HBWnovel Chapter 79: Sandstorm (823 BC)
Chapter 79: Sandstorm (823 BC)
Chapter 79: Sandstorm (823 BC)
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823 BC, Valley of Kings, Egypt
(Medusa POV)
I had just teleported from my home to the location of the temple that someone was trying to break into. I'm not a fool to leave dangerous artefact unprotected, so there was no hope for someone to actually break in and steal my stuff. The only issue that this temple of mine should only be known to the royal family in Egypt, more precisely, only the king.
I made a lot of temples in my days as an advisor to the pharaoh and most of them were only filled with treasure. These were known to pretty much anyone who had worshiped me as the snake goddess Wadjet. I mostly left gold there to appease the Pharaoh. For some reason, the man insisted I do this, similarly to how he kept his wealth in a pyramid for him to be buried with, in some vain hope to have it in the afterlife. Plus, I needed a place to put all the useless gifts I kept receiving for some reason. After a while, even Gold is getting old.
I left most of the stuff I don't particularly care about in these temples. These temples were protected so the average mage will not be able to enter, but an entire team of curse breakers in a few centuries could break in. I left it for some lucky team that would be capable enough to get inside and retrieve what should be to them, a great treasure. I would honestly not care if the temple that was being attacked was one of them.
However, there is a single temple I created that mattered to me. A personal vault of memorabilia and precious treasures. It held my personal belongings but I did use it to keep artifacts there, some I confiscated and some were of my own creations. What? I was bored over the years which meant I had all the time in the world to enchant a few items, just to know if I could. I would admit that some of them were a bit too dangerous to exist in case they fall into some idiot's hands but I was bored and lonely; there was little I could do.
In this vault laid all the knowledge of Atlantean magic that I confiscated, even some of the books I wrote about my experimentations with magic. So, what's inside that vault is far more valuable then all the treasures in my other ones combined and so I warded it accordingly. Even its location was supposed to be a secret I only told to the last Pharaoh before I left Egypt and I enchanted the knowledge so that only the undisputed king of Egypt could know.
Even with all that, someone was trying to enter my temple, which meant that it was either the Pharaoh or someone ordered by him trying to steal my property which meant that something was wrong in Egypt.
I teleport into my temple to find that nothing was taken and the wards were at full power. I then turn into smoke and confronted the intruder. There were five in total, they were powerful but it felt artificial somehow. Their magic felt as if someone had tried to inflate it like a balloon somehow, allowing them to gather more magic, but disrupting their control and stopping it from evolving. The power up was bound to the man in the middle somehow, funnily enough the man was blue and was wearing some kind of weird armor that I could sense was very heavily enchanted.
The blue man was trying to teleport past my wards. It was a heavily modified portal that was based pure space manipulation. It would have gotten through anti teleportation wards easily, but I had a deep understanding of space magic and stopped any kind of space magic inside that didn't have my own magical signature. The blue man's magic just felt wrong, like it was a lot of different magic being stitched up together. I didn't like it.
After watching them, I had enough and materialize in front of them and they stiffened in surprise at my arrival.
"You are not welcome here." I bellow.
The blue man steps forward, "How curious. And who are you?"
"It is customary for the intruders to introduce themselves first, especially to the owner of this temple." Visit for the best novel reading experience
Unconcerned with their fates, he looked impassively at me, "Do you know how I became king?"
"Can't say that I do."
"I started from the bottom, with nothing to my name. Even my parents abandoned me, probably thought I was an abomination because of my appearance. I was then found by a band of desert nomads called the Sandstormers, whose leader, Baal, recognized my potential and raised me as his own. He even gave me my name, En Sabah Nur. He taught me the truth of the world, that the strong survive and the weak die. Those words are one that I still live by to these days. All was well until the Pharaoh attacked our tribe in fear of a prophecy that a young and powerful warrior would dethrone him and end his line. I was always stronger, smarter than everyone else. I became a fearsome warrior. There were songs of my exploits and tales of my adventures. The more well known I became, the more the Pharaoh feared me so he ordered his soldiers to wipe down my tribe.
