Miss Hebe Is Charging Through the Lostbelts! [16]

The cooldown on Whispers in the Woods was a full day, too.

For Hebe, tuning in to Whispers in the Woods once a day was actually a lot of fun.

But today, she had no mind for that sort of leisure. The new Lostbelt had fully unlocked.

On the dark-green desktop, the card bearing a desert and pyramids was glowing faintly.

[SECRET HISTORIES SIMULATOR 1.0. WELCOME, KNOWER.]

[THE GATE TO THE LOSTBELT DREAM OF GOLDEN TRUTH: THE LOST KINGDOM OF THE SEA OF SAND HAS OPENED. YOU MAY CHOOSE TO ENTER AND BEGIN ITS CONQUEST AT ANY TIME.]

[NO METHOD OF CONQUEST WILL RESULT IN TRUE DEATH.]

[UNTIL A CERTAIN DEGREE OF PROGRESS HAS BEEN REACHED, YOU CANNOT BRING IN REWARDS OBTAINED FROM OTHER LOSTBELTS.]

[UNTIL A CERTAIN DEGREE OF PROGRESS HAS BEEN REACHED, YOUR TRUE NAME WITHIN THE LOSTBELT WILL BE HIDDEN.]

Hebe took a deep breath, dragged the desert-and-pyramids card over, and set it into the card slot.

[CURRENT LOSTBELT]:

[DREAM OF GOLDEN TRUTH: THE LOST KINGDOM OF THE SEA OF SAND.]

[CURRENT LOSTBELT PROGRESS: 0%.]

[THE GOD-KING WHO REIGNS OVER THE GREAT RED SEA OF SAND SHALL TOUCH THE FORBIDDEN, YET HIS GREAT WORK SHALL ULTIMATELY REACH THE VAULT OF HEAVEN. NOW, AMID THE RUINS OF THE ETERNAL OASIS, OZYMANDIAS’S BOASTS STILL ECHO ON.]

[RECORD YOUR STORY. IN THE END, WE SHALL CROSS THE YELLOW SANDS AND JOURNEY TO THE FAR SHORE OF OLD GLORY.]

…

The dark-green desktop abruptly expanded, drawing Hebe’s consciousness into it.

The space around her gradually darkened. When it lit up again, her surroundings had changed completely.

The sky was a deep, dusky blue.

A warm wind swept over the rolling dunes in the distance and the low, flat-roofed houses. The climate was so pleasant that Hebe almost thought she had arrived in Jiangnan in the springtime, back in Cathay.

Judging by the preliminary information provided by the Secret Histories Simulator, this Lostbelt should belong to ancient Egyptian civilization. But the environment was clearly different from what she knew.

Ancient Egypt—or, as they called it themselves, Kemet, meaning “black land.”

Because of the climate, most people chose to shave their hair off and wear wigs when they went out in daily life. In certain seasons, men and women alike might simply go without upper garments, tying only white cloth around their waists.

As for children, they might not even bother with the white cloth and would run straight out into the street as they were.

But the temperature here was neither dry nor scorching. Instead, it was gentle and comfortable. Put simply… it was as if the whole place had central air conditioning.

At the moment, Hebe was dressed in a long linen sheath dress, her slender arms and calves exposed to the air. To keep the fine grit from scraping up the soles of her feet, she also wore a pair of strapped sandals.

She tried to open her status window, but there were only a few sparse words.

[HEBE STANTON / IMA (TRUE NAME HIDDEN)]

That was her current status.

Ancient Egypt had passed through ten periods, from the Predynastic Period to the Ptolemaic Dynasty. Ordinarily, Menes was regarded as the pharaoh who unified Upper and Lower Egypt and founded the First Dynasty.

However, Hebe remembered that when she had crossed over, the academic world in her previous life had already seemed to propose the concept of Dynasty Zero—that Scorpion King Narmer had been the pharaoh who unified Egypt even earlier than Menes.

Though whether Narmer or Menes, neither was nearly as famous as their successors. When it came to the most legendary pharaohs, the names were naturally Tutankhamun and Ramesses II.

The former was a pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, eighteen hundred years after Menes. He died young, yet became widely known because of his “mysterious curse.”

