Compared to Nitocris, Alaric's study of Egyptian runic magic progressed with remarkable smoothness.
In truth, among the Egyptian gods, although the sun god Ra and the Ennead he produced appeared to be the rulers on the surface,
the second generation of the Ennead, the air god Shu and the moisture goddess Tefnut, and the third generation, the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut, generally had little presence.
These four deities governed vital concepts of the world, yet adhered to the traditions of the Heliopolitan pantheon, remaining aloof from worldly affairs aside from maintaining basic stability.
The most active and core part of the pantheon was the Heliopolitan system centered on the sun, revolving around the concepts of life and death.
By day and by night, Ra traveled through the heavens and the underworld aboard two solar barques known as the Mandjet (Boat of Millions of Years) and the Mesektet.
These vessels carried him through the sky and the Duat, the ancient Egyptian underworld.
When seated upon the Mesektet, Ra appeared in the form of a ram-headed god.
As the solar barque traveled through the underworld, it passed through twelve gates and regions, each guarded by ghosts, monsters, and fire-breathing serpents.
The most dangerous of these was the seventh gate, guarded by the serpent of chaos, Apophis.
At dawn, Ra would pass through all the gates, emerge from the underworld, and reappear in the sky, bringing light back to the world.
Thus, night and day alternated endlessly, light and darkness eternally locked in struggle. Ra was revered not only for this, but also for his connection to the souls of the dead.
The solar barque entered the waters of the underworld from the mountain of sunset, and when souls were freed from their bodies, they would wait in the valleys for the solar barque, Ra himself serving as its guide.
For this reason, within the sun-centered Heliopolitan pantheon, the powers of life and death were intimately linked with sunrise and sunset.
As the pantheon evolved further, Ra's authority gradually fragmented.
Within the Heliopolitan system, Osiris was the god of the underworld, a descendant of Ra, and the ruler before Horus.
Yet only now did Alaric come to understand that Osiris, and his child Horus, represented far more than that.
Osiris, Horus, and Ra were in fact a trinity, divided into three to maximize the utilization of divine authority.
In the Heliopolitan pantheon, life and death always corresponded to the sun at different times.
Osiris, ruler of the underworld and marked by the legend of his castration, lacked vital life force and symbolized the setting sun.
His son Horus, whose name carried the meaning of the rising sun, stood in direct contrast to Osiris, who embodied dusk.
Ra himself was regarded as the midday sun, the creator of all life.
Osiris was the sun sunk beneath the sea, god of death and the underworld, while Horus was the newborn sun, protector of the Pharaoh.
These three gods were essentially one, representing the three forms of the sun, a complete cycle symbolizing rebirth and renewal, and the core mystery of the Heliopolitan pantheon.
Of course, although Ra was divided into three, there were circumstances under which the three would reunite.
For example, as the final ruler of the Heliopolitan pantheon, Horus merged with Ra and ascended the throne as Horus-Ra.
As Pharaoh, Nitocris was regarded as the Son of Horus, deeply connected to the Egyptian underworld.
The divine spells she excelled at were fundamentally based on the core of Egypt's faith, Horus, Ra, and Osiris, the trinitarian deity.
These spells, as the distilled essence of the Egyptian gods' power, gave Alaric tremendous inspiration.
He once again dismantled Egyptian runic magic, extrapolating divine runes into magical runes.
Compared to divine runes that invoked the power of gods, magical runes were naturally more complex, and the power they produced depended directly on the caster rather than a deity, resulting in generally weaker effects.
However, magical runes had a unique advantage: even those who were not believers of the gods could cast spells once they had learned them.
Even for Alaric, completely dismantling divine runes and creating corresponding magical runes was no easy task.
As test cases, the first batch of runes he converted was small.
For example, the rune Ka, representing the soul, symbolizing spirit and essence.
And the rune Nebu, representing gold, symbolizing the flesh of the gods and immortality.
For Alaric, translating and creating magical runes was extremely time-consuming, but with divine runes as a foundation, much effort was already saved.
After all, deriving magic directly from divine-era power would have been an even more colossal undertaking.
Even so, constructing a complete system of Egyptian magic was far from easy.
But Nitocris's revenge could not be delayed too long.
Thus, Alaric's immediate priority was to convert Medjed's power into magic.
Breaking Medjed's power down into divine runes was no simple matter.
Although Medjed was not a particularly powerful god, in the domain of concealment he was absolutely unparalleled.
A concealment method capable of deceiving even Alaric was naturally extraordinary.
With Nitocris's assistance, Alaric spent three to four days extracting several new divine runes from Medjed's divine power.
By combining these with existing runes, they were finally able to use divine magic to cast an Egyptian version of the Ultimate Invisibility Spell.
But this was still not enough. Alaric needed to convert each of these new runes into magical runes.
This step was, for him, a matter of slow, painstaking refinement.
After several more days, he finally completed the process.
Next, once Nitocris mastered these magical runes, she would be able to cast a spell comparable to the arcane Ultimate Invisibility Spell.
With it, she could silently infiltrate the homes of the ministers who had murdered her brother, delivering sacred vengeance one by one.
The results proved that Alaric's effort in deciphering divine runes and teaching Nitocris "Egyptian magic" was the correct choice.
Compared to the Ultimate Invisibility Spell she had repeatedly failed to learn in the past, the spell now called Medjed's Invisibility was far simpler for her.
In just a single day, despite having little foundation in magic, Nitocris mastered the spell with ease, relying on her innate talent for divine runes.
And so, her revenge began.