Versatile Mage

1583 Tomb of the Demon Child

Translated by XephiZ

Edited by Aelryinth

Everyone had weird expressions when they found themselves in yet another chamber similar to the previous ones after coming out of the passage.

“Another one?”

“There’s no exit again. Does anyone see a coffin?”

The chamber looked empty at first glance. They did not see a coffin hanging in the air. Mo Fan eventually found it; it was already on the ground. It was an unremarkable mummy’s sarcophagus.

“It’s my turn to open it.” Zhao Manyan was bolder after seeing how simple-minded the Mummies were.

Zhao Manyan noticed how strange the coffin was when he walked closer. It was tied shut with an ancient, indestructible vine.

Zhao Manyan did not think too much about it, slowly gathering Light Magic on his palm. The Light Magic extended to his wrist and formed a golden hilt. It grew further and turned into a crescent blade!

Zhao Manyan slashed at the vine wrapping around the coffin. It left a shallow, tiny cut on the vine.

“Mm? It’s pretty tough!” Zhao Manyan was surprised when he failed to cut the vine in half.

Zhao Manyan swung the saber again. This time, he had expended more energy to increase the damage of the blade.

This slash left a deeper cut on the vine. Zhao Manyan roughly estimated it would take seven or eight more slashes to cut through the vine.

“Can you do it?” Mu Bai asked when he saw Zhao Manyan struggling to cut the vine.

“It’s pretty tough… f**k me, what’s going on here? How did it grow back?” Zhao Manyan exclaimed.

The cuts that Zhao Manyan had left on the vine with great effort had healed on their own. He quickly increased his attacking speed and hacked at the vine continuously, but the vine fully recovered in the end.

“I don’t believe it!” Zhao Manyan was annoyed. Even a vine was trying to mess with him. It was time for him to show what he had!

“Zhao Manyan, stop cutting it!” Shreev blurted out with an anxious face.

“Why? We have to open it to leave this place!” Zhao Manyan asked.

“We can’t afford to mess with this guy!” Shreev was holding a book. He had just realized who the small coffin belonged to!

“Really? The other two Mummies were pretty dumb…” Zhao Manyan said.

“An ancient manuscript stated that Khufu once met a demon child when he was young. The demon child almost took his life. It took him great effort to kill the demon child, but even so, he was still scared of it. He asked someone to retrieve an Immortal Vine from the Cape of Good Hope to seal the demon child’s indestructible corpse inside a small sarcophagus. It was the same demon child Khufu learned some powerful Undead Magic from, thus his reign was never challenged…the vine you’re trying to cut is the Immortal Vine, and the markings on the coffin are the same as the ones that were drawn in the manuscript! Khufu has always been afraid of the demon child, yet he kept trying to turn it into his subordinate. The demon child has been in this Pyramid for a few thousand years. If it really became undead, it will possess great power. It’s going to kill us all!” Shreev exclaimed.

Zhao Manyan was startled after hearing those words. He withdrew his saber and stared at the casket.

Its surface was full of uninterpretable diagrams and words. Zhao Manyan tried to see something in them, and suddenly noticed one of the diagrams twisting and turning into the face of a child. It was smiling with an innocent bright smile, yet it was utterly spooky in Zhao Manyan’s eyes!

Zhao Manyan quickly backed away with a pale face.

“It’s…it’s a phantom!” Zhao Manyan said.

Phantoms were the most difficult kind of undead to deal with. They were untraceable, immune to Elemental Magic, and good at controlling the minds of the enemy, Curses, and poison. The coffin was not open, yet it could still smile at Zhao Manyan and send chills down his spine!

“Let’s not mess around with it,” Mo Fan said.

“Yeah, I agree!” Shreev exclaimed.

“But how are we going to open the next door if we don’t open it?” Meos said.

“I’ve investigated, and found out there were countless mummy chambers under Khufu’s command. They were all his councilors during his reign, and the only way into Khufu’s chamber is through these mummy chambers. The chambers are interconnected; each chamber has four doors, one on each wall. When the coffin in a chamber opens, it will open a single door, but killing the owner of the chamber will open all four doors,” Shreev informed them.

