Tomb Raider King
chapter-181

Translator: miraclerifle

[Michael Jones, the Monarch of Gambling has committed suicide after his entire fortunes tank.]

[A file was found after his suicide. Will the route for the illegal organ sale that had been covered in a veil be revealed?]

[The Monarch of Pollution's excavation team, Stra, continues to face accidents for some reason. Have they been cursed?]

[TKBM's new business factory has evaporated.]

[Nostradamus, the Monarch of Fate, has faced a calamity in the middle of the night while sleeping.]

[International Soccer Star, the Monarch of Doping injures his leg through a questionable accident. Unable to participate in the World Cup.]

[The Monarch of Delicacies was found in a state of starvation.]

[The Monarch of Evangelism’s Middle East IS terrorist organization has suddenly disbanded while leaving a questionable message behind.]

The world was in uproar. It was because of the rumors about a terrible curse.

[A series of odd accidents. Is this already the tenth incident?]

[Famous businesses, organizations, criminal organizations have all been harmed.]

[Their crimes are being revealed in the process.]

The number of civilian artifact users were exponentially increasing in the world.

That wasn't all. Items created by using artifacts were starting to appear in the world as well. That was how the world’s interest in artifacts was slowly increasing.

However...

‘Accidents to the forerunners in the artifact world...’

People did not think that these incidents were mere accidents.

Why?

[There were suspicious masks placed on the faces of all victims.]

There were these masks of unknown origin. A suspicious man had appeared at each of the locations as well.

In the middle of a dark night in a warehouse full of containers...

"Evan Goldman, age 34. Born October 17. Occupation, Drug Broker. You are the person who received John Smith's request, correct?”

“Y, yes?”

A man with bronze skin wearing all black always appeared in front of the victims regardless of the time or day.

That was the same right now.

“You accepted the request and took the money but feigned ignorance, how despicable.”

“Ho, who the hell are you? Who the fuck do you think you are......?!”

‘Who am I?’

“I am that John Smith.”

“!”

The man took a step back as soon as he heard that.

But Anubis was approaching him as if to take the person's soul.

“It’s been a few weeks since I paid you to assassinate Seo Ju-Heon. Why the hell have you not done anything?”

“A, aaaahhh!”

The man screamed in fear after looking at this man who resembled the grim reaper.

"W, what are you talking about?! It is just not the right time yet; we’ve been preparing for it! Seo Ju-Heon that bastard will die in a few days...ugh!”

The man who was in his thirties was flailing as his body started to float. It felt as if an invisible hand was dragging him up.

“L, let go of... ugh!”

It felt as powerful as a crane. Anubis, who had lifted the man up, crossed his arms and sighed.

“Yes, yes. Now that I think about it, I wouldn't be out here doing this if all of you had just done your jobs.”

He looked a bit angry, but it didn't matter.

The past was the past.

“I will give you another opportunity. I will give you new information about Seo Ju-Heon and a commission of 100 million dollars. Do you accept?”

Anubis motioned with his hand. The rope that had followed Anubis opened a 007-style briefcase.

Clunk!

There were piles of dollar bills inside.

The man foamed at the mouth.

‘Holy shit, how much is that?!’

There was no way a human would not be shaken by the seduction of money.

The man started to shout.

“Fine! Just wait! All we need to do is kill that Seo Ju-Heon bastard, right? We will also bring you all of that bastard’s artifacts in the process! A, are we good?”

Anubis started to smile.

‘As expected of humans.’

“No. You will be executed. You talked shit about my master.”

A vicious aura started to appear behind Anubis.

Boom!

“Ahhhhh!”

The roaring aura shook the ground and destroyed the items nearby.

[A Tomb Appearance is affecting the nearby area in a 50m radius.]

The only place an artifact could use its full power without its master was during a Tomb Appearance. That was why all artifacts caused Tomb Appearances to use their full strength.

This was the same for Anubis.

[The power of the god of the afterlife is descending.]

[The power of the god of the afterlife is descending.]

Of course, it didn't create a large tomb. Artifacts needed quite a lot of materials to create large tombs that were the size of dungeons.

They just needed to create a level 1 (Boundary-Grade) tomb to make it easy to act!

Basically, they were creating a barrier.

Boom!

“Aaah!”

Egyptian hieroglyphics started to appear on the ground.

This was the incantation from the Book of the Dead.

