[22] The sky was dusky blue, and low, flat-roofed houses surrounded her.
Hebe stood in the middle of the broad road, people coming and going all around her.
“As expected, everything has become more real.” She smiled in understanding, then raised a hand and snapped her fingers.
Water stains dripping from a corner of the wall suddenly twisted, forming words only Hebe could see.
[HEBE STANTON / IMHOTEP] [PATH]: [PRIEST (LOSTBELT-LIMITED).] A PRIEST IS A SCRIBE WHO GOVERNS SILENCE, ENGRAVING EPITAPHS OF STILLNESS AND PAYING AUDIENCE TO THE APPOINTED END TO COME.
[PRINCIPLE]: [WINTER (LOSTBELT-LIMITED)].
THE PRINCIPLE THAT REPRESENTS SILENCE, ENDINGS, AND THINGS NOT ENTIRELY GONE.
[RANK]: [DAWN (LOSTBELT-LIMITED).] THE FIRST RANK ON THE ROAD OF ASCENSION.
When Hebe saw her identity in the Lostbelt, she nearly laughed aloud.
“I never expected to be the only sage in ancient Egypt who achieved a great work as a human and was worshiped by later generations as a god.” Hebe lifted her head slightly.
“Fine.
That just makes it more challenging.” More words gradually appeared.
[OZYMANDIAS SEEKS A “BRIGHTER” REIGN, AND HE IS BY NO MEANS A KING WHO WOULD BOW BENEATH ANOTHER.
HE IS PLOTTING A GRANDER FUTURE, THOUGH THE PRICE IS ALL OF EGYPT.] [AS A PRIEST, YOU MAY FREELY CHOOSE YOUR FUTURE.
YOU MAY CHOOSE TO HELP OZYMANDIAS RISE HIGHER, OR CAST THE FOUNDATION OF HIS ASCENSION INTO THE BLACK NIGHT.
NO MATTER WHICH METHOD YOU CHOOSE, IT WILL CONTRIBUTE TO LOSTBELT PROGRESS.] She turned around and walked south instead of fleeing north toward Memphis.
This time, Hebe no longer had any need to hurry to Memphis and report the news.
The merit of a messenger would, at most, allow her to become a low-ranking priest, and the new round of contention for the honored seat of the Hermanubis school would produce a winner within the next few days.
The two candidates currently competing for the seat of the present Hermanubis had been put forward by the military noble faction and the temple priest faction, respectively.
No matter which side she reported the news to…
the result would be the same.
Hebe continued south.
Her stride was long, yet carried an exceptionally graceful beauty.
Every time her wheat-colored legs stepped forward, it was like a lion bounding across the earth, swift and unstoppable.
This was a secret transmission of the Lion school, one that could increase a person’s travel speed during the day.
When the villagers saw Hebe’s heroic bearing, they all bowed their heads and knelt in awe.
Hebe paid them no mind.
She kicked off the ground with both feet and, as if riding the gale, lightly leapt over the flat-roofed houses and landed on the main road at the edge of the village.
The instant she touched down, the sky abruptly darkened.
Boundless night pressed in like walls, carrying an indescribable malice as it tried to swallow her.
“I STAND UPON THE REVERSE SIDE OF TIME, YET STILL I MAY SEE.” “AH!
THIS ONE STOPS, YET TURNS WITHOUT END.” “MY LOST HEART, TOO, CANNOT BE SEEN.
AMUN!” Hebe’s lips moved, yet her voice was like a storm, forcing the approaching “Plague of Osiris” to halt several meters away.
In her previous simulations, she had tested it many times, learning the range and degree to which her secret incantations took effect, and grasping how to briefly block and drive back the Calamities of the Ennead through those incantations.
The girl reached out with her right hand and seized the empty air.
A black obsidian staff nearly as tall as a person, entwined by twin serpents and topped with outspread wings, was pulled out by Hebe.
This was a curio she had crafted with her own hands in a past simulation: the Staff of Apep.
In that simulation, Hebe had joined the Apophis school and used the techniques of the Snake school to create this weapon, which could directly open phenomena of the “Calamities of the Ennead.” In her later simulations, however, Hebe had been unable to bring out rewards because her evaluations were not high enough.
But this time, when she entered the Lostbelt, she had already released her True Name and brought in what she had obtained from the previous Lostbelt.
She possessed Illusion.
