosophy because he got ganged up on before?'

Everyone had the same realisation.

"It is a despicable way to die! Shame! shame on them!"

'So, it really is...'

"Your fault then. We'll kill you both and double our rations!"

"Tsk! Fine, I'll take 1.5 of them. UGH, what!"

The three of them froze.

"What?" the leader asked.

"How, how do you take one and a half of them?"

"..."

"You really are a mor- AGh!"

The royal slither had already disappeared from where it was hanging in the water before. Then when the leader caught something in the corner of its eyes, it was already cut in half but it was still alive as it hasn't bled out in that instant yet.

Bright flashes covered its vision in white. The royal slither flitted by numerous times. All three of them were sliced into little pieces. The unusually long slither was mesmerised by the water dance.

'So, this is royalty...'

They did not stand a chance.

While royalty did have more packed protein in each gram of their bodies, the slithers were much smarter than their locals. While they have much higher intelligence, as a consequence of relying less on instinct, they forgot that in slither infested swamps, the royalty were apex predators.

"Yo, stick insect." The royal slither asked while sizing its long body.

"Uh, yes?"

"... Are you sure you're not royalty?"