Tomb Raider King

Translator: miraclerifle

“Which artifact is it?”

Ju-Heon responded to the question.

“It’s......”

As Ju-Heon was about to answer...

“Ahhh!”

They heard screams all around them. The vines binding them became weaker and made them look like fruits that were about to fall off of trees.

[Oh my ,oh my. Our prey are going to fall into our mouths on their own!]

“Go away, go awaaaaaaaaaaay!”

The most popular of the group was naturally Jaeha.

"Why are they all gathering around meeee?! Captain-nim! Please translate for me!”

“You want to know why? You have the most fat in your guts.”

“?!”

That was the truth.

[Meat needs some fat to taste good.]

They probably considered Jaeha to be the rib eye.

Ju-Heon sneered at him.

“I knew this would happen ever since I saw you relying on the phoenix to eat two whole fried chicken in the middle of the night.”

“$#&#!”

It wasn’t that Jaeha was actually fat, but Ju-Heon and Seol-A were extremely unpopular. Their flesh looked extremely tough as if they did a lot of working out while Julian also worked out every day to maintain his health.

The only popular one was Jaeha, the ribeye, the chuck, the pork belly, etc.

Of course, their Heirlooms played a role as well.

[The bitch is too vicious.]

They avoided Seol-A’s Heavenly Horse because they didn't want to get kicked...

[As for Haetae......we can’t eat our fellow tiger.]

They treated Haetae as one of their own!

And Ju-Heon...

[That bastard has eaten so many dirty things that I feel like I might get a stomach ache if I eat him.]

[You're right. Don't eat him. You’ll probably get food poisoning.]

He failed the sanitary inspection.

Compared to them, the Phoenix looked extremely delicious along with Jaeha.

[Hehehe, we have rib eye and bird meat! Bird meat!]

[Haaa, haaaa, let’s roast them! Roooooast them!]

[The legs are mine! All miiiiine!]

Both Jaeha and the Phoenix foamed at the mouth.

“Captain-nim! Please at least get rid of that Four Evils bastard! It’s fine if it is only for a moment! I just need to be able to use my artifact!”

Ju-Heon sighed as if he had no choice.

“Fine. I guess I can’t let you die since you are my subordinate.”

Ju-Heon’s eyes flashed and Julian and Seol-A got ready as well.

‘I'm sure he’s going to use Artifact Destruction.’

They would escape the moment Ju-Heon destroyed the vines tying them down.

As they were getting ready...

“Hey spider lady. You can hear me, right?”

“!”

Ju-Heon unexpectedly called for Zhen Cai Yuan.

He didn’t know where she was but knew that she would be able to hear them.

‘Why is he calling her in this situation?’

Ju-Heon continued to speak without caring for anything else.

“Instead of responding to your question from earlier, let me make you an offer.”

“C, captain-nim?”

He said something quite shocking as the rest of the team tried to figure out what he was doing.

“I’ll be your boyfriend if you unbind us.”

“?!”

The team almost fainted after hearing that.

“Captain-nim?!”

“Hey, hey! Seo Ju-Heon! What are you saying?!”

Seol-A took it the worst.

‘What is he saying in such a situation?’

However, Ju-Heon was being serious.

“What’s wrong? I said I'll be your boyfriend.”

Julian shouted in anger as Ju-Heon would not stop.

“Hey! What the hell are you saying all of a sudden?! What kind of stupid nonsense is that?!”

Ju-Heon glared at Julian.

“You’re the one who is being stupid. This tomb is different from most tombs. It already has a master. Don't you know what that means?”

The spider would be able to use its master’s power to continue making traps in the tomb.

Basically, it meant that they would keep getting caught in traps even if they got out of this one.

So, to take care of them all one by one?

“That’s just a waste of energy.”

Julian sighed.

Ju-Heon wanted to just get rid of the source instead. The traps in the tomb would disappear if the master suppressed the spider’s powers.

"But still......! There’s no way that such an evil woman will fall for...!”

But at that moment...

“Do you really mean that?”

“?!”

The team members couldn't help but question their ears.

The area in front of them seemed to warp before Zhen Cai Yuan appeared in front of them.

‘She really fell for it?!’

The smart Julian couldn't understand this situation at all.

