Miss Hebe Is Charging Through the Lostbelts! [42]

This was the first time Hebe had fully released this Mark since condensing it, and wrathful blue-green fire wrapped around her.

Once more, she set foot on the royal road leading to an audience with the Red King.

The stone statues standing on either side of the royal road came alive one after another, their stone pupils casting deep-blue light into the wild wind.

Sealed within them were the souls of criminals from every age—but now she knew those criminals had merely realized the truth before anyone else.

They had been too clear-eyed, and so Ozymandias had ordered them bound within, forced to endure torment day and night, to suffer pain far too cruel.

Hebe silently gazed at these sufferers.

She raised both hands, and blue flames formed a halo like lotus petals behind her.

Hebe pressed her palms together.

The fire halo symbolizing precepts swept over those stone statues in an instant, leaving them rigid and dead once more, like corpses.

Then twin serpents covered entirely in scales swam out from the fire halo, each holding the other’s tail in its mouth.

[FIRST MARK]: GOD OF MEDICINE

One after another, the stone statues knelt to the ground. The suffering souls within them let out satisfied sighs. There were no further words. Their torment, which had lasted several hundred years, had finally come to an end.

At the end of the royal road, the gates of the pyramid were shut tight, impossible to open from this side.

Yet the instant Hebe reached out, the pyramid gates rumbled open to either side.

The clouds in the sky grew denser, and gloomy thunder rolled without end. Ozymandias had fallen into a fury.

Hebe raised her head and smiled faintly. “With Your Majesty’s ascension close at hand, what subject would have any reason not to come for an audience?”

Above the clouds, Ozymandias once more let out thunder in wrath.

At the end of their lives, each generation of the Nine Sage Gods would come before Ozymandias and offer up the flame of their life, allowing the Red King’s reign to continue.

Because of the King of Rams’ obstruction, Ozymandias’s edict had not been conveyed smoothly, and naturally, he had not had time to reclaim the Authority he had granted Hebe.

As one of the three kings, she of course had the right to enter and leave the Great Pyramid freely.

Passing through the pyramid once more, Hebe watched the cobalt-blue light flow past her, gazing at those magnificent yet lifeless wonders and letting them fall away behind her.

She leapt high from the stone platform, breaking free of the narrow stone chamber like a fish unwilling to admit defeat, vaulting above the sea of clouds.

An invisible force suddenly appeared, and Hebe could advance no farther.

“This is as far as you go.”

The vast, shining temple complex operated on its own in midair. Layer upon layer of mechanical rings locked together one by one, and this immense wonder that surpassed the ages finally opened its gates before her.

From within, the god-king’s pupils cast a tyrannical glance toward the present world.

“Imhotep. Thou art a treacherous minister indeed.”

Hebe dipped slightly, and even smiled faintly, as though honored. “To receive Your Majesty’s recognition is truly the highest honor. But Your Majesty, to think you still have the leisure to jest with a traitor and rebel like me at a time like this.”

“I am Ozymandias, lord who rules the four corners of the earth.”

Ozymandias’s words rang out like thunder from every direction at once. “Didst thou think that by playing with schemes and tongue like a jester, thou couldst shake me?”

“Thou art wrong. Gravely wrong.”

The Red King’s words carried undisguised and perfect arrogance.

“I am myself. King of Kings. Even the Ennead is not enough to make me turn my gaze.”

“Imhotep, thou treacherous minister. Thou hast come at just the right time.”

“Just in time to witness the great work by which I shall make Heaven bow!”

That vast, shining temple complex burned inch by inch, and the metal gates disassembled one after another. A hand made of nothing but white bone reached out from the edge of the gate and tore the temple apart from within.

Like the creator in legend, born from an egg, the Red King was reenacting that myth.

That was power drawn from the law of imitation. It was as though, by doing so, he too possessed a great Divinity so awe-inspiring that none could look directly upon it.

When he fully stepped out of the temple and proclaimed his Golden Truth, that would be the moment he shed his mortal body completely, perhaps even leaping directly into becoming a new Consul.

Hebe merely raised her hand calmly.

Lord of Fiends had a second effect, called Special Authority, which could even allow her to simulate an entirely new Mark out of thin air.

Ozymandias was unmoved. He even scoffed.

Dusk? It could never possibly break through the great temple’s obstruction. And once he accomplished his unrivaled Great Deed, he could kill as many such things as he wished.

