Chapter 333: Into the Forest (13)
The sight of human corpses torn apart and dismembered was so shocking that, by comparison, Everly carrying a weapon and stabbing people in the head somehow seemed relatively mild.
Although the male lead, Anthony, was uncomfortable with what he saw as “b*llying the weak,” he was not completely devoid of reason.
He understood that Everly was doing this to eliminate the threat posed by the Caribs. So when Everly and Sophia took up their weapons in turn and attacked the red-skinned people lying on the ground, he not only did not stop them, but also kept his weapon ready and stayed close to the more vulnerable Sophia, prepared to step in if anything went wrong.
Fortunately, the accidents he had imagined never happened.
The four bottles of medicine Everly had found might have been illegally synthesized in some underground workshop, because they were remarkably potent. Mixed into the meat broth, the powder had put more than a hundred people into an extremely deep sleep. Even the deafening boom of the signal flare exploding failed to wake them.
Under these circumstances, all Everly and Sophia had to do was pick up their spears, aim at the sleeping tribesmen, and strike with all their weight behind the attack.
The sudden pain would often make a sleeping Carib jerk awake, but before they could even understand what was happening, the attack had already caused a fatal injury.
When Sophia first began killing, she was clearly reluctant. Her face was pale and her forehead was covered in sweat, and her spear trembled uncontrollably every time she struck. She simply could not get used to the feeling of a life ending by her hand.
But as it continued, and fatigue accumulated, her fear gradually faded. Sophia slowly became numb.
It was hard to believe. She had lived an ordinary life, following the expected path all these years, yet somehow there had come a day when she would be holding a sharp weapon and slaughtering people like this… The experience this time had been simply unbelievable. Once she returned, she was definitely going to apply for a long vacation and enjoy life to the fullest!
Her body mechanically repeated the motions of stabbing and pulling back, while all kinds of chaotic thoughts churned through her mind. She had no idea which victim she had reached when she pulled out her spear and suddenly sensed that something was wrong—
Blood was flowing.
This wasn’t merely bleeding caused by ruptured blood vessels. The blood was actively surging outward.
As the spearhead was pulled free from the eye socket, the bright-red blood finally found a way out of the body and began slithering from the eye socket like a snake.
At the same time, countless densely packed black spots, resembling a honeycomb, appeared across other parts of the man’s body. Innumerable threads of blood as fine as strands of hair pierced through the skin and emerged from the bottoms of the black spots.
They resembled garden eels swaying with the waves on the seafloor. The moment their slender bodies emerged, they began writhing wildly in midair. It was a form of hunting, a probing motion. As soon as one thread of blood touched another of its kind, the two would join together, forming a thicker thread of blood.
Two became one, three became one, four became one…
The threads of blood emerging from the corpses gathered together of their own accord, growing thicker and thicker until, in the end, they twisted into a “blood stream” as thick as a wrist.
“Hey, hey, look! They’re bleeding!”
“Oh, my God, what the hell is going on…?”
The survivors’ astonished exclamations rose and fell behind her. Sophia took a moment to look up and discovered that it wasn’t only the corpse in front of her. Every corpse throughout the entire food-processing area was bleeding outward.
No, calling them “corpses” wasn’t quite accurate either. More precisely, the blood inside every red-skinned Caribbean was rapidly being drawn out of their bodies.
Beside every dead Caribbean was a stream of blood, and every single stream was pointing in the same direction.
Sophia’s gaze followed the flow of blood toward the center of the food-processing area. When she saw what was there, her breath caught and her pupils contracted sharply—
There, a monster made of blood was rapidly taking shape.
The first thing to appear was a network of purplish-red blood vessels—veins, arteries, capillaries, every last detail present.
Next, plasma spread over the outside of the blood vessels, gathering into thick muscles and bones.
The Caribs seemed to possess an endless supply of blood, and the monster’s body grew increasingly solid and massive. This strange process of flesh and blood layering continued for a long time. Finally, bright-red skin stretched out like a sheet of plastic film and tightly wrapped around the muscles beneath it. Clothes, ornaments, and other objects appeared without warning, and in an instant, a giant covered entirely in red had taken shape.
It stood a full three to four meters tall, with shoulders as wide as a spacious jeep. Falcon feathers were stuck into its head, and a necklace of wolf fangs hung around its neck. Its upper body was bare, its chest covered in strange totems. A cloak made from bison hide hung across its back, while black bear hide covered its lower body, and a skinned snake was wrapped around its waist.
The giant looked extremely strange. Unlike an ordinary human, its head seemed to be a combination of a plant, an animal, and a human:
Its hair consisted of drooping vines, with leaves ranging from fresh green to withered yellow. Whenever it moved, leaves constantly fluttered down, while new leaves continuously sprouted and unfolded. Its cheekbones and jaw protruded outward, its nostrils were long and narrow, and its mouth jutted forward. Its thick lips split into a W-shaped, pseudo-tripartite mouth resembling that of a feline, riddled with holes through which more than a dozen metal rings had been threaded. Its eyes were the most human-looking part. Aside from the bright-red pupils and the unusually wide-set eyes, there was, for the moment, nothing else particularly out of place about them…
Everly had only just seen the colorful murals inside the priest’s tent, so she immediately recognized it: this was the red giant from the painting, the one that had killed the giant serpent.
