Chapter 21: There’s a weird guy in Korea (2)
Chapter 21: There's a weird guy in Korea (2)
Translator: miraclerifle
“This place is always so loud.”
Ju-Heon was drinking a gin and tonic as he looked at the brightly lit night sky.
It was already 8pm. It was also January, the middle of winter.
However, this damn Las Vegas was loud without ever getting exhausted.
Red light, blue light, lights flashing in all sorts of colors as well as golden colored buildings, solicitors and tourists.
This western US tourist and gambling city was the same as it was in the past.
‘Other than the fact that it is a bit smaller.’
During Ju-Heon’s times, Las Vegas had grown a lot as one of the greatest auction houses for artifacts.
That was why Ju-Heon was very familiar with this desert city.
The World Auction.
The secret underground auction nicknamed, < Midas > started here.
Ju-Heon was waiting in the lobby of the auction house for Oh Seung Woo's group to arrive.
Most people might think this was a regular restaurant, but the people with inside information knew this was the auction house's lobby.
‘Why are these bastards not here yet?’
Midas was a five day long auction. Right now, most of the items going through this secret auction house would be brand items, famous art pieces and stolen goods.
It was just a place for rich people to have some fun, but it would become an artifact auction house in the future where CEOs of international corporations, the wealthy, royalty, celebrities and even political figures attended on a regular basis.
Ju-Heon had also frequented Midas as Chairman Kwon’s right hand man. There were some celebrities, CEOs, and royalty that he got to know there as well.
‘Although they probably saw me as thorns in their eyes.’
Ju-Heon's infamy was extremely high because Chairman Kwon used his wealth to sweep away the artifacts put up for auction.
But this infamy went beyond the auction house.
Chairman Kwon was one of the monopolizers and his excavation team at the time had both the highest status and the highest infamy.
Ju-Heon was the captain of that excavation team. Of course, Ju-Heon’s excavation team was closer to an illegal tomb raiding team than an excavation team at the time.
None of the monopolizers were able to do anything in front of Ju-Heon’s tomb raiding team.
‘I wonder what the other punks are doing right about now.’
The teammates from his tomb raiding team as well as the monopolizers whom he had negative relationships with.
All of them were talented rulers who possessed artifacts.
‘I'm sure they are all still regular people at this point.’
It was at that moment.
“Huff, huff! We found you! Seo Ju-Heon!”
Ju-Heon turned his head after hearing a familiar voice. He could see Oh Seung Woo’s group who were wearing terribly fitting suits.
Ju-Heon cracked his knuckles as he welcomed them.
“30 minutes over.”
Oh Seung Woo's group started to shake in fear after hearing his cold tone. Ju-Heon looked like a gentleman in his suit but they knew too well about this so called gentleman's vicious nature.
“W, wait!”
“H, hold on! There’s a reason!”
“What? What kind of reason?”
Ju-Heon started to frown. However, the scared Oh Seung Woo’s group pounded their chests as if something was unfair.
“It was hard to get in here without Kyung Joo noonim!”
“Listen! Damn it, why were they trying to kick us out?!”
They sounded as if they faced some unfair treatment but Ju-Heon laughed while looking at them.
‘They would be able to tell if they looked in a mirror.’
That was the case.
Their faces were one thing, but their outfits were more the reason.
They seemed to have dressed up as Midas’s dress code required formal attire, but their shirts were the problem.
They were wearing some old-fashioned flower patterned typical thug shirts that were in style probably twenty or thirty years ago. In addition, who knows what they did with their ties as they did not have any ties on them.
“Tsk, anyway, what are we going to do? None of us can speak English. You need to say some weird things when you place the order to enter the auction house.”
Ju-Heon tilted his head.
“We just need to do it.”
Oh Seung Woo’s group pounded their chests in frustration after hearing his calm response.
“Like I was saying, noonim usually did that! You should be in the dark as much as we are!”
Ju-Heon chuckled and raised his hand. A waiter who seemed to have been trained well soon arrived and warmly asked.
