Heroic Spirit Deck in Yu-Gi-Oh!

"Kaiba? Kaiba, are you alright?"

Seeing Kaiba suddenly act strangely without warning, Hoshino Alter couldn't help but grow worried.

"Could it be that the supernatural shock of being able to read ancient text hit him too hard?"

"I'm fine."

Snapped back to reality by Hoshino Alter's voice, Kaiba shook his head, attributing the strange vision he had just seen to exhaustion.

Who wouldn't be tired? Not only had he been suddenly thrown thousands of years into the past, but upon returning, he still had to deal with all the post-KC Grand Tournament paperwork. Elizabeth's sudden scream and the space distortion weren't minor incidents—one misstep, and the entire Kaiba Corporation could collapse.

Even if only for a fleeting moment, a small part of Kaiba's heart had thought,

"Maybe I should just stay in this era and not go back."

But he crushed that thought the moment it surfaced.

"Mehen, the gaze of the Eye of Death shall claim the lives of intruders…"

As Sid repeated what Kaiba had translated, he suddenly exclaimed in realization:

"I get it now! The trap's trigger mechanism is in the eyes of the snake-headed carving on the far wall!"

Hoshino Alter asked, "How did you figure that out?"

"In the legends, Mehen is a god with a serpent's head. As the Sun God Ra's personal bodyguard, he is eternally vigilant. His eyes can rotate 360 degrees to protect Ra without blind spots. So anyone who enters the tomb and meets Mehen's gaze… will be struck down by a hail of arrows."

"But according to your explanation," Hoshino Alter said, "if we want to destroy the trap trigger—Mehen's eyes—on the opposite wall, we'd have to go through that hallway of arrows. Isn't that a guaranteed death sentence?"

Marlene, who was stretching nearby, laughed at Hoshino Alter's naïveté:

"Who said it's a death sentence? Now it's time for the famed bounty hunter Marlene to shine!"

"Shine... as in how?"

Before Hoshino Alter could finish, a cool breeze brushed past her cheek. Marin, now warmed up, dashed forward across the corridor, using the dead bodies of earlier tomb robbers as stepping stones.

She skillfully dodged the arrows and used a dagger drawn from her seductive waist to deflect those she couldn't avoid, moving with the grace of a dancing warrior woman from a foreign land. Hoshino was stunned by her elegance.

Finally, stopping about three meters from the serpent carving of Mehen, Marlene threw her dagger. The silver blade sliced through the air and struck the red gemstone embedded in the serpent's right eye with pinpoint precision.

Crack—!

As the gem shattered, the relentless hail of arrows immediately ceased.

"Ohhh! That was amazing!"

This time, Hoshino Alter wasn't just praising out of politeness—she was genuinely impressed by Marlene's performance. With physical prowess this superhuman, she might just be one of Jounouchi's ancestors.

"All done. You can all come over now—feel free to be grateful~"

Marlene retrieved her dagger from the now-broken gemstone and tucked it back at her waist, beckoning the others to proceed.

With Marlene as the powerhouse, Sid's experience, and the tomb robbers' corpses conveniently marking many of the traps, Hoshino and the others made smooth progress with little resistance.

But despite the seemingly easy advance, Sid's expression grew more and more serious the farther they went.

Hoshino also noticed something was off.

"There are fewer and fewer corpses the deeper we go. It looks like not many of them made it this far. From here on, we might be entering uncharted territory."

Yet Sid's concern was for something else—he was closely examining the marks where a blade had sliced through the ground.

"Too fresh," he muttered.

"These trap trigger marks… the corpses may have been dead for days, but the trap marks look like they were triggered just recently."

Kaiba frowned.

"Recently? Then does that mean someone else passed through here not long ago?"

"I can't rule that out... No—on the contrary, I'd say that's the most likely explanation. Whoever's ahead of us is a tomb raider too, but judging by how they bypassed the traps, they're far more skilled than we are."

