Ex-level Player With the Greatest Civilization of All Time - Chapter 27

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 27

I watched from a distance as Krail, having received his orders, organized his unit.
Baek Jin-seong, standing beside me, whispered.
“Is this really all right?”
At his question, I glanced toward Argelayer, who crouched in a corner sketching strange diagrams with a wooden stick.
“It’s fine. Let her be for now. Just help me with something later.”
“Y-yes!”
But paradoxically, the chat sentiment from viewers watching Argelayer dig was running hot.

– My, what’s with the gloomy mood?
– I’m joining Team Argelayer.
– Naia should make better use of Argelayer!

Showing the sentiment of the voice chat would be easy enough to placate them.
So for now, I kept my focus on Krail.
Once he’d finished organizing his unit, Krail came over and reported.
“Will this suffice?”
“Yes.”
The Drones here numbered roughly thirty in total.
Excluding about five Reconnaissance Units, that left some twenty-five Drones with actual combat capability.
Yet Krail had only requisitioned about half of them.
“All right, if that’s your thinking, I trust you. Go.”
“I won’t fail to honor your faith!”
I could roughly guess Krail’s reasoning too.
At first glance, it seemed reckless to enter the Hidden Floor—where so many players had already failed—with numbers like that.
‘But sending them all in wouldn’t improve efficiency anyway.’
The passages of the Hidden Floor were vast.
Unnaturally so for an underground facility.
Yet even at their widest, the narrower corridors never exceeded twenty meters across, whether length or width.
Deploy Drones exceeding one meter in size by the dozens, and you’d only create a bottleneck—the very opposite of what you wanted.
Moreover, a Drone’s true strength lay in its range and flight capability.
Engaging the enemy from heights where their attacks couldn’t reach, overwhelming them one-sidedly.
Lose the high ground while already sacrificing range and mobility, and you’d have nothing left.
‘And from what I’ve observed, Krail is precisely the resource specialized for this kind of thinking.’
If Argelayer unified her unit into one concentrated force that melted away opposition with overwhelming firepower—
Then Krail, whose base unit was the Reconnaissance model, specialized in observation and optimal tactical judgment.
But the viewers, ignorant of these facts, were already in uproar.

– Protect Krail at all costs!
– This can’t be happening!
– Commander Krail ㅠㅠ
– An incompetent commander is the most terrifying thing.

Already they were flailing about with negativity.
Why not just sing a funeral march.
Krail must have caught my discomfort, for he shot a pointed look at Baek Jin-seong—who was receiving the voice chat—then saluted me.
Snap.
I returned his salute, and Krail turned and entered the Hidden Floor.

– Wait, was he just getting angry on behalf of someone who threw him into danger?
– Loyalty GOAT
– That’s the spirit! Hang in there!

Shortly after Krail entered.
A video feed materialized before my eyes.
The screen displayed the interior landscape synchronized with the visual sensors of Krail and his Drones.
I spoke while monitoring the situation through the feed transmitted by the Reconnaissance Unit.
“Let’s go as well.”
“Pardon? Go, sir? But you just said we shouldn’t enter….”
“I said we won’t enter. But we still need to prepare for contingencies from up here.”
When I sent Krail ahead, the viewers had criticized me as incompetent.
But honestly, I had no intention of shouldering all the burden on him alone.
I didn’t want to lose a high-caliber asset like Krail either.
More than anything, I lacked the confidence to endure Naia’s cold reception if we returned without him.
So I had to be ready to intervene if things went south.
“In this operation, Krail down there is more like a scout, really. The finishing blow will fall to Argelayer. Probably.”
I had given orders to eliminate the source, after all.
But that was only contingent on it being manageable.
The scale of the World Tree was simply too vast.
If just the roots were this enormous, the overall size would rival a proper mountain.
To handle something of that magnitude, Argelayer’s firepower was indispensable.
“And if something goes wrong in the meantime, we’ll need to provide support from the surface, won’t we?”
But at my words, Baek Jin-seong scratched his head.
“Ah… I understand what you’re saying, but how exactly would you get there, sir?”
Sharing the interior situation via screens was one thing.
But from the ground, there was no way to know which location corresponded to where Krail was currently walking.
“Don’t worry about that—Krail is capable.”
Ding—
Right on cue, Krail’s built-in skill.
A map created via Cartography appeared as well.
The viewers responded enthusiastically upon seeing the map.

– This. Guy. Is. Legend.
– He even draws maps?
– Just what is he?

“Now all that remains is….”
I placed my hand on Argelayer’s shoulder as she continued sketching some incomprehensible diagram on the ground.
“Let’s move out, Lieutenant.”
“Will something like that actually be useful?”
Depressed again….
Not even cursing about it anymore.
“You, Lieutenant, are what we call the joker—the battlefield’s radiance, Argelayer. I’ve prepared the grandest stage for you, so set your mind at ease.”
I gave Baek Jin-seong the cue I’d arranged earlier.
And he rose to the occasion.
“Aaahhh, too dazzling! Lieutenant Argelayer. The battlefield’s radiance!”
Once the viewers caught on to the mood, they joined in the chorus.

– Argelayer! Argelayer! Argelayer!
– I want to see it—the grand and mighty Ultra-wide Beam Cannon of Argelayer!
– If we make it to the end, our Argelayer will sweep the day!