“Are you ready to order, sir?”
Oh Seung Woo’s group who seemed to have insecurities about their English quickly looked away.
‘How can you suddenly call him over!
My mind is not ready yet!’
However, Ju-Heon casually looked over the menu and started to order something.
‘Huh, huh?’
He sounded skilled at this.
Oh Seung Woo's groups expressions slowly changed after Ju-Heon started to say something about the auction.
They went, ‘huh?’ at first before their expressions reached the level of astonishment.
‘What the hell is going on?’
‘When did this bastard learn English?’
Ju-Heon’s English sounded as if he was a native speaker.
That wasn’t the only thing. He seemed to have also joked with the waiter in the process, as they were both laughing as they chatted. The waiter and Ju-Heon even looked toward Oh Seung Woo’s group as they laughed.
Oh Seung Woo could not help but start to shout out of frustration.
“Hey! What the hell are you saying right now?! Are you talking shit about us?!”
Ju-Heon just scoffed at them.
“No? He said they were going to kick you guys out because they thought you were black consumers so I was resolving the misunderstanding.” [1]
“......?!”
“By the way, I ordered everything from top to bottom. You guys pay the bill for my helping you resolve this misunderstanding.”
“What? Hey, hey!”
“Ah. I also told him you guys will take care of the tip as well.”
The bill was already their responsibility!
Either way, once that short commotion was over, Ju-Heon was able to receive an auction catalog from the employee.
Information about the items that would show up in the auction were listed in this 200-page book that was the size of one hand.
There were large images of the item as well as an English descriptions of them. Ju-Heon looked through each page wondering if any artifacts ended up mixed in with the items.
Oh Seung Woo’s group whispered to each other while looking at Ju-Heon.
“This bastard...... do you think he’s actually reading everything?”
“B, but more importantly, hyung-nim, is it really okay for us to help this bastard? Shouldn’t we make him pay for putting Kyung Joo noonim and Kyung Tae hyung-nim behind bars......”
“That’s right! We came out here with extraterritoriality, so why don’t we take care of him here......”
Oh Seung Woo stepped on his lackey’s foot and glared at him when he tried to get up.
“Are you confident you can beat him right now?”
They all became quiet.
It was definitely not possible.
How could they take down this monster-like bastard?
They might end up getting shot to death trying to take care of this bastard in the US.
“If you think about it, what good will it do us to be loyal to people who went to prison for smuggling drugs?”
“But!”
“Did you already forget how the Park siblings treated us as underlings?”
“But what...!”
Oh Seung Woo then started to think. They were forced by Ju-Heon to work right now, but he didn’t know whether he could trust this young bastard who claimed they would be well compensated based on how well they did.
‘Shit, what do I do?’
It was at that moment.
“You said there are three JKs?”
Oh Seung Woo's group flinched at Ju-Heon’s question and quickly handed him a document.
“Uh, uh, yeah. It's these guys.”
They must have some connections with an auction house employee as they were able to gather information on JK.
Ju-Heon looked at this well-compiled document and started to smile.
‘These kind of bastards are useful too.’
There was a limit to getting this kind of information from the auction house for his current self. He needed Park Kyung Joo's company to qualify to get into the auction house this time as well. That was why it should be useful to boss these bastards around until he didn't need them anymore.
Of course, there were ways for him to get this information if he really wanted to do so, but he had too much to do to pay attention to such trivial things.
‘Although it looks like I need to train them some more since they seem to be getting some funny ideas.’
Oh Seung Woo who had no way of knowing about Ju-Heon’s dark thoughts started to sweat bullets as he explained the situation to Ju-Heon.
“There are three JKs. But all of them have different nationalities and occupations, so......”
“R, right. I heard one of them is a woman, a Hollywood actress. The other is a man......who seems to be a rich golden spoon artist. The third is a writer. They all seem to be using fake names so I can’t really tell, is the person you are looking for among those three?”
