Tomb Raider King Volumes 4 and 5 Review

Jooheon is getting tired of General Kiera getting in his way. It’s time to squeeze her dry—from relics to knowledge—and dispose of her. Brute force is not the only thing Jooheon can use. Thanks to his knowledge from his previous life, he now knows who the key relics users are and the best way to destroy them. While some of them will have some worth as pawns for his plans, if they don’t end up being useful, they’ll get destroyed… he’ll make sure of it.

The first step of Jooheon’s plan against Keira is to ruin her reputation. From then on, Kiera keeps digging her own grave; when she tries to blackmail Irene Holton to join her side, she finds herself a new powerful enemy. Thankfully, Jooheon predicted Kiera’s actions, and after saving Irene’s parents, he lets the two women fight, before swooping in and destroying Kiera once and for all. But he’s no knight in shining armour; this way, he gains Irene and her family’s loyalty, influence and money.

However, Kiera is just the first of his enemies. Pandora, an organisation that is supposed to manage relics but in reality wants dominion over them, is aware that the seven great tombs—which belong to stronger relics—are about to appear in the world. The members of Pandora know that Jooheon won’t join their cause, so they make him their enemy number one. And the same fate soon starts to follow Jooheon’s comrades. Of course our antihero is not despairing about it. Actually he’s quite pleased with himself.

When the first of the seven great tombs appears in Kyoto, Japan, Jooheon is ready for it. Outsmarting the other excavation teams, he reaches the relic first, and of course he can’t help but scam, oops, I mean make a deal with the Nero relic, the owner of the Tomb of Sloth. If by doing so he can also mess with a few other people including Chairman Kwon, Jooheon won’t waste the opportunity.

The more I read this series, the more Jooheon appears to be a villain instead of the hero. We know what led him to behave this way and why his personality is so twisted, but he’s also acting against and taking revenge on people who haven’t done anything to him yet. ‘Yet’, in fact, is the keyword. Jooheon wants to save his comrades that he wasn’t able to protect in his past life, and he’ll destroy anything and anyone who gets in his way. In Volumes 4 and 5 we also get to meet a few of his past colleagues: Julian Miller, Seolah and finally Chen Yang, the comrade who betrayed Jooheon’s team. They are all enemies now, but I hope that Julian and Seolah will join Jooheon once again. It’s not going to be an easy feat due to his personality but if they can see past Jooheon’s peculiar character, his original team might be able to get back together.

Jooheon’s villainous personality is offset by the comedic side of the story. His schemes are amusing to read about and you can’t help but cheer for Jooheon to succeed in his endeavours. The actions of the characters, both humans and relics around him also lighten the story and highlight Jooheon’s twisted personality even more. To deal with Nero’s tomb, Jooheon accepts to take part in a literature contest after one of his relics sells a novel that he wrote without his permission. While the novel is considered rubbish by his human comrades, the relics seem to have a different opinion, and that turns out to be his triumph card. Without any doubt, Jooheon has Lady Luck on his side. It would be quite a plot twist if a luck relic existed and Jooheon had it with him, but that’s just speculation.

Like the previous volumes, Tomb Raider King has a mix of action and adventure scenes that recall Indiana Jones, especially when they are excavating the tombs of the relics. Compared to the other manhwa, this series doesn’t give previews of what’s to come, but instead leaves the readers with a cliffhanger.

Tomb Raider King is written by San.G, illustrated by 3B2S and adapted by Yuns (REDICE STUDIO). It started as a webtoon on Tapas, and it’s published in print format by Ize Press. Volume 6 was released in March 2024.

Our review copy from Ize Press was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.