While Sid and Marlene relied on destroying traps and teamwork, and the tomb robbers had resorted to brute force and sacrificed manpower, these people seemed to have slipped through untouched—without triggering traps, and without leaving bodies behind. Even Sid, with all his experience, couldn't make sense of it.

Hoshino shivered.

"In this dark, sealed tomb, there's someone else hiding besides us…"

Sid shook his head.

"Not a group—judging by the number of traps triggered, it's probably just one person. A lone intruder who broke into the Pharaoh's tomb."

Marin added cautiously,

"Someone bold and experienced enough to solo infiltrate the Pharaoh's tomb... That kind of person isn't to be taken lightly. We'll have to move forward with caution. Ideally, they haven't realized we're here yet."

If the enemy's in the light and we're hidden in the dark, even if we encounter them, we'll have the advantage.

"Let's hope that's the case…"

Now aware of this new variable, the group proceeded much more carefully, their pace slower and warier. After advancing deeper into the tomb, the corpses of the tomb robbers finally disappeared completely—likely all wiped out before making it to the inner sanctum.

Even though the bodies were gone, signs of triggered traps remained, further supporting Sid's theory.

Cautiously making their way forward step by step, everyone braced themselves, worried they'd run into the mysterious tomb raider at any moment...

But what they found waiting for them wasn't a person—it was a heavy stone door.

"Impossible..."

Sid looked stunned. This was clearly not what he expected.

"This should be the entrance to the Pharaoh's main burial chamber. And yet, we haven't seen a single person along the way. Based on the design of the Aknamkanon Pyramid, there should be only one entrance to the main tomb."

Hoshino speculated:

"Maybe the person ahead of us already entered the burial chamber. Would it be dangerous if we rushed in right after them?"

"The main gate shows no signs of having been opened. If this is the only entrance to the main burial chamber, then the others definitely haven't gotten inside yet. And we haven't seen anyone along the way—it's like they just vanished into thin air…"

Marlene said, "Maybe we just took different paths midway. It's pretty easy to lose your way in a dark place like this. Besides, if they haven't gotten into the main chamber yet, then let's not overcomplicate things. Sid, hurry up and figure out how to open the door. Once we've got what we came for, we can grease our heels and get out of here!"

"With how they handled those traps, would they really get lost?" Though Sid voiced his doubts, his body obediently began examining the door to the main burial chamber.

While Sid crouched by the heavy stone door, studying how to unlock it, Hoshino Alter curiously asked, "Marlene, you said you're not here for the treasures in the Pharaoh's tomb, so what exactly are you here to retrieve?"

Marlene gave a smile, the corners of her lips curling smugly. "If I told you, it might scare you. We were hired by a high-ranking priest from the royal palace to steal the most important thing from the previous Pharaoh's tomb."

"The most important thing? Isn't that the treasure?"

"In the Pharaoh's tomb, the most important thing is, of course, the body of the former Pharaoh."

If you're talking about the most important thing in a tomb, then sure, the body itself makes sense. After all, without a body, a tomb loses its meaning.

That said, even if he was a Pharaoh, at the end of the day, it's still just a corpse. Compared to the priceless treasures buried with him, a dead old man isn't exactly appealing.

So what would anyone want with a dead guy's corpse? Some kind of necrophilia?

Probably noticing the disdain in Hoshino Alter's eyes, Marlene shrugged helplessly.

"Can't help it. The minds of those high-ranking folks aren't something we can easily understand. We take the money, do the job, and don't ask questions. That's the bounty hunter's code. After all, the more you know, the faster you die."

THUD—!

A dull thud echoed through the dark, enclosed space.

"It's open. That's the former Pharaoh's main chamber. Normally, as the Pharaoh's eternal resting place, there shouldn't be any traps inside."

As usual, Marlene took the lead, and the four of them cautiously stepped into the chamber. Just as Sid said, the spacious burial chamber didn't have any of the deadly traps seen earlier. Only three stone coffins lay silently in the southeastern corner of the room.

"Three coffins? So Pharaohs buried their slaves with them too?" Hoshino Alter said in disgust.

