[HOST: Deimos Yusha
STR: 23
VIT: 23
SPE: 23
DEX: 23
INT: 20]
My stats have been going up nicely now. I think I can fit in a couple more attributes before I have to face off against Imhotep.
Maybe, he'll be completely shocked at the level of strength that a human can possess. But we'll see.
Compared to me, Imhotep has the advantage in magic but I have the advantage in speed and strength, so I think I should be fine, especially with all my enhancements from my Niko Style.
As I was musing over last night's rewards and contemplating things, I sat on the top of one of the ancient standing pillars that dotted Hamunaptra and saw the Sun steadily rising up to signify the start of another day.
Yes, I did stay up all night in complete anguish and turmoil since Rick was getting much closer and developing a relationship with Evelyn rather than me.
But I ended up having an epiphany during my chaos.
I thought to myself and had a meaningful conversation with Eve which brought up a lot of additional details that she neglected to inform me about.
I thought that since I couldn't really ignore the side quest of making both Rick and Evelyn end up in each other's arms at the end of the plot. Considering that I didn't see a reward for that quest and brought it to Eve' attention, all I got in response to that was 'It's completely up to you on how you feel about their predicaments and up to you if you want them to end up with each other. The rewards, if you do plan on completing the side quest, were hidden on purpose to see if you would end up following the quest or not. The World Quest's rewards, however, were purposefully hidden since the rewards varied depending on how smoothly you could complete it.'
I somewhat understood the premise of the system trying to help me in that aspect and saw why it didn't disclose the rewards to me.
Even though I was butthurt about it for a few minutes since I wanted all major details open to me at the very start.
Nonetheless, I was also butthurt about the fact that although I was the main main character, compared to Rick who was just a lowly main character, I couldn't end up with the main heroine of the plot.
This was all answered by Eve who brought me a different way in thinking things through and said that 'If you did end up with Evelyn, that would mean that you would have to stay in this world indefinitely and would relinquish all control of the system capabilities. The system isn't a complete monster, where if the heroine does end up falling for you, it wouldn't just force you to leave them and not pursue a life with them.'
Although that sounded fair in my eyes, I, for one, did not want to live the rest of my life in the plot of this movie's franchise. Too supernatural for my tastes and I wanted a somewhat peaceful life that also had some thrill but without the magic things.
Call me boring for that, but that's just what I want to live the fullest in.
Also another reason that I myself found completely mean and terrible, is that Evelyn really wasn't my type.
Sure, she is pretty and cute, but I found blondes better in my eyes.
I guess that makes me a mean person, but they're my preferences so I can't do anything about it.
And besides, I did have a girl in mind that I wanted to save from a torturing life and honestly found drop dead gorgeous.
She's someone from a movie that only a tiny fraction of the population would know about that released in 2020.
(A/N: Can anyone guess what the movie is? :D)
Hopefully I get her movie as an option in the future but as of right now, I was starting to clear my head.
If I can't end up with Evelyn, so be it.
I'll try to make Rick end up with her in my stead then.
-MEANWHILE-
"It says, 'There is one, the undead, who, if brought back to life, is bound by sacred law to consummate this curse.' " said Allen as he was translating a chest that they had pulled out of the Anubis statue's base.
"Let's make sure we don't bring anyone back from the dead then." said Dave.
" 'He will kill all who open this chest and assimilate their organs and fluids, and in so doing, he will regenerate and no longer be the undead but a plague upon this Earth.' " Allen said solemnly as he understood the magnitude of this message that was engraved onto the chest.
"We didn't come all this way for nothing." said Dave trying to get everyone to open up the chest despite the warning.
"That's right." Henderson agreed.
"I-its the curse." Beni said as he was steadily taking a few steps back away from the chest looking completely terrified.
Everyone looked at Beni while he said again, "It's the curse. It's the curse! BEWARE OF THE CURSE! BEWARE!!!" he said before he turned around and made a run for it.
"Stupid, superstitious bastard." said Dave.
As he said this, Burns and Henderson opened the chest which emitted a large spout of smoke with the sound of a roar.
-BACK TO DEIMOS-
We kept exploring the depths of Hamunaptra despite seeing what happened to Hassan.
As we entered another room, we saw a traditional sarcophagus that stood upright.
"Oh, I've dreamt about this ever since I was a little girl." said Evelyn excitedly.
"You were dreaming of dead guys." I said weirded out.
Evelyn just gave me a look and continued as she observed the sarcophagus, "Oh look, the sacred spells have been chiseled off."
