Ex-level Player With the Greatest Civilization of All Time - Chapter 32

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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 32

The conquest of the 15th Floor of Naia Tower.
The fact sent shockwaves through the world.
Because it was an S-Rank Hidden Floor?
That alone was not the reason, without question.
Clearing an S-Rank Hidden Floor held deep significance, certainly.
But there was one reason that mattered far more.

[Finally caught the Floating Garden]
– Sweet as expected, huh?

[Why won’t I get it.]
– This is already the third time today..

[If you’re a man, don’t go to the Floating Garden ——]
– Aren’t you ashamed?

After Neia conquered the 15th Floor, that place underwent a dramatic transformation.
A floor that was once shunned for its vicious difficulty
had become a strategically desirable honey field.
The newly assigned quests changed too—planting flowers, creating water channels, fulfilling spirit requests—such simple tasks that the foot traffic never ceased.
Naturally, this transformation was entirely due to Neia’s conquest.

[Wow, Neia really turned the tower upside down.]
[This too must be Neia’s grace.]
[Neia paved the way for you all to have it easy, and you’re not going to use it? Don’t be ridiculous—I’m going to milk this honey myself.]

A difficulty that was embarrassingly trivial compared to before.
The repeated rewards had been reduced, of course.
But since most Players were most sensitive to level gains, nobody minded.
In any case, more than two weeks had passed since that day, yet conversations about the Floating Garden and Neia remained keywords that commanded widespread attention.

[Phew… Only the 15th Floor left.]
– Just go in mentally prepared?

[Made it past the Floating Garden’s 15th Floor..]
– Barely survived.

Yet the Floating Garden was not entirely without its deterrent elements.
Cream on the 15th Floor was precisely that element.
Though whether it carried the same infamy as before was rather ambiguous.

『Now, this one could tell at a glance the extraordinary nature of the noble Neia….』

Cream, transformed.
After expending tremendous power that day, influenced by the World Tree that had returned to a seedling state, he took the form of a boy—and whether from that influence or not, his disposition had changed.
And not for the better.
The juvenile Cream had become an incorrigible chatterbox.
The mission on the 15th Floor was none other than conversing with this Cream.

[Converse with the World Tree Cream. 0/1]
[Cream senses your wandering attention.]
[Three warnings will result in mission failure.]

Cream spent every moment praising Neia to Players who visited the 15th Floor until his tongue wore thin.
The problem was that it stretched endlessly without answer, rising to the level of torture—a cruelty quite considerable.
It was not conversation, strictly speaking.
Right, hearing the Neia gossip.
If his concentration wavers, Favorability drops and it interferes with the Mission.

– Ugh, please stop.
– He’s like a walking recording device.
– Too much talking lol
– Was he always this chatty lol
– He helped find housing for a homeless guy who got scammed out of a jeonse deposit, so this is deserved
– Real lol

Anyway, setting aside those minor (?) deterrents, the Floating Garden had finally found peace.
Thanks to Neia.
So the video of Neia clearing the 15th Floor was racking up staggering view counts.
It had been barely two weeks since Baek Jin-sung uploaded it, and it had already hit three hundred million views.
Naturally, no Player had ever brought about such a shift in the tower’s ecosystem before.
And it was Neia who’d accomplished it first.
Such popularity was, in a way, inevitable.
“Ugh… stop becoming famous already!”
Yet there was someone who took Neia’s sudden rise with displeasure.
It was Byeon Gi-hyeok, director of administration at Korea’s Player Association.
As Neia’s fame grew, the attention directed toward him didn’t stop at the public level.
Governments from various nations, who had previously left matters to the Guilds, had begun to stir.
The one most sensitive to this shift was naturally the Korean government burdened with the contract, the Association, and its point person—him.
〈America Makes Contact with Baek Jin-sung; Koreans Lose Sleep Over Talent Drain Fears.〉
〈China and Japan Step In? The Whole World Has Eyes on Neia.〉
〈Claims of International Treaty Violations; Denials of Ill Intent Follow.〉
By the treaties originally signed between nations, state institutions were strictly forbidden from attempting to recruit another nation’s Players within the tower.
Yet recently, they’d been making aggressive overtures willing to risk diplomatic friction.
As a result, the Association—which had done nothing—bore the brunt of public criticism.
And today’s hastily arranged meeting was the Association’s desperate scramble to escape the situation however they could.

“Everything’s ready for today, right?”
“Yes, Director. Don’t worry.”

Neia still kept his identity hidden.
But there was certainly someone who acted as his proxy.
That was Baek Jin-sung.
A meeting with him regarding Neia’s contract was scheduled for today.
“D-Director, they’re almost here!”
“Got it!”
He sprang from his seat and hurried to the Association’s main gate with several team leaders.
Baek Jin-sung emerged from the backseat of the Association’s car and entered the building, receiving distinguished treatment.

* * *

Two weeks had passed since clearing the 15th Floor.
I’d been resting without any additional climbing since that day.
My main forces had suffered significant damage and were sidelined, for one thing.
After climbing so intensively, I’d decided to take this time to recover.

[Is Neia dead?]
└ Ha, gods don’t die.
[Please stream something]
└ Fine, whether it’s a shopping broadcast or whatever, I won’t complain.
[Day 153 of prayers for Neia’s return]
└ It’s only been two weeks since we lost contact, so how is it day 153?
└ └ Prayer is a matter of the heart, so it exists beyond the constraints of time and space.
└ └ Wow!