Considering that the Caribs practiced monotheism, the identity of this being, which had protected them several times throughout their long history, was obvious—the God of Hunting, “Oseiwa.”
I’m supposed to fight an evil god? Seriously?!
As someone who knew when to cut her losses, Everly’s first reaction upon realizing that an evil god had appeared was to run.
She reached for her waist, just about to take out the mirror and switch places with Bloody Mary, when the Sacred Tree bracelet around her wrist suddenly came loose with a sharp snap for no apparent reason and fell to the ground.
“Ola!”
Not far ahead, Oseiwa stomped one foot against the ground, opened its enormous mouth, and let out a deafening roar.
Although Everly couldn’t understand the natives’ language, she remembered that this was the battle cry the Caribs always shouted before launching an attack.
The roar was like the tolling of a bell amid chaos, awakening the surviving Caribs on the ground.
Dozens of red-skinned natives opened their eyes in unison. There was no confusion or bewilderment in their gazes, only hatred, savagery, greed, and fervent devotion to their god.
Like zombies released from a cage, they staggered to their feet, their protruding eyes bloodshot and their faces twisted into savage expressions. Baring their teeth, they seized whatever weapons they could get their hands on and charged recklessly toward the nearest living person, shouting “Ola!” and invoking Oseiwa’s name.
There were awakened Caribs around Everly as well.
When they locked onto the lone young woman, raised their axes and spears, and charged at her like raging bulls, a fig tree suddenly sprouted from the soil beside her feet without warning.
It grew from a slender shoot to the thickness of a thigh, its bark gradually fading from pale green to grayish white. It continued growing at an utterly incredible speed. When it reached a height of around two meters, the trunk stopped growing upward and instead sent countless branches stretching out in every direction.
Fresh green shoots emerged from the branches and unfurled into leaves. In barely a moment, a giant umbrella formed from the tree’s canopy had spread over the girl’s head.
“Wooloo?”
“Pachikas…”
Several Caribs hurriedly halted their charge at the sight, suspicion and astonishment appearing on their red-painted faces.
Everly was a little bewildered too.
She swore that what she had intended to do just now was use the Mirror Witch’s “Mirror Realm Exchange” to move herself into the mirror world and let Bloody Mary deal with this troublesome evil god. She had never even considered using the Sacred Tree bracelet!
Yet, just as she touched the mirror and was about to act, the Sacred Tree bracelet on her wrist fell to the ground first, absorbing the energy of the earth and transforming from a branch into the enormous tree before her.
One of her only life-saving measures had inexplicably been consumed, and Everly’s heart practically bled at the loss.
Under these circumstances, there was naturally no way she could continue using Bloody Mary’s mirror.
She might as well wait and see how things developed. If the Sacred Tree’s true form could defeat the red-skinned giant, that would be a happy ending for everyone. If it couldn’t, she would still have plenty of time to use the mirror…
“Shalala…”
Once the fig tree had fully grown, the leaves at its crown suddenly began moving despite the absence of wind. As the branches and foliage swayed, a grayish-white shadow slowly emerged from the trunk.
It had a slender, vaguely human silhouette, its grayish-white body covered in mottled, cracked patterns resembling wood. On its flatter, more elongated head grew long, fresh green vine-like hair. Around where its eyes should have been, layers of fan-shaped shelf mushrooms grew in several rings like petals encircling its head. Framed by this crown, its originally strange appearance seemed to acquire an air of dignity and holiness.
It was the true form of the Sacred Tree summoned by the bracelet!
“Chirp—!”
The moment the Sacred Tree’s true form appeared, it immediately opened its mouth and let out a threatening whistle at the tribesmen attempting to approach.
“Wooloo wa!”
Seeing this, the Carib at the very front looked frightened and instinctively glanced toward his older companions behind him.
“Ola! Galo! Osewa!”
One of the companions behind him let out a furious roar, strode past him, and was the first to hurl a spear at the Sacred Tree.
But there was no way the formidable Sacred Tree’s true form could possibly be hit by a mere human spear.
It moved its slender limbs and crawled down the trunk like a spider, easily dodging the spear. It then dashed two steps across the ground, bent its limbs, lowered its center of gravity, and suddenly sprang forward with its massive body.
“Whoosh!”
Everly only had time to catch a glimpse of a rapidly flashing gray-white shadow. By the time the Sacred Tree landed again, the several Caribs charging toward her were already bleeding from their noses and mouths, their hearts pierced by branches that had grown from the Sacred Tree’s body.
Having effortlessly taken down several tribesmen, the Sacred Tree’s true form dragged the corpses back to Everly and, right in front of her, tossed them beneath the roots of the fig tree.
“Shala shala…”
Several aerial roots descended from the canopy, dense rootlets sprouting from their tips and burrowing deep into the corpses’ chests. Then, as though sipping some heavenly nectar, countless rootlets began pulsing as they sucked the fluids from the dead bodies.
In the blink of an eye, the corpses’ plump cheeks shriveled, turning them from fresh bodies into mummified remains.
“Chirp—!”
Standing beside Everly, the Sacred Tree’s true form patiently waited for her to watch the entire process. Then it leaned toward her, tilted its head slightly, and let out a melodious, clear cry.
Everly: ???