Miss Hebe Is Charging Through the Lostbelts! [23]

The girl before her pricked up the cat ears atop her head in displeasure and tossed her long, silky hair. The water lilies on her hood swayed with the motion.

The tail beneath her cloak went stiff, and her slender, fair feet stamped the ground unhappily, leaving a mess of footprints behind.

Even when Pepe was angry, she looked extremely cute.

Hebe sighed and met her gaze with sincerity.

“Please hear me out first.”

Hebe pointed toward the dense darkness not far away. “There’s no need to be angry with me. You only need to look. Right now, we are already in Thebes.”

Pepe followed Hebe’s pale finger and looked over. Her slightly babyish face scrunched up.

“The Plague of Osiris…”

She pressed her lips together, unsure for a moment whether she should turn and run first, or punish Hebe, this disrespectful wretch, first.

Pepe took a deep breath.

“Listen carefully. I don’t want to get involved with Thebes at a time like this at all, much less now that the Calamities of the Ennead have descended here. I don’t know how you got your hands on my token… but if you want to run, I can take you with me.”

Pepe felt that everything about today was completely inexplicable, and that she had already done more than enough.

Yet the girl with those beautiful green eyes only looked at her calmly, a trace of sorrow flickering in her gaze.

That shade of grief was almost like night rain falling on water-lily petals, and it made the tip of Pepe’s heart sting.

“I see.” Hebe nodded lightly. “I understand. Please forgive my presumption, and forgive me for not bringing more offerings.”

“Please pardon me.”

The girl bowed slightly, then calmly turned and left at once.

One step. Two steps. Three steps.

“Wait!”

The curve of Hebe’s lips vanished as quickly as it appeared.

She turned back, her face showing just the right amount of confusion, along with a faint hint of expectation.

“May I ask if you have any further instructions?”

“Are you trying to die?!” Pepe’s voice rose several pitches. “I’m not going to grieve over one person’s sacrifice!”

Hebe only watched her quietly.

She was waiting.

“Do you think doing this will make me go soft?”

Pepe felt her voice tremble a little. “You cunning priests… You’ve all been like this since the Second Dynasty!”

“Say it. What do you want?”

The girl who had once been pharaoh, and was now a beast-god, gazed at Hebe and spoke softly.

Pepe knew she really had gone soft. Whether as a pharaoh or during her time living as a beast-god, she had never liked “sacrifices” or “offerings.”

If it were Sister Nitocris, she would not have been troubled by this sort of thing, because in her eyes, life and death were only the most ordinary cycle, and offerings would be reborn after their sacrifice.

But Pepe was not like that. That was why she would rather not look at scenes that made her feel awful.

She would rather stand in the night, tasting the loneliness brought by history.

“Please forgive me. I seek your witness—for what I am about to do.”

“Why…” Pepe pressed her lips together, her voice coming with some difficulty. “You’re a priest of Hermanubis, aren’t you? Why not call upon the god you believe in? Why ask me to bear witness for you?”

Hermanubis was the Hellenized name of Anubis. In other words… it could also be regarded as Nitocris herself.

“Because your mercy surpasses that of all gods,” Hebe answered. “Even if I fail, you will carry this message to the people of Egypt. But in Hermanubis’s eyes, this is their appointed end. There is no need to defy it at all.”

“Perhaps you have another question—if Hermanubis is such a god, why did I become his priest?”

Hebe spoke softly. “Because Hermanubis merely takes pleasure in seeing mortals reach their appointed end. He does not arrange the process. In his eyes, mortals are like water flowing through a riverbed.”

“So long as Hermanubis maintains silence, his kindness already surpasses that of the other gods.”

Pepe wanted to clarify a few things on Nitocris’s behalf, but some hidden emotion made her keep her mouth shut.

“Fine.” Pepe stared at the girl before her, at those beautiful green eyes. “Tell me your name.”

“Imhotep.”

“Then, Ima! Whether you succeed or fail, I will keep my promise and tell everyone what happened in Thebes. I’ll let them know that there was a hero who tried to save everything.”

Hebe thanked her once more, then calmly walked into the darkness.

…

Within the darkness, there was not pure nothingness. It had swallowed everything in Thebes and reproduced it all inside its own body.

Surging blue-black river water flowed past Hebe.

A numb, sluggish pain echoed deep inside her body like the tide.

Hebe’s eyes shifted as she looked around. In the exceedingly dense reed marshes lay countless corpses whose chests had been opened and whose organs had been removed. A considerable number of them had already begun to rot, turning into sludge.

Everything here was like the underworld where Osiris dwelled.

Splash. Splash. Splash.

With those sounds, two figures emerged from the blue-black river water. Their bodies were wrapped in thick linen robes, their surfaces covered in a heavy layer of mucus. Their shaggy long hair had matted into clumps, and their forms were like enormous crocodiles.

The one on the left held a hook-shaped knife and spoke indistinctly. “It’s time, it’s time.”

“We have to bring His Majesty ten people.”

The one on the right carried pincers and a long hook, answering in a muffled voice. “Then we really can’t delay.”

“They’re all nameless dead. Be careful!”

They searched through the mudlike corpses and soon reached Hebe’s vicinity, delightedly dragging an old man up from the ground.

He was called an old man, but in truth, he was only thirty or forty years old.

The old man screamed in terror.

“What are you screaming for? What do you even have to scream about?” the crocodile holding the knife roared roughly. “You’re all the Red King’s slaves. Dying for the king is your duty.”

“Hateful! Hateful! You wicked slave, you cannot be allowed to disturb the king’s rest!”

The crocodile raised its knife, about to stab it into the old man’s mouth and cut out his tongue.

“Why do you call him a slave? This is the underworld. Why should he be treated this way?”

At that moment, amid the dense reeds by the riverbank, Hebe stood up straight.

Her voice was not loud, yet people could not help listening.

The crocodile holding the knife shook the old man in its hand, leaned its head over, and asked in a muffled voice.

“What place is this?”

Without waiting for the old man to answer, the crocodile chuckled. “This is the underworld. The Red King is master of the underworld.”

“You’re standing on the Red King’s territory right now. How are you not slaves?”

“The king has fallen into slumber. He needs you to offer yourselves. Refusing to devote yourselves to the king is a crime.”

Hebe looked at the old man. “As they say, devoting yourself to the king is indeed a supreme honor in the eyes of you Egyptians. Are you willing?”

Tears poured from the old man’s eyes.

Hebe turned again and looked at a woman lying nearby, holding a child in her arms. “And you? Are you willing? After you offer yourself to the king, are you willing to offer up your child as well?”

The young woman was already barely breathing.

“I’m useless. I’m going to die soon… Take me away. Don’t take my child…”

The two crocodiles looked at Hebe in unison, mocking smiles in their six gloomy eyes.

“What about you?” they asked. “What about you?!”

“You slave, when do you plan to go and have audience with the king?!”

“It isn’t time yet. At least, not now.” Hebe stood. “And I am not a slave—the king of the underworld is the slave!”

“Rebel! Devil!”

The crocodiles were both shocked and enraged, while the surrounding “slaves” looked at Hebe in disbelief, as though they had seen a true demon crawl out of the river of the dead.

“I’ll tear out your tongue! I’ll dig out your organs and throw them away! I’ll gouge out your eyes! I’ll drain your blood dry! You filthy devil, you cannot be allowed to have audience with the king!”

The crocodile howled and swung its knife down.

Hebe did not move. The knife struck her raised arm, hitting the papyrus wrapped around it.

The blade snapped.

The papyrus coiled around Hebe’s arms. The sixfold secret transmission of Hermanubis took effect one by one in the underworld, making her palms grow long and vicious.

She walked over, clamped the two stunned crocodiles by the necks, one in each hand, and easily strangled them to death.

These crocodiles were jailers of the underworld, but very low-ranking ones.

After dealing with the crocodiles, Hebe walked toward the old man collapsed on the ground. A staff entwined by twin serpents had appeared in her hand.

She tapped the other end of the Staff of Apep against the old man, and the wounds on his body healed.

The old man, however, was so terrified that his face turned deathly pale, not a trace of blood in it, let alone enough courage to speak.

“There’s no need to be afraid,” Hebe said. “I won’t pull out your tongue, and I won’t take your life.”

“You are not slaves. You are free people.”

“It is just that, right now, I can only fight for one chance for you. A chance to live.”

Hebe spoke calmly and struck the ground with her staff. In an instant, their wounds stopped hurting.

“If you want an honorable death, stay where you are. Sooner or later, jailers will come and take you away.”

“But if you want to live, then get up and walk on your own.”

The people Hebe had healed lowered their heads, timid and submissive, not daring to look at her.

Hebe did not get angry. She placed the crocodiles’ hooks and broken knives beside them, then turned and walked away from the river.

The woman holding the child watched Hebe’s figure gradually recede. Her mouth opened, as if she wanted to chase after her, yet her feet stayed where they were.

“She… She really is a witch!”

The old man knelt trembling on the ground, staring at the knife whose tip had broken off, but whose blade was still sharp.

“Only a witch would teach people to resist the king’s orders, teach them to reject an honorable death—”

But the woman holding the child crouched down and gripped the sharp hook. Her voice was hoarse as she asked him, “Are you going or not?”

The old man froze.

He looked at the knife on the ground, then seized its hilt. “From today on, I’m following the witch—”

“Go! Go!”

Holding the knife, the old man seemed to regain strength in his body as well.

The woman held the child in her arms, clutching the sharp hook in her hand.

The child clapped and shouted happily.

“Go! Let’s go!”

And so, from those drifting reed marshes, more people walked out. With their backs to the river, they chased in the direction Hebe had left.

“To the place where there is sunlight! To dry land!”

“To the place that witch is going.”

The old man heard someone say, “The Red King doesn’t want us anymore. Then we’ll follow the witch—she is our king.”

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!