Chapter 506: The Death of Shiller (Part 2)_1

"Beep — beep — beep —"

The sharp and piercing call echoed in Mark's ears, so he promptly sat up from his hospital bed. He inhaled deeply, looking around in confusion. Where was this?

He fixed his gaze on a machine making a noise. It was a heart rate monitor. Instinctively, Mark reached out and touched his chest. His heart was still beating, and it was steady.

Mark glanced around, threw off the blanket, and got out of the bed. He saw some notes stuck on the wall by the door with medical instructions and drug schedules.

Just as he was trying to decipher any useful information from the notes, there was a knock at his door. He stood up quickly and turned around, only to see a man who looked exactly like him standing outside.

The man wore a cold and impatient expression, "What are you still doing here? Come with me!"

Mark didn't understand what was happening when the man suddenly rushed in, grabbed Mark by the arm, and dragged him out. It wasn't until he was pulled out of the room that Mark reacted. He pushed the man away and took a defensive stance, asking, "Who are you?"

The man turned around, assessed Mark up and down, and responded coldly, "I'm Jack, your other personality. When you faint or lose consciousness, I control the body."

His answer was so straightforward that Mark was taken aback. He looked at himself, then at Jack, and asked, "So, I really do have multiple personality disorder?"

"But where are we? How did we get here? What happened before?"

"Follow me," Jack continued walking down the corridor without looking back, explaining as he went, "Just now, I died."

His first sentence made Mark utterly astonished. Mark hastened to catch up with him and asked as they walked, "Died? Are you saying this place is Hell?"

"Almost, they call it the Netherworld."

"That's impossible, are you joking?!"

But just then, they reached the end of the corridor. Jack pushed open the door, and a massive creature with the head of a hippopotamus and the body of a human emerged from outside.

Before the hippopotamus could speak, Jack took the initiative and said, "I know, I'm now dead, this is Duat the Underworld, and you are Taweret, the protector of women and children. Please, step aside."

Caught in mid-greeting, Taweret suddenly let out an exclamation. In an instant, their surroundings shattered, and Mark found that they were standing on a boat. Also on the boat, was Shiller.

Shiller was leaning over the edge of the boat, trying to fish something out from below. Taweret rushed over and yanked him back by his collar, reprimanding him, "What are you doing? Didn't I tell you not to reach out!"

Mark, standing behind Jack, asked with confusion, "Shiller? Wait, are you really Shiller? Why are you so young?"

The Shiller standing before Mark was indeed young, looking under twenty. He looked vastly different from the Shiller Mark had met in reality, and he had a completely different aura about him.

At least for now, the Shiller being scolded by the large hippopotamus creature seemed like an unruly child disregarding safety procedures on a boat.

Soon enough, Mark determined his initial assessment was correct when he heard Taweret say sharply:

"In thousands upon thousands of years, I have seen countless souls who wish to cross over. I've never seen anyone like you!"

"You refused to stay in the psychic world, dreaming your final dream. You had to come to the boat ahead of time, and even knocked down a lamp post with your umbrella, almost causing a fire!"

"While I was busy going to fetch the other two, you even tried to jump into the river to fish out stuff! Are you mad? I've told you countless times, this is the Netherworld! This boat is to ferry you to the other side, and you can't touch anything beneath it, put your umbrella away!"

Shiller stared at Taweret, who glared back at him. Finally, Shiller snorted, put away his umbrella, and turned away.

Taweret heaved a deep sigh, crossed her arms, stared at Shiller intensely, then pointed down with one finger, threateningly demanding, "Stay put! I need to explain the rules to the newcomers!"

After she had finished, she slowly turned around, then quickly whipped her head back, making sure Shiller hadn't moved. Satisfied, she turned back around and made a threatening gesture at Shiller with two fingers to her own eyes, silently conveying: "I'm watching you."

Seeing Shiller obediently standing in place, the hippo finally breathed a sigh of relief. She approached Mark and Jack again and said, "It seems that the deities you worshipped have already explained to you what would happen after your death..."

"As you know, this is the Netherworld, all believers of the Egyptian Pantheon have the opportunity for resurrection, you can consider it as a kind of benefit..."