It happened as the Oh Seung Woo group clicked their tongues thinking it could have all been for nothing.
They saw that Ju-Heon was smiling as he looked at the document.
“No, the person is in here.”
They were shocked.
“What?! Who is it?! I, is it the a, actress?”
Ju-Heon just smiled while looking at the document of participants they brought over.
‘Actress my ass.’
Ju-Heon's eyes started to glare at one of the three people on the list.
‘I knew you would come. Chairman Kwon.’
He was certain.
The fact that the bastard was here meant that the chances of artifacts appearing in this auction house was high. Maybe he was born with an innate sense of detecting artifacts or something, but there were always artifacts wherever that man went.
That was why Ju-Heon's hands became busy looking through the catalog.
And lo and behold.
‘There are some.’
Ju-Heon's hand stopped moving.
Ju-Heon found multiple artifacts in the catalog.
The Code of Hammurabi.
Shakespeare’s pen.
There were some other ones as well. A bracelet, a toy, a cigarette, they were all in different forms, but their cores remained intact for Ju-Heon to be able to tell.
‘I don't see any Divine-Grade artifacts, what could be going on?’
The prophecy mentioned a Divine-Grade artifact at the auction.
‘Did I miss it?’
Oh Seung Woo tilted his head in confusion as he watched Ju-Heon. There were limited edition 20th century luxury bags, a Van Gogh painting and even wine that could sell for billions of dollars on the catalog.
It was fine to pass those items because they couldn't afford them, but why was Ju-Heon marking such weird items?
However, they couldn’t help but scream after looking at an item Ju-Heon selected.
‘Starting bid of 2 billion dollars?’
They thought it wasn’t much, but some of them were extremely expensive.
However, what shocked them more was what Ju-Heon said next.
“There are a few items I need to win.”
Oh Seung Woo foamed at the mouth after hearing that.
“Hey! A, are you saying you are going to win all of those items you checked?”
“Is there an issue?”
“Hey! The fact that you want to win something at Midas makes no sense at all! There are CEOs of large corporations bidding for these items!”
Even Park Kyung Joo had only come to the Midas auction to build connections and watch, not to bid.
How was he planning to do anything in this battlefield of giants?
“Hey! Let's say that the items you picked are not popular. But they are all in the hundred millions dollars range to start! Where are you going to get that money?!”
However, Ju-Heon just smiled at him.
“We just need to earn some money.”
“W, what?”
“Did you forget that we are in the city of gambling?”
The Oh Seung Woo group were shocked after understanding the meaning behind Ju-Heon’s words.
“G, gambling. Are you thinking about hitting a jackpot or something? You think that is possible?!”
“What if it is?”
“What?”
Ju-Heon then took out a gold knife from his pocket. It was the gold axe from the Gold axe Silver axe pair.
He had disguised it as a knife to make it easy to carry around.
“You bought a map of the area right? Take it out.”
“Y, you punk, I have no idea what you are thinking.”
Oh Seung Woo sounded shocked but still took out the tourist map of Las Vegas from his pocket.
Ju-Heon did not care what they were thinking.
He could increase his wealth.
He just needed to find the ideal spot to increase his wealth.
This gold axe would help him do that.
[Gold axe Silver axe - Gold Axe (B-Grade:Rare-Grade/Consumable Artifact)]
- Remaining Uses (941/1000)
Similar to how the gold axe silver axe brought wealth for the honest woodcutter, this artifact was one that helped bring wealth to its master.
The gold axe's ability was to pinpoint places that gave off the scent of money, riches, or treasures.
In simple terms, it could locate places that would make the user rich.
‘Okay then, pinpoint the place where a jackpot will happen today. Go, gold axe.”
Ju-Heon activated the artifact and threw the knife into the air.
And then...
Stab!
The knife shined with a gold light before stabbing into a spot on the map.
Ju-Heon started to smile as he looked at the map.
‘Alright then, shall I go hit a jackpot?’
1. Black consumer is a term in Korean for problem customers.