In a slave-based society, slaves were treated as property. So even if they were alive, they were often buried with their masters like other funerary goods.

Although it was common practice back then, from Hoshino Alter's modern perspective, it was a cruel and inhumane custom.

"No, he wouldn't have buried slaves with him."

Staring at the three silent coffins in the southeast corner, the uneasy feeling in Sid's heart resurfaced.

"I mentioned this before we came in: this inverted pyramid tomb was built specifically to dispel the resentment Aknamkanon accumulated in life. So burying slaves with him would be completely counterproductive—he wouldn't have done it."

Drawing the dagger strapped to her shapely waist, Marlene suddenly assumed a combat stance. "Then that means... the extra two coffins must be—"

The room fell deathly silent, broken only by the faint sound of stone scraping against stone.

The heavy stone lids of the coffins slowly began to move. A lid of this type typically needed at least two full-grown men to even budge—and that's from the outside. Anyone sealed inside, no matter how strong, would never be able to escape.

Unless, of course, the ones inside aren't human.

BOOM—BOOM!

The stone lids slammed to the ground, kicking up clouds of dust that filled the entire chamber. Then, two creatures over two meters tall, pitch black, wielding curved blades, and with bodies resembling both humans and serpents, emerged from the coffins.

"God-Manifestations of Apophis? Guardian beasts commanded by the previous Pharaoh? No one said anything about these being in the tomb!"

Even Marlene, who had faced countless deadly traps with cool confidence, now looked visibly troubled. "If they've got these guarding the tomb, we'd better be getting hazard pay!"

The serpent-like monsters slithered forward at lightning speed, closing in on Marlene. Despite their massive size, their movements weren't slow at all. One slashed at her with its blade, clashing violently against Marlene's dagger. Sparks flew in the dimly lit tomb.

"Damn it, these things really are monsters… Fast and absurdly strong—my arms are practically going numb."

Even someone as skilled as Marlene was being pushed back against two foes. If she could hold her own against these, then maybe Marlene's the real monster here.

Meanwhile, Hoshino Alter and Kaiba were just as stunned by the creatures' appearance.

"These are… Duel Monsters?! In a tomb from this era, there are Duel Monsters?!" The familiar forms triggered an instant reaction in Kaiba.

Hoshino Alter confirmed, "That's right! I remember—it's a trap monster that Odion used. Its name is 'Embodiment of Apophis' or something!"

They knew Pegasus got the idea for Duel Monsters from ancient Egyptian tablets, but this level of similarity was beyond expectation. It was as if Duel Monsters actually existed in this era.

"You two! Now's not the time to be chatting! Even Marlene can't take both of these monsters down at once—we need to retrieve the Pharaoh's body now! Boy, give me a hand!"

Sid shouted as he sprinted toward the one unopened coffin. If the opened coffins held the Pharaoh's guardian beasts, then the remaining one had to contain the body of the previous Pharaoh.

"Look out!" Marlene called out the moment he neared the coffin.

For the Apophis, their mission was to protect the Pharaoh. Naturally, the greater threat wasn't Marlene but anyone who approached the Pharaoh's corpse.

Working in tandem, one monster continued to block Marlene, while the other twisted its body and lunged straight at Sid.

"Damn it!" Kaiba clenched his fists in frustration. If he could use Duel Monsters to fight Duel Monsters, a 1600-ATK Apophis wouldn't be a problem.

But he hadn't brought a Duel Disk—and even if he had, this era didn't have the satellite systems required to generate holograms.

At that critical moment, Hoshino Alter grabbed the Pyramid of Light around her neck and invoked the name of the Egyptian god.

"—Anubis, I choose you!"

"—Awooo! Leave it to me, my master!"

With a roar, Anubis materialized—not in his usual cute pup form, but as a giant silver-gray wolf over five meters long.

With a powerful swing of his claw, he smashed into the Apophis lunging at Sid, sending it flying and embedding it into the chamber wall.

"Wha—!?" Marlene and Sid stared in stunned silence, unable to comprehend what had just happened.

(*****)

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