"According to these hieroglyphics, and if I'm reading them right, I think we're right underneath that big Anubis statue" I told everyone once we finally went to the speculated place that had revealed itself to Evelyn during our little standoff.
Rick was currently hammering away at the ceiling to try and dig his way up into the base while Jonathan was just there for moral support.
"Right you are Deimos, your translation is getting better if I may add." Evelynn told me with a cute smile.
I immediately turned my head away and winced in envy at the thought that I couldn't get together with Evelyn.
Like c'mon, gimme a break. I've never really experienced a relationship before. Like even before everything that's happened, I wasn't really ugly or had a terrible personality. It's just that I primarily focused on my education before anything else and all I could blame for my lack of a love life was myself.
'Damn you, you suave lucky sunavagun!' I internally screamed at Rick.
Rick noticed my glare and just creased his eyebrows and asked "What I do?"
"Nevermind, but you know exactly what you did." I pointed at him.
Rick continued to look at me like I was a weirdo but went right back to digging.
Evelyn, not knowing the inner turmoil that I was experiencing, said "We should come up right between those legs." as she kept looking up to where Rick was digging.
I guess Jonathan was still a little pissed about the standoff that we had shortly before since he said "When those damn yanks go to sleep-" he looked at Rick and before continuing what he was about to say, told Rick "No offense."
Rick just kept digging and said "None taken."
Jonathan, getting a basic seal of approval continued "-we'll dig our way up and steal that book right out from under them."
As he said that, Rick finished up digging and asked me and Evelyn "Are you guys sure we can find this secret compartment thing?"
I just gave him an affirmed nod while Evelyn told him, "Oh yes, if those beastly Americans haven't beaten us to it." Just as she finished, she did the same as Jonathan and told Rick "No offense." to which Rick answered "None taken" again.
At this moment, Jonathan started to look around the room we were currently in and said "Oh by the way, where did our smelly little friend go?"
Funny way of addressing Hassan, I just noticed he wasn't here either.
"Had to take a leak?" I asked Jonathan, who then gave me an understanding nod.
'He's at that wall trying to pluck out those scarabs, no?' I told myself. 'Don't like bugs my ass. Dude's just wishing to be eaten.'
-A FEW MINUTES LATER-
Still no sign of Hassan. Must be having the time of his life right now.
Rick was currently taking a break from digging and wanted to rest up a bit. So he and Evelyn sat together while Evelyn was explaining the mummification process to him.
"So let me get this straight." Rick wanted to clarify. "They ripped out your guts and stuffed them into jars?"
"Basically, yeah. But also your brain and heart too." I told him before Evelyn could.
She smiled at me and continued "But do you know how they took out your brain?"
Jonathan looked up to Evelyn as he was using his pickaxe to play gold with a few rocks, "Eve, I don't think we need to know this."
"Stick something up your nose and break the brain apart and pull it out through the nostrils, right?" I answered Evelyn to which she beamed me another one of her cute smiles.
Rick just looked disgusted as his face cringed up at my answer. "For the record here, if I or any of us dies here, don't put us up for mummification."
"Don't jinx us." I playfully said.
"Of course." Jonathan said as he hit a rock with his pick.
BOOM
The ceiling of where Rick was digging collapsed right before us.
A giant sarcophagus had fallen through the ceiling and shocked us all.
I was the first to come back to my senses and walked over to Jonathan.
"Nice job!" I signaled for a high-five to which he high-fived me back while looking confused and mouthed 'I did that?'
"So what's a sarcophagus buried in the base of Anubis?" I asked Evelyn.
"This person must've been someone of great importance if he was buried there. Or they did something very bad." she answered.
Evelyn quickly took out the gifted, or should I say stolen, tools that Rick gave her and quickly went to dust off the sand and small rocks off the sarcophagus.
I helped her out by just using my hands and saw some symbols that I couldn't really identify so I just let Evelyn translate.
"He that shall not be named." she said ominously.
The bozo of the movie's in here then? Alright, good to know.
Evelyn looked back at me and asked "Do you have any idea of who this could be referring to?" to which I lied and said I didn't while shrugging my shoulders.
Rick tried to get a little closer and saw a little mound of sand on an indentation of the sarcophagus and blew it off.
A symbol with a scarab appeared and he said "This looks like some sort of lock."
Jonathan took a look and said "Well, whoever's in there sure wasn't getting out."
"Unless they were some form of super mummy," I said trying to get a little scare out of Jonathan which looked like it worked since he just looked at me with a frightened look.
"Yeah, no kidding," said Rick.
