Chapter 277: Scouting War (1)

Translator: miraclerifle

In another part of the world...

“It seems as if everybody failed in their attempts to take the Heirlooms that Seo Ju-Heon has monopolized.”

Prometheus put a hand to his forehead after hearing his subordinate’s report.

"I hoped it would not end up like this but in the end it seems it is inevitable.”

He was currently in the Amazon. There were many poisonous snakes and insects around this tomb within the vast jungle.

Prometheus was in a cave somewhere within that jungle.

He had no choice but to come here in order to go up against Seo Ju-Heon who had monopolized the Heirlooms as well as to achieve their grand vision.

The artifacts that came with Prometheus started to whisper while looking at something inside this underground cave.

They could see a large box.

This was the original of the small Pandora's box Zhen Cai Yuan had in her possession.

[Must you remove the seal on these bastards?!]

“Yes. This is our only option.”

They needed Heirlooms.

They needed to turn the bastards they wanted into Monarchs. Those bastards needed to be able to use Divine-Grade artifacts.

And if they could not take away the Heirlooms from Seo Ju-Heon......!

‘Their replacements!’

They had resisted using these replacements because these ones were hard for them to control but they had no choice!

‘They are annoying to deal with but they are very strong.’

If the Heirlooms turned humans to have superhuman bodies and upgraded their attributes, these bastards did something different!

‘But their abilities are at the level of the Heirlooms!’

Boom!

Prometheus released the seal on the artifacts. He had to personally remove the seal that they had placed to imprison these bastards in the past!

There was suddenly an intense earthquake.

The tomb crumbled and the artifacts imprisoned inside were laughing as they shot up into the air.

Booboboboooooooooom!

[Kahahaha! We’re free! Freee!]

[Who is it? Who ended up releasing us?!]

[Hmm? Aren’t you Prometheus?]

[What? It was you? You released us after imprisoning us for being a thorn in your eyes? Kahahaha!]

Prometheus laughed toward them as well.

“Follow me, you gross bastards. There are humans for you to parasite over!”

[Kaha, kahahaha! That sounds great!]

“Here! Go! We will reward whichever one of you who manages to create one of the Four Emperors!”

The seal on the box was completely removed.

‘We can’t sit by and watch Seo Ju-Heon become the Monarch among Monarchs, the Majesty!’

[Other Monarchs are able to use Divine-Grade artifacts again.]

[Did they purchase Heirlooms from Seo Ju-Heon?]

The world was in uproar.

Yoo Jaeha screamed while reading the articles.

“Hold on! What the hell? Are there Heirloom replacements or something? Just how...?!”

Ju-Heon seemed calm.

“Why are you freaking out like that? We expected this to happen. Those bastards are the type who would definitely try to find replacements to squeeze their way as Monarchs if they can't get the Heirlooms.”

"I, is this okay? Kwon Tae Joon and Kwon Hyuk Soo are Monarchs as well.”

Ju-Heon chuckled in response.

“Who cares if they did? It clearly states that they are False Monarchs.”

"Well......”

That Pandora system artifact seemed to be quite honest.

Although the official documents had the other people listed as Monarchs, well... The Pandora website clearly indicated that they were False Monarchs.

The server had been shut down as soon as it was seen but everybody in the world had already seen it or taken screenshots of it.

The media was in a frenzy right now.

[They must have used abnormal methods to gain such benefits.]

[Can we still trust Pandora?]

[We cannot accept anybody who does not have a Heirloom.]

[The Monarchs are probably aiming for the remaining 7 Great Tombs.]

“Either way, is this okay?”

“It’s okay. They would have used those Heirloom replacements a long time ago if they are that great. But they tried their best to steal our Heirlooms and finally settled for those?”

It was obvious that they dragged it out as long as possible before making a decision they did not want to make.

Those replacements must be double-sided swords or have extremely difficult risks or some other negative factor compared to the Heirlooms.

No matter what, a Heirloom replacement was only a replacement.

