Miss Hebe Is Charging Through the Lostbelts! [20]

A single lamp broke through the heavy night.

Beside the low table where the lamplight rested, a girl draped in a white robe frowned as she struggled to read the words on a papyrus scroll. From time to time, her lips moved slightly, as though she were silently reciting its contents.

A full seven years had passed.

Hebe had long since set foot on a Path again and become a Dawn Rank apprentice.

This time, the Path she had achieved belonged under the Principle of Winter. According to the naming conventions of the Temple of Thoth, it should be called the Priest Path.

To rise from Dawn to Daylight required opportunity, practice, and a conviction that revered desire. Hebe knew those nobles and priests would never allow her to climb any higher, so after several attempts, she gave up on advancing and turned instead to studying the secret arts of the various schools.

Among them, she had mastered the most from the Hermanubis school, secretly learning every secret rite they were permitted to teach.

As for the other schools, Hebe had only studied the Ram school’s mechanics and the Scarlet Ibis school’s illumination studies. She could only familiarize herself with the rest; she was still far from mastering them.

“If only Curtis hadn’t advanced so quickly…”

Two years ago, Curtis had ascended to become the current Saint Bennu. Because of that, the time Hebe could spend with her had drastically decreased; in a year, they might only meet once.

Over those seven years, Hebe had not neglected her relationships either.

Apart from Curtis, who had already thought well of her from the start, she had also made many other friends. For example, the current Hermanubis, who loved telling bad jokes and playing cards. Or a certain woman who was clearly capable of inheriting Shesepankh, yet had refused twice, and did nothing all day but fight and drink… Although Hebe’s friendship with these people was not especially deep, it was enough.

Enough for her to win them over in the next simulation.

Or replace them.

Rustle, rustle…

The papyrus scroll continued to shift past, while Hebe’s thoughts turned in silence.

Although she had not left the Temple of Thoth since then, thanks to those relationships, she basically never missed any movement in Memphis.

Ever since Curtis inherited the seat of Saint Bennu, Hebe had been able to feel the atmosphere around her gradually becoming tense and cold, as though something major was brewing.

Because of that, she had used every method she could to break through restrictions, attempting to grasp those secret rites that were not taught to outsiders.

For example, what Hebe held in her hands now was the scripture acknowledged within the Hermanubis school as “first in power” and “first in solemnity”—the Book of the Gates of the Sun-Crossing Tower.

This scripture governed the entire outline of the Hermanubis school. It used silent reading, secret contemplation, and imagination to perform secret rites. It was extremely obscure, yet exquisitely profound.

In the voice of the sun, it expounded upon the relationship between king, sage, and nation, using the construction and destruction of a “high tower” as a metaphor to interpret one conclusion: all things would ultimately move toward silence.

The papyrus scroll Hebe held was only a copy, but even so, this knowledge had power.

She had spent a year and a half studying and silently reading this scripture every night, and had finally achieved something with it.

In other words, she already possessed the qualifications to become Hermanubis.

After resting for a while, Hebe picked up the scripture again, her lips moving.

“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!”

She was clearly only reciting it silently, yet a wind suddenly began to blow through the room.

Hebe focused her entire mind, feeling the faint chill blooming at the tip of her tongue, and blew at the oil lamp on the table.

Whoosh!

The oil lamp went out in an instant, yet the light grew gentle, rapidly spreading through the entire room.

Hebe stood, took the papyrus scroll in hand, and draped an outer robe over herself.

As she made that movement, the soft glow filling the room fell onto her robe in an instant, like tender evening clouds.

This was a secret incantation Hebe had summarized from the Book of the Gates of the Sun-Crossing Tower. It could borrow light and briefly call down protection, keeping the recipient undisturbed on the scales of time and space.

Without a word, Hebe walked out the door.

The Temple of Thoth was silent, as though it had sunk into a shadow without thought or mind.

Hebe’s outer robe gave off a faint glow. As she walked barefoot through the long corridors of the Temple of Thoth, flecks of that light drifted down, opening the way for her.

The path that ordinarily was not so long now seemed endless. Only when the robe on Hebe’s body gradually returned to normal did she finally arrive outside the Temple of Thoth.

Outside the temple, “people” stood packed together.

Their features could not be seen clearly in the dark, and their figures looked tall, thin, and strange. When Hebe walked out, they turned in unison, facing her with badly rotten faces.

