According to Karl’s earlier description, tonight marked the most important final stage of the annual Sacred Tree ritual. The priest would pray throughout the night, offering lavish sacrifices and devout faith to the sacred tree in exchange for its protection in the coming year.
But below the banyan tree—suspected to be the sacred tree—chaos had erupted.
Several masked, burly n had sohow broken in, interrupting the Native Aricans’ ceremony.
They seized an elderly woman wearing a headdress of eagle feathers and a buffalo-hide outfit, pressing a gun to her forehead. They forced the nearby musicians to drop their instrunts and lie face down on the ground.
Among them, Everly spotted Quilla. Blood seeped from the corner of her mouth, and her cheeks were tinged with dark purple—she had clearly just been beaten.
Judging by the intricate and ornate decorations on the elderly woman, as well as the imposing eagle-feather crown on her head, it was clear she held a high position in the tribe. She was most likely Nava, the Winton tribe chief and priest Karl had ntioned.
As for the masked n, based on the dayti incident and the prominent tattoo visible on one of their hands, Everly imdiately recognized them as the white ranchers who had caused trouble in the village earlier that day.
She couldn’t believe they dared to climb over the fence and storm into the Native reservation at night, physically attacking the residents.
There were too many of the white ranchers for Everly to handle alone, and if they realized soone in the woods was attacking them, they might lash out recklessly at the captured Native Aricans—sothing Everly was determined to avoid.
So, despite her worry for Nava and Quilla, she forced herself to suppress the impulse to rush forward, hiding even more carefully and peering down through the branches.
She needed to see what these intruders intended to do.
Beside the altar, after one masked man had successfully used Nava to control the other Native Aricans, another masked man roughly pinned the elderly woman to the ground and gestured toward a companion.
The other masked man understood the signal, turned toward the edge of the clearing, and picked up a tal can from the ground. He carried it to the base of the banyan tree and poured the contents over the trunk.
“Stop! Stop imdiately! You don’t understand what you’re doing—this is sacrilege!”
Seeing this, Nava’s eyes blazed with fury. Her frail body twisted and struggled violently against the masked man’s hold, trying to break free and stop their horrific act.
But at her advanced age, she was no match for several strong, middle-aged n.
“Behave yourself!” one of the n snapped impatiently, raising the butt of his gun and striking Nava sharply on the forehead. She fell backward, stars flashing before her eyes, her struggling montarily halted.
“No! You damned white n!” Several nearby Native Aricans sprang to their feet, angry, attempting to rush forward and help the elder.
“Bang!”
One of the white n imdiately raised his shotgun and fired into the air.
The intent was intimidation, but he didn’t notice the gray-white sheepskin hanging from the banyan’s canopy directly above him.
The shotgun blast struck the sheepskin, easily piercing the supple hide. Whatever was inside spilled out like water from a burst balloon, drenching the man below head to toe.
It was a dark-red, bloody, foul-slling liquid, mixed with bones still attached to cartilage and bits of flesh.
—The items hanging in the tree that had appeared to be re furs and hides were not hollow at all!
Though it was hardly the right ti to think of it, Everly couldn’t help but recall how, when insects were caught by spiders, the spider’s digestive fluids liquefied the insides while leaving the exoskeleton intact, creating sothing like “insect jelly.”
Could it be that the feathers and hides suspended from the banyan tree—seemingly just decorative—were actually partially digested animal corpses? If so, what could have digested them… could it be this very banyan tree?
“Shra-la-la…”
As if to confirm Everly’s suspicion, a sudden gust seed to sweep across the clearing.
No—it wasn’t wind. The branches of the massive banyan tree in front of the altar were moving on their own!
Like a tree demon straight out of a movie, it broke from its static state. The trunk swayed back and forth, its branches shaking violently across a wide area. Tens of thousands of aerial roots, anchored in the ground beneath the banyan, simultaneously pulled free and floated in midair, writhing like monstrous tentacles. The tree’s canopy above surged like boiling sea water, green waves rolling outward.
With this sudden motion, the animal hides and skeletons hanging from the tree fell in a cascade—crashing to the ground with a “crackling” sound, exploding on impact, and splattering dark red blood and broken bones outward.
The clearing instantly descended into chaos.
“W-what the hell is that?!”
“N-no! Run! That tree… it’s alive!”
The flying aerial roots moved like incredibly strong arms, as if they had eyes, striking at the masked n below. The banyan was so enormous that the intruders couldn’t even escape its canopy. They were imdiately ensnared by the tree’s roots, bound tightly like mummies from above.
The tree even seed to know how to disarm them.
The hard tal barrels of their guns were like brittle cookies compared to the supple, whipping roots. With a single powerful lash, the roots flung their largest weapon out of their hands. At the sa ti, as the branches tightened, the masked n felt the ground disappear beneath them—their heavy bodies lifted into the air, suspended by the tree’s grasp.
