Chapter 326: You Are Not My Son

The first anti-tomb-raiding curse blanketed an inscribed stone stele.

The key caught the tumbler and turned halfway. The curse fell dormant.

The hostile layer of ether surrounding the stele relaxed, settling into a pool of stagnant water.

Richard pressed the "mirror" against it.

The moment its true name was spoken, Richard clearly felt it...

Deep within the veil, a thread severed for decades reconnected between the Black Soil River Virtuoso's true body and the stele.

The stele recognized its master. The power radiating from the Virtuoso's true body noticeably thickened.

Far out in the waters beyond the Harbor, the mummy vessel strengthened in tandem.

It raised a hand. The mirror on the ocean's surface unfurled once more, covering a far wider span than before.

Golden light beat down, but the mirrored surface refracted it right back, blasting a blinding flare into the Perception of the two defending Virtuosos.

The Solar Tradition Virtuoso was forced to recoil—something that had never happened during the first two trials.

If uttering the true name of a single relic could bolster it this much, what would happen when all four were spoken?

Richard wasted no time. The second curse blanketed a Painted Wooden Coffin.

A winged Isis was painted across the lid, though most of the pigment had faded away.

"He who takes this shall find his soul severed in the river."

The mummy's inscription key slid into the lock once more, but this time it snagged.

The protection of Isis was fundamentally different from the standard anti-tomb-raiding curses left by ordinary priests.

Woven into Isis's curse was a thread of maternal protection.

The key jammed halfway through the turn.

The curse was asking a question: Are you my son?

The mummy was a priest, and priests were entirely different from pharaohs.

Isis's curse recognized pharaohs; it cared little for priests.

Richard considered this for a few seconds before changing tactics.

Instead of brute-forcing it with the priestly inscriptions, he isolated the specific passage detailing the "Eye of Horus" from the mummy and channeled it over.

Horus was the son of Isis. A mother's lock had to be opened by a son's hand.

The curse hesitated. "You are not my son."

"But you carry his name."

The wooden coffin's true form within the veil manifested: Isis, spreading her wings to shelter a golden pharaoh's sarcophagus.

Its true name was spoken. The Virtuoso's true body surged with power once more.

Out in the ocean beyond the Harbor, the mummy flipped the surface mirror over.

The upward-facing mirror could only bounce light back toward the sky. The reversed mirror now faced the seabed.

The ocean floor was dark, and the dark was the undisputed domain of shadows.

Beneath the waves of the entire anchorage zone, shadows began to slither.

The Solar Tradition Virtuoso forced the golden light several feet into the water, but the beam ricocheted off the inverted mirror.

The Forge Fire Virtuoso began to boil the entire expanse of the ocean, attempting to shatter the mirror with sheer heat.

But the mirror was vastly thicker than before.

The two defending Virtuosos were forced to expend even more power to contend with it.

Consequently, the Perception net covering the city grew even thinner.

The third curse rested on a Gold-Gilt Mask. Within the veil, it took the form of a pharaoh's face.

The sun shining upon a pharaoh was tantamount to a coronation. It was exactly this resonance that the Solar Tradition Virtuoso had exploited for an easy advantage last time.

Richard needed to unlock the mask while the Solar Tradition Virtuoso was still pinned down at the Harbor.

Otherwise, the moment the golden light returned and resonated with the Solar Tradition, Richard would be caught in the crossfire and crushed from both sides.

The curse placed on the Gold-Gilt Mask was far simpler than the first two.

A pharaoh's mask was, after all, meant to be worn by the pharaoh himself.

The priestly inscriptions contained a specific ritual dedicated to crafting the mask for a pharaoh.

The craftsman had the right to touch it. A single turn of the key unlocked it immediately.

The mask's true name was spoken.

The fourth relic was the best-preserved among the four Canopic Jars.

The lid bore the likeness of Imsety, a son of Horus, who guarded the liver.

Its curse operated on the same principle as the one on Isis's coffin, similarly steeped in maternal protection.

Yet there was an additional layer here—something Richard had never encountered before.

He pressed the "mirror" to the jar and attempted to read it. The curse violently erupted. It was weeping.

Preserved inside the jar for thousands of years, the liver had been crying for decades—ever since it was dug out of its native tomb and shipped halfway across the ocean.

The liver belonged to Imsety, and Imsety's domain was "direction."

Torn from its rightful resting place, it had lost its sense of direction.

For thousands of years, it had only known a single location: the lower right quadrant of the deceased's chest cavity.