Hebe spread open the papyrus scroll in her hands, and her lips moved once more.

“I am one idle and at ease.”

“Time passes through the gaps, slowly, gradually.”

She passed through those rotten classmates. The outer robe, its mystery gone, made tearing, hissing sounds as it brushed against them, then became strips of cloth on the verge of decay.

The effect of this secret incantation was to make the chanter ignored by the dead and departed spirits.

At times Hebe chanted softly; at times she read silently in her heart. The papyrus scroll in her hands gradually became brittle and shriveled, crumbling rapidly as though it had been left under the sun for decades.

By the time she had walked several hundred meters, only a short section of the papyrus scroll remained.

That length was no longer enough to let Hebe continue walking, so she went to a nearby platform and sat down.

At this moment, clouds were gathering in the deep night sky like a surging tide.

They revolved around the three pyramids of Memphis as their center, spinning like a vortex.

Above the largest Pyramid of Khufu, one could vaguely glimpse an even broader platform held aloft by a blue-green barrier of light.

The metal platform looked like an inverted pyramid.

The light grew brighter and brighter, yet all of Memphis seemed dead, without the slightest reaction.

Whether priests, Temehu nobles, or commoners, all had silently melted into the night, becoming dead things with rotting faces.

Among the Calamities of the Ennead, the natural disaster known as the Plague of Osiris had already descended upon Memphis without a sound.

At the same time, the tearing, hissing sounds grew more violent. The papyrus scroll in Hebe’s hands suddenly lifted, and a scorching, dry wind blew in from every direction.

The foehn known as the Breath of Set had also arrived.

A grief-stricken, despairing wail rang out from the sky above the Pyramid of Khufu.

“We were wrong! We did wrong! We failed!”

Crunch, crunch, crunch!

Along with that voice came a chewing sound that made one’s hair stand on end. Within the thick clouds, an enormous “sphere” emerged.

The sphere was adorned with gold and red, yet its whole body emitted a deathly white light. But that light was always blocked within the clouds, unable to fully shine down upon the land of Memphis.

After several struggles, the sphere slowly turned around.

It was a scarred eyeball.

But in Hebe’s eyes, that sphere looked more like… a skull.

The instant that thought appeared in her mind, the sphere descended slightly from the clouds, and a stark-white spine emerged after it from the darkness.

This truly was a skeleton.

Its legs wrapped around the pyramid, and its hands kept scooping flesh and blood from the clouds.

Whatever that flesh and blood was, once it fell onto the skeleton, it became fresh-red muscle and blood vessels. But there was no skin.

It looked like a flayed human being.

Hebe spread her hands. The last fragment of the papyrus scroll had also turned to ash and vanished like smoke.

She realized that she was very likely the last living person in Memphis.

But in the very next instant, two figures appeared before her.

“There’s still someone alive?” one voice said.

“No. She is about to die. This is the end of her allotted span. I have seen it,” another voice answered.

Hebe opened her eyes again.

The scorching foehn wind was ravaging everything prosperous in Memphis. Amid the yellow sand filling the sky, the two cloaked women stopped speaking and both turned their gazes toward Hebe.

Hebe barely tried to make them out, but the wind and sand grew fiercer and fiercer, making it impossible to distinguish any details. She could only tell that the two women differed greatly in height.

“You are a priest of Hermanubis,” the taller woman said. “In that case, I have a duty to grant you an undisturbed peace…”

“Well, thank you for that.”

Hebe sat cross-legged, her hands resting on her knees, and barely managed a withered smile. “Would it be convenient for you two to tell me your names?”

The tall woman’s outstretched hand stilled.

She raised her other hand and removed her flat hood, revealing long hair as pale as moonlight, and golden ornaments atop her head like rabbit ears.

Those eyes were an eternal color, like gold.

“My name is Anubis,” she said. “And before I cast away my mortal nature, I once ruled Upper and Lower Egypt under the name Nitocris.”

Her palm pressed steadily against Hebe’s forehead.

Hebe’s vision immediately began to blur, and from far away, another somewhat playful voice reached her ears.

“My name is Djerwnapekhaper Saciut Hatshepsut… I was once a pharaoh who briefly ruled Egypt too, you know. Eh, she can’t hear me anymore…”

[CURRENT LOSTBELT PROGRESS: 25%]

T/N: NITOCRISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

ALTER

oh Djerwnapekhaper Saciut Hatshepsut or “Pepe”

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!