The latter was the third pharaoh of ancient Egypt’s Nineteenth Dynasty. Under his rule, Egypt reached its greatest height.

And Ozymandias was the Greek name later given to him by the Ptolemaic Dynasty.

But Lostbelts were called Lostbelts precisely because they had diverged from true history.

Suddenly, a low cry broke the silence.

The surroundings abruptly grew even dimmer, so dark that Hebe could barely make out the scenery around her. She could only see a hunched-backed man walking toward her.

Hebe narrowed her eyes slightly and warily took two steps back.

The man did not notice the small movement, because he staggered and collapsed by the side of the road.

“You there! Come here! Come here!”

The man lying by the roadside ripped the words from his throat as he shouted at Hebe.

Hebe walked over. A heavy reek of blood rushed at her. By the light of the torch on the wall, she saw that something had bitten into the man’s lower leg, exposing stark white bone.

The man looked like a warrior. When he saw Hebe, a flicker of disappointment crossed his face, but he quickly forced himself back together.

He lifted his face, fumbled the sword free from his waist, and held it out to her with trembling hands.

Hebe crouched halfway down and accepted the sword.

“Take it!” The man handed her a flat canteen and a small bundle. “There’s still some jerky inside. I won’t need it anymore. You can eat it on the road.”

He leaned back against the wall of the house.

“Go northwest! To Memphis! But you have to stay on the road. Don’t wander off…”

“Take the sword and give it to Sekanakht, the gate officer in Memphis. He’ll take you in.”

“Hurry. Otherwise it’ll be too late…”

His voice shook more and more, and even his tone began to distort.

Hebe’s heart tightened. She took the things the man had entrusted to her and ran without looking back.

The vault of heaven grew darker and darker. Darkness pressed in from all directions like walls.

Hebe raised her head. The moment she looked at the sky, a deep confusion suddenly climbed into her heart.

Where was Polaris? Why couldn’t she find Polaris? She could not even find several of the famous constellations.

And there were far too few stars, so few that the familiar star chart in her mind had been torn to pieces.

Every star gave off a low, dark-red glow, like an eye weeping tears of blood.

Was this still fucking Earth?

Even more unnerving was the sound behind her, like the overtaxed scream of some heavy object being crushed.

Hebe steeled herself and turned around.

She saw a vast darkness sweeping in unstoppably from the distance. Everywhere it passed, every burning light sank into silence. The man lay on the ground, his chest silently caving in.

—What is that?

Hebe ran desperately along the road, but she still could not outrun the spreading darkness. With all her strength, she leapt toward the sand beside the road.

Pop.

It was like passing through a bubble. A cold, biting wind instantly blew Hebe’s mind numb, and her eyes became bloodshot from the dryness.

Shivering, she looked back and reached out to feel the air in front of her.

Pale-blue light flowed through the air. It extended downward into the sand beneath her feet, and upward into the sky, to some unknown height.

In that instant, Hebe understood why those low, flat-roofed houses had been built along the road, and why the climate she had felt before had been so comfortable and pleasant.

“Stay outside, or go back in?” Hebe made her choice quickly and struggled onward along the road.

The climate outside was dry and cold, yet from far away came a violent sound—the strange howl of a gale.

She struggled to raise her head and saw the horizon slowly rising, like a tsunami.

It was not a wave, but a sandstorm driven by the gale. A scorching foehn wind howled as it charged toward her from the distance at terrifying speed.

Hebe’s thoughts grew slower and slower. She could even feel the moisture in her body evaporating rapidly.

“Well… at least I know this Lostbelt… is full of danger…”

In a few short seconds, Hebe’s body was completely dehydrated. Before her consciousness vanished entirely, she faintly saw the sandstorm break through the fragile pale-blue barrier and crash into the pure darkness.

…

[YOU DIED.]

[YOU ENCOUNTERED A DISASTER THAT HAS YET TO BE IDENTIFIED. CURRENT LOSTBELT PROGRESS: 1%.]

This is a fan translation of 赫柏小姐正在杀出异闻带！ by 青散人 Rights to the original work belong to the creator. Please support them by exploring their original work or sharing it with others if you can. Thank you for reading and supporting my efforts to bring this story to a wider audience!