Miss Heber is fighting her way out of the Lostbelt!

Heber turned his head again and looked at another woman lying nearby, holding a child in her arms. "What about you? Are you willing? Are you willing to sacrifice yourself for the king and then sacrifice your child?"

The young woman was already dying.

"I'm useless, I'm dying... Take me away, don't take my child away..."

The two crocodiles looked at Hebe at the same time, with mocking smiles in their six pairs of gloomy eyes.

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

"When are you going to meet the king, slave?!"

"It's not time yet, at least not now." Hebe stood up. "I am not a slave either—the King of the Underworld is the slave!"

"Rebellion! Devil!"

The crocodiles were filled with shock and anger, and the "slaves" around them looked at Hebe in disbelief, as if they saw a real evil spirit crawling out of the River Styx.

"I will pull out your tongue! I will dig out your entrails and throw them away! I will gouge out your eyeballs! I will drain your blood! You filthy devil, you cannot go before the king!"

The crocodile howled and swung its knife.

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

　Reimu's first blade broke.

The papyrus was wrapped around Hebe's arms, and Hermanubis's six-level secret teachings took effect one by one in the underworld, making her hands become slender and ferocious.

She walked over, grabbed the two stunned crocodiles on the left and right, and strangled them to death easily.

These crocodiles are the jailers of the underworld, but their status is very low.

Heber dealt with the crocodile and walked towards the old man who was lying on the ground. She had a staff with two snakes entwined around it in her hand.

She touched the old man with the other end of Apep's staff, and his wounds healed.

However, the old man was so frightened that his face turned pale, without a trace of blood, let alone speaking.

"Don't be afraid," Hebe said. "I won't pull out your tongue, nor will I take your life."

"You are not slaves, you are free men."

"But now I can only fight for a chance for you, a chance to live."

Hebe spoke calmly, striking the ground with his staff, and their wounds instantly stopped hurting.

"If you want an honorable death, stay where you are. The jailers will come and take you away."

"But if you want to live, start walking on your own."

Those who were healed by Heber lowered their heads and were timid but did not dare to look at her.

Heber was not angry. Instead, he placed the hook and broken knife in the crocodile's hand beside them, then turned and walked away from the river.

The woman holding the child looked at Hebe's figure walking away, opened her mouth, and wanted to catch up but stopped.

"This...she really is a witch!"

The old man knelt on the ground trembling, looking at the knife with a broken blade but still sharp.

"Only a witch would teach people to disobey the king's orders and reject a glorious death—"

But the woman holding the child squatted down, grasped the sharp hook, and asked him hoarsely, "Are you going to leave?"

The old man was stunned.

He looked at the knife on the ground and grabbed the handle: "From today on, I will follow the witch--"

"Go! Go!"

The old man gripped the knife, and he seemed to have strength back in his body.

The woman held the child in her arms and held a sharp hook in her hand.

The child clapped his hands and shouted happily.

"Go! Go!"

Then, more people came out from the swaying reeds, their backs to the river, and chased in the direction Hebe left.

"Go where the sun is, go to the land!"

"Go where the witch is going."

The old man heard someone talking.

"The Red King no longer wants us, so we will follow the Witch—she is our king.

P.S.: Updates will be made around 6 p.m. from Monday to Thursday, and around noon from Friday to Sunday.

ps2: Thanks again to August's ruling Canlang for the treasure chest. Alas, I owe twenty chapters before it's even on the shelves.

ps3: Please collect and read

Volume 24: The First Demon King

More and more people stood up and more and more people started walking.

They followed the figure holding the long staff and gradually saw the light.

“We are following the light.”

"We are following the Demon King."

"The devil is the light, and the light is the devil."

The crowd began to whisper, saying incomprehensible words. Some people fell behind, but more people caught up. The reeds gradually became shorter, and several crocodiles fell on the side of the road.

Hungry people walked over and cut the crocodile into small pieces with their knives, passing them down one by one.

The old man held the piece of bloody meat, put it into his mouth, chewed it a few times, and swallowed it.

The woman holding the child chewed the meat in her mouth and fed it to the child.

After finishing the meat, the old man belatedly realized, "Oh, this is the jailer's meat. The jailer is coming after us!"

"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid," many people said. "We have knives in our hands, we have weapons."

They bravely continued walking, but no crocodile jailer came to pursue them.

They knew that it was the devil who drove away all the crocodiles.

The figure holding the long staff was not tall, but he always walked in front.

People saw the devil raise his staff and wave it, and then light appeared.

Supporting each other, they walked out of the gate of Thebes, left the "Plague of Osiris", and saw the blue sky above their heads.

