Chapter 2: You are a Tomb Raider (2)

Translator: miraclerifle

‘A Tomb Raider?’

Some holographic words were floating next to him.

Ju-Heon sighed after seeing that. He questioned why he could see something like this, but that was not important right now.

[Tomb Raider Seo Ju-Heon]

Level 1.

A pathetic pickpocket who can’t even use a shovel.

There were some words that annoyed him, but Tomb Raider! A word that should have no relations to the world during this time had appeared.

“Did my eyes go crazy?”

However, he could not ignore this. He needed to confirm things since he could see something like this.

He needed to see if he could use his abilities. That would determine whether his life changed from here on.

This was a chance.

That was why to start...

Ju-Heon grabbed the slightly rusted chair and stealthily tried to use one of his abilities.

‘Restore!’

Unfortunately, nothing happened to the chair. Ju-Heon could only sigh.

‘I guess it doesn’t work without an artifact.’

The restoration ability was one of the abilities he had gained from the Archeologist's artifact.

According to his memories, it should easily get rid of some rust on a chair.

‘Is this really just an illusion?’

He saw a message pop up in front of him at that moment.

[Other skills are necessary in order to use the restoration skill.]

[Please learn all four basic skills first.]

‘A higher-tier skill?’

This window felt like a game interface. Ju-Heon was confused but soon started to smile.

An odd but familiar thing appeared in front of his eyes.

- Tomb Raider Basic Skills (1/4)-

[Spy(F-Rank): Search a 1 meter radius area around you.]

Ju-Heon started to laugh out loud after seeing that explanation. That made the officers look toward Ju-Heon in shock.

“Did this bastard suddenly go crazy?”

“Hey, why are you suddenly laughing like that?”

However, Ju-Heon didn't care and just continued to laugh.

He was now certain.

The name was different, but this was definitely the search ability that had been one of his abilities.

But it changed to this?

‘Did my original abilities turn into these game-like skills?’

That was why Ju-Heon’s eyes sparkled.

If it was like this, he should be able to use his abilities even without the Archeologist's artifact.

A message popped up as he was having that thought.

[Please awaken all four dormant skills in order to advance to a Tomb Raider.]

[Mission: Successfully awaken all four basic Tomb Raider skills.]

‘Oh? A quest window after a skill window?’

He naturally had no objections. Why would he have any issues with something that would allow him to use his abilities right now?

‘But how do I awaken these skills?’

It happened as Ju-Heon was thinking about this.

“Ah, seriously, hey you! Hurry up and kneel and beg for forgiveness! Do you want to end up in jail?”

Ju-Heon turned his head. Next to him was a high school student and a well-dressed madam.

“Hurry up and admit that you hit my son! We will settle for 10 million won! You can go to jail if you don't want to do that!”

Ju-Heon started to frown after hearing the woman’s shout.

‘Who are these bastards?’

But Ju-Heon quickly figured things out. Ju-Heon’s memories were so good that he could even remember a phone number he received on the streets many years ago.

That was why he could clearly remember what was going on right now.

It happened on the streets around dinner time.

‘I remember it was that bastard who provoked me after he had been drinking.’

As expected, the student was chuckling behind his mom.

“Oh, you're going to stare at me like that? So who told you to touch a student studying for their exams? He can’t even use his hand because of you.”

“They said it will take 8 weeks for a full recovery! Are you going to take responsibility if my son fails to get into college because of you? Are you going to take responsibility for ruining my son's life?!”

However, Ju-Heon scoffed at the women.

‘That injury taking 8 weeks to heal?’

“What a moron.”

The mother-son duo both dropped their jaws at this comment.

This bastard who was just groveling and saying he didn’t have even ten dollars on him just said what?

“Hey! Did you suddenly go crazy or something?!”

However, Ju-Heon could only laugh. There was only one thing for him to do now that he came back to the past.

It was to take the artifacts inside the tombs before anybody else. He needed to awaken his skills to do that. Yet he was stuck here wasting time with these buffoons.

‘I want to kick myself from 15 years ago.’

But he could understand why his old self acted the way he did. This had been how he lived until he earned the Archeology ability. He had found it hard to get a job as a high school graduate and had been suffering under an evil boss.

‘But I can’t waste my time like that now.’

There was no time to deal with these kind of children.

The mother-son duo became anxious after hearing Ju-Heon start to laugh.

“Hey, did you go crazy, you retard? What’s so funny? Huh?”

“This good for nothing bastard will snap out of it after he gets a beating!”

The woman tried to slap Ju-Heon. The officers tried to stop her in shock.

“Ahhhhhhhh!”

A loud scream filled the station.

The officers dropped their jaws in shock. The hand of the woman who tried to slap Ju-Heon had been twisted in a weird direction.

It had happened so fast.

“Hol......!”

“Aaah! My arm, my arm!”

Ju-Heon lightly laughed as he twisted her arm.

“Hey old lady, you need to know what you can hit and what you can’t hit.”

“Ahhhhhhhh!”

“M, mom! Are you okay? You bastard!”

The son tried to punch Ju-Heon as well and got his arm twisted as well.

“Aaah!”

“Oh my, I thought you needed 8 weeks for a full recovery. Your hand seems to be perfectly fine.”

“Aaah! Stop, stop! I'm sorry!”

The officers finally snapped out of it and stopped them.

“Hey, stop right now!”

Ju-Heon let go without any hesitation and stood up.

“That's fine, where is the holding cell?”

“Huh?”

“Aren’t you going to put me in the holding cell? I'm sleepy so I'm just going to go in and get some rest.”

Ju-Heon then started to walk toward the holding cell. He looked as if he knew exactly where it was.

“Tsk, look at that bastard!”

