Ex-level Player With the Greatest Civilization of All Time - Chapter 5

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

Episode 5

Naia asked me.

‘Shall I begin factory operations?’

“No, wait a moment.”
I stopped her from proceeding.
There was a problem I needed to address first.
Producing now was one thing, but I needed to secure surplus electricity for the factory’s operation before ramping up production.
“Can you calculate the total power consumption we’d need for one battle, including the additional units we’d produce?”

‘Command confirmed. Calculating… Calculation complete. We estimate approximately 1.5 times the previous power consumption. I recommend maintaining a reserve of at least double the baseline to account for contingencies.’

1.5 times, then.
It was just one additional Hunter Drone, but the consumption was considerable.
In the current situation, jumping headlong into production felt unwise.
So I decided to leave first and secure the necessary resources.
“… For now, wait here. I’m going out.”

‘Yes, I will be waiting.’

After hearing Naia’s response, I returned to my room and shut the gate.
“I suppose this is my only option?”

【S-Rank Material Box (Floors 1-5)】

I’d obtained it after clearing the third floor.
On the way back, I’d thought about it, and this really was my only reliable option.
I knew it was greedy of me.
“But please, please, please…!”
Here I was again, trusting everything to luck.
But what else could I do when luck was all I had to depend on?
I opened the box.
Creak-eek.
And what appeared in my inventory was….

【Kinol’s Lightning Flute】

“What…? It appeared again?”
Wondering if it was an error, I took it out of my inventory to verify—and sure enough, it came out.
Was this simple luck?
Kinol was a fifth-floor monster and the Floor Boss of that section.
Getting his signature item twice in a row was, statistically speaking, practically impossible.

“Maybe it’s because it’s an S-Rank box?”
That explanation made considerable sense to me.
Normally, the boxes most players obtained from clears were C-Rank.
Even with variance, they fell one step lower or higher at most.
But an S-Rank box was three grades higher than that.
If probability adjustments were factored in, the logic held.
“I mean, SSS-Rank clears aren’t easy, after all.”
Before I arrived, the absolute fastest record was an S-Rank clear that took over six minutes.
And strictly speaking, the SSS-Rank reward was this very S-Rank Material Box.
“It’s better than I thought—SSS is quite the deal.”
Naia’s lifespan wasn’t in immediate danger anymore.
I decided to take my time finding a buyer and selling it in Lucid.
I posted a thread in the community.

[Selling Kinol’s Lightning Flute.]
-Price: 12 million won. Leave a comment if interested.

I posted the message and watched the situation unfold.
But the response was practically nonexistent.
The view count barely budged.
The reason was clear enough—Top-Tier Insider’s posts were experiencing an explosive surge in activity today.
Normally, new posts didn’t fill up to page ten.
Today, they went beyond that—all thirty pages were filled with posts from just this single day.

[Is this a bug or something?]
[If the name’s Naia… what country are they from?]
[From the sound of it, probably Latin American?]
[Going by the name, could be a woman?]
[That name is undeniably beautiful.]
ㄴYeah, gorgeous.
ㄴㄴSome hairy old dude, then.
ㄴㄴHaha!!

Wrong. No chest hair.
Though a thirty-year-old old man is accurate enough.

Here I was, tripping over my own feet.
The absurdity of it struck me, and I let out a hollow laugh.
But I couldn’t just leave things as they were, no matter how ridiculous it felt.
If my post got buried like this, visibility would tank.
The proper approach was to repost it at reasonable intervals.
“This is going to be a hassle…”
I decided to hope that Naia’s interest would fade quickly.

* * *

A mysterious player had appeared out of nowhere.
A newcomer who proved an SSS Rating clear to the world.
The emergence of a monster who bombed the lower tiers had captured people’s intense interest.
Naia.
Interest in this person wasn’t limited to Korea alone.
Overseas attention was equally keen.
In fact, overseas interest was running even hotter.
Particularly in South America, and in North America where many migrants had recently arrived from there, and in Western Europe.

[Incredible monster.]
[What country is Naia from?]
[Still nothing revealed about Naia?]

Three days ago.
After clearing the fourth floor with an SSS Rating, she vanished.

[Is she preparing for the Floor Boss?]
[That doesn’t make sense, though. If she