‘At minimum they are Divine-grade artifacts. They will be strong artifacts.’

“It is quite interesting.”

The thing that was most interesting were the artifacts from the 7 Great Tombs and that Majesty's Treasure of course.

‘The precursors for the rest of the 7 Great Tombs appeared as soon as the Monarch's Tomb disappeared.’

It was to be expected. That tomb should have originally come out later but they had forced it to open.

It made sense for the 7 Great Tombs to appear. The fact that the Monarch's tomb was cleared first seemed to impact their appearances that they were showing up a bit later than expected.

‘I need the other two to go find the Crow.’

He really wanted to know more about that Majesty's Treasure business.

‘According to the artifacts, it is an overbearing artifact that can control all artifacts, change their abilities, and even get rid of them.’

That artifact might even be in the tomb where the Crow was imprisoned.

They saw an unfamiliar face on the TV while looking up information on potentially related tombs.

[You were promoted to a Monarch again. Please comment!]

[The world is currently full of people claiming Seo Ju-Heon is the messiah or whatever but that is not the truth.]

A man with an eye patch over his left eye was on TV.

[In my opinion, Seo Ju-Heon is not the messiah but chaos itself. He is an evil person who will bring destruction to this world.]

[Is that true?]

[I am the Maitreya. I am able to look into people’s minds using supernatural powers.]

The man seemed to be Ju-Heon’s clone.

Everybody became shocked at what they were seeing on TV. They did hear that new Monarchs had appeared, but...

“I, isn’t that Gung Ye's artifact?!”

“Hey hey, that’s not important right now! He’s an exact copy of the Captain-ni......ugh!”

Ju-Heon was pinching Yoo Jaeha's cheek.

“Hey. Do you want to die? How can you say that cult-leader like fraud looks like me? Huh?”

“Oooow, sowwieeee, pweese let go... aaahh!”

Ju-Heon seemed extremely annoyed. Seol-A seemed to be quite annoyed as well.

“Yeah! How can you say that they look similar?! A fake like that could never measure up to the Captain-nim!”

“No, they really do look sim......”

“I said they don't! The Captain-nim is much cooler!”

Seol-A started choking Yoo Jaeha in anger.

But no matter what she said, they did look similar.

There had been a Monarch who looked like Ju-Heon in the past as well, but that guy had clearly not been as handsome.

However...

‘It's not a lower quality this time!’

The guy was no doppelganger but did seem extremely similar to Ju-Heon.

This one was actually handsome like Ju-Heon! Seol-A did not seem to like that at all.

She quietly started to mumble.

“It’s not like a hidden twin brother suddenly appeared... What the hell is going on? Is it an artifact?”

Irene innocently asked a question after hearing Seol-A's mumbling.

"Now that I think about it, Mr. Ju-Heon, didn't you say that you had a twin?”

The team members flinched. The male team members seemed to be flinching quite significantly.

Ju-Heon tilted his head in confusion.

“Irene, how do you know that?”

The rest of the team members started shaking in fear.

Why?

“Let me make one thing clear. I have no family members, you got that?”

They had been extremely scared because Ju-Heon had stabbed a knife into the table.

𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

‘The fact that Captain-nim did all that means he really didn't want us to talk about it.’

But someone had talked about it. Someone had told Irene about Ju-Heon's twin!

The desperate team members pulled Irene by the arm.

“What do you mean a twin? The Captain-nim doesn't have a sibling!”

“Excuse me? But......”

“Haaa, Irene, you must have heard wrong......”

Ju-Heon’s smile looked quite ominous.

They were right to feel scared.

"Who told her?”

“E, excuse me?”

“The fact that Irene knows about my twin means that one of you must have told her about it.”

“......N, no, that...!”

Ju-Heon was smiling brightly. But that smile was proof that Ju-Heon was extremely angry.

Irene seemed to have realized the situation as she anxiously grabbed Ju-Heon's hand.