The officers chased after Ju-Heon in confusion. The mother-son duo were holding hands in shock as they watched him.

It looked like the son's hand was not as injured as they proclaimed...

“Ow, that bastard! Is he crazy?”

“Hurry up and stick him in the cell! Right away!”

“I'm going to sue this bastard!”

They were huffing and puffing but did not realize something very important.

They did not notice that their wallets had left their pockets without them knowing.

“Oh, these bastards were quite loaded.”

Ju-Heon chuckled while looking at the stolen wallets. He had used his skills to swipe them.

The original Ju-Heon had worked for 10 years with people calling him a rat bastard. It was nothing for him to steal people's attention away and swipe things. His skills were at the level of a street magician or an expert.

Of course, he had usually only used it during work-related tasks, but he had done it as a warm-up since he returned to the past. And voila, it had succeeded.

‘You damn bastards, it looks like there are some important stuff in here so have fun crying.’

He just needed to awaken these basic skills now. The problem was that he still didn’t know how to do it.

‘Just how do I go about awakening these skills?’

It would be great if he at least knew how to do that.

It happened at that moment.

[Spy skill mastery level has increased.]

[Your stealthy hands that even the devil would be shocked to see has helped you learn about the existence of the basic skill, < Dexterity >.]

‘Oh?’

Ju-Heon started to think after seeing that before he started to chuckle.

Did this mean that he needed to do certain actions to awaken the skills?

Ju-Heon was about to thoroughly inspect the system window but quickly put away the stolen wallets first.

It was because there was an officer heading toward him.

“Hey, you punk. I haven't even seen my wife’s face in a month so do I really have to see you here?”

Ju-Heon started to laugh.

Kim Gun Woo.

He was an investigator on the Violent Crimes Unit who had been treating the orphan Ju-Heon like his own brother since they were young. He had been Ju-Heon’s only family member until he eventually found some blood relatives.

“Anyway, don't worry because I took care of this. Those damn scammers were repeat offenders.

We should be putting them in jail for their repeated reports for the same thing.”

Ju-Heon smiled before seriously asking a question.

“Hyung, I have a question.”

“A question?”

Ju-Heon pointed to the TV instead of responding. The TV had a lot of news information quickly buzzing by.

[An unknown tomb appeared in Myeong-dong at 3pm today causing quite a disturbance. There are over 1,000 people reported to be missing......]

Inspector Kim looked at the news before clicking his tongue.

“Even the police don't know why these tombs are suddenly appearing. We haven’t found anything out in the past nine months.”

No, that wasn’t very important. Ju-Heon knew very well about these occurrences even without being told anything.

[Tomb Appearance]

This was a disaster in the world caused by artifacts looking to find their masters.

Zeus, Solomon, Socrates, Faust, Nostradamus, Chiyou the Chinese God of War, etc. Artifacts with the abilities of gods, heroes, and famous individuals were appearing in the world.

Artifacts used different methods to select their masters, however, they all created tombs in the process. People saw the tombs as a signal and gathered over to them.

‘Hell will be created once they start appearing more frequently.’

Artifacts definitely brought people benefits. However, if their goal was to destroy humanity, it could be called a great success.

People started to kill each other for artifacts and the monopolizers changed the social structures. The only way to survive was to find a great artifact and became an artifact user.

‘History will only repeat itself if I don't do that.’

This was the core part of his question.

“Hyung, have you seen any superhumans?”

“What? .........Ah! I saw it a while ago, the movie that got over 10 million views! The heroine was so hot.”

Ju-Heon started to smile at that response.

Based on that response, tombs have not been cleared yet and artifact users have not appeared in the world.

Tombs and artifacts were popping up here and there but it was still in the infancy stage. So there should not be any real competitors right now.

However, he could not relax just yet.

Why?

Because of Chairman Kwon. Although he didn’t know the exact time, Chairman Kwon was one of the early birds who got a Divine-Grade artifact in the early stages.

‘So I need to move faster than that bastard.’

The best scenario would be to take Chairman Kwon’s artifact before he got it.

Ju-Heon started to grind his teeth after still feeling the pain from his limbs being cut apart from his body.

‘Even without thinking about revenge, I need to hurry up in order to not have the same kind of life.’

Ju-Heon firmly made his resolves before saying goodbye and heading out of the police station.

There were too many things for him to do now that he had returned to the past.

‘The first was Europe. The tombs that were profitable mainly appeared in Europe at first, so I need to go there.’

However, it was at that moment.

Ju-Heon suddenly stopped walking after realizing an important fact.

It was something so shocking that he couldn’t believe he forgot about it.

‘Hold on. Wasn’t I penniless at this point?’

That was the case.

During this time, he had not even been able to pay his electricity or his water bills.

So forget getting on a plane, he didn’t even have money for daily necessities right now!

Ju-Heon could only sigh after remembering this fact.

‘I should be able to pay my overdue cell phone bill with this stolen money.’

Based on the situation, it looked like the era of artifacts would officially start in about two months. But forget getting into the tombs, he was having trouble getting to those countries to start!

‘Damn it, why did I erase those winning lottery numbers from my memories.’

Even his memory that was better than everybody else was useless right now.

However, it was at that moment.

“Hey! Seo Ju-Heon!”

There was a group of people sharply calling for Ju-Heon outside the police station. Ju-Heon started to frown while looking at them.

‘Those bastards are?’

They were his hyung-nims at the company where he was being exploited during this time.

They spit on the ground and motioned for Ju-Heon to hurry over to them.

‘Are they saying they will kill me if I don't come?’

He didn’t know exactly what they wanted, but he knew it wasn't so they could hang out and have some fun together.

However, Ju-Heon started to smile as if he thought of something while looking at them.

‘There are some useful punks right there.’