Anubis had a cold smile on his face.

“Punishment to those who bother the peaceful rest of my master.”

A sticky black liquid violently shot up from underneath the man’s feet.

Booboboboooooooooom!

“Ahhhhh! My face, my face!”

The liquid that struck the man’s face turned into a suspicious mask.

“Mmph, mmph, what is this?!”

This was the Mask of Tutankhamun.

“Ahhhhh! Aaah!”

The curse had started.

Tutankhamun’s artifact was a curse-type artifact. It would stick to the person’s face and bring forth some kind of curse.

The most likely curse was the change to a person’s age.

“I’m sorry, I'm sooooorry! Stoooooooooop!”

The man’s screams echoed through the warehouse and the man turned into an old man and then a mummy.

Anubis, who had taken care of one more person, grinded his teeth as he sighed.

There were still too many humans to handle.

‘Damn it, why did I have to send out the hit request to so many people for no reason?’

Someone poked at Anubis’s leg at that moment.

“!”

He turned around to see the rope that had taken care of things for Anubis.

The rope’s eyes were sparkling as it looked up at Anubis.

[#$&#!]

My pay for my part-time job today! My pay!

Anubis groaned and took out his wallet from his pocket.

The rope must have learned from Ju-Heon(?) as it had started a weird part-time job.

Well, it had originally ripped anybody and everybody other than Ju-Heon off for hundreds of millions of won, but it was eventually caught by Ju-Heon and scolded.

‘You can rip as much money off people as you want. That is great to see. But don’t rip my slaves off too much. They’re too pitiful. Rip other people off if you want to rip people off.’

Maybe that was the reason.

[$#&$!]

My pay! My pay!

“Fine. Take it.”

The rope was extremely happy to receive a 500 won coin.

[#$&#&!]

I got my pay! I got it!

How long will it take to gather 100 million dollars at this rate, but it didn’t matter.

He had his own things to deal with.

“Okay, next......”

Anubis sighed and quickly flipped the document over to find the next target.

He would be in trouble with Ju-Heon if he was late.

[31St victim has been located.]

[The suspicious mask was found again.]

[The visit of a suspicious man, is he the grim reaper?]

[Is Seo Ju-Heon related to this?]

“There are rumors that those who try to harm Seo Ju-Heon will run into this curse from an unknown source......”

Bang!

“Unknown source my ass! What do you mean unknown source! Unknown source?!”

Yoon Shi Woo, who had been listening to the secretary's report, started to grind his teeth.

The people gathered at Pandora agreed with him.

“The victims all have something in common.”

“Yes sir. All of them are people who have received the request to assassinate Seo Ju-Heon. All of them were people who had planned ways to kill him.”

“That’s not all. They were all people who were recruiting people to drag Seo Ju-Heon down from a Monarch position.”

People around the meeting room gasped after hearing that.

That was right.

It had been two weeks since the incidents started. A storm was going through the 515 people whose names were on the Monarch-Grade and Expert-Grade lists.

Seo Ju-Heon. That bastard was the problem.

The people who were being targeted by Seo Ju-Heon were currently gathered in Pandora to come up with a plan to stop him.

“Did you know this? The people who were cooperating with my subordinates were attacked as well.”

“That’s not all! Our excavation team was scorched because of that weird curse. We barely got the rights to excavate! Our Captain-nim is still angry...”

“Ah, I heard that there was someone who managed to get out of the curse...”

All of their ears perked out.

“How did they do it?”

“Those who bother the rest of the pharaoh, be cursed. Those who spread the name of the pharaoh... They will be blessed.”

“!”

Pandora's female employees were the ones to speak.

“It is the special trait of Tutankhamun's artifact. It is a curse-type artifact but those who do something that is beneficial to Seo Ju-Heon will be removed from the curse.”

“What did you say?”

“Basically...... wouldn't spreading the name of the pharaoh mean to leave Seo Ju-Heon in the Monarch position?"

Multiple people started to swear.

“The Monarch of Fate's prophecy about the special artifacts appearing to Monarchs will happen in two weeks!”

“We have tons of people waiting in line willing to give a ton of money to Pandora to get into a Monarch position!”

“But how can we let a bastard from who-knows-where take one of those positions?!”

“The issue started with Pandora! Why did you guys put such a bastard as a Monarch in the first place?!”

The Pandora employees were flustered at the continuing opposition.

