Tomb Raider King Chapter 69: It was just a bad match-up 2

Boom!

An aura of disaster that transcended all imagination started to spread throughout the airport. Now that it was dominated properly, the power of the artifact was much stronger and scarier than before.

Of course, the ones that received the most damage were naturally Pandora's artifacts.

[$##&$#$!]
[#@&#@!]

Waaaaaah, waaaaaaaaaah.

I finally came out after a long time to show off my powers, but what the hell is this?!

A message popped up in front of Ju-Heon as if to show him the pain the artifacts were going through.

[The savage Hand of Destitution has descended on the entire airport.]
[An area with a radius of 1km has forcibly turned into a destitution field. An unfavorable situation will befall all wealth related issues.]
[The strong aura of ill omen is making the enemy artifacts suffer significant pain.]
[There are probably no artifacts that could survive this disaster.]

Something happened to the artifacts in Pandora soldiers' hands as soon as that message popped up.

Crack, crack.
Crack, crack.

The artifacts that could not overcome the aura of disaster started to crack.

And then…

Bang!
Bang! Bang! Bang!

Artifacts after artifacts started to break one after another. It looked as if light bulbs were exploding all around them.

This made the Pandora soldiers start to scream.

“T, the artifacts!”
“Our artifacts!”

They became anxious while looking at the artifacts that had turned to powder. How could these artifacts that wouldn't even get a scratch on them when they tried to destroy them end up like this?!

Ju-Heon shamelessly snickered as if they had it coming.

“See, I warned you. I told you to put your artifacts away.”
“You……!”
“You guys are amazing but you picked the wrong person to mess with.”
“You bastard!”

The soldiers who had instantly lost their artifacts all glared at Ju-Heon. However, Ju-Heon viciously smiled and walked toward them.

All of their artifacts were probably marked by a Divine-Grade artifact called the < Pandora System > so their locations were being tracked. That was why the right choice was to destroy all of them instead of stealing them.

Some of the soldiers fell on their asses as Ju-Heon got closer. These were the young soldiers. They had received a lot of artifact training until now, but this was something they could not have ever imagined.

'I don't know what it is, but he has a suspicious artifact.'

There was a saying that said an unidentified enemy was the scariest in the world. It would be weird if they weren't scared of Ju-Heon after losing their weapons and their artifacts.

“D, don't come any closer!”

Colonel Morgan shouted viciously after hearing one of his subordinates shout like that.

“That stupid idiot! How dare he show such a reaction to a damn terrorist…!”

However, Colonel Morgan could not finish his sentence. It was because ju-Heon got close and roughly grabbed his collar.

“Ugh!”

Ju-Heon smirked and started to frown.

“Terrorist? You should keep your f*cking bullshit straight.”
“What?”
“If we are terrorists for having artifacts, doesn't that make you guys terrorists as well?”

Morgan shouted in anger.

“Don't treat us the same as you bastards! We are users who have received permission……ugh!”

However, Morgan coughed up blood mid-sentence.

It was the same for the other Pandora soldiers as well. However, Ju-Heon's group and the regular civilians were fine for some reason.

They did not know why they had coughed up blood.

However, Ju-Heon's eyes flashed as he started to speak again.

“Go back to Pandora and tell them this. Get rid of that nonsense of a law if they don't want to die.”
“U, ugh! I got it, so……”
“Well, it's not like you guys will listen even if I tell you like this.”
“?!”

The corners of Ju-Heon's lips started to go up as he continued.

“People who don't understand with words seemed to understand after suffering a bit themselves.”
“What?”

And voila, the artifacts that had not yet cracked started to heat up as soon as Ju-Heon said that.

[#$#&#!]
[#$#$(#$(!)

“Ow, so hot!”

The soldiers dropped the artifacts that were heating up too much.

A message popped up at the same time.

[The artifacts that were unable to stand the strong power of destitution are destroying themselves.]
[You have learned about the existence of the < Artifact Slaughterer > title.]
[Your Dominance has increased exponentially.]