My entire tribe was massacred by the mages under the Pharaoh's command and I was apprehended. I was then enslaved by the Pharaoh, to become a symbol to all those who dared to oppose him. Every day I was tortured, until one day another prisoner arrived. He was curious, able to heal from any injury and the Pharaoh wanted to understand his abilities so that he could become invincible. That day, one of the mages went too far and as I was laying there dying, I reached out to the prisoner in a vain attempt to save me, only to find myself in his body. My old body was shriveled and I became him. With my strength, I was able to escape from his prison as they didn't enchant his prison to be unbreakable like mine. There was no need for it. I then proceeded to kill every mage in the palace, every member of the royal family, every noble in the palace. I freed the slaves and took over the city. And the rest was history."
I answer, "As intriguing as this is, why should that matter to me?"
He replied, "I am a man who earned everything I have today and nothing will ever stop me. Even your pathetic order of mages serves me now and have devised a ritual for me to get even stronger. The strong live and the weak die and I am the strongest of them all. I am Egypt and you have no place here!!"
He then controlled the sand all around us and created a veritable sand storm, suddenly the sand turned into steel spikes that tried to impale me. I turn to smoke and it goes right through me. That was close. Transmutation and Sand manipulation on this level is really impressive. I create a shockwave sending shards of steel towards Apocalypse. He conjured some sort of force field to stop them. I then raised my staff into the air and conjure a veritable thunderstorm and a giant bolt of lightning appears from the sky and hits my opponent. The bolt was so powerful that it temporarily blinded me and yet when I regained my vision, my opponent was still alive, although a bit ragged.
He then telekinetically controlled giant boulders and threw them at me, I transformed them into smoke that spread around the battlefield blinding him. I then proceeded to travel through the shadows, stabbing him with a conjured sword and then disappearing before he could even register the blow.
Angrily, En Sabah Nur created a telekinetic shockwave, dispersing the smoke. His cuts were already visibly healing by themselves.
"Your reputation was not exaggerated, Wadjet. You truly are a fearsome opponent. Your body will me my masterpiece."
I sensed something coming from my left, it was the flying horseman from before. I was done playing. I unmaterialized my staff and conjured two swords made of shadows. I dodged the flying attack and swung my sword at one of my attacker's wings cutting it off entirely. The man screamed in pain at the attack, and I used this distraction to send a pressurized blast of air towards his head killing him.
I dodge the sand attack that Apocalypse sends at me and create a portal directing it at another attacking horseman. The man wolf one was swept away by the sand. I create another portal later teleporting him towards me and with a swing of my swords I beheaded him.
The last two horsemen attack me but I conjure steel spiked into their foots, pinning them into the ground, then I throw both sword at them, hitting each one of them in the throat, killing them instantly.
In barely ten second, all of the horsemen were dead and I looked at Apocalypse's face. It seemed that he started to understand his mistake. Nevertheless, he screamed into the air and it was like the entire desert came to life and a veritable Tsunami of sand appeared trying to smother me. I gather my power over darkness and create a veritable wave of dark magic disintegrating everything around me, the sand's momentum stopping at it turned into ash.
Apocalypse created a forcefield to protect him from the attack but some of it came through and parts of his body were hit in the process and looked like it was eaten by some sort of acid. Again the wounds started to heal on their own.
"I told you, Wadjet, I am invincible. You cannot kill me."
I smile at him, "Your body might be but there are many ways to kill someone like you."
I cast a spell at him, draining his life force and dispersing it into the ground causing him to visibly starting to age. A few seconds later and he looked like an old withered man. Scared, the man created a purple sphere and teleported away. So that's how he did it.
I knew I could not kill him yet as he's supposed to be alive in the future. Instead, I make sure he is imprisoned. It only took a couple of suggestions for a few mages to turn on him and interrupt the ritual. They destroyed the pyramid where the ritual was being held and kept him trapped in statis for thousands of years. It took a few days, but En Sabah Nur was trapped and Egypt was free.