Miss Hebe Is Charging Through the Lostbelts! [24]

More and more people stood. More and more people began to walk.

They followed the figure holding the long staff, and little by little, they saw light.

“We’re following the light.”

“We’re following the Lord of Fiends.”

“The Lord of Fiends is the light, and the light is the Lord of Fiends.”

The crowd began whispering among themselves, saying things that made no sense. Some fell behind, but more followed. The reeds gradually grew shorter, and several crocodiles lay collapsed by the roadside.

The starving people walked over, used the knives in their hands to cut the crocodiles into little pieces, and passed the meat back one piece at a time.

The old man gripped a bloody chunk of meat, stuffed it into his mouth, chewed a few times, and swallowed it down.

The woman holding the child chewed the meat until it was soft, then fed it to the child.

Only after finishing the meat did the old man belatedly remember. “Ah, that was jailer meat. The jailers are going to come after us!”

“We’re not afraid, not afraid,” many people said. “We have knives. We have weapons now.”

Bolstered by that courage, they continued walking, but no crocodile jailers came to hunt them down.

So they knew. The Lord of Fiends had driven all those crocodiles away.

The figure holding the long staff was not tall, but she always walked at the very front.

The people saw the Lord of Fiends raise her staff and sweep it out, and then light appeared.

Supporting one another, they walked out through the gates of Thebes, left the “Plague of Osiris,” and saw the pale-blue sky above their heads.

There were no reed marshes here, nor blue-black river water. The air was dry, but clean.

For a while, the crowd all stopped. They closed their eyes and savored this moment. Gradually, they recalled the memories of when the disaster had descended and shared the joy of rebirth with one another.

That joy lasted for several minutes, until a young man stepped forward.

He raised his hand and shouted with his arm lifted high, “I’m going to follow the road the Lord of Fiends walked!”

“I’m going too! I’m going too!” more people cried in unison.

“The Red King abandoned me. Egypt does not see me as its child,” the young man said. “From now on, I am no Egyptian.”

“So what?” someone said. “The Red King wanted us to die, but the Lord of Fiends came to save us instead.”

“But the Red King’s rule over Egypt is eternal. Without His Majesty’s protection, we’ve lost our homeland.”

“So what if we lose our homeland? Was Egypt ever our home?”

The crowd argued. Some people left, heading in the direction of Memphis.

“They’ll probably sell us out to the nobles,” the people who remained murmured.

“It doesn’t matter. If they’re willing to go back into the cage, that’s their freedom. And if we’re willing to leave that cage, that’s our freedom too.”

The young man stood up. “We are no longer Egyptians. Then what should we call one another? I think there is one word that suits us best…”

He cleared his throat and spoke that word.

“Sarkaz.”

…

Frustration. For some reason, frustration.

Perhaps it was because events had gone beyond her imagination, or perhaps because she had realized the girl before her had caused a terrible disaster. In any case, Pepe felt frustrated.

Watching that crowd gradually move farther and farther away filled her with inexplicable frustration.

“Why did you do that?” Pepe sat on a damaged stone stele, her legs dangling down. “Ima, do you know what kind of cruel punishment you’ll face for this?”

“Do you know you’re defying the will of the solar god-king who reigns over the great red sea of sand and all Upper and Lower Egypt?”

“Do you know that after doing this, even death will become a luxury?”

“And taking a step back, how long can these mortals survive under the Breath of Set, which blows from time to time?”

Pepe frowned slightly. “Ima, it would have been enough for you to bring them back to Memphis.”

After Hebe waited for her to finish, she let out a soft sigh.

“That god-king is destroying Egypt.”

“……”

Pepe looked at Hebe in silence.

She jumped down from the stele and landed soundlessly on the ground.

That inexplicable frustration had finally found its source. She walked over and pinched Hebe’s cheek hard.

“Ozymandias is not destroying Egypt. On the contrary, He is trying to prevent Egypt’s destruction.” Pepe gazed into those beautiful green eyes. “Anyone, at any time, in any place, must acknowledge that.”

Hebe looked toward Thebes, still sunk in darkness.

The Plague of Osiris only occurred within protective barriers, and the king who ruled the so-called underworld was not Osiris, but the Red King Ozymandias.

That was not a natural disaster. It was a man-made calamity.

The other Calamities of the Ennead were the same.

The natural disasters the Egyptians fought and the king they revered were one and the same.

“No, you don’t understand at all—”

Pepe’s voice rose several pitches, and the color of the setting sun suddenly appeared in her eyes.

The faint fragrance of water lilies silently spread around them.

“Do you know what Egypt was like three hundred years ago, Ima?”

“Back then, people still devoutly bowed before the gods, calling for their miracles to descend from the Wasteland, regarding them as eternal glory. The Egyptians believed, with absolute certainty, that they walked alongside the gods.”

“They adorned the gods’ images with gold, pleased the gods’ priests with spices, and offered up everything most beautiful to the gods, because they believed the gods would protect them, from every moment of life to every moment of death.”

“Every Egyptian was like that. From pharaoh to commoner.”

“Then the Nine Calamities descended,” Pepe said quietly. “The nine great gods of the Wasteland brought down nine disasters—without reason, without warning.”

Osiris brought down the dark plague. Set raised the eternal foehn. Isis turned the Nile into blood. Geb stirred earthquakes. Tefnut made hail fall in the night. Horus-Ra made every Egyptian’s firstborn child go blind overnight…

“Ramesses II was filled with regret, because He had long ago foreseen the coming disaster in a dream, but had not believed it.”

“Even Nefertiti, the pharaoh’s beloved, died among the Nine Calamities.”

“There were four million people across Upper and Lower Egypt. After the Nine Calamities, only one fifth remained,” Pepe said softly. “What wrong had they committed, to suffer such groundless punishment?”

What happened afterward was recorded on murals, sculptures, and papyrus scrolls.

Ramesses II cast aside his old name, rejected the title of pharaoh, and abolished all worship of the gods. No one opposed him, because those who might have opposed him had already died cleanly in the Nine Calamities.

After that, Ramesses II’s life as a human ended there.

He ascended into Ozymandias, both god and king.

In the name of the Red King, He resolved to rule the bodies and souls of the Egyptians for eternity.

“So Ozymandias is no tyrant.”

But when Pepe said those words, she revealed a helpless, bitter smile.

Even she could hear how powerless and pale that sentence was.

—To the Egyptians of three hundred years later, the Red King was no different from the Ennead.

“I see. So His Majesty was protecting Egypt… by destroying it.”

After a long silence, Hebe spoke softly.

T/N: if u protect something by destroying it, what use was your protection?

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!