"When our believers die, they don't die directly, their souls board this ship. Here they are judged, if they pass the judgement, you can be resurrected, but if not..."

The humanoid hippo shrugged her shoulders, pouted towards the sandy sea full of skulls outside the ship. Mark widened his eyes and asked the hippo, "You're not implying that, if we fail the judgement, we will be thrown down there, are you??"

The hippo nodded her head and noticed that Mark's expression became somewhat panicked. She reassured him, "Don't worry, the chances of passing are quite high. I believe you guys haven't done anything wrong..."

But suddenly, the hippo noticed that Mark's expression became more and more panicked and his eyes were fixated on something behind her, the hippo suddenly felt a bad premonition.

She slowly turned her head, then saw that next to Shiller who was standing in place, there appeared countless replicas of Shiller.

Covering her face with her hands, the hippo let out a scream, she said, "No! No! Oh God, what is going on here? Where did you all come from? Get out of here..."

Mark could only watch as the replicas of Shiller calmly scattered around the ship in an orderly fashion. Two rows of Shillers went to the ship's sides to operate the paddles, one reached the helm, two were pulling at the mast, and one went to the bow to keep watch...

The God in Hippo-head was erratically moving amongst these figures, attempting to stop them, but she was too outnumbered. As soon as she stopped one Shiller, another appeared, soon, the ship was filled with Shillers.

Mark was left speechless by this eerily bizarre scene. In the end, all he could do was turn to Jack and ask, "What's going on?"

"Earlier, this man called Shiller knocked you unconscious, then called me out. While we were fighting side by side, he told me about a plan. I thought it sounded interesting, so I decided to get involved."

"Plan? What plan?"

"It's a bit complicated, let him tell you about it." Jack steped aside, revealing Shiller in a white lab coat behind him.

"Hello, Mark, long time no see. I know you have many questions right now, but we can talk slowly because this ship sailing to where I want to go will take some time."

As Shiller's words trailed off, Mark saw that under the control of countless Shillers, the ship began to deviate from its original course and even turned around 180 degrees on the spot, starting to go back.

The hippo collapsed, sitting on the ground and sobbing. A Shiller was feeding her grass strips. She cried and ate at the same time, her wide mouth full of a mixture of grass clippings and tears.

"As the Pope, a respectful believer of Moon God Khonsu, I once seriously listened to his teachings. He once said that, as a believer in the Egyptian Pantheon, one can have the opportunity of resurrection."

"Believers in the Egyptian Pantheon will board a ship after death, on the ship, a guide will take out the believer's heart and place it on a scale, just like this..."

Shiller took a scale from the hand of another Shiller. On one end of the scale was a feather, Shiller pointed to the feather and said, "If a believer's heart is placed on the other end of the scale and the heart is heavier than the feather, this indicates the believer is a sinner. They will be thrown under the ship and drowned, devoured by an endless number of skulls."

"And if the heart is lighter than the feather, on the contrary, they can go to the Field of Reeds and get the chance to be reborn."

"Through certain means, I learned that death in this world is not as simple as it seems. There is a higher level of rules confining all creatures in the cosmos, leading them after death to a final destination, hence, I am curious about this rule of the Egyptian Pantheon. What is it that enables them, contrary to this rule, to resurrect the dead?"

"I thought, you might have noticed, that there are many interesting factors in this process."

"I make an assumption, if the Egyptian Pantheon truly could break the rule of death and directly resurrect the dead, then why would they need to set up the process of boarding the ship, navigation, judgement? Couldn't they just resurrect people right away?"

"So I think that the process of navigating and judging might hold the key."

"So you took over this ship???" Mark exclaimed, unable to believe his ears, "Have you gone mad?! How... How could you..."

Mark was at a loss for words to describe this act, while Shiller didn't seem bothered by his reaction, and continued,

"And another thing that interests me is that, just like what you experienced before boarding the ship, you will enter a psychic battlefield, in other words, you will have a dream."

"So..." Shiller looked around the environment and up to the mysteriously ever-changing sky, then said, "Is this Netherworld really existing in reality? Or is it to say..."

Mark watched in shock as, the moment Shiller spoke those words, all the Shillers turned their heads to look at them.

"This place is still part of a dream, and this ship... it can carry our souls from the dream... into reality?"