Just looking at the sarcophagus, I presumed that it would take a couple days to crack it without the key. So I just did what anyone would typically do with the level of strength that I had.
I wanted to break it open with pure strength.
Everyone looked a little taken aback as they saw me preparing to punch the sarcophagus open.
Before I could, however, Evelyn quickly stopped me and said "wait wait wait, no no Deimos." she said while holding on to my arm.
"We need to have this intact and with minimum damage no less." she continued not realizing that she herself believed that I probably would have opened it up with brute force.
"Besides, didn't you hear Rick? He said that there could be a key for this and I think we have it." she said as she rummaged around her personal bag of belongings.
Oh yeah I forgot that those guys on the ferry weren't successful at getting the key thing.
Clumsy me.
"Aha! I've found it. That man with a hook for a hand was trying to take this away from me. Guess he also knew about its function."
She placed the key onto the lock on the sarcophagus and before she could turn it, we all heard Hassan screaming through one of the hallways.
We all looked at each other with anxiousness and worry, well more so them than me, and quickly went after the whereabouts of his screams.
Rick and Jonathan were at the front, Evelyn was in the middle of the group and I was at the back while we made our way towards the room that Hassan was in.
Suddenly, Hassan bolted right out the door continuing his shrieking and ran past all of us at full speed.
He brushed past Jonathan, Rick and Evelyn but didn't seem to see me just standing in the middle of the hallway we were in and slammed right into me.
Although I didn't budge and stood like an iron wall, he had gone and knocked himself unconscious from slamming into me.
Honestly speaking, that was kind of comedic in a way.
{Haha! Did you see the way he had fallen down?!}
'Yeah yeah Eve. Don't you kinda feel bad for the guy though?' I said mentally to Eve.
{Not in the slightest. In the movie he was supposed to run straight to a wall but he ran into you instead so it made it even more funny!}
I smirked to myself and let out a small chuckle and mentally told Eve, 'Ok, I guess it's kinda funny then.'
While looking at Hassan just sprawled out in front of me out cold, everyone just looked really surprised.
Half of their reaction was from them seeing Hassan screaming and the other half was from them witnessing that I didn't move at all from when he slammed right into me.
I pointed at Hassan and asked them "You think he's dead?"
-TIMESKIP TO NIGHT-
"What do you suppose killed him?" Evelyn said aloud as we were all surrounding a campfire trying to register everything that had happened today.
"Obviously from him slamming into Deimos at full speed!" Jonathan exclaimed, still not being able to come to terms with my superhuman-like physique.
"It wasn't Deimos' fault that he was killed!" Evelyn quickly retorted. She looked at Rick, trying to get some support from him.
"Yeah I don't think Deimos is at fault here Jon." Rick said. "And besides, he was screaming like a madman when he ran out the door.
Also, it seems that our American friends had a little misfortune of their own today. Three of their excavators were melted."
"Melted? How?" I questioned Rick.
"Salt acid," he answered. "Pressurized salt acid. Like some sort of ancient booby trap."
Jonathan looked scared as always and said "Maybe this place really is cursed."
Right when he said that, a chilly wind had blown and made the fire waver a little.
Everyone except Evelyn just looked at the fire with wide eyes and had a little worrying look.
"Oh for goodness' sake you three." she said.
"What? You don't believe in curses huh?" I asked her.
"No, I don't. I believe if I can see it and can touch it then it's real. That's what I believe." she answered.
"Valid point." I said to her.
"Let's see what our friend, the warden, believed in." said Jonathan as he rummaged through Hassan's bag.
I suddenly remembered those scarabs and quickly took the bag away from him and said "Hang on! Let me do the rummaging please."
As I went through the bag, I pulled out a bottle of whiskey and held it in front of everyone.
Jonathan quickly took notice of it and hurriedly asked "May I?"
I handed him the bottle and as he examined it, "Glenlivet. 12 years old!" was what he had said aloud.
"Well, he may have been a stinky fellow, but he had good taste." Jonathan said before he uncapped the bottle and took a swig of it.
"That is the stuff. You guys want some?" he said to us.
"I'm fine." "No thanks." Rick and Evelyn said at the same time.
Jonathan looked at me expectantly to which I shook my head and said, "Nah sorry man, I don't drink."
"Pfft. You lot are no fun." Jonathan groaned out.
All of a sudden, I heard a commotion in the distance to where the Americans were camping and shortly after, it seemed that Rick had caught along as well.
"Rick, follow me." I told Rick to which he understood and tagged along.
"Take this. Stay here." he said to Evelyn while handing her the shotgun that he had been carrying.
