Jarkon's armor saved him from the twisting forces within the whirlpool which would have rented him apart. If he survived even that, then the explosion would have sealed his fate. He would have been stretched apart by the pulling force of the whirlpool as it tries to regain its normal state.
It is one thing to withstand external pressure. It is another thing to withstand internal expansion. You need to be durable and sturdy for you to withstand the first but you need to be elastic and capable of expanding into a great size against your will near instantaneously for you to withstand the second effect of the WORLD HAMMER. Those two qualities are different if not opposite to each other and rarely do they exist in the same person at the same time. They certainly won't appear within a simple nuisance like Jarkon.
Soverick came to examine what was left after the explosion.
"It's just as expected. They gave him something I can't use if I manage to defeat him." He said when he saw the tiny pieces of the armor scattered about.
What's left of the armor is unsalvageable. It is just bits and pieces crushed beyond recognition. He had to break the armor open to kill the person within but that also removed the option of using the armor for himself after killing its previous owner. It might just be a coincidence but he has decided to err on the side of caution and believe that it was intentional.
He shrugged and said, "No use crying over broken armor no matter how top-grade it is. I'll just have to find my own."
Then he jumped out of the large crater and resumed his journey across the grassland. He is sure that he will find something soon because there is a limit to how much manipulation the arena spirits can do to deprive him of good artifacts. He just needs to move to two zones away from where he is. The zones closest to him might also have been rigged against him but he is sure to find good things two zones out.
They won't be able to deny him from getting something good for long. This means they will be trying other things to stop him soon. More fights like the one he just had with Jarkon will probably happen soon. He will welcome them because the fight will not be entirely fruitless. Anyone that can resist him so someone that has to be astounding or at least above others in skill. That also means that they will likely have feats for him to take after killing them.
Jarkon had feats and he acquired 3 feats from Jarkon after his death. It means Jarkon had at least 6 feats or 7. If it were 8 feats, he would have received 4 feats instead of 3. Or that's how it should have gone if he were a normal person who doesn't have access to the law matrix. Soverick took everything that Jarkon had to offer.
That's how he knows that Jarkon did in fact, have 7 feats and not 6. It is because he extracted 7 feats from Jarkon when his brand was saving him. That moment of vulnerability in the brand caused by the need to save Jarkon from death created a window of opportunity that he was very quick to exploit.
"I'll take the extra 4 feats as the payment of my services. I taught Jarkon a lesson. I should get paid for it." He thought to himself happily.
The thought of Jarkon brought to mind their bloodline.
He said with mirth, "Probably gained his feats by actively hunting criminals. He just doesn't have anything better to do. Everyone with that bloodline is like that. They surely have a weird bloodline. They must be very lucky or they won't have survived."
The rule of society in the void universe makes it that the bloodline of the lion of justice should have been wiped out long ago. They made a lot of enemies by putting their noses where it doesn't belong and interfering in matters that don't concern them. Being a hero in the void universe is not a healthy lifestyle.
They should have all been killed and would have been wiped out If not for the support of the racial council. It is ironic that an eternal bloodline, one that is supposed to last forever, is the cause of death in its own lineage. It isn't exactly a rare situation. It happens in bloodlines where the ancestors are suicidal, manic, and crazy.
The ancestor of the lion of Justice was crazy about justice to dangerous levels. Fortunately for them, they have the right type of crazy that the racial council needed. They have the qualities that one will favor in a breed of hound dogs.
The racial council wanted a policing force to give a semblance of order to the plane. Anyone can do anything in the plane, but they must not go too far or the plane will become too chaotic. There has to be a force for reckoning if balance is to be kept. Who best to use than the suicidal fools hell-bent on upholding justice?
So the racial made them their hunting dogs and established an empire for them where their bloodline can proliferate in safety. It helped the bloodline to continue despite the self-harming tendencies of its possessors.
It is without a doubt that their bloodline is strong. It would have been stronger if it were not so focused on hunting evil and delivering justice. Their eyes lost the usual power of the battle sage monkeys in favor of identifying criminals and locking on them.
Once someone with the bloodline of the lion of justice locks on to someone, it is near impossible to escape their hunt unless you leave the plane. Even then, there's nothing stopping them from leaving the plane to chase after you. The racial council saw this and was impressed.