There are no reed fields or blue-black rivers here. The air is dry but clean.

The crowd paused for a moment, closing their eyes and savoring the moment. They gradually recalled memories of the disaster and shared their joy of rebirth.

This joy lasted for several minutes until a young man stood up.

He raised his hands and shouted, "I will follow the path that the devil has walked!"

"I'm going too! I'm going too!" More people shouted in unison.

"The Red King has abandoned me, and Egypt no longer considers me a child," the young man said. "From now on, I am no longer an Egyptian."

"So what?" someone said, "The Red King wanted us to die, but the Demon King came to save us."

"But the Red King's rule over Egypt is eternal. Without your Majesty's protection, we will lose our homeland."

"So what if we lose our home? Is Egypt our home?"

The crowd was arguing, and some of them left and headed towards Memphis.

"They might sell us out to those nobles." The rest of the people were talking among themselves.

"It doesn't matter. If they want to go back to the cage, that's their freedom. If we want to leave the cage, that's our freedom too."

The young man stood up. "We are no longer Egyptians, so how should we address each other? I think one word might be the most appropriate for us..."

He cleared his throat and uttered a word.

"Sarkaz."

……

I feel irritated, and I don’t know why.

Perhaps it was because the situation was beyond his imagination, or perhaps it was because he realized that the girl in front of him had caused a terrible disaster. In any case, Pepe was very annoyed.

She looked at the group of people gradually moving away and felt inexplicably irritated.

"Why did you do this?" Pepe sat on the damaged stone tablet with his legs hanging down. "Ima, do you know how cruel the punishment will be for doing this?"

"Do you know that you are defying the will of the God-King of the Sun, who reigns over the Great Red Sea and all of Upper and Lower Egypt?"

"Do you know that if you do this, even death will become a luxury?"

"Stepping back, how long can these mortals survive under the constant blowing of Set's Breath?"

Pepe frowned slightly: "Ima, it's enough for you to just bring them back to Memphis."

Heber waited for her to finish and sighed softly.

"The God-King is destroying Egypt."

“…⑴陾磷鏾②０崎事⑧~…”

Pepe looked at Heber in silence.

She jumped down from the stone tablet and landed silently on the ground.

The inexplicable irritation finally found its source. She walked over and pinched Heber's face hard.

"Ozymandias is not destroying Egypt. On the contrary, he is trying to prevent Egypt's destruction." Pepe stared into those beautiful green eyes. "Anyone, at any time, in any place, must acknowledge this."

Hebe looked towards Thebes, which was still shrouded in darkness.

The Plague of Osiris will only occur within the protective shield, and the king who rules the so-called underworld is not Osiris, but the Red King Ozymandias.

That was not a natural disaster, but a man-made disaster.

The same goes for the other nine disasters of the gods.

The natural disasters that the Egyptians fought against and the king they respected were one and the same.

"No, you don't understand at all—"

Pepe's voice rose several degrees, and the color of sunset suddenly appeared in her eyes.

The fragrance of water lilies spread silently around.

"Do you know what Egypt was like three hundred years ago, Imma?"

"At that time, people still worshipped the gods devoutly, calling on their miracles to descend from the wilderness, and regarded them as eternal glory. The Egyptians believed that they walked with the gods."

"They adorned God's appearance with gold, used spices to please God's priests, and offered God the best of everything, because they believed that God would protect them every moment from birth to death."

"This was true of every Egyptian, from the pharaoh to the common people."

"Then, the Nine Plagues descended," Pepe said darkly. "The nine great gods of the wasteland brought down nine calamities—without reason or sign."

Osiris brought down the plague of darkness, Set blew the eternal burning wind, Isis turned the Nile into blood, Geb caused earthquakes, Tefnut caused hail to fall at night, and Horus-Ra blinded all the firstborn sons of the Egyptians overnight...

Ramses II regretted Moder because he had foreseen the coming disaster in a dream but did not believe it.

"Even Pharaoh's beloved Nefertiti died in the Nine Plagues."

"There were four million people in Upper and Lower Egypt, and only one-fifth remained after the nine plagues," Pepe whispered. "What did they do wrong to deserve such unprovoked punishment?"

What happened next was recorded in murals, sculptures, and papyri.

Ramses II abandoned his old name, renounced the title of Pharaoh, and abolished all worship of the gods. No one objected, as those who opposed him had already died in the nine plagues.

Thus ended Ramses II's life as a human being.

He ascended to become Ozymandias, both god and king.

He determined to rule over the bodies and souls of the Egyptians forever in the name of the Red King.

"So, Ozymandias is definitely not a tyrant."

But when Pepe said this, he showed a helpless and bitter smile.