“What are you trying to say?” Mo Fan asked, all confused now.

“We can only find the way to Khufu’s chamber by choosing the right door. If we choose the wrong door, it will lead us to another maze with four doors. There are at least a few hundred mummies under Khufu’s command. If we keep wandering between the chambers, we’ll either be trapped to death or be killed by the mummies,” Shreev replied.

“Why didn’t you tell us that in the first place?” Zhao Manyan yelled.

“I only figured out the structure after seeing the demon child’s coffin. Most importantly, the first Mummy we stumbled into, whose coffin was held by the spider with a golden head and a silver body, that’s one of the right chambers. One of the doors in that chamber will lead us in the right direction.”

“…so we are going the right way?” Heidi asked.

“I don’t think so. There were some clues on an ancient painting. It had a spider with a scorpion on it, and a snake on the scorpion, and finally an eagle circling above the snake… if we are going the right way, the next chamber should be related to a scorpion.”

“Are you telling me we have to go back and fight the Ruler-level Mummy? That thing still knows how to talk! It’s clearly a strong monster!” Zhao Manyan protested.

“No wonder it didn’t bother stopping us in the first place. It knew we’d return to its chamber eventually,” Mu Bai mused thoughtfully.

“So should we turn back now?” Meos asked, grimacing.

“Yeah, let’s head back. Either way, we can’t afford to provoke this demon child. We’ll have to identify the owner of the coffin in every chamber first from now on. If we happen to wake a terrifying existence, we are as good as dead. The demon child isn’t part of the way that will lead us to Khufu’s chamber, so we shouldn’t bother challenging it,” Shreev said.

“Shreev, why do you know so much? Are you Khufu’s descendant or something?” Zhao Manyan had to ask.

“Are you kidding me? Almost every Egyptian is related to Khufu!” Shreev grunted.

“Oh, you’re right…”

—

The group did not provoke the demon child any further, especially Zhao Manyan, who was terrified after learning its identity. Mo Fan believed the demon child was around the level of the Queen of the Netherworld. If they did end up waking the demon child, it could easily take them out by raising its little finger!

They took the same passage back. They began to prepare themselves for an upcoming battle when they thought of the Mummy that was connecting random skulls for its head.

“Come, I’ll smash all its skulls into pieces!” Mo Fan strode forward and looked around in the chamber.

Mo Fan was ready to see some skulls, yet the chamber was completely empty.

The mountain of skulls had disappeared, so had the Skeleton Mummy with a wild temper. The chamber seemed smaller than the one before too.

“What now?” Zhao Manyan looked around with wide eyes, yet he failed to spot the skulls.

“Did…did we go the wrong way, even though there was only one exit?”

Shreev said after a brief thought, “As I thought, even if we go back the same way, we won’t return to the previous chambers. It will bring us to a new chamber instead!”

“You kept giving us advice in hindsight. Why can’t you just tell us all this earlier!?” Zhao Manyan yelled in frustration.

“I can only speculate based on what we’ve gone through! Not many people have managed to come out of the Great Pyramid of Giza alive. Even if someone knew the secret of the chambers, it’s most likely lost to history!” Shreev answered.

The new chamber was only the size of a school’s stadium. Instead of a coffin, it had a tombstone at its center.

The ground below the tombstone was bulging, the words on it were written in blood. The group went up to the tombstone to see if they could open the door.

“We have to kill this thing and choose the door to the left of the tombstone to return to the first chamber,” Shreev said.

“Such a hassle…”

“Don’t forget we are in one of the greatest tombs in the world. It’s a miracle that we are still alive!”

Mo Fan did not bother reading the uninterpretable words on the tombstone. He smashed it to pieces with a single punch!

The owners of the other chambers were at least sleeping comfortably in a sarcophagus. The owner of this chamber was clearly a loser compared to the others. It only had a simple, overgrown tombstone!

“Mo Fan, couldn’t you wait until I find out who it belonged to!?” Shreev demanded angrily.

“Wait my ass, who cares about the name of a slave lord who has been dead for a few thousand years? We are not archaeologists!” Mo Fan answered impatiently.

Why would they bother waiting if they had to take out the Mummy to open the right door? Just kill it!