Ex-level Player With the Greatest Civilization of All Time - Chapter 30

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

Chapter 30

I watched Krayl’s expression on the screen grow darker by degrees.
Not without reason, either.
“There’s no end to it….”
The vines proliferate without cease.
At first, it had seemed like a balance—the players cooperating, holding the line—but.
The vines kept coming in endless waves, whereas.
The players visibly flagged with each passing moment.
To make matters worse.
The drones, too, had burned through their firepower in such a short span that they began overheating one by one, shifting into cooling mode and withdrawing from the field.
I realized I couldn’t afford to wait any longer and pressed Neia.
“Neia, how much longer?”
The one glimmer of hope lay in Argelaier’s barrage.
If we could intercept that black sphere at the peak of the World Tree, something would have to change….

『Nearly finished.』

“That’s the third time you’ve said that….”
It wasn’t that the Ultimate Photon Cannon’s charging had hit a snag.
True, it did take some time, but that was still within a minute or so.
The real problem was that Neia’s coordinate analysis was dragging on considerably.
She was a drone that had been trailing Krayl while maintaining a distance of roughly three kilometers.
Because of that, executing a precise strike from such a range seemed to demand calculations far more complex than I’d anticipated.
‘Should’ve set up close quarters from the start if I’d known…’
I was in the midst of venting frustration inwardly at the delay.

『Coordinates locked. Argelaier Ultimate Photon Cannon firing.』

Neia’s report came through, and.
Whooooosh—
In the next instant, a massive, brilliant beam painted the sky.
Centered on that colossal beam, the firepower of multiple combat drones converged on a single point of impact.
Boom—
The photon cannon that melts all things swept across its target zone with crystalline clarity on the screen.
Krayl, the players on the ground, the priests alongside them—all stood transfixed, their eyes drawn not to the collapsing vines but to the blue radiance born of the photon cannon’s strike.
Silence fell.
What broke it was Neia’s voice.

『Strike confirmed. Target eliminated.』

The first to react to Neia’s report were the viewers.

– Every time I see it, the firepower is just brutal.
– Absolutely insane.
– Argelaier! Argelaier! Argelaier!

I was no different.
If anyone had reason to be overjoyed at this moment, it was me.
A situation that had spiraled to the brink of catastrophe suddenly resolved itself cleanly.
Of course I was relieved.
The relentless assault that had cornered Krayl and his companions had vanished; in every way, the worst had been averted.
Mission complete, no losses, precisely on schedule…

[Halt the World Tree Rampage – 0 / 1]

“What…?”
Baek Jin-sung looked up at my muttered words.
“Why do you ask?”
“The Mission counter… it’s not registering.”
“Ah… what? That’s… strange?”
Baek Jin-sung’s expression turned puzzled as well.
I twisted my face in frustration.
Every time something like this happened, it was always a different problem.
I quickly surveyed the various monitors surrounding us.
There were no obvious signs of trouble.
The silence was suffocating.
Yet that very silence unsettled me.
I decided to warn Krayl just in case.
“Krayl.”
“Yes, comman—”
That was as far as he got.
Bang.
A jet-black beam of light fired from nowhere engulfed Krayl.

Crackle—crackle-crackle-crackle—

Fortunately, Krayl emerged unharmed.
In that brief instant, he had activated a Barrier by deploying three Aegis units in synchronized operation.
Thanks to his quick reaction, no one was injured.

‘Three Aegis units core disabled. Overload condition. Repairs and recharging required.’

Neia’s report told us just how perilous that moment had been.
Three Aegis units rendered combat-ineffective in a single volley.
And then came the voice of the one who had done it.

‘Hmm… quite competent, are you?’

The voice was languid and lazy, as if waking from a long slumber.
From the sky above, the speaker looked down upon Krayl and his companions.
Hair black as ill omen descended to her waist, and crimson eyes gleamed.
Two horns protruded from her head, and a pair of bat-like wings folded at her back.
The ashen-skinned woman radiating an aura that pressed down upon everything around her needed no introduction.
It was Belferus.

‘Woke too early, did I? This weakness is unfamiliar to me.’

Belferus carelessly swept her hand through the empty air, awakening her body that had grown accustomed to slumber.
And then, the next moment.
As she opened her eyes sharply and swung her hand toward Krayl, a torrent of dark waves shot down at him and his group below.
“Krayl, watch out!”
I shouted the warning in desperation.
Thankfully, that attack failed to reach its mark.
The Archbishop and the Priests, who had been quietly stockpiling their power, had deployed a Barrier just in time.

‘We shall take it from here. Thank you for your efforts, brothers.’

