"Go find Evelyn, quick!" I quickly told Rick, breaking away all the worry that was plastered on his face.
"Me and Jonathan will try to find out where he is. Henderson, go find your friends and make sure Burns is alright." I gave everyone their jobs but felt bad since I knew Burns was no longer with us.
Poor dude.
"You seriously want to face that guy again?!" Rick asked me and before I could answer, he ran as fast as he could to get Evelyn.
"Do we seriously need to go hunt down that super mummy? Can't we just run away like O'Connell just did?" Jonathan said with a scared tone.
"I mean, just look outside" he said as he pointed out the open doorway that led to a pretty substantial view of the fort/city.
I quickly made my way through the doorway to observe the events more closely.
Seriously though, the entrance of Fort Brydon did this place no justice. It was a colossal mega city but without all the modern day buildings.
Though now it just looked like the epitome of an apocalypse with the scene that was taking place.
The storm that I saw looming over when we all arrived had grown even bigger and now there were small balls of fire raining down.
The fireballs were numerous and were wreaking havoc on anything it hit.
Large amounts of buildings were hit and started to crumble away.
Tents that were hit had instantly caught on fire and started to burn away completely.
All in all, it was a sight to behold and had me stun-locked for a good few seconds.
'WHO THE HELL SENT ALDUIN HERE?' I shouted in my head with my eyes widened.
I quickly ran back away from the doorway and quickly dragged Jonathan to try and find where Rick had gone.
"Oh so we are running away?" Jonathan asked me as he had no choice but to be dragged along again.
Ignoring Jonathan's questions, I quickly made my way to an open courtyard that was just outside the hotel we were just in.
In the corner of my eye, I saw both Rick and Evelyn and unsurprisingly, Beni who was coming down a flight of stairs and quickly tried to avoid Rick, which we just now noticed.
Though he couldn't avoid it, he was caught and held against the wall by Rick.
As we got closer to them, we could hear what Rick was saying.
"Beni, you little stinkweed, where've you been?" Rick started to interrogate Beni.
Before Beni could even have a chance at answering, everyone heard a blood-curdling scream coming from upstairs, where Beni had initially retreated from.
"Yo! You guys wanna check it out?" I said as I pulled out the specially made pistols that were holstered similarly to Rick's.
He did the same and quickly took out his own revolver and grabbed Evelyn and led us to the source of the scream earlier.
As we went up the stairs, I questioned Rick, "You think Beni's on his side now? Didn't he come from this way?"
"Maybe, that little weasel." Rick said with an angry tone.
"Deimos, you got an extra gun? I dropped mine at the bar." Jonathan said sheepishly.
I sighed and pulled a normal pistol from the holster on my waist and just gave it to him.
"Use this. And stop eyeing my guns." I said to Jonathan as he was basically drooling over the guns that I was using.
"My special tungsten made blue Colt 1911's were basically built to be wielded by me and only me. I doubt you could even hold it properly." I quickly told Jonathan who now was a little let down.
As we entered a room which was basically a luxurious penthouse, we saw a pretty unwelcome sight.
We saw Burns…well what now was supposed to be Burns sitting on the chair lying motionless.
Of course, everyone knew of his predicament where he had lost his eyes and tongue, but what welcomed us now was a dry husk of his body.
His skin had now looked extremely leathery and extremely shriveled up.
It looked like he had never drank any water in his entire life for it to look that shriveled.
As we kept looking at him, feeling bad for the dude, I quickly noticed Imhotep standing in front of the dressing table in the room.
I quickly aimed my two pistols at him to which both Rick and Jonathan followed the same, quickly aiming their weapons at him.
Although his back was facing towards us, we could clearly see the changes that were taking place in his body.
The rotted flesh and muscle on him was quickly being nurtured and started to repair itself slowly.
Though it still looked rotted away, shriveled and dry, it was still a better sight to see compared to how he looked when we had originally met.
He quickly spun around and now we could clearly see his face.
It now actually had some depth and muscle.
Honestly, it looked really freaky but still kinda interesting with how all the muscle fibers were regenerating itself at a visible rate.
'Maybe I could achieve the same if my vitality is absurdly high enough?' I asked mainly to myself but also as a question to Eve.
{Technically yes, but it would have to be extremely high since Imhotep here is using magic to speed it up and the fluids of others. Don't worry though, I doubt you'd be injured to that extent for you to rely on this form of regeneration.}
'Thanks again.' I mentally said.
Quickly going back to the situation in hand, it seemed that Imhotep's regeneration had stopped.
Guess he needs even more people to obtain his normal appearance and powers.
Everyone looked completely shocked at the sight of Imhotep, who in turn screamed at us.