"What the hell......”

Zhen Cai Yuan was looking at Ju-Heon with shaking pupils.

“I asked if you were being serious.”

“Yes. I said I'll be your boyfriend.”

Her eyes flashed.

“Let me make it clear. Yoo Jaeha won't be my boyfriend. YOU will be my boyfriend.”

“.............”

She needed to make things clear after having been scammed once already. Ju-Heon nodded his head.

“Okay. So let me go. Oh and get rid of that Four Evils bastard while you're at it.”

Zhen Cai Yuan peeked toward the evil beast.

This beast was the Taotie, one of the Four Evils that brings evil in the world. The other three were the Hun Dun that looked like a dog, the violent tiger Tao Wu, and the winged tiger Qiong Qi that eats the nose of the reasonable one and gifts the evil ones. Taotie was the evil beast of greed, a beast so gluttonous that it would even eat its own body.

‘It is the original artifact for this Great Tomb.’

The Supreme Leader had consumed this bastard to take away its rights as one of the artifacts of the 7 Great Tombs.

Anyway, fighting a Divine-Grade beast of this level would require them to put their lives on the line.

That was why it was understandable that Ju-Heon would include it in the deal. She could also predict what Seo Ju-Heon was thinking.

‘He’s probably aiming for the artifact.’

Zhen Cai Yuan soon smiled.

‘He can't take back something he’s already said.’

Her eyes flashed dangerously. Ju-Heon's condition wasn't to give him the artifact, it was just to get rid of this trap.

‘He is my enemy but it is not hard to get rid of a single trap.’

This wasn’t the only trap here after all.

Zhen Cai Yuan immediately glared at the monsters.

“Let them go.”

[!]

The evil spirits, human-faced tigers, and even Taotie were shocked at what she just said.

[What did you say?!]

“I told you to let them go.”

The artifacts started shaking in fear at Zhen Cai Yuan’s order. The aura of the Supreme Leader she was giving off was too strong for them to ignore her because she was a human.

The evil spirits and tigers ran away and the vines binding Ju-Heon’s group released them. The team sighed in relief after falling to the ground.

“Wow, I thought I was going to die!”

Zhen Cai Yuan smiled brightly and walked over to Ju-Heon as soon as the trap was removed.

“I kept my promise. You have to keep your word.”

Ju-Heon sighed.

“Okay, okay. I'm your boyfriend starting today.”

Seol-A looked as if she wanted to cry. How could her Captain-nim do this to her?

But they had no choice.

Zhen Cai Yuan hugged Ju-Heon with a wicked look on her face. She had no plans on letting Ju-Heon go.

She just needed to kill the rest of these annoying team members and just take Ju-Heon with her to China.

‘You’re mine now.’

Zhen Cai Yuan grabbed Ju-Heon's face and looked ecstatic.

“Hey Ju-Heon, then we should......”

“Let’s break up.”

“?!”

That was all Ju-Heon said before he ran for his life. It had all happened in an instant.

The freed Ju-Heon immediately called out his Crow and caused a ruckus.

Boom!

[The Crow is consuming the artifacts that are running away.]

The Crow that could not be activated until now because Ju-Heon couldn't channel his Dominance was going crazy consuming the evil spirit artifact and the human-faced tigers as if it had been waiting to do this.

[You have eaten the hungry evil spirit.]

[You have eaten the violent human-faced tigers.]

[Digesting the artifacts now.]

[You have gained a new artifact's ability.]

Ju-Heon then aimed for the Taotie as well.

“This Supreme Leader artifact’s tomb is great!”

Ju-Heon was laughing maniacally as he let the Crow's aura go berserk.

A chaotic aura that was large enough to cover the whole tomb shot out of him.

The aura was aiming for the Taotie. His team members naturally gasped in shock.

“Aaah! Not him! Captain-nim!”

An artifact that was one of the Four Evils was bound to be extremely evil. Ju-Heon had gotten a stomach ache after eating Hitler’s artifact.

In comparison, forget rotten food, eating one of the Four Evils would be like eating nuclear waste!

“That’s dirty! Dirty!”

Ju-Heon ignored him and consumed the evil beast.

Booboboboooooooooom!