Baaaaang!

Even the high-grade artifacts self-destructed without fail.

It was just extra that the airport was destroyed as well.

[There was an explosion at John F. Kennedy International Airport on March 12th at 2pm.]
[The airport was destroyed as a result of this incident and although no civilians were harmed in the incident, the civic groups and foreign press have proclaimed that Pandora will not be able to avoid responsibility for this.]

“This is really driving me nuts.”

A meeting at the Pandora headquarters in Paris.

Richard, one of Pandora's leaders, had a headache because of this incident.

This was an important time where Pandora needed to receive favorable opinion from the public to spread its wings.

But what?

“We destroyed an airport? Make the reporters shut their mouths!”

'Seo Ju-Heon that bastard was the one who destroyed the airport!'

However, it did not seem that way to the civilians at all. What they saw was that Pandora had not maintained their artifacts properly, leading to their explosion and the resulting damage.

However, these were the articles being posted regardless of whether it was true, driving Pandora's leaders crazy.

[US Civic group, “If they want to create an International Artifact Administration Organization, they should be adept at handling artifacts.”]
[China, “It was illogical to leave artifacts to Pandora without having any proof they could handle it. They should stop pushing countries to become members.]
[If it is like this, they should get rid of any thoughts about receiving support…]

People were concerned.

That was obvious.

Pandora who was supposed to protect the civilians destroyed an airport because they could not handle their artifacts properly?

“There are many organizations being created that are aggressively pushing for Pandora to be disbanded. They are saying Pandora is using a weird law to unfairly profit.”
“We must reveal the truth to restore Pandora's reputation.”
“We need to first capture that Seo Ju-Heon bastard! We must figure out why the artifacts were destroyed! We have almost no information on him!”

Honestly speaking, this situation was what Ju-Heon wanted to happen.

If he could not destroy Pandora yet, he could start by shaking different parts of its foundation one by one.

They would lose power if Pandora did not receive support and he could get rid of that shitty law where civilians could not be in possession of artifacts.

And he managed to destroy Pandora's image to a degree.

Richard was grinding his teeth as a result.

They had finally prepared this law to easily gather artifacts but it was already in such peril!

'Damn it. It looks like the Divine-Grade artifact users will need to deal with Seo Ju-Heon.'

As Interim Director, Richard banged on the table as the members started to argue and fight.

“Fine. We will postpone Pandora personally capturing artifact users. We will leave that to each country. We will also put Seo Ju-Heon, Yoo Jaeha, and Irene Holten on the wanted list and name them as dangerous individuals throughout the world.”

Many of the members flinched after hearing that.

“Wait, hold on. When you say Irene Holten…is she not from that Holten household?”
"Are you sure it is okay to mess with them?”
“That's right. It looks like that Seo Ju-Heon person has some connections to the Holten household. Wouldn't it be better to make a backdoor deal than to put them on the wanted list?”

However, the people who said that ended up being treated as idiots.

“Please stay quiet if you don't know anything. Do you think we have just been sucking on our thumbs? We contacted the Holten household right away. We mentioned his sister and Seo Ju-Heon. Do you know what George Holten said?”
"What did he say?”
“He told us to get lost if we don't want to end up being destroyed along with these satanic artifacts! He treated us as fools!”

They could not say anything after hearing that.

“Oh my…that guy is still the same. What about the parents?”
“We cannot contact them. I'm sure they are ignoring our calls.”
“That is why we plan on making examples out of all three of them. That will make it easier to draw in the other artifact users.”
“That's right. The Holten family just considers artifacts to be the devil. Their thought process has not evolved since that of the Middle Ages.”

There seemed to be members who had a bad relationship with the Holtens as more people chimed in.

Then they all started to laugh.

They had no idea that their action would end up waking up a wild beast.

“Aigoo, we're dead now!”