Good grief, searching.
It wasn’t something I wanted to do, to be honest.
Whether I watched video streams or not.
Whether I scrolled through communities or not.
Even on television, it was all about me, all the time.
So by now I’d stopped avoiding it and was genuinely enjoying this unintentional self-referential attention.
“Don’t you get tired of it?” you might ask.
Not at all.
Once I actually started, there was something quietly addictive about it.

[But seriously, Argelayer’s damage looked pretty bad—can that thing even be repaired?]
[Yeah, he was already in rough shape and then took another Photon Cannon hit, so it’s a total mess now]
[Shouldn’t we be worried about Krail instead of Argelayer lol? Look how coldhearted Argelayer is.]
[You don’t know what you’re talking about—when a unit breaks that badly like Krail did, you don’t need to worry. That’s a power-up flag lmao]

The fanbase for the humanoids seemed to be growing formidably as well.
According to Baek Jin-sung, donations directed at them were increasing by the day, and…
Last time I checked, there were quite a few people begging for merchandise like that in Baek Jin-sung’s video comments….

[+Upvote if you’re excited about the Box Draw rewards Neia received]
-Count me in first.
└ So when’s the next broadcast?
└ He hasn’t been streaming lately either.
└ What, is something wrong?
└ I heard an agent from Japan came by the day after the dungeon clear, so maybe that’s why?

And especially the talk about the Box Draw came up every single day.
It was basically a given that my comeback broadcast would be a Box Draw.
Anyway, I was checking the community while having lunch.
-Hyung-nim, I’ve arrived. Starting the broadcast now.
Baek Jin-sung, who had naturally taken a vacation following my lead.
Though I felt bad about it, I’d asked him to handle some business during the break.
It was the contract matter with the Player Association.
Since my family was in Korea anyway.
And I wasn’t so desperate for money that I needed to move abroad.
So I’d decided to have Baek Jin-sung act as my representative and publicly sign a contract with the Association to avoid any conflict with them.
The relentless approaches from other countries were honestly becoming a nuisance.
“…Especially with all those drones they keep targeting.”
I examined the business cards crammed into the trash bin.
They were overflowing with cards from Japan, China, and various other countries.
From what I’d heard vaguely through Baek Jin-sung, they’d been dropping hints about technological transfer of the drone or purchasing interest—ambitious stuff.
Since that clearly showed more interest in the drone than in me, it soured my mood considerably.
Strictly speaking, that had made me completely abandon any thoughts of emigration.
Anyway, I logged into Baek Jin-sung’s broadcast to check on the situation.

“Then please begin,” came the voice.

The exchange was straightforward.
It concerned a contract restricting emigration to foreign countries.
“Doesn’t really seem like anything will be a problem.”
I tidied up the folding table I’d been eating from and opened a Gate.
I figured Baek Jin-sung would handle the remaining negotiations well enough and decided to head into the Subspace.
Normally I only entered if I had materials to transfer or something specific to handle.
But today I had business to attend to.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Neia,” she said.

“Everything ready?”
I’d arrived at the Core Center.
There was something I’d asked Neia to prepare beforehand.
Today was the day of the Promotion Examination to recognize and celebrate the achievements from the recent S-Rank Hidden Floor clear.
‘I suppose I should use it now.’

[Promotion Examination]

The Promotion Examination recharged once per month on the first day.
Today was the last day of this month.
Given that the Promotion Examination could accumulate a maximum of two uses per cycle,
at least one use had to be spent before the month turned over.
Originally, I’d intended to wait until after Krail recovered,
but the repairs dragged on longer than expected, so I kept postponing it until today became unavoidable.

‘I’ve lined up the robots around the Core Center.’
A promotion ceremony deserved some grandeur—I’d ordered a general assembly of every robot in the city.
The space would feel hollow otherwise.
Of course, none of this was strictly necessary.
The skill’s name is Promotion Examination, but there’s no actual requirement to stage it like this.
Still, both Ar and Krail—
if I respected their selfhood, this seemed the proper way to do it.
Simply casting the skill from the sidelines and offering a few words of praise felt hollow by comparison.
“Well done. How’s Krail coming along?”
Naturally, today’s ceremony had two principals.
Ar and Krail.
Krail, who had suffered the most severe damage, had regained consciousness about three days after that incident and had since been rapidly reconstructing their body, though they still weren’t mobile enough to move about.

‘The situation remains unchanged.’

“I see. Then I’ll have to arrange something special for Krail later.”
I moved toward the location Neia was indicating.
A substantial number of robots had gathered there.
Climbing onto the inspection platform, I realized there were even more than I’d anticipated.
The atmosphere evoked some kind of revolutionary fervor—like announcing the end of the human age.
Who in the world had been raising Blitz Krank?
‘There were this many all along.’
The city was vast enough that they must have been moving about in places I couldn’t see.
I looked out over hundreds of robots arrayed below and spoke.
“Second Lieutenant Argelayer, step forward.”
I dispensed with unnecessary formalities.
What mattered most was acknowledgment of their accomplishments.
“Second Lieutenant Argelayer, your deeds and valor are deemed sufficient to serve as an example to all. By this authority, I grant you promotion.”
I placed my hand on Argelayer’s Rank Insignia.
“Second Lieutenant Argelayer!”
Then I exchanged it for the First Lieutenant insignia.
“First Lieutenant Argelayer!”
“I look forward to your continued service, First Lieutenant.”
I patted their shoulder and activated the Promotion Examination.
A notification message appeared before my eyes.

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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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