As long as she understood something well enough, she could construct its form with Illusion and reproduce its function.
And what could she understand better than something she had once made with her own hands?
Hebe gripped the Staff of Apep and struck the surface of the Plague of Osiris as casually as if she were swinging an oar.
Hiss!
The Plague of Osiris shrank back at once, like a finger burned by hot coals.
That retreat carried it nearly two hundred meters away.
Hebe stepped forward and swung the long staff again.
The Plague of Osiris retreated once more, spitting out all the villagers and soldiers it had swallowed earlier.
Those people were barely breathing.
The instant the Plague of Osiris left their bodies, they broke free from “death” and came back to life, but their condition could by no means be called good.
But they were not blind.
They could see the girl before them, holding a papyrus in her left hand and a staff in her right, driving away death like a great god from legend.
They could see that whenever this beautiful green-eyed girl swung the long staff in her hand, the darkness that greedily devoured all life receded like an ebbing tide.
And everything whose life had been stolen “came back from the dead” in the process.
In the next instant, Hebe had already passed through the little village and continued south.
…
Hebe had calculated the situation very clearly.
Whether compared to the military nobles or to the representatives put forward by the temple priests, she had no qualifications to compete.
Strictly speaking, she would even need to provide an explanation for the knowledge she possessed.
The situation was like a game of chess where dozens of pieces had already been taken off the board.
How could one win?
Hebe’s answer was simple.
She would pick up the chessboard itself and smash it hard into the opposing player.
She also remembered very clearly that even if she brought the news back to Memphis, the military nobles and temple priests would still delay for some time before sending troops south.
No matter what, some territory and some people would have to be sacrificed.
“Even the Red King Ozymandias never took back those lost lands, allowing them to sink into the Plague of Osiris.” Hundreds of thousands of people were abandoned one after another like this, until the seventh year, when there was nowhere left to retreat.
Hebe looked straight at the dense darkness before her.
The Plague of Osiris, a natural disaster bearing the honor-name of one of the Ennead.
It was different from the Breath of Set.
It only descended within protective barriers, and the more people there were, the greater the chance of its descent.
As far as Hebe knew, the outbreak point of the Plague of Osiris this time should be Thebes.
Not Thebes of ancient Greece, but Thebes-Luxor, seated in the middle reaches of the Nile and regarded as the sacred land of Upper Egypt.
Legend said that generations of pharaohs had built countless temples, palaces, and sanctuaries there, and Ramesses II was naturally the one most enthusiastic about such things.
Not only had he built his own temples and statues on a grand scale, he had even changed the statues of previous pharaohs and gods to bear his own face.
At its height, Thebes was known as the “City of a Hundred Gates,” and the Arabs praised the city as though it were a palace in the heavens.
Yet now, Thebes was nowhere to be seen.
The darkness before her filled everything.
Hebe reached out.
When she had set foot on her solitary pilgrimage south, swinging her staff to drive back the darkness and saving those who had fallen into death, she had already risen to Daylight.
To ascend from Dawn to Daylight required a true and genuine “pilgrimage.” What Hebe had done was already enough to be regarded as the foundation of a Great Deed.
To begin a lone pilgrimage, reclaiming the lives and lands that belonged to the living, like a god of medicine from myth, like a warrior from legend.
This was also the difference between past and future.
In the future, apprentices had all the courage and methods needed to try, but lacked opportunities for pilgrimage.
In the past, such opportunities were everywhere, but apprentices lacked the courage and imagination to do it.
But Thebes was different from other places.
A Daylight-level status was not enough to move the Plague of Osiris entrenched here.
Hebe calmly reached out and seized something beside her.
An exquisite golden lotus ornament lay quietly in her palm, looking like a brooch.
She did not know whose chest it had once adorned.
In past simulations, Hebe had been given this brooch many times.
She lowered her eyes slightly, then focused her entire mind.
Hebe threw the brooch into the darkness before her, then reached out and pulled at her side.
“I HEREBY CALL UPON BASTET: DJERWNAPEKHAPER SACIUT HATSHEPSUT.” Before her voice had even faded, she spoke again.
“Great Pharaoh Pepe…” “Whoa, who even are you?!” A clear, complaining voice rang out from nowhere.
“How do you have my token?
And how dare you call me by my nickname?!” — T/N: hueheuhuheoeheueholehioehuehoeheuehepoheiheuehoeheu papyrus is basically paper