“Ah, umm, I'm sorry! I kept pestering everybody else about it...!”

Irene clenched her eyes closed.

“It’s all my fault so......!”

Ju-Heon continued to smile brightly as he caressed Irene’s hair.

“Ah, it's okay. It’s totally fine.”

“Really?”

“I just have to take their Heirlooms to pay for their sins.”

“?!”

“Especially you, Yoo Jaeha. I really want yours. Hand it over.”

That must have been his goal from the start!

The team members foamed at the mouth after seeing the chaotic Crow's aura behind Ju-Heon and ran away.

“Ack! No! You know that we will die if the Heirlooms leave our body!”

Heirlooms were artifacts that turned the human body into a superhuman body. They would return to being a regular person if their Heirloom was destroyed before dying not too long after.

Although they could generally protect their parasitic Heirlooms, Ju-Heon’s power that preyed on other artifacts and sucked them up was truly a source of fear.

“It’ll be destroyed if it is gobbled up by the Crow!”

“It’s fine, I'll tell it to swallow them without chewing on them.”

“Don't say something like that with a serious expression on your face you son of a bitch! That’s not the problem!”

The team members started crying as they begged for forgiveness.

"We're sorry. We know that information leak is a sensitive issue but we let our guards down because we were in our base!”

“It was because we were talking to Irene!”

“Please don’t kill us!”

Ju-Heon showed them his phone after hearing the team members begging for forgiveness.

“Then as punishment, each of you will go get a menu item from this restaurant. Here’s the menu. I will give you one hour.”

“Excuse me? This is a place you have to wait in line for hours to get inside......!”

“It’s also located in France! Did you forget that we are in New York?!”

“Either that or hand over your Heirlooms.”

"We will go get it right away!”

Ilya and Jaeha ran out as fast as lightning and Ju-Heon leisurely called Dan over.

“You don't need to make dinner for the two of them for a while.”

“......I, is that really okay?”

“Those bastards won’t dare to come back for at least a week.”

‘Well, I need to do this much in order for them to be more careful next time.’

Irene asked again, as if she had been waiting for a moment to do so.

“Umm, then is it okay to ask you about your family member, Mr. Ju-Heon?”

Ju-Heon happily answered Irene’s question.

“I do have a twin, a twin sister. Ah, I guess I have two siblings if you consider Kwon Woo hyung’s son in Korea.”

"Where is your twin sister right now? Is she in Korea?”

“She should be in the US.”

“Huh, the US?”

"We were separated when we were young. We lost our parents in an accident... And have not seen each other since we were six years old. She was adopted by a family abroad.”

"Aha.”

Julian sighed and asked at that moment.

"But that really is Gung Ye's artifact, isn't it?”

“So what?”

“Didn't Gung Ye's artifact not show up in the past? I do remember seeing Wang Geon's artifact though......”

Chairman Kwon had sold that off to the Chinese government in the past.

There had been a lot of diplomatic issues because China had claimed that Korea was required to hand it over as a vassal state of China.

“Did it come out but I just forgot about it?”

“No. I don’t recall Gung Ye's artifact coming out either.”

"Then who the hell is that bastard?”

Who was he?

“I am the Maitreya.”

The man who looked extremely similar to Ju-Heon was calmly smiling at Pandora.

The other Monarchs who were called here were frowning, probably because he looked so similar to Ju-Heon.

"Who the hell is this crazy bastard?”

“Is it because of his artifact’s risk? He seems a bit of a nutjob.”

“How dare you. You seem to have evilness in your mouth.”

“What? What did you just...... ugh!”

A scream echoed inside the meeting room.

Pow!

The head of the man who had talked back to the Maitreya exploded and he turned into a lump of meat.

“M, my goodness.”

“What the hell did you do?”

Guinness, the Monarch of Delicacies, glared at the man after his subordinate was killed.

“Are you fucking crazy?!”

The man who significantly resembled Ju-Heon calmly made a comment.