A Sacred Object in the Archbishop’s hand blazed with pure white light.
As if they had been waiting for this moment, the light began to purify the World Tree, spreading outward from where they stood.
The World Tree’s roots and branches regained their color beneath the radiant white glow.
Yet something was wrong.
Belferus remained utterly composed.

‘Really? Can you manage it? All by yourselves?’
‘What our predecessors accomplished, we can accomplish as well.’
‘So confident. I do admire that arrogance. But you’ve aimed it at the wrong target.’

Belferus drew energy to her fingertips and struck downward with tremendous force.
A heavier shockwave than before shattered the Barrier in a single blow.

‘This can’t be…!’

The Archbishop and his Priests wore expressions of disbelief.
In the past, their predecessors had used Sacred Objects to seal her in this place.
More than that, Belferus had grown weaker since then, which made the current result difficult to accept in any way.

‘Don’t panic! We can simply cast the Barrier again!’
That aura which had once been so fierce it blanketed the sky was now this pathetic—how could such a thing be?
The Archbishop tried to convince himself that her previous strike was the extent of her power, and moved to cast the Barrier once more, but—

‘Fools, did I say I was done?’
‘Gahhh!’
Vines erupting from the ground pierced through the Archbishop’s heart as he desperately attempted to raise the Barrier again.

‘I’ve told you, you lot are not my match. Still, I’ll give you credit—you brought me the very possibility of my own sealing, delivered right into my hands. Hehehehe.’
‘Your Excellency!’

When the Priests moved to heal him, Belferus simply pierced their hearts as well.
The Sacred Object tumbled from the Archbishop’s grasp, rolling across the ground.

‘Now there’s no one left who dares stand against me?’

A shocking turn of events in mere moments.
Instinct screamed that conventional methods would never be sufficient to handle this.
“Neia! The Ultimate Photon Cannon—where is it?!”

‘Charging sequence complete, but there’s no guarantee of a direct hit.’

The situation differed from when she’d been trapped inside the sphere before.
Now, she could leave her position at any moment without raising alarm.
But one mercy remained: she hadn’t left her position even once since her resurrection.
“Krayl, do you hear me? Draw her attention. Just buy me a moment!”

‘Understood.’

Krayl humbly accepted what could scarcely be called a Mission.
He trained all the functioning Drones on Belferus at once.
Fwiiiiish—
But Belferus scattered the beam barrage with a mere gesture.
Krayl poured fire without hesitation, driving the Drones to malfunction from overheating.

‘Hmm… come to think of it, it was you who blocked my attack earlier, wasn’t it?’

Having reduced the Priests to corpses, Belferus had already entered a mode of play.

‘Can you do it again?’

A chilling smile played across her lips as she watched the antics of these insignificant things.
It was the moment she raised her hand toward Krayl—her plaything.
Flash—
Light rippled beyond the horizon, then descended upon Belferus moments later.
Boom—

‘Nngh…’

By the narrowest margin, she reacted to the Ultimate Photon Cannon, displaying insane strength as she clashed against the beam’s force.
Krayl and the Players pelted her back with the few Drones that had recovered.
“How dare you wound me….”
The moment Belferus gritted her teeth, something extraordinary happened.
The Ultimate Photon Cannon began to spiral inward through her fingertips.
The beam, already dimming, was completely absorbed.
‘Ah… now that I think about it, I nearly forgot the one who woke me.’
As if recalling a lapse, Belferus redirected the power she had just consumed.
The perilous beam that had nearly caught him now fired precisely toward Argelaire.

‘Here—choke on this!’
‘Warning: Argelaire, brace for impact.’

With Neia’s voice, the Ultimate Photon Cannon descended upon Argelaire and her crew.
As the light faded, two of the Aegis units flanking Argelaire fell blackened and smoking to the deck.
In the same moment, I saw Argelaire’s outer plating melted away—a sight of utter devastation.
“Neia, what’s Argelaire’s status?”

‘Fortunately, current damage is minimal. The two Aegis units operated by Krayl performed admirably. Damage rating at twenty-nine percent—repairs are feasible without loss of function.’

I gave the order to withdraw at once.
“Krayl, retreat now!”
The tide of battle had already turned against us.
Against a creature like that, escape unscathed seemed impossible.
But sitting idle and watching us annihilated was worse.
“Return alive—that’s an order.”
As I commanded Krayl to fall back, Belferus’s gaze shifted from Argelaire toward him.
And in the next instant.
Crack.
A pillar of light struck Krayl, and he shattered into fragments, scattering in all directions.

‘You’ve been in my way since the beginning.’

