Chapter 76: The tomb’s strange thieves (1)

Translator: miraclerifle

Ju-Heon pushed down on the accelerator.

Vroooooooooooom!

This tomb was one where the entrance was completely visible. However, Ju-Heon had no plans on entering through the entrance.

Who was crazy enough to go through the main entrance that was bound to be full of traps?

It was only normal for a Tomb Raider to create an entrance that doesn’t exist to stealthily infiltrate a location.

And lo and behold.

Ju-Heon who was pushing down on the accelerator reached his hand out toward Yoo Jaeha who was sitting next to him.

“Hey number 1. Hand any of them to me.”

That made Yoo Jaeha, one of the temporary baggage carriers, turn pale.

"C, captain-nim. No way, right?”

“You already know it. Why are you freaking out like that?”

Yoo Jaeha sniffled after seeing Ju-Heon’s wicked smile and handed him a toothpaste. He could anticipate what was going to happen next, but what could he do? He could only kneel when his captain told him to kneel.

Although it looked like a regular toothpaste on the outside, this was an artifact.

And thanks to Ju-Heon slamming on the accelerator, the tomb was right in front of them now. The guard in the back seat became anxious as she thought they were going to crash, but Ju-Heon just chuckled and channeled a large amount of Dominance into the toothpaste.

Ju-Heon then flung the toothpaste out the window. The toothpaste that flew backwards due to kinetic energy started to scream.

[#$(*$#(!!]

Aigoo, you human bastard, I'm not a cigarette butt!

However, the toothpaste that almost instantly disappeared while screaming crashed into the stone mountain and caused a large explosion.

Bang!

It truly was a large explosion.

Ju-Heon’s Tomb Excavation skill and the impact from the artifact’s self-destruction had fused together to create a hole in the tomb. That was how the artifact that helped get rid of bad breath disappeared as a pile of ashes.

Ju-Heon, who had quickly reversed as he threw the artifact, turned the steering wheel and headed toward the hole. The tomb was quite large, so it was no problem to enter in with the Jeep.

Boom!

A large cave appeared once they entered, and warning messages started to pop up one after another.

[Warning. There is a trap created by the owner of the Artifact of War 500m in front of you.]

Ju-Heon sneered after seeing that.

‘I wasn’t planning on going that way, you idiot.’

[Following that path, it will take 10 hours to reach the lowest underground level where the artifact is located.]

‘Like I said, I'm not using that path.

Usually, a tomb like this has a side path right around...’

Ju-Heon looked around and smiled as if he found something. What he found was a cliff that only a crazy person would approach.

Ju-Heon boldly drove off the cliff.

The tomb was most likely an underground-type.

The Jeep fell headfirst as if it was being swallowed by the large black hole.

It was a thrilling drive of death from there.

“Aaaaaah!”

The car thankfully landed on a slope, but it was so steep that the car felt as if it would flip over at any moment. It would have crashed into some vicious jagged stones and caused a large accident quite a few times if it wasn’t for Ju-Heon's talented driving techniques.

The guard who was shielding Irene in the backseat teared up as if she was scared that she was going to die. She had come with them because Ju-Heon said he needed a lot of baggage carriers, but this path did not seem normal at all!

“E, excuse me? I'm sorry to ask this kind of question, but!”

“What is it?”

Everybody else was tightly grabbing on something as if they were worried for their lives, but Ju-Heon was the only one who was calm. The guard held back her tears and asked.

“This does not seem like a proper road!”

A message popped up as if it was agreeing with the guard.

[Warning. This is not a proper entrance.]

[There are no roads here.]

The message window seemed to be protesting.

It was as if it was saying, ‘I didn’t give you the tomb excavation skill to do something like this!’ However, Ju-Heon just scoffed at it.

“A proper road? Who cares about that? Everywhere is a path if you force your way through it.”

“W, what did you say?”

Yoo Jaeha shouted as if he was asking why the guard was freaking out after hearing her shriek in shock.

“Did you just realize this was not a path? Looks like you're quite the slow one.”

Honestly speaking, subordinate number 1 had already figured out Ju-Heon's style in Midas's tomb.

“I’ll let you know that our Captain-nim is always like this.”

“Excuse me?!”

Ju-Heon reached his hand out as if he found Jaeha to be praiseworthy.

“Hey number 1. Give me one more artifact while you're at it.”

“..........”

Yoo Jaeha picked an artifact in his bag that he had been restoring and handed it over. Ju-Heon took the artifact and made it self-destruct as he used the Tomb Excavation skill.

[$##&!]

Bababang!

They heard another large explosion!

Who knew what the exploding D-Grade artifacts had done to deserve this, but at least they were very effective.

Boom!

They were able to break through an obstacle and reach their destination.

“Huff... huff...”

How long must they have driven down for? They sighed in relief after the Jeep came to a stop.

They could see light in the distance, but they didn't have the time to pay attention to that right now.

“W, we stopped.”

Everybody other than Ju-Heon was just happy that they were still alive. It was normal that they were out of their minds because they took a few minutes to get somewhere that would normally take ten hours.

But Ju-Heon didn’t care about how the rest of them were feeling as he got off the Jeep.

A message popped up at that moment.

[The current location is an already conquered tomb so worldly items can be used as well.]

Ju-Heon took out his cellphone after seeing that message.

The message seemed to be true as an item from the modern world was working properly even though they were inside a tomb.