"We are in serious trouble." Rick said, now slightly trembling at the sight while Jonathan and Evelyn both were completely speechless in fear.
Imhotep started to walk towards us and that's when Rick and Jonathan started to unload bullets into him.
Although they were riddling every part of his body with bullets, it did nothing to stop his approach.
I backed off a few steps back and shot him accurately in his kneecaps that did slow him down but was quickly regenerated.
I quickly aimed for his head next and shot him again.
Same results.
He staggered for a little bit but quickly regenerated the damage.
Okay. Guess guns don't really work on mummies.
Imhotep got to where Rick and Jonthan were, who were standing side by side, and quickly tossed them both away with his strength.
At this moment, Henderson and Dave walked through the entrance and were quickly knocked down by both Rick and Jonathan.
As Imhotep turned away from the damage he had caused and quickly talked to Evelyn in Ancient Egyptian.
After a few phrases that I could barely understand with words such as "Saved me. Undead. Thank you." It looked like he was about to lean in for a kiss.
Holy crap.
Didn't know 3,000 year old mummies were also this straightforward.
I quickly roared out. "IMHOTEP!"
At the sudden outburst, Imhotep quickly turned to my direction and a quick and slight hint of fear flashed through his eyes.
"So you've finally recognized me, eh?" I said as I holstered my guns and started to crack my knuckles and stretch my arms.
"Wanna go another round then?" I said now with a demented smile on my face.
Before I could even approach him, he quickly spiraled to a small mini sandstorm and exited out the penthouse through the balcony.
"Next time it is then!?" I quickly ran towards where he had gotten out and yelled out.
Finally recovering, Rick stood upright and reaffirmed, "We are in VERY serious trouble."
-FEW HOURS LATER-
After Imhotep had left, the firestorms and the storm had dissipated and all was calm for now.
Making sure we didn't leave anything else behind and giving Burns a proper burial, we headed back to the museum/library that Evelyn worked in.
As we all entered the museum of antiquities, Jonathan brought up a question that everyone had in their minds since we left the hotel.
"He does seem to like you, Evy?"
"Yeah, what's that about?" Rick agreed with Jonathan.
Dave had finally had enough and wanted answers.
"What's this guy want anyway?"
"There's only one person I know who can possibly give us any answers." Evelyn said as we headed straight for the owner's office.
As we rounded the corner to his office, we saw him talking to someone.
That someone was Ardeth Bay.
Everybody stopped and stood in their tracks.
"YOU!?" Evelyn said loudly to which Rick and everyone except me pulled out their weapons and aimed at Ardeth.
The owner just nodded his head and looked at us. "Miss Carnavon. Gentlemen."
"What is he doing here?" Evelyn questioned him.
"Do you truly wish to know? Or would you prefer to just shoot us?" the owner said.
"After what we just saw, I'm willing to go on a little faith here." Rick said as he uncocked his revolver to which everyone followed suit and did the same.
-A FEW MOMENTS LATER-
After getting situated I looked back to my stats.
Before we left, I had done my daily quest again that had reset.
[HOST: Deimos Yusha
STR: 27
VIT: 27
SPE: 27
DEX: 27
INT: 20]
Currently, everyone except me was discussing the ancient order that the owner and Ardeth Bay were a part of.
Since I already knew about it, I just told them that I wasn't interested in knowing and just left with them having a flabbergasted look on their faces.
Since I had nothing to do and I was basically at a library, I quickly started to read through as many books as possible.
As I got comfortable at a table that was piled up with various books on Ancient Egypt, I started to read them one by one.
Before that I clarified a few more things regarding the intelligence part of the system to Eve.
"Okay Eve. What's the current rate of exchange of books to intelligence? Is it like 1 : 1 or something else entirely?"
{Trying to get more smart now, are we? Okay, for every book you read, it will add half a point in intelligence. So the ratio would be 1 : 0.5 .}
That's pretty good considering that I'm only reading books.
{Also another thing, you can't just flip through pages and expect the rewards to come rushing in, you have to put in the time and properly read the books entirely.}
That's fair. Though it would've been overpowered if I could do that.
Mentally readying myself, I picked up one of the books on the table.
Stories of Ancient Peoples 1901
Reading through each page carefully and getting a better understanding of ancient civilizations, notably ancient Egypt's, I had a solidified foundation towards these topics.
I eventually finished the book and looked up at the large grandfather clock.
It seems that with my intelligence already being at 20, it also increases the speed in which I can take in information.
It has taken all but 10 minutes for me to finish a book that had over 240 pages of content.
DING
An audible ding was heard in my head and a panel appeared in front of me.
[INTELLIGENCE IMPROVED
Stories of Ancient Peoples (1901) ✓
Rewards: INT + 0.5, Basic Understanding of Ancient Civilizations]
Very nice.
