Chapter 44: Everyone Sit Tight! This Lord is Taking Off!
When Hikigaya once again saw the massive crater he and Horus had blasted into the dried-up Nile riverbed, he knew he had returned to the modern era.
The power he and Horus had wielded had long since dissipated.
The area had reverted to a vast expanse of yellow sand, and the Nile's water had returned to its pitiful trickle.
Only the crater remained, proof of the battle that had once taken place there—but even that was now filled with water.
Hikigaya silently watched the riverbank for a while. Then he waved his hand, erasing the crater and restoring the riverbed to its original state.
"You're not going to leave it?" Haruno asked him. "Maybe you'll want to go back someday."
As the only one who had spent a considerable amount of time with Hikigaya in that legendary city, Haruno could tell he hadn't come away without feelings.
Even raising a pet makes people reluctant to part with it—how much more so with human interactions? She herself found herself missing that young King Minos a bit.
Who knew if he was being bullied again by those women after she left?
"No need," Hikigaya shook his head and exhaled. "If I want to go back, I can—I've figured it out."
"You can go back?" Haruno was shocked. That was not the comforting answer she'd expected.
"Yeah. Not exactly to any time, but I can get back to Ra's side."
Hikigaya spoke with absolute confidence.
This round trip had allowed him to grasp the flow of time itself.
Unfortunately, the power wasn't yet under his complete control.
Even to use it, he needed a medium and specific conditions.
That medium was the Nile River.
This river gathered within it everything beautiful and terrible from Egyptian mythology. When coupled with the ancient Egyptians' concept of time, it also possessed temporal power.
For example, the merged form of Horus and Ra—Ra was the later solar king of unified Egypt, while Horus was once the god-king of Upper Egypt, symbolizing the Nile's flooding.
Sun and Nile—in the hearts of ancient Egyptians—had, to some degree, become one and the same.
When Nut and Geb had an affair, Ra cursed them to never be able to bear children within the time he controlled.
Although the Egyptians were indifferent to the material world and never emphasized time deities, the concept of the Sun God being the God of Time existed—very similar to the eastern Yi people's view of the sun.
Therefore, it was only by wielding both Nile and solar powers that Hikigaya had accidentally disrupted time during his battle with Horus in the river.
And with that experience, even without outside help, Hikigaya could now travel through time using the Nile as a medium.
He just needed to study the ancient Egyptian calendar first.
"No rush. Let's go home first," he said.
He stopped looking at the place, pulled Haruno's hand, and walked back to the others who had been quietly watching him.
"Are we heading back to the city?" Hazazi asked a bit awkwardly.
He had the deepest knowledge of magic among them, but that also made it hardest for him to process what had happened. Now he looked at Hikigaya with something closer to reverence.
Not like before—back then, it was admiration, not awe.
"Nope. I want to go home and rest. Let's just leave like this," Hikigaya said. "Everyone hold hands and stand together."
After his crash course from the gods of the New Kingdom period, Hikigaya felt he could finally say goodbye to buses forever.
No more getting on buses ever again, thank you very much...
Suddenly, he felt a weight on his shoulder—Tamamo-no-Mae had climbed onto it.
She had gotten noticeably fatter. Could probably sell her for a decent sum.
Hikigaya mocked her silently and then began activating his authority.
Ancient Egyptian and later Greek theologians believed in a class of beings far above humans—great spirits, or "daimones." These powerful entities were often the spirits of noble and virtuous humans who had died and retained their sentience.
These beings floated around humanity. If people fulfilled certain special conditions and honored them, they might receive the spirits' blessings and be protected from misfortune.
Despite their nobility, these spirits—before finding their rightful place in the cosmos—suffered, wandering endlessly. In Empedocles' "Purifications," he described these wandering "great spirits" like this:
"Strong winds throw them into the sea, the sea spits them onto land, the land into the blazing light of the sun, and the sun back into the swirling wind. They are driven from place to place, cast aside in fear wherever they go."
Ancient theologians believed these beings endlessly cycled through heaven and earth, suffering until they transcended and found their rightful place in the universe, becoming divine.
Hikigaya suspected this was how "gods" originated.
That would explain the link between gods and mythology—both stemmed from the same source: the highest ideals of individual and collective human spirit.
And it also explained why someone like Tamamo-no-Mae—a powerful yokai—couldn't become a god despite all her scheming: Girl, you weren't human to begin with!
After all that, it still came back to how awesome humans were. That thought brought him some weird sense of pride.
Anyway, back to the point. While in ancient Egypt, Hikigaya had experimented with this theory.
The results showed that the human spirit could indeed exist independently from the body under certain conditions—but it was also incredibly dangerous.
Those slaves whose bodies Hikigaya had transformed using his authority—exposing their spirits to the natural world—would have their minds instantly destroyed unless he gave them special protection.
Turns out a "noble soul" really is a prerequisite...
Which basically meant: no morals, no account!
But thankfully, Godslayers were exceptions to all rules. Even with no morals, as long as they had the Godslayer's protection, they could still play the spiritual simulator.
That was exactly what Hikigaya was doing now.
As the wind around them grew stronger, his power flowed into everyone and the fox through their physical connection, beginning to take effect.
For everyone but Hikigaya and Tamamo-no-Mae, it was an indescribable and surreal sensation.
Their bodies were fading, yet their senses and spirits remained fully intact. The warmth of the wind felt comforting, but beyond the wind, they could all sense a terrifying realm—an absolute no-go zone.
They were all immersed in this strange, transcendent feeling until Hikigaya's voice suddenly echoed in their minds:
"WAHAHAHA! Everyone sit tight! This lord is taking off!"