Argelayer’s lips curved upward once more.
Season 3 revival!
“I shall annihilate every foe! I am Argelayer, a brilliant officer who graduated top of her class from the Academy, after all, hahahaha….”
Having fully recovered her spirits, she began moving forward.
The map was clear enough that even I, who had no idea how to read maps, could understand it easily.
Like a game’s minimap, my current location glowed green.
Krail’s location shone blue.
The terrain was so vivid and distinct that there was no risk of losing our bearings.
Walking at a pace matching Krail’s reconnaissance speed left me with such surplus composure that I had more than enough leisure to watch the monitor and interact with the viewers.
“But sir.”
“What?”
“That person is following us.”
An existence I’d forgotten about.
At Baek Jin-seong’s words, I glanced back to see Krim trailing along behind us.
Was he interested in something?
Or perhaps it was connected to the task he’d mentioned earlier, and he simply wanted to observe the unfolding situation from the sidelines.
At the same time, looking at Baek Jin-seong’s face, it seemed he too wished to accompany Krim.
Krail and Argelayer had been buried in the Hidden Floor and momentarily forgotten.
But Krim, possessed of a sound mind, made for fascinating broadcast material.
“If you don’t mind, shall we go together?”
“Ahem… then I’ll be imposing on you, friend.”

– Can’t believe Krim just called him that.
– That’s actually adorable…
– Wait, didn’t they confuse it with Naia’s name?

Now that he thought about it, Krim had asked, but he’d never actually answered the question about his name.
“My name is Naia.”
“Naia. Ah, I see—a fine name indeed.”
Krim said so, then posed another question.
“But… might those soldiers of this man be summons of yours, Naia?”
“That is correct.”
“Hoho… though I pride myself on living quite a long time, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Krim’s eyes sparkled as he pressed on with question after question.
He seemed particularly impressed by the formidable Ultra-wide Beam Cannon that Argelayer had displayed earlier.
“And that strike was as if the grace of a goddess had descended upon us.”
“You are too kind.”
As Naia deflected Krim’s flattery and continued walking, it happened.

Whoosh—rumble!

A beam shot from the hologram screen, creating a thunderous boom.
In the screen, Krail’s eyes were suffused with blue light.
Above the Reconnaissance Units, the shape of blue eyes was hovering.
‘That’s what I saw before!’
During the city reconstruction work.
That very symbol that had floated above the work robots’ heads.
But viewers unfamiliar with this were bewildered.

– Huh?
– Why is he firing at thin air?
– Is he seeing things?
– Alert, red alert—Krail’s malfunctioning!

It was understandable to be puzzled; even knowing the situation, he was firing indiscriminately at empty space.
For viewers without prior knowledge, it was the perfect picture for misunderstanding.
Even as the chat window erupted in noise, the barrage continued.
Heavy fire fierce enough to shake the corridor itself.
Sharp enough to be felt through the camera feed, which meant the actual site must have been far more intense.
Yet even that bombardment, like a summer downpour, had to end.

– It stopped.
– What on earth was that?
– As long as he’s not broken, that’s what matters.

But the very next moment, a scene unfolded that clearly demonstrated the viewers’ concerns were unfounded—the preceding barrage had been deliberate, purposeful.
Thud-thud-thud…
Something fell from the ceiling.
Vine debris and Monsters.

– It’s a spider!
– Ugh, what’s with that size?
– So it was hiding up there?

A Vine Spider with half its body blown away.
A spider with its head and legs torn off.
A spider riddled with holes of every size across its entire body.
The forms of the monsters were so grotesque that one could not help but accept that they had breathed their last.
The audience’s sentiment began to shift.

– As expected, Naia’s technical prowess is second to none in the universe.
– How can you even call that a malfunction lol
– Experience the omnipotence of AI lol
– Why the hell is he skulking around like that?
– These guys were just saying it broke down but now they’re losing their minds lolol

『Forty-one Vine Spiders neutralized. Advancing now.』

Krail had always carried a serious, weighty presence even in ordinary moments.
During an operation, it was even more pronounced.
Unshaken by the audience’s reactions, he moved forward with mechanical precision and terse reports.
After that, common monsters—slimes, moths, and the like—rushed at him, but there were no casualties.
Despite the confined space, he maximized his advantage to its limit and issued optimal commands.
‘My judgment was sound after all.’
Drones excel in destructive power but lack durability to match.
A classic glass cannon.
But paired with Krail’s situational awareness, that weakness was largely compensated for.
Observing the battle in three dimensions, Krail controlled each drone individually, allowing him to intercept threats by priority order.
‘Breaking through to the World Tree might be easier than expected.’
The eye-shaped form hovering above those drones filled him with ease whenever it crossed his mind.
“….”
And so Krail advanced without doubt that he would continue his winning streak all the way to the source.
But then he stopped.
Krail and his drones halted in place.

– What’s going on?
– What’s going to show up this time?
– Since he’s not just raining attacks like before, it’s not an ambush, right?

The audience, having witnessed Krail’s near-supernatural scouting ability several times now, had entered a realm of absolute trust.
Yet his reaction this time was different from when facing the Vine Spiders or other ambushes.
He simply gazed down the corridor with an empty expression.
Then…
Step. Step.
A faint sound began to emanate from the end of the passage.
A viewer who had spotted the blurred silhouette emerging from the darkness spoke.

– It’s a raiding party!

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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