Now, it sat in a wooden crate in the basement of the Imperial Capital Museum.

It had no idea where it was. Its wails echoed far and wide across the veil.

Richard's heart sank slightly.

Ordinary people would never hear this weeping.

But anyone with Inspiration could feel a violent writhing in the right side of their chest at this exact moment.

He channeled the mummy's inscription, resting it gently against the lip of the jar.

"Iw-i iry wab en-ek."

(I purify thee.)

As the priest's words of purification fell, the weeping slowly subsided.

The curse unraveled. The Canopic Jar's true name was spoken.

For the fourth time, the Virtuoso's true body surged with power.

Beyond the Harbor, the mummy stood atop the ocean mirror. Indigo and black-gold light intertwined, cloaking its entire form.

It raised its linen-wrapped right hand and reached out toward the two defending Virtuosos.

"Helio Montague! Come here!"

The golden sun bore down from above, blasting a pillar of light onto the sea.

But this time, the ocean mirror caught it.

The beam shattered into dozens of rays, refracting across the waters flanking the Harbor and turning the ocean a blinding, silvery white.

The mummy crushed a section of the mirror beneath its foot and drew a shadow spear from the jagged shards.

It was pitch-black with a razor-sharp tip, possessing no true shaft... The entire weapon was simply a tightly wrung cord of shadow.

It hurled the weapon. The shadow spear spiraled through the air.

Golden light sought to burn it away, but the spear threaded perfectly through the gaps in the blinding rays.

The spear struck the exact boundary where the golden light met the sea. The seam violently tore open.

The golden light hemorrhaged from the breach, exactly as if someone had knocked a hole through the bottom of a barrel.

The Solar Tradition Virtuoso was forced to divert his power to patch the wound.

The Forge Fire Virtuoso flanked from the opposite side, driving a crushing wall of molten iron toward the mummy.

The mummy absorbed the catastrophic impact of the entire molten iron wall as if it were nothing.

Only the outermost layers of linen charred. With the true names of the four relics spoken, its durability had scaled to an entirely new tier.

In that moment, the two defending Virtuosos reached the same conclusion: they could no longer afford to waste time at the Harbor.

For every second they were delayed, another relic in the city could be compromised.

If every relic had its true name spoken, the power of this vessel would likely rival the Virtuoso's true body.

By then... The golden light began to retreat toward the Harbor, and the Forge Fire pulled back as well.

Richard's scalp prickled. They were coming back.

In the inner ring of the Storeroom behind the iron gates, only a few core relics remained.

In the absolute deepest recesses of the Storeroom, silver threads spiderwebbed across the floor into a circle far more intricate than the outer rings. Hovering dead in the center was the Sacred Ibis Scepter.

The entire scepter was cast from dark copper. Its head took the shape of a perched sacred ibis.

The ibis's long beak parted slightly, cradling a crescent moon atop its crest.

Deep, tightly packed inscriptions covered the length of the staff—carvings far older than those on any of the other relics.

The moment Richard's Spirit Vision brushed the scepter, it violently rebounded.

He stumbled a half-step back, shaking his head to clear the numbing backlash lingering in his Inspiration.

This scepter belonged to Thoth.

Thoth, the god with the head of an ibis.

The God of Wisdom, the God of Writing, the God of the Moon, the God of Accounting.

Among the entire pantheon of the Black Soil River Basin, Thoth occupied a uniquely impartial position. He never picked sides.

When Horus and Set warred, Thoth stood by and kept the ledgers.

When Ra and Apophis locked in eternal combat, Thoth stood by and kept the time.

When Isis and Nephthys quarreled, Thoth stood by and arbitrated the dispute.

He cared only for recording and weighing. He was the sole arbiter of right and wrong.

Therefore, this scepter flatly rejected the Black Soil River Virtuoso.

But just how strong was that rejection?

Richard thought back to the chaotic melee at the end of the second trial.

The scepter had stood right at the epicenter of the slaughter. From start to finish, the ibis perched atop it had kept its eyes half-shut, practically rolling them in disdain.

But there was no time to hesitate. The two Virtuosos were about to come crashing back down on him.

He marshaled his power and cautiously extended a plea to communicate.

The ibis atop the scepter snapped its half-shut eyes wide open.

It spoke a single word.

"isfet!" (Falsehood!)

The sacred ibis craned its neck back and let out a piercing shriek.

At that single cry, the sealing arrays lining the entire Storeroom ignited.