"Can you tell if it's recent or not?" I asked her.
"I could try but it seems that Jonathan here wants to open it up as soon as possible." Evelyn said as we saw Jonathan fiddling the key onto the lock of the sarcophagus.
"Ah I've got it. Now let's see who's inside, shall we?" Jonathan said as he and Rick tried to pry it open.
I scoffed at their attempts and said, "Step aside ladies, let me try it." I jokingly said while rubbing my hands together.
"I'm not a lady." Jonathan said with a confused expression on his face.
'Time to display my awesome power.' I mentally told myself and grasped the cover of the sarcophagus and pried it open.
CRACK
Oh boy.
The sarcophagus did open but not in the way that I had hoped.
"Jonathan, did you turn the key all the way?" I turned to ask him.
"I did." Jonathan said.
"Which direction?" I asked him.
"Right. And then I heard a click." Jonathan answered.
I deadpanned and just yanked out the cover of the sarcophagus instead of dealing with Jonathan.
To everyone's complete surprise and me jumping in my boots a little, a cadaver had leaned in forward with the yank of the cover.
"AHHH!" Jonathan, Evelyn and even Rick had screamed when old buddy boy made an appearance.
"Oh, my god! I hate it when these things do that." Evelyn said, trying to compose herself.
"Is he supposed to look like that?" Rick questioned.
True, compared to normal mummies, this one's skin still looked a little moist and I think there were still some traces of blood.
"I've never seen a mummy look like this before." Evelyn said examining the corpse.
"He's still…still-" Evelyn was about to say but Rick and Jonathan had answered for her: "Juicy."
"Yes, exactly. He must be more than 3,000 years old, and, well, it looks as if he's still decomposing." Evelyn said.
"Hey guys. You think he's the one who made these scratch marks?" I said while pointing to some markings that I saw on the inside of the cover.
"My god. This man was buried alive." Evelyn said as she traced the scratches with her fingers.
"And he left a message too it seems." I pointed it out to her.
" 'Death is only the beginning?' " she translated.
We all looked at buddy boy and felt something ominous looming over us.
-MEANWHILE-
When the initial burst of smoke had cleared away, Allen was the first to inspect the contents of the chest.
An outline of a book could be seen wrapped tightly in a cloth.
"Oh my god. It does exist." Allen said in awe as he held out the book after removing the cloth.
"The book of the dead." Allen showed everyone.
"A Book? Who cares about a book? Where the hell's the treasure?" Dave said not interested at all.
Allen, ignoring Dave's comment, said as he stood up slowly, "This gentleman. This is treasure."
Henderson looking confused at the book in Allen's hands said "Hell, I wouldn't trade you for a brass-"
Dave interrupted by kicking the chest out of frustration and knocking a side panel off.
A variety of jars in different sizes with corks resembling various Egyptian deities had been revealed.
"Look at that. There's your treasure, gentlemen." Allen stated.
"Now we're onto something." Burns said.
-AT NIGHT THE SAME DAY-
After spending the entire day in the tomb, which wasn't really fun at all, we stumbled to a couple more rooms with more sarcophagi, most of their contents were either empty or unnoteworthy corpses that resembled typical mummified cadavers.
Everyone came to a decision of appointing me to open them up, though I didn't mention to them the fact that it was getting a little easier for me to do so with my increase in strength again.
During those basically unboxings, a couple of them frightened Evelyn quite a bit so I just signaled Rick to console her.
Right now though, I was currently finishing up my new daily quest.
[Daily Quest: 225 push-ups, 225 squats, 225 sit-ups, 22.5 kilometre run.]
(A/N: I'm purposefully not writing the time limit from now on. It's a hassle trying to keep it consistent with how fast paced this movie is. But the time limit is there that Deimos can see but we can't. I'll bring it back though whenever the penalty world is brought up though.)
223
224
225
And boom.
[Daily Quest: 225 push-ups, 225 squats, 225 sit-ups, 22.5 kilometre run. (COMPLETE)
Rewards: +2 in all stats except intelligence. {RECEIVE?}]
[HOST: Deimos Yusha
STR: 25
VIT: 25
SPE: 25
DEX: 25
INT: 20]
With that I'm completely worry free as of right now.
Honestly I felt that I could do more, but the system told me to do this much, so I'll do that much.
Though, it did feel weird now that my intelligence stat was lower by 5 compared to everything else.
Not wanting to think too deeply about that, I made my way over to where Rick, Jonathan and even Beni were situated.
