Chap­ter 13 — Buried Trea­sure begins with an intense scene where Bulan con­fronts three relent­less attack­ers. Though out­num­bered and out­matched, he relies on instinct and brute force, man­ag­ing to sub­due one with raw strength. The effort leaves him bad­ly drained, his vision fad­ing as the weight of the fight pulls him into uncon­scious­ness. In a moment of unfore­seen sal­va­tion, Sing inter­venes with his rifle, unknow­ing­ly sav­ing Bulan by dis­pers­ing the remain­ing threats. When Bulan stirs from his state of col­lapse, the jun­gle feels eeri­ly qui­et, but some­thing inside him has shift­ed. There’s more than sur­vival at stake—there’s a grow­ing sense that his pur­pose goes beyond sim­ply stay­ing alive. Reflect­ing on the attack, he begins to see him­self not as an exper­i­ment but as a being with rea­son, feel­ing, and inten­tion. His body may be wound­ed, but his resolve has nev­er been stronger. He stands not as a mis­take but as some­one capa­ble of choos­ing his own path.

Lat­er, Bulan is joined by his com­pan­ions, Num­bers Three and Twelve, who have also endured sim­i­lar tests of strength and loy­al­ty. Bulan address­es them with respect, rec­og­niz­ing not just their phys­i­cal sim­i­lar­i­ties, but their shared jour­ney of ques­tion­ing what it means to be alive. Instead of view­ing them as arti­fi­cial cre­ations, he speaks to their indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, rein­forc­ing the belief that the essence of human­i­ty lies in one’s choic­es. Their bond is not forged in a lab but through strug­gle, pain, and the deci­sions they’ve made since gain­ing inde­pen­dence. When Twelve asks if they are mere­ly shad­ows of real peo­ple, Bulan responds not with cer­tain­ty, but with conviction—they are as real as the ones who fear them. This dis­cus­sion marks a piv­otal shift in their dynam­ic. No longer just sur­vivors, they become seek­ers of mean­ing, eager to chart their own course. Their deter­mi­na­tion deep­ens, dri­ven by pur­pose and the need for self-def­i­n­i­tion.

Mean­while, von Horn maneu­vers through the shad­ows of the island’s pol­i­tics and dan­gers. His greed for the buried trea­sure push­es him into reck­less deci­sions, using trib­al alliances and deceit as tools for advance­ment. With Muda Saf­fir lurk­ing and alliances unsta­ble, von Horn’s manip­u­la­tions grow increas­ing­ly des­per­ate. He promis­es rewards he can’t guar­an­tee and paints Bulan and his kind as mon­sters to dis­tract from his own treach­ery. Still, he press­es on, believ­ing the treasure—whether gold or some­thing more elusive—will final­ly ele­vate him above the lega­cy of a sec­ond-hand sci­en­tist. Yet, with every step into dan­ger, his schemes inch clos­er to col­lapse. His ambi­tion, once masked as prag­ma­tism, now reveals itself as raw self-inter­est. While oth­ers seek iden­ti­ty and truth, he is lost in a quest for dom­i­nance.

Back in the jun­gle, Bulan makes the bold deci­sion to con­tin­ue the search for Vir­ginia. Each foot­step feels heav­ier than the last, but his mind is focused. He must find her—not just to save her, but to under­stand who he real­ly is through the way she sees him. For Bulan, Vir­ginia rep­re­sents hope. Not because she can fix him, but because she may see him as a man before a mys­tery. The jun­gle, with its tan­gled vines and hid­den threats, mir­rors the con­fu­sion with­in his own mind. But as he walks for­ward, there’s clar­i­ty in his goal. He won’t run from his past. He’ll con­front it, and in doing so, choose the future he wants.

The chap­ter clos­es with dual momen­tum. One path leads to dis­cov­ery, the oth­er to destruc­tion. Bulan, through strug­gle, emerges more cer­tain in his val­ue and his mis­sion. Von Horn, fueled by greed, slips fur­ther into moral decay. As jun­gle rains fall and paths blur, the con­trast between these men sharp­ens. One seeks human­i­ty. The oth­er sac­ri­fices it. This sets the tone for what lies ahead—where trea­sure is not just gold or rich­es, but truth, accep­tance, and the courage to face one­self.