Yoo Jaeha lamented as if the world was ending as he read a news article. They were currently in a luxurious and spacious Benz while heading to one of the Holten family's ten estates.

They successfully cut Pandora's image down, but the problem was the article that came up after the airport incident.

[Airport Terrorist Incident trio set to have the highest bounty.]

'Bounty, a bounty?!'

“They put a 10 million dollar (10 billion won) bounty on our heads! Aigoo, the world's worst criminals have an average of 5 million dollar bounties but look at this!”

It made sense that Yoo Jaeha who didn't want to be arrested by Interpol would shriek. However, Ju-Heon didn't even snort while looking at the article.

'Is this how they want to play?'

In fact, Ju-Heon looked annoyed.

It was one thing to have a bounty on his head, but…

'Only 10 million dollars?

Are they looking down on me?'

The bounty on his head as the captain of the tomb raiding team in the past was 70 million dollars so it was normal that 10 million dollars seemed quite low.

'Furthermore, your bounty was higher than mine, you damn Monarch of Fraud.'

The impact that the monarchs had on the world could not be described with words. Of course, Yoo Jaeha's bounty was the lowest among the monarchs as his level of danger was quite low compared to the others.

There was also another reason Ju-Heon didn't care much about this bounty.

There were bounties on all artifact users in his past world and the bounties ended up being considered an artifact user's level of worth. There were times they would end up being scouted because of how high their bounty was.

That wasn't the only thing.

He had successfully landed the first blow on Pandora and managed to check the impact of the artifact of destitution, so he benefited in the end.

But it would be annoying to already have a bounty on his head.

'Well, I guess the only way is to be friendly with the Holtens and have them handle it.'

That was why Ju-Heon was looking at the Monarch of Destitution with a focused gaze. Irene was his important cornerstone.

'Everything is perfect if I can make the Holtens mine.'

In that sense, Irene was the medium to grab the entire Holten family. It would be bad if something happened to her. Ju-Heon asked a question after having that thought.

“Is there anywhere that hurts or anything that seems odd?”
“Huh? No! Not at all. Why?”

Irene looked toward Ju-Heon but Ju-Heon just coolly turned his head.

“That's good. Just let me know if anything changes in your body.”

Yoo Jaeha, who saw Irene's expression, clicked his tongue toward Ju-Heon.

'Sigh, that damn artifactphile.'

Did he need to help him? But Ju-Heon was interested in something else.

He was thinking about the risk.

Consumable artifacts that made up about 80 percent of all artifacts usually did not have risks.

Why?

Artifacts were bastards who enjoyed seeing people fighting, harming, and killing each other. Their goal was to make it easy for anyone to use them to kill as many people.

But people would hesitate if there was a risk to use them.

They would lower the walls as much as possible to make it easy for more people to use them. Artifacts wanted to see as many people in pain even at the cost of cutting away at themselves.

That was why although there was a limit to how many times consumable artifacts could be used, there were no risks.

However, possession-type artifacts were different.

Possession-type artifacts could only have one master. In that case, where would these bastards find joy?

The answer was obvious.

'They bother their master.'

This was why possession-type artifacts always carried a risk that bothered the user. Of course, artifacts and their risks were all over the place that some people might not even find the risk to be a risk while others would consider it to be like hell.

Because of that…

'I'm sure Irene has a risk as well.'

The higher-grade possession-type artifacts came with more difficult risks.

However, even a beating hurts less if you get it earlier as the saying goes, it was important to make her use her artifact to figure out that risk. Ju-Heon could plan around it once he knew.

'Well, I will need to figure it out before we properly attack Pandora.'

It happened at that moment.

The moment the car entered the Holten parking lot!

“Kyaaaa!”

Irene who was sitting next to him suddenly screamed. Ju-Heon and Yoo Jaeha quickly looked toward her in shock.

"What's going on?!”

It was because Irene's body started to glow as a weird change started to happen.

Ju-Heon could not help but anxiously jump up.

'Is her risk finally starting?!'

Chapter end