At that moment, our American friends came over as well.
"Say, O'Connell, what do you think these babies'll fetch back home?" Henderson said as we waved one of the jars that his group found earlier.
Burns turned to me just as I arrived and asked "We heard you guys found yourselves a nice, gooey mummy? Congratulations."
I guess they were mocking us at our pitiful luck.
"You know, if you dry that fellow out, you might be able to sell him for firewood." Dave said jokingly.
"Hehe, very funny." I told him.
"Look at what I've found!" said Evelyn with an excited tone in her voice.
Rick's eyes lit up a little when he saw her and quickly looked at Beni and said "You're in her seat."
Beni just scoffed at him and before he could say anything, Rick sternly said "Now."
That certainly got the hold on him as he quickly stood up and meekly said "Yup." and took another seat around the campfire.
Evelyn, completely unaware of the situation, just sat where Beni had previously and continued on, "Scarab skeletons, flesh-eaters. I found them just inside our friend's coffin. They can stay alive for years feasting on the flesh of a corpse."
She held out her hand for everyone to inspect them.
Not wanting to touch old beetles, I just shook my head and said "No thanks" as everyone else started to inspect them closely.
"Not a fan of these, I take it? Unfortunately for our friend, he was still alive when they started eating him." Evelyn said to everyone.
"So, someone threw these in with our guy, and then they slowly ate him alive?" Rick asked Evelyn.
She leaned in a little closer to him and said "Very slowly."
"He certainly wasn't as popular fellow when they planted him, was he?" Jonathan said as he handed back the scarab skeleton to Evelyn.
"Oh? Well, he might've probably gotten a little too frisky with the pharaoh's daughter." Rick jokingly said.
Evelyn chuckled a bit and said "Well, according to my readings, our friend suffered the Hom-Dai. Which is the worst of all Ancient Egyptian curses, one that is only reserved for the most evil of blasphemers."
"In all of my research, I've never heard of this curse having actually been performed." she finished.
"That bad eh?" Rick said appalled like everyone.
"Yes, well, they…They never used it because they feared it so. It's written that if a victim of Hom-Dai should ever arise, he would bring with him the 10 plagues of Egypt." she said ominously.
-A MOMENT LATER-
As everyone was resting, I was up on night watch.
Well, I appointed myself for that position since I wasn't feeling any forms of exhaustion.
As I laid on top of one of the ruins, I saw Evelyn taking the book of the dead from Allen's clutches as he was sleeping and took it to where we were situated.
"Looks like the fun is soon about to start." I said to myself.
'Hey Eve.' I called for her in my head.
{Yes, Deimos?}
'Should I be stopping this or will that delay a lot of things?' I asked if I should indeed be stopping the awakening of Imhotep.
{Just let the plot continue how it had already been progressing. No worries at all. I'm fairly certain that you could overpower that bald guy quickly now.}
'Alright, I'll do as you say.' I said as I just laid down and watched the events unfold.
As I saw her opening the book with the key she took from Jonathan while he was asleep, I saw the campfire she was in front of flicker heavily, to the point of almost extinguishing itself.
"That happens a lot around here." I said to nobody in particular.
As I continued to watch from afar, I somehow heard the words that Evelyn whispered from the book very clearly.
"Amun Ra, Amun Dei. Ima Tipit Bin Ikit Bin Su-Ei. Yatu Ei Yatu Ei Yatu Ei." was heard in pretty much everyone's ears on the campsite, no matter if they were asleep or awake.
It was at this moment that I saw Allen suddenly stand upright from his previous sleeping position and yell out "NOOO! You must NOT read from the book!"
After he had shouted a piercing whining type noise was heard that seemed to be coming out from the desert.
Rick and the others jump to their feet while the Americans ran out of their tents.
The sound of the whining gets louder and closer.
From the entrance of Hamunaptra, everyone could see a huge wall of locusts coming from out of the darkness.
"THAT WAS THE FIRST PLAGUE!?" Rick and I shouted at the top of our lungs and made a run for it.
I pointed to a crevice that led to the interior of the tomb towards them and motioned for them to enter.
They were a lot closer to the entrance and subsequently were the first to experience the locusts and had to fend off the vermin as they ran towards where I had pointed.
I did see from the distance that Beni and our American friends had ran towards a temple but didn't see Allen among them.
Poor bastard.
-IN THE CORRIDOR OF THE TOMB-
Everyone still didn't feel safe being close to the entrance of the crevice and were still running deeper into the labyrinth-like hallways of the tomb.