“W-we… we’re not going to end up like those animals, right?!” One masked man scread in terror as he saw the animal hides and bones swinging closer from the treetops.
His scream was like a bolt of lightning clearing the fog from the others’ minds.
“Set it on fire! Quick, light it!”
“This must be the evil thing they worship—burn it!”
So of the more alert masked n realized the danger and shouted out loud. The one who had been sent to pour the gasoline struggled violently, trying to free his arm from the roots that bound him, and flicked the lighter in his hand.
“No! Not a chance!”
Without the masked man’s imdiate threat, the restrained Native Aricans quickly regained their composure. Two rushed to check on the injured and dazed Nava, carefully examining the elder’s wounds, while the others sprinted toward the man with the lighter, trying to snatch it from him.
Everly, who had witnessed the entire scene unfold, quietly pulled her foot back. Her primary reason for coming to the village was to ask the priest questions, and secondly to accompany Old John to visit the deceased. If these white ranchers were harming the priest or Quilla, she would do her best to intervene. But now, it seed that the banyan tree was taking care of the situation on its own; her appearance made little difference.
Better not to step out… she thought. The banyan tree the Native Aricans worshiped seed a little sinister, and she wasn’t sure whether it was truly a sacred object or sothing malevolent. If she rushed in excitedly and inadvertently uncovered its secrets, she might bring trouble upon herself.
“Woof! Woof!”
Just then, her dog Buddy, who hadn’t barked in a long ti, let out another anxious howl. Everly’s attention snapped upward. A massive black shape silently swept across the sky, flying at incredible speed before folding its wings and landing atop the altar.
The instant she caught sight of it, her long-dormant danger radar triggered, flooding her with a sharp, familiar sense of imminent peril. She narrowed her eyes.
It was a monster with fleshy wings growing from its back.
It stood nearly six feet tall when upright, a grotesque hybrid of human and beast. Its head resembled that of a bird, with large, rolling blood-red eyes. Its beak jutted outward slightly, the jaw bare of teeth, and its lips were soft and rubbery, drooping limply downward, giving it a shocking, uncanny appearance.
The monster’s body was completely hairless, its skin a leathery brown, and as it moved, layers of flesh folded over at the joints. From the back of its skull down to its lower back grew a row of quill-like spikes, each half an arm’s length long, black and razor-sharp, catching the firelight with an ominous glint.
Its rotund body was supported by horrifyingly solid, muscular limbs, each ending in clawed, chicken-foot-like appendages. From its rear extended a nearly one-ter-long, hairless tail.
Seeing the creature, Everly imdiately recalled the “Complete Guide to Blood-Sucking Monsters” Rebecca had summarized for her a few days ago. One of the creatures there bore an uncanny resemblance to this flying monster: the “Chupacabra,” a bloodsucking beast said to inhabit the Aricas and feed on livestock.
So the predator that had been attacking farm animals was a Chupacabra? But that couldn’t be right—last night she had clearly seen the other, spider-like, lanky monster…
Before she could resolve the confusion, the Chupacabra, seemingly aroused by the splattered at and blood on the altar grounds, quickly fixed on a masked man dangling from a tree branch. Its mouth opened, and from its shriveled jaws shot a fleshy, pink tongue with blinding speed toward the exposed neck of the man.
A glistening layer of mucus coated the tip, forming translucent threads in the firelight as it made contact with the man’s flesh. At the instant of contact, three hidden, sharp teeth at the tip of the tongue sprang out, piercing deep into the man’s neck.
“Ahhh! What is that?!”
“It…it’s like it’s…sucking blood!”
The masked n scread in terror, and even the Native Aricans who had been trying to grab the lighter froze, staring at the tongue as it throbbed and contracted like a pulsating vein, montarily paralyzed by shock.
Strangely, while everyone else scread in terror, the masked man being attacked remained unnervingly calm. His eyes were glazed, his body curled up motionless on the branch, as if srized, obediently allowing the monster to suck his blood. His once-ruddy complexion rapidly paled before Everly’s eyes, yet he showed no resistance at all.
Everly suspected that the mucus on the Chupacabra’s tongue had a paralyzing or numbing effect.
“Get away, monster!”
Just as she watched, soone finally reacted in the clearing—Quilla!
The Native girl, with her wheat-colored skin and inherited courage from her father, bent down and grabbed a rifle from the ground. With steady hands, she aid the barrel directly at the monster’s tongue, expression calm and fearless, and pulled the trigger.
“Bang!”
The crisp gunshot rang out. The bullet roared through the air and pierced the monster’s tongue, slicing it neatly in two. Dark, thick blood gushed from the hollow tongue like a fountain, splattering in all directions.
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