The place they landed in was quite wide.

And...

‘I guess I was right to bring baggage carriers.’

Ju-Heon looked at the sight in front of him and smiled with satisfaction.

There was a large tea plantation that was as wide as multiple soccer fields put together in front of him.

There were creatures that were glowing similar to fireflies floating around the tea plantation. The combination of the two made it oddly seem beautiful.

‘I guess the specialty item was a type of tea.’

There were thousands of types of tea here. Just taking a small seedling of each one would be quite the load.

But there was something even more shocking.

“There really are kids here. There seems to be thousands of them.”

Yoo Jaeha who got off behind Ju-Heon looked around as if he was shocked. The African children all seemed to be under 15 years of age, and they just continued to pick tea leaves even though some unfamiliar adults had shown up.

‘It seems as if they are all hypnotized.’

A message popped up at that moment.

[The humans are being controlled by Xu Fu's artifact.]

[They are gathering tea leaves at the artifact’s order.]

The messages continued.

[These tea leaves have the power of the ox-headed human.]

[These tea leaves have the power to revive the dead and have a flavor that you cannot forget after trying it once.]

Ju-Heon chuckled as he read those messages.

It said an ox-headed human, which was a human with an ox's head and a human body.

Ju-Heon who was thinking after seeing the Toombglyphs here lightly chuckled.

‘I have a vague idea about whose tomb this is.’

That was indeed the case.

This tomb held the artifact of < Shennong >, the man who was called the father of Chinese medicine, the Taoist God known as a god of agriculture and medicine. He was said to be a legendary king with an ox’s head.

Learning about the antidote properties of tea by chewing on it and drinking tea as a beverage were both said to be Shennong’s ideas as well, but that was not important right now.

He desired this artifact as well but there was something more important.

“We will first split up and look for Xu Fu’s artifact. I taught you how to detect auras, right?”

“Yes sir! It will probably take a while because it is so wide!”

The group split up and Ju-Heon started to look around.

Based on the aura he was feeling, it should be hidden somewhere within this tea plantation. It happened as Ju-Heon held his phone up as he looked around.

“!”

Ju-Heon kicked in reflex after seeing shadows violently charging toward him.

The attackers were unexpectedly the farming children.

Pow!

The children who had been trying to bite Ju-Heon as if they were zombies coughed up blood and were rolling on the floor. The artifact might have ordered them to attack anyone who entered the tea plantation.

He then heard some urgent screams.

“Kyaaaa!”

“Ugh, these crazy bastards!”

His subordinates were getting attacked as well. The children bit off the skin on Yoo Jaeha's arm with their animalistic teeth.

Blood splattered as a chunk of his flesh was ripped off. Then they aimed for his neck!

Tang, tang!

“Aaaaah!”

He took a small pistol out and fired around the children. The children either ran away in shock or fell to the ground.

Some of the more defiant children glared at Ju-Heon who viciously glared back and growled.

“Get lost if you don't want to die. I’ll blow all of your f*cking heads off.”

His gaze looked serious as if he had no problem making it so these children could never walk again. They must have instinctively realized their enemy was extremely evil as the children shook in fear and ran away.

Ju-Heon lowered the gun and walked over to Irene who was on her own.

"Are you okay?”

“Ah, yes. I'm okay, but...!”

Irene was worried about the children who had fainted while foaming at the mouth. The children who had tried to attack her were suppressed by the power of destitution and fainted after contracting a rare disease before they could even attack her.

Ju-Heon started to smile.

‘As expected of the Monarch of Destitution. I guess I didn't need to worry.’

As it was a parasitic-type artifact, it would automatically activate if it felt its master being in danger.

Yoo Jaeha approached Ju-Heon at that moment.

“It looks like they will attack if we even get close to the tea plantation. ...Should we be the bait so you can look for it, Captain-nim?”

Ju-Heon sneered while looking at Yoo Jaeha's bleeding arm.

“It is praiseworthy that you are pretending to be tough, but you're going to die if you don't stop that bleeding!”

“Aaaaaah!”

“Also, I don’t need bait. It’ll slowly reveal itself.”

“It’ll reveal itself?”

Ju-Heon chuckled.

“Xu Fu's artifact is the bastard controlling the children. It has hypnotized these children and is considering them to be its property. Won't it react if we steal its property?”

“......When you say steal it's property, you don’t mean...”

Ju-Heon detected the aura of an artifact and became alert as soon as he said that.

“I attacked the children. It’s about time it charged out because I touched its property.”

Xu Fu's artifact was a possession-type artifact.

You needed to either kill the owner or make the artifact betray its owner to take a possession-type artifact.

Those were the only two methods. As for the zombie powder he stole from Yoon Shi Woo, he had lowered Yoon Shi Woo's Dominance so low that he was able to make the artifact betray him.

Anyway, both Xu Fu’s artifact and Shennong's artifact should be Keira’s possession-type artifact.

‘Well, I did come with a potential method of making it betray Keira, but...’

He needed to test it out to see if it would work, but he needed the bastard to come out to even try it.

As expected, that bastard came out in a little bit.

[#$(#(@#*(!]

‘You motherf*cking human bastards, who dares to touch my stuff?!’

Xu Fu’s artifact that had been hiding among the tea leaves appeared in anger.

However, Ju-Heon then smirked as if he had been waiting for this.

‘You're finally here, you bastard.’