As we delved deeper, myself and Rick had managed to grab a torch during the chaos that had unfold.
BOOM
An earthquake-like vibration and sound was felt and heard and from in front of us a small mound started to appear out of the sand floor.
As it got to about waist height, a colossal amount of scarabs erupted and continued to spout out from the mound.
Their targets?
Us.
We all quickly turned around and continued to run and try to escape the clutches of those flesh-eating scarabs.
While I signaled for Jonathan and Evelyn to run in front of me, me and Rick tried our best to stop the scarabs in any way possible.
Rick had opted to use his shotgun to shoot the little critters to no avail.
I on the other hand, tried to use the torch in hand to try and burn them away while backwards running.
As we kept running we were at a bridge section.
On both sides of the bridge were little platforms that we could jump on and let the little vile insects pass us by.
Me, Rick and Jonathan jumped on to the left side of the bridge while Evelyn had jumped on to the right side.
Not realizing that this is where Evelyn had gotten separated from the group, I was too focused on the hundreds of thousands of scarabs that were scurrying past us.
Eventually they all had passed and only then could Rick and Jonathan take a breather.
Rick, taking little time to compose himself, looked around and saw that Evelyn wasn't where she had jumped to.
"Evelyn?" "Evy?" Rick and Jonathan called out at the same time.
We went to where Evelyn was supposed to be and tried to observe anything that could show us where she was at.
"Guys look." I pointed and let everyone know the existence of the trapdoor she had originally been leaning on.
"There's gotta be a switch or something around here someplace." Rick said, trying his best to figure out a way in.
"AHHH!" is all we heard as our American friends had run out from where the scarabs had gone through.
"RUN, YOU SONS OF BITCHES! RUN!!!" Henderson and Dave had collectively said.
"Go now!" I yelled out to both Rick and Jonathan as we made a run for it.
As Henderson, Dave ran past us, we ran right behind them.
It was at this moment that we saw a digger that had hopelessly lost his footing and tripped on to the floor of the bridge behind us.
As me and Rick turned to try and help him up, it was already too late.
The scarabs had already started to swarm over him and soon his screams of agony had died down.
Where he had originally fallen, a dried and decomposing looking corpse had taken its place.
We had no choice but to turn tail and run away.
As we ran past several corridors and rooms, Rick had spotted Evelyn in one of them.
I followed in right after him.
"There you are! Will you quit playing hide-and-seek? Come on! Let's go!" Rick had said as he ran up to Evelyn.
Not getting a response from her, Rick was confused.
Following her gaze, Rick and I saw old buddy boy up and about.
"YIKES!" Rick had said, surprised at this turn of events.
Though everyone was absolutely terrified, the expression on my face wasn't that of surprise and horror like everyone else's, but one full of complete confidence and excitement.
One that made me smile.
A demented looking smile appeared on my face as I felt a rush flowing through my body.
"Time to die again" I said as I walked up towards old buddy boy Imhotep.
Imhotep suddenly stopped what he was doing in what looked to be surprise.
That expression soon gets wiped away from his corroding face as he unhinged his jaw to inhuman size and let out a horrific and primordial shriek.
Both Evelyn and Rick behind me screamed and shuddered.
But I, on the other hand, had roared right back at him.
"Ahhhh!"
Then blasted a punch towards Imhotep's chest.
This punch was also influenced through the Adamantine Kata and was made even more powerful.
As I punched Imhotep fully expecting him to avoid it, but he had let himself be hit.
I guess Imhotep wasn't really expecting much power considering that he thought I was your average Joe.
But boy was he wrong.
He had ended up losing a good chunk of rotten flesh from where his heart would've been and had flown back and slammed against the wall.
Everyone was completely shocked.
One, because of my absurd strength and two, because Imhotep was slowly getting back up.
Me being fired up and ready, I tried to go to where Imhotep was but was stopped by Rick.
"Let's go!" he shouted and grabbed Evelyn and ran.
"Did you see that?" "It was walking! It was walking!" Henderson and Dave said respectively.
"You're lucky today, ya'know." I pointed at Imhotep who was still in shock as he stood up.
There was a small trace of fear in his eyes that looked to be full of hatred towards me.
He hadn't expected that soon after he had woken up, someone of my caliber would be opposing him.
'Too bad I can't finish it early. Would've been the ass-kicking of the year.' I thought to myself as I also ran out from the room following everyone else.
END CHAPTER 11