“W, well... Mr. Seo Ju-Heon is actually talented, and... it is the system artifact and not us that decides the grade of the artifact users...”

“Hoo, whatever, just drag him off of it!”

“That bastard was responsible for that empty tomb without an artifact as well, wasn’t he?!”

“That’s right, I heard that that bastard didn’t even complete the artifact’s test and just dragged it out of there!”

“That tomb raiding bastard!”

“Do you know how many empty trips we had because of him?!”

“E, everyone! Please calm down!”

Even TKBM’s Yoon Shi Woo was clenching his eyes closed.

‘Damn it, this is driving me nuts. All of this is happening while the Chairman-nim is missing.’

Chairman Kwon had already been missing for two weeks since the Valley of the Kings incident.

They had continued to search through the pharaoh's tomb until now, but they could not find Chairman Kwon.

TKBM was close to having internal division as their leader had disappeared.

‘There really will be a battle for the successor at this rate.’

Chairman Kwon's sons and daughters each had their own businesses. Their goal was to eventually get control of TKBM.

Some of them might even jump in joy and try to take Chairman Kwon's artifacts and excavation team if they heard that he was dead.

‘I won’t let those bastards take it all.’

Yoon Shi Woo's eyes were full of greed.

The Monarchs would be finalized in two weeks. It was normal that they would have a sense of urgency.

"This is indeed a problem. We even lost the Monarch of Fraud whom we thought would be useful.”

“My goodness, we also heard that Seo Ju-Heon's subordinate is more talented than the official restorers...... there’s talks about raising Yoo Jaeha to a Monarch as well...”

“Ah, about that. I heard that the top restorers are extremely angry. They're talking about how a quack restorer was mocking them. They probably won’t leave him alone.”

The others started to smile in response.

"Anyway, we can’t let that bastard do as he pleases any longer.”

But at that moment...

Ruuuuuuuumble!

“!”

The people gathered at Pandora freaked out after hearing the sudden loud noise.

“W, what the hell is this?!”

"What is going on?!”

The noise was so loud and made the Pandora building feel as if it would crumble.

A Pandora employee quickly ran over.

“This is bad! You must all evacuate!”

“What, what is going on?!”

“No, you see, the M, Monarch of Strategies... Julian Miller barged in and......!”

At the same time...

[I pretty much got rid of all 700 people on the list.]

Anubis was trying to catch his breath while handing Ju-Heon a document with X’s all over.

It then returned from his human appearance to its dog appearance.

Seol-A found this to be amazing.

“He can turn into a human?”

Ju-Heon was quite amazed as well.

“Apparently. I thought even S-Grade and above artifacts could not turn into anything not related to them.”

Anubis was pouting as it looked toward Ju-Heon.

[It's not that they can't but that they don't. Why would an artifact take the form of a lowly human......]

Ju-Heon scrunched his eyes.

It was understandable as all artifacts looked down on humans.

However...

‘Maybe there is a rule about not getting involved with humans.’

It was at that moment.

Brrrrr.

Ju-Heon picked up the phone after seeing who was calling.

“What is it? What do you need, our little Kongming?”

Julian was the one who was calling.

However, Ju-Heon started to frown after hearing the loud noises on the other side of the call.

"Where are you right now?”

[Where else, I'm at Pandora.]

"What are you doing there?”

He heard a Pandora employee screaming on the other side of the call.

[Ahhh, you can’t burn those reporting documents! Stop him!]

[We must save at least the ones that this bastard signed!]

Babababang!

[Aaaaaaah!]

“.............”

Ju-Heon started to chuckle as he heard the screams.

“You’re really causing a ruckus, aren’t you?”

[A ruckus... that’s rude. I sincerely requested to cancel my contract until they dragged me to this eerie place...]

“Whatever. What do you want?”

[Ah, I heard some interesting information at Pandora.]

“Interesting information?”

[You know how Chairman Kwon is currently missing? Some bastards that want to gobble up TKBM and its excavation team have appeared.]

“Oh?”

[If that happens, those bastards will probably become interested in you as well. For bad reasons of course.]

Julian then continued to speak.

[Kwon Joo Hee, Kwon Seung Jae. Chairman Kwon’s children. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? You were close to them.]

Ju-Heon’s eyes turned vicious and full of life after hearing those names.

There was no way he wouldn't remember those trashes.