Chapter 18: The Divine Power Descending Upon the Earth
Led by a certain Pharaoh who had a habit of impulsively setting off at any time, Hikigaya followed the procession as they advanced.
This city had truly begun to take shape.
Along the route, one could already glimpse its future appearance.
The main avenues connecting various temples and the royal palace had already been paved, allowing Ramesses' convoy to gallop freely.
In this era, with the manpower of the Egyptian Empire, building a city didn't take very long.
Ramesses wasn't even the first Pharaoh to establish a new city as his administrative center — this was actually one of the favorite ways for Pharaohs of the time to flaunt their power.
Menes, the founder of the ancient Egyptian kingdom, had built Memphis for fun.
The ancient Egyptian Pharaohs' enthusiasm for architecture was simply off the charts.
Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom loved pyramids — their aim was to create sacred spaces on Earth.
By the Middle Kingdom, Pharaohs began to pay more attention to the afterlife, so they started building royal tombs.
And now, in the New Kingdom, the Egyptian pantheon had become the most mature it had ever been. The number of deities continued to increase, and their powers reached the greatest heights in Egypt's history.
One temple after another became the Pharaohs' favorite new obsession.
But that didn't mean they stopped building cities — and Ramesses II took it to the next level.
In the future, when this city would lose access to the nearby Nile tributary, Ramesses II's descendants would undertake a massive relocation: buildings would be cut apart, statues would be moved in whole blocks, and everything would be rebuilt beside a new branch of the river.
By then, Egypt would already have become a weak nation — but even so, it shows that for the Pharaoh's family, giving up their need to show off was harder than death.
Following the convoy, Hikigaya soon saw the river again.
Across the water was the empty land on the west bank that Moses (or rather, Ramesses) had pointed out to him on the map.
The smooth road ended here.
Soldiers escorted the Pharaoh and his queen, Hikigaya, and the priests onto small boats docked at the riverbank. They crossed this not-very-wide river and stepped onto the west bank.
The moment Hikigaya got off the boat, he stepped into a patch of mud.
There were no signs of construction on this side of the bank yet, but the vegetation on the surface had been cleared away.
Hikigaya looked around.
Roughly estimating using modern measurements, the cleared land was about five hectares — even by future standards, not exactly a small project.
According to Moses', or rather, Ramesses' plan, a library, warehouse, and gardens would be built here to accompany the temple.
The Egyptians quickly disembarked and spread out. Soldiers moved around the perimeter and brought in wooden stakes. Ramesses personally directed them, positioning the stakes in specific locations.
Then Ramesses took a wooden mallet from a priest and began driving the stakes halfway into the ground, tying guide ropes to them.
"What is the Pharaoh doing?" Hikigaya asked curiously, turning to a nearby priest.
If this were before, he'd have been lucky to get a grunt in response.
But now, the priest respectfully answered right away — this was a ritual to awaken the memory of Imhotep and all the architects.
The former was the builder of Egypt's first pyramid.
Hikigaya thought the name sounded flashy, but before he could say more, he turned back and saw Ramesses II had changed professions — he was now acting like a farmer, digging at the ground with a hoe.
What the heck was this?
Next, Hikigaya watched Ramesses patiently carve out trench after trench in the earth. He placed gold and silver bars, miniature models, and protective amulets inside them, then buried them with soil.
And even that wasn't enough for him — Ramesses started playing with a lever.
It was an extremely primitive one, which he used to move a precisely cut stone block onto a clear patch of land. Then, using local clay, he began molding mud bricks by hand.
During this entire process, Hikigaya remained silent — because this action had triggered one of his divine authorities.
It was the power of Osiris — the one that reveals all things in the light.
Hikigaya saw the Temple of a Million Years, even though it had not yet been built.
He saw the floors, the walls, and the ceiling of the structure — and he stood within it.
Before the illusion of the temple faded, the Pharaoh began walking ceremoniously around the sacred ground, scattering pellets scented with frankincense.
When the priests handed him a wooden model of a doorway, and he erected it with his own hands, the vision Hikigaya saw grew even clearer — he felt divine power entering this place.
"Man and god…" Hikigaya murmured to himself. His voice was so soft only he could hear it.
He was beginning to understand why the female priests he had seen in the royal palace before — who had looked as weak as kittens — could still wield divine power.
This wasn't a case of gods being distant from mortals. In this era, when the mythology was just reaching maturity, the closeness between humans and gods was terrifying.
It was likely that as long as certain conditions were met, the gods' power could be directly projected onto the land!
Hikigaya narrowed his eyes.
At this point, he no longer saw the ancient Egyptians around him — he was looking at the divine power that had been drawn by the Pharaoh's ritual.
He saw the power of language — and then, order.
As more and more divine energy poured in, the godslayer blood in him began to boil.
Power roared inside his body, trying to break free. Emotionally, he wanted to shatter this power from his eternal enemies.
But rationality told him not to.
This wasn't the era he was familiar with, and the gods of this age weren't the ones he knew. Even if the names were the same, there was a good chance they were entirely different entities.
That meant he had to let go of one of his long-held advantages.
Instead, he could use this divine power to do something else.
Divine energy was the best stimulant for a godslayer. It could push their strength to the maximum, allowing them to do things they couldn't normally achieve.
Like now — allowing him to use the special ability he had received from Osiris, even at night.
He held back and, under the stimulation of the divine power, continued to enhance his "vision," trying to locate the companion he still hadn't found.
And this time — he felt something. Faintly.
It was like looking through a shattered screen. Though the image wasn't clear, he could feel it was there — closer than ever before.
All he had to do was repair the cracks and see it clearly.
And soon, the opportunity arrived.
A massive obelisk appeared in his vision. A huge crowd of slaves emerged, using their frail bodies to transport the monolith and erect it on the site.
As the obelisk was raised, the land before Hikigaya's eyes disappeared — it transformed into a vast sky.
That surge of power repaired the "cracks."
Hikigaya could finally see it clearly.
He saw Yukinoshita Haruno!