"No, wait, wait! Wait for me. Wait!" Evelyn said as she quickly stood up and ran after us.
"Evy!" Jonathan said exhaustedly as he got up from the campfire and followed Evelyn.
"Didn't the man just say to stay here? Evy!" he shouted out for her to stop.
When me and Rick had made it towards the American campsite, we had seen a bunch of cloaked people on horses swarming in from the entrance of the city.
There was already a gunfight taking place which we decided to join in and our American brethren.
My Firearms skill level of 6 was in full effect. With every shot I had taken, I had accurately disabled the cavalry men and without hurting the horses either. Why didn't I shoot the horses and basically get a two-birds-one-stone type thing? Cuz I ain't a monster.
With everything that was going on and me having way too much fun with me dual wielding my pistols, I didn't register anything but the thrill of the moment.
"Enough!"
That seemed to have gotten me out of the moment as everyone was stopping their fighting.
"We will shed no more blood. But you must leave!" a person, who I identified as Ardeth Bay.
"Leave or die!" Ardeth was speaking to everyone. "You have one day." he turned around to leave with all of his other companions.
As him and everyone he came in with had left, the Americans quickly realized something and Henderson said "See? That proves it! Old Seti's fortune has got to be under all this sand. For them to protect it like this, you know there's treasure down there."
"Nope." Rick said to the Americans. "These men are desert people. They value water, not gold." he explained as he held on to Evelyn's waist after he made sure she was okay.
'Damn you! That should be me holding her!' I mentally screamed.
Burns quickly had a proposition while he still had half his face covered in shaving cream.
Guess the little battle earlier got the jump on them.
"You know, maybe just at night, we could combine forces. Hmm?" he said to me.
"You know that actually doesn't seem that bad an idea. What do you think?" I said to Rick.
"Sounds great."
A little later, Jonathan was trying to get some sleep, Rick was trying to teach Evelyn on how to throw a proper punch and I was busy preparing for my daily exercises.
Or shall I say daily dose of pure unfiltered power.
[Daily Quest: 200 push-ups, 200 squats, 200 sit-ups, 20 kilometre run.
Time Left: 03:14:57]
I stretched before I started and tried to see how quick I could finish them.
-RICK POV-
"Hey, tough stuff, try a right hook. Ball up your fist and put it-" I said as I adjusted Evelyn's hand movement. "Put it up like that. And then mean it. Hit it hard." I told her to hit my hand with everything she had.
Evelyn being a clumsy girl had mis stepped and almost fell If I didn't catch her. Realizing that she probably got into the warden's bottle, she was probably a little drunk right now.
So I just tried to put her to rest.
Before that could happen, I wondered where Deimos was. I hadn't seen him since I started to give some pointers to Evelyn and started to look around.
"I saw him standing in a little clearing doing push-ups faster than my eyes could register.
'Seriously. Just what is he made of?' I thought to myself before going back to taking care of Evelyn.
She was just about to take another swig of the bottle before I stopped her. "I think you, miss, have had enough."
"You, sir are wrong. Because unlike my brother, I know when to say no." She retorted.
"I can't seem to understand you, you know?" I asked her genuinely trying to know why a girl like her was doing in a place like this.
"You are probably wondering-" she said in a little slur, "-what is a place like me is doing in a girl like this-hic"
Surprising that she basically read my thoughts albeit a tad bit wrongly, "Yeah something like that."
"Egypt is in my blood. You see, my father was a very famous explorer" she started explaining while playing around and showing me a necklace she had been wearing.
"And he loved Egypt so much, he married my mother, who was an Egyptian and quite an adventurer herself."
"Ok, ok. I get your father and mother." I looked over to a sleeping Jonathan and continued "And I get him. But…what are you doing here?" I asked her.
"Look, I may not be an explorer-" she said as she stood up.
"-or an adventurer or a treasure seeker or a gunfighter, Mr. O'Connell, but I am proud of what I am"
"And what is that exactly?" I questioned further.
"I…am a librarian!" she exclaimed.
I quickly tried to suppress a smile that was trying to form on my lips from her answer.
She fell down to her knees and met my eyes right after and as she got closer to my face, she said "And I am going to kiss you, Mr. O'Connell."
That was entirely unexpected but welcome nonetheless. "Call me Rick."
That seemed to get her a little bit more excited and before she could kiss me, she had passed out from drunkenness and exhaustion.
I did feel someone glaring daggers at me at this moment and quickly spotted Deimos in the clearing jumping around to what looks like anguish.
'What's up with him?'
END CHAPTER 10