The evil beast was swearing but could not help but be sucked into that black hole.

[The Taotie is doing everything it can to escape.]

[You have gained a new artifact's ability.]

Ju-Heon seemed to be in a bit of pain as he was unable to digest a Divine-Grade artifact right away, but it didn't matter.

“There were talks in the past about using the Four Evils to call forth the Four Symbols!”

Ju-Heon motioned for his team to follow him.

“Follow me. It’s this way.”

The rest of the team was shocked.

“I thought you were going to seduce Zhen Cai Yuan!”

“What? Of course that was just a bluff.”

“Excuse me?!”

Even if he went out with Zhen Cai Yuan, she was the type who would kill everybody else saying that they were annoying her. He would have to be crazy to give her his heart.

“In addition......”

Ju-Heon looked at the shape of the tomb and started to smile.

"The Supreme Leader artifact is an artifact born from the Gu poison.”

“Excuse me?!”

The Gu poison was one of the ancient Chinese curse methods.

Numerous poisonous insects and creatures would be placed in a closed container until they created the most poisonous creature. That poison was used to kill people.

Poisonous spiders, centipedes, toads, snakes etc would be placed in a single container and surprisingly, as if by magic, they would fight and eat each other until one was left. The last remaining creature would be used for the curses.

The curses ranged from viruses, parasites, bacteria, etc, but there was a story that was most famously tied with the Gu poison.

“You know about the bug that will give you unbelievable wealth in return for giving it humans?”

“Ah.”

The user had to return the wealth plus interest if they could not feed the creature anymore.

If someone took that wealth from the user, they would take the creature with them.

Most people would take it without knowing about the creature and ended up getting eaten by it.

That was how they would kill the target.

“China was able to gather a lot of artifacts and wealth even without Pandora. I'm sure it was thanks to the Gu poison artifact.”

It also meant that Zhen Cai Yuan would have fed people to the spider in return.

“So you're saying that the Supreme Leader artifact was created from the Gu poison artifact?”

Basically, it was the most venomous creature that ate up all of the other poisonous artifacts and survived.

It managed to surpass all of the other creatures it faced to be the last one standing. He didn’t know what happened in the past, but......

‘That bastard might have originally been locked up with the other Divine-Grade artifacts.’

It consumed Divine-Grade artifacts and ended up as the last artifact standing, earning its title as the Supreme Leader.

“Wow, it really is a scary artifact.”

Ju-Heon sneered at him.

“Do you want me to tell you something that’s even scarier?”

“Excuse me?”

“That spider artifact... Could have started out as a human.”

“Excuse me?!”

The team could not close their jaws at Ju-Heon's shocking comment.

“W, what did you just......?!”

“I'm not certain. I just think that might be the case.”

“But why?!”

Even Julian seemed shocked this time. Ju-Heon responded to him.

“The way it talks is different.”

“The way it talks?”

Ju-Heon seemed to be thinking for a moment.

He could hear the artifacts. Naturally, he started to learn the artifacts’ tone and speaking style.

But this spider was the only one that was different.

“I don’t know whether to call it the tone, but the artifacts actually speak differently from humans.”

They weren't as unnatural as robots, but it just felt different from how people talked.

He felt as if this was how aliens would sound if they spoke the human language.

However...

“The Supreme Leader artifact pretends to be an artifact but its tone sounds very similar to humans.”

“............!”

In addition, information about other artifacts showed up properly for him but there was no information about the Spider artifact.

“Then how did a human eat an artifact...?!”

“In Greek mythologies, there are people who get cursed and sell off their daughter or even eat themselves until only the teeth are left. If you think about it that way, it’s not that hard.”

"Then you really think......!”

Ju-Heon smiled.

But that wasn’t important right now.

"That bastard is the artifact of gluttony. That means that this tomb is full of the artifacts it has consumed until now.”

This tomb was actually located in the belly of the Supreme Leader.

That wasn't all.

‘There’s a way to make the Supreme Leader submit without going through Zhen Cai Yuan.’

As Ju-Heon was using Tomb Destruction to create shortcuts...

[#$&#*!]

The rope must have detected something as it urgently slapped Ju-Heon on the cheek.

Had it detected an enemy? Some faint changes started to happen inside the rope’s body.