I put the finished book on another table and quickly took another one.
This one should help with my translation and reading.
Intermediate Ancient Egyptian: Language Study
This book was a lot longer than the last one, now consisting of over 700 pages that went in depth to a large amount of hieroglyphs and spoken language.
This one ended up taking a little over 20 minutes for me to fully read and understand.
Similar to the last book I finished, an audible sound was heard only by me.
DING
[INTELLIGENCE IMPROVED
Intermediate Ancient Egyptian: Language Study ✓
Rewards: INT + 0.5, Hieroglyphic Translation Lvl 1 → Lvl 3, Spoken Ancient Egyptian Lvl 3]
Nice. It seems that reading specific type books also gives me various skills in different fields.
Guess, I'll be in this library for as long as I possibly can.
-SKIP A FEW HOURS WITH RICK-
Rick looked out the window at the British soldiers that were manning the walls. Above and beyond them, –is a black sun.
The eclipse was still holding place and everything outside was barely illuminated by sunlight. It all looked very crypt and biblical.
Evelyn and Jonathan were pacing about the room on Evelyn's foyer of her place here.
"We must stop him from regenerating." she said before turning to Dave and Henderson.
"Who opened that chest?" she asked them.
"Well, there was me and Dave here, and then poor Burns of course, oh yeah, and that Egyptologist fella." Henderson answered her.
Rick turned away from the window and asked Henderson, "What about my buddy, Beni?"
"No, he scrammed out of there before we opened the damned thing." Dave said.
"Yeah, he was the smart one." Henderson added.
"Well…yeah that sounds like Beni." Rick said.
"We must find the Egyptologist and bring him back here to the safety of the fort, before the creature can get to him." Evelyn stated.
"Right. She stays here, you three, with me." Rick casually said.
Everyone pounced up all at once.
"The hell with that! I'm not goin' nowhere! We're safe right here." Henderson retaliated.
"Yeah, I'm not leaving this fort for nothin'. Dave sided with Henderson.
"Who put you in charge?! You can't just leave me behind like some old suitcase. I'm the one responsible for this mess and I intend to be the one to clean it up." Evelyn quickly disagreed.
Rick just shook his head and sighed loudly. Not really taking any of it, he picks up Evelyn, takes her into her bedroom, tossed her on the bed, walked out, slammed the door shut and locked it with a key.
From inside the room, you can hear her screaming and pounding on the door.
Rick walked up to Dave and asked him with a threatening tone, "This door doesn't open. She doesn't come out, and no one goes in, right?"
"Right!" Dave had no choice but to agree.
Rick turned to leave and while walking out told Jonathan, "Let's go Jonathan."
Jonathan looked worried and tried to bring up an excuse for him to not go and said "Oh, well, I thought I could just stay at the fort and reconnoiter."
Rick, not turning back, just said loudly, "NOW!"
"Yeah, right. We're just gonna go rescue the Egyptologist." Jonathan said as he quickly stood up and followed Rick.
"By the way, where the hell's Deimos? It's been like 4 hours since he walked to the library." Rick suddenly had a moment of realization.
-BACK TO DEIMOS-
"My brain hurts."
I said to nobody in particular as I stared at the several piles of books on the floor that accumulated during my study montage.
I gotta say though, there's quite the selection of books here.
Although it's mainly just historical books and books that relate to ancient and present day Egypt, there's still a few ones that I found interesting enough to read.
There were selections of novels that I found interesting which I read but gave nothing other than the INT attribute and others that gave me small time skills.
Things like cooking, writing, plays, poetry, etc. were all piled away after I was done reading them.
There were also some combat books that were stored in a closed off section of the library.
Since reading these books, I've gotten many different skills that pertain to those books.
A lot of those skills were kinda dog water and I personally didn't feel like I was gonna use them at all, but who knows.
Along with those kinda useless skills right now, the most notable were the language and translation books.
Reading all that I could find, I can safely say that I was now fluent in speaking, reading and writing in every major language of the world as well as my ancient Egyptian and hieroglyphic translating reaching their max levels.
"Please show me my current skills now, Eve."
{No problem.}
[SKILLS
Firearms Lvl. 6 → Lvl. 8
Niko Style Lvl. 1 → Lvl. 3
Housecare Lvl. 6
Polyglot Lvl. 9
Literary Arts Lvl. 6
Hieroglyphic Translation Lvl. 1 → 10
Detoxify ]
Quite the collection.
Since I got too into reading, I wasn't really sure what my stats looked like right now either.
"Eve, show me my stats now please."
{Certainly!}
[HOST: Deimos Yusha
STR: 27
VIT: 27
SPE: 27
DEX: 27
INT: 55]
"Eve. Am I reading this right? I have 55 intelligence?" I said to confirm if I indeed was reading it right.