Krayl’s severed head rolled across the floor and came to rest against the far wall.
With Krayl destroyed, Belferus’s expression finally brightened—the corners of her mouth lifting in satisfaction.
At the shock of it all, my teeth clenched so hard they ached.
“Neia! Save Argelaire—get us out of here!”

‘Understood. Transmitting orders to Argelaire now.’

“Hurry!”
I was about to order Baek Jin-sung to flee as well.

‘Problem detected.’

Dread seized me at Neia’s tone.
And my fear was not unfounded.

‘Argelaire is not responding. She is refusing commands and preparing the Ultimate Photon Cannon.’

“What?”

‘Analysis indicates that the death of Krayl triggered a critical error in Argelaire’s decision circuit, causing a system rampage.’

“When has she ever been so jealous…!”
My teeth ground together.
A humanoid so nearly perfect, so human in behavior—and here it turned into a liability….
Frustration burned through me.
‘What kind of mission is this, anyway?’
The difficulty was at a level meant to ensure our complete annihilation.
How could anyone even hope to defeat a thing like that?
Should we have simply given up from the start?
Krim.
He wasn’t listening to what the elf was saying.
Bitter regret crushed his thoughts.
Thump-thump-thump.
The scene on the screen showed chaos—absolute chaos.
The fleeing players were blocked by vines stretching across their path; they thrashed and raged trying to break through, but it was useless.
The moment a vine was torn apart, an even thicker, more massive one grew in its place.
“Brother.”
I swallowed the desolation rising in my chest and answered Baek Jin-sung’s question.
“…Why?”
“Krim isn’t here.”
Had he opened the board only to abandon everyone else and flee alone?
Just as hot emotion surged up inside me—

— Wait, isn’t that Krim?
— Why is he over there?

At the viewers’ words, I looked more carefully at the screen and spotted one figure moving calmly through the chaos.
A being walking in the opposite direction from all the other players.
It was unmistakably Krim.
He was advancing toward the Sacred Object.
Belferus, who had remained composed until now, finally showed a flicker of bewilderment.

『How did you get here…!』

The same devastating blow that had shattered Krayl was now hurled at Krim—but this time the outcome was different.
The moment Krim’s hand touched the Sacred Object, a torrent of pure white light engulfed everything around him.

『You coward who did nothing but run—what brings you back now…!』
『Belferus, there’s nothing wrong with me returning to my own home, is there?』

“Brother!”
Baek Jin-sung called out to me urgently as I watched the screen.
I turned my head and startled myself.
It was because of the flowers now in full bloom, flooding the space with brilliant light.
The garden surrounded by a halo of pure white radiance was breathtaking.
The blooming flowers transformed the barren wasteland of a garden into a paradise.
They poured out Holy Power without cease.
“This is…”
A memory surfaced in my mind.
The seeds we had planted on Layer 14 using the drone back then.
Those seeds were germinating now—unmistakably so. In real time, they sprouted and drained Holy Power before withering, a cycle repeating before my eyes.
The Holy Power generated this way flew toward Krim and was absorbed into him.

『Neia, are you listening? Thanks to you, I found the courage. I cannot keep running forever.』

“What are you… what exactly are you? You weren’t just a simple elf, were you?”
Krim smiled bitterly.
“Allow me to introduce myself properly. My name is Krim. I am the Spirit Body of the World Tree—one who abandoned his origin and fled in order to survive.”
The blackened outer shell of the World Tree crumbled away, revealing luminous flesh beneath that blazed with dazzling light.
Pure white vines coiled around Belferus and bound her fast.

『You fool…! Do you really mean to drag us both down?! If you do this, you’re just a Spirit Body—you’ll…』
『I had forgotten. It was with that very resolve that I accepted you that day.』
『You think I’m going down with you?』
『Alone, it would be impossible. And if I were going in alone, I would never have begun this.』
『What…?!』

Belferus’s eyes trembled with a shock she had never shown before.
Beyond that horizon, a single glimmer of blue light sparkled.
Krim spoke to me.

‘Well then, you can do this, can’t you?’

“Neia! Send the coordinates to Ar.”

‘Instruction acknowledged.’

Neia’s calculations finished quickly this time.
It seemed the numbers hadn’t changed much from what she’d computed moments before.
An intense blue light erupted outward.
It shattered the magical circle Belferus had deployed with all her might.
Yet the Ultimate Photon Cannon did not stop.
It struck Belferus directly.
Whoooooooosh—
A colossal beam of light, burning the very air, vanished into the sky beyond.
Taking with it the calamity that had stained the world red.

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