The halo of the Third Mark rose behind Hebe’s head. It was cold. It was silent. It was white as bone. It possessed no power at all, as though it were only an unrealistic illusion.

—[THIRD MARK]: “NEFERTITI”].

…

In the temple of the Obsidian City, Hebe had listened to Tutankhamun recount the entire life of Ozymandias’s wife, Nefertiti.

Nefertiti had leapt into the Nile in despair, hoping to end the wrath of the Ennead.

This was a secret not even recorded in the temple.

After that, in the Abydos inside Nitocris’s mirror, Hebe had found Nefertiti’s bones, which had been enshrined in the Temple of Kings.

Ancient Egypt was a nation that believed in resurrection after death. They believed the dead could return once more.

“So there must be some possibility that would allow Nefertiti to revive as one of the dead,” Hebe said with certainty. “There must be a key that only I can complete.”

Illusion.

What limited Illusion had never been scale, but imagination.

From Tutankhamun and Nitocris, Hebe obtained the framework that made up “Nefertiti.” Then, with Illusion, she added flesh and blood to it through imagination, and with the Special Authority of “Lord of Fiends,” she decreed that “Nefertiti” should reappear in the world as her Third Mark.

…

And yet Ozymandias could no longer tear his gaze away.

“Thou rebel minister!”

The god-king’s roar could no longer be restrained, and within that rage, a hint of panic could still be heard.

Hebe answered only with a tolerant smile. “Your Majesty, why such alarm?”

A white hand bone flew out from Hebe’s robes.

Invisible power settled upon that hand bone, filling in the parts that had originally been missing.

It became a slender female skeleton. She slowly stepped forward, walking toward Ozymandias’s shining temple. The force that had pressed Hebe in place and left her unable to move did not hinder her in the slightest. On the contrary, it made her body even more complete.

“Nefertiti!!!”

Ozymandias roared, “Thou didst willingly offer thyself to the Ennead! Thou art no longer the queen who shares my glory! How darest thou appear before me once more!”

With Ozymandias’s voice, invisible majesty descended again, making Nefertiti’s skeletal steps grow ever more difficult.

But Hebe’s voice rang out once more.

“Your Majesty, you truly have grown muddled with age. Have you forgotten? She threw herself into the Nile precisely because she was in despair. And you never revoked her title as queen, nor did you take a new wife. In other words, she is still your lawful wife… and still possesses every authority you personally acknowledged.”

“Moreover, she is also your blood kin, so naturally, she is qualified to take your place in the ascension ritual.”

“Then I shall deny now that she is my wife,” Ozymandias replied darkly. “Only a pharaoh older than I is qualified to reject my decree on the grounds of preserving sacred blood kinship.”

“I have swallowed all pharaohs of past ages. By all means, try to defy me!” The god-king cast a gaze full of killing intent toward Hebe. Not even Ozymandias himself realized that he had been driven to such a point by an insect.

Faced with his challenge, Hebe merely raised her hand and pointed to Mercury, shining brightly in the sky.

Three voices came from three different directions.

“REJECTED!” Djerwnapekhaper’s mocking voice sounded from the other side of the Red Sea.

“REJECTED!” Nitocris spat the icy word through clenched teeth.

“REJECTED!” Tutankhamun threw away the papyrus in his hand and spoke with impatient eagerness.

At this moment, Ozymandias’s expression finally changed drastically. His decree attempting to strip Nefertiti of her status had been rejected by three pharaohs earlier than himself.

At this crucial moment of ascension, that had been one of the few powers Ozymandias could still spare to protect himself.

He no longer had the ability to obstruct Nefertiti’s advance.

Ozymandias could only watch helplessly as the bones of his own wife stepped into the shining temple complex and forcibly divided away half of the power that belonged to him.

Even more fatal was that, as Nefertiti entered, the invisible force obstructing Hebe also vanished.

And so, in an instant, Hebe recombined her Marks once more.

This was not enough to let her break through the status of Daylight and Dusk. It merely strengthened her First Mark.

Ordinarily, Ozymandias would not even deign to glance at it. But now, at this critical moment when they were fighting over the dominant consciousness, it was the feather that could tip the scales.

The Staff of Apep appeared in Hebe’s hand once more, and the radiance of God of Medicine shone bright.

“Your Majesty, there is no need to panic. I have come to deliver your fated death.”

T/N: yes yes its neferati dwwwwww it’ll be explained

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!