{You seem surprised. You did read a total of 70 books in 4 ½ hours! Quite the record you just achieved and I think I can safely say that you probably won't have to read another book for the rest of your life.}
"70 books? In 4 ½ hours? That's like spending 4 minutes per book!" I said being completely shocked at this outcome.
I leaned back into the chair that I was sitting in and only now, and stretched out.
Only then did I hear both Jonathan and Rick walking into the room.
"This is the library right?" Jonathan said before he spotted me surrounded by piles of books.
"Good Lord! Deimos! What's with all the books?" Jonathan said, surprised by the amount.
Rick noticed it as well and was also quite appalled by it.
"Hey, Deimos. You alright here?" Rick asked me.
"Yeah no worries, I was just finishing up." I answered back.
"Cool. We were just about to head out and find the Egyptologist guy, wanna tag along?" Rick asked.
"Sure, where are we headed to first?" I questioned him since I'm very certain by the time we get to him, it'll already be too late. Pretty sure we could find Beni as well, that little rat.
"Let's head to where his place is." Rick said and motioned for me to get up.
"Alright, let's go." I said I stretched out even more.
-A FEW MOMENTS LATER AT ALLEN'S OFFICE-
As we were nearing Allen's office after asking everyone we could about where it was, we could hear the sounds of paper and furniture being knocked around.
We go to the room and lo and behold, Beni was there ransacking Allen's office, trying to search for something.
"Well, well, well. Let me guess, spring cleaning?" Rick said after we observed quietly.
Beni looked at us for a moment and quickly retreated and ran towards a window.
Since we couldn't really have him going back to Imhotep, I just grabbed a chair and lightly threw it at Beni's retreating figure.
BOOM
"Nice shot." Jonathan said as Rick approached Beni who was now on the ground in pain.
"I…honestly didn't even try that hard." I looked at Jonathan.
"I can believe that. Especially since you ripped open that shriveled up sack's sarcophagus." Jonathan said.
"Oh Beni, did you fall down? Let me help you up!" Rick said as he held Beni by his collar and held him up against one of Allen's shelves.
"You came back from the desert with a new friend, didn't you, Beni?" Rick questioned.
"What friend? You are my only friend." Beni said mockingly.
Both me and Jonathan held in our laughter as Rick dragged him away from the shelf and slammed him into Allen's desk.
"What the hell are you doing with this creep, huh Beni!? What's in it for you!?" Rick said, ignoring our antics.
"It is better to be the right hand of the devil than in his path. As long as I serve him, I am immune."
Rick slammed him again and asked "Immune from what?!"
"I don't wanna tell you. You'll just hurt me some more." Beni said.
"He's got a point there you know." Jonathan remarked.
"What are you looking for? And try not to lie to me." Rick held Beni up towards the ceiling fan.
Could that even decapitate him if he wanted to try that?
I highly doubt it, but it's a good scare tactic.
"AHH! The book! The black book they found in Hamunaptra. He wants it back! He said to me it would be worth its weight in gold."
"What's he want the book for?" I asked Beni as I signaled for Rick to drop him.
"Ah come on, I don't know." Beni said.
Rick, not liking that answer, grabbed him again and lifted him up back to the ceiling fan.
"AHH! Something about bringing his dead girlfriend back to life! But that's all! He just wants the book, I swear! Just the book, I swear!" Beni said before he looked at Jonathan and quickly said "And your sister. But other than that-"
AHHHH
A scream could be heard from outside and cut off what Beni was about to say.
Beni realizing that we were all distracted and seizing the opportunity, knees Rick in the balls and jumps through the window and onto the street.
"That looked rather painful." Jonathan said to Rick who was now hunched over.
"Ya know, ever since I met you, my luck has been for crap." Rick said, trying to compose himself.
"Yes, I know, I do that to people." Jonathan said with his head down.
AHHHH
The same scream was heard again and this time we all gathered at the window that Beni had broken through to make his escape.
Down in the bazaar, people are screaming and backing away from Allen.
Or rather, the shriveled up corpse of Allen.
A partially decayed hand reached down and took one of those sacred canopic jars out of our Egyptologist friend's shriveled up hand.
We all knew who that hand represented. It's Imhotep, who was now regenerated even further.
He looked up towards the window and looked at me particularly and grinned.
He then unhinged his jaw to an inhuman size and from his mouth, a huge swarm of flies came out and raced straight towards us.
We all slammed the window shutters and heard a THUNK like noise as the swarm slammed against it.
"Damn it! That's two down and only two to go." Rick said as he held the shutters.
"He'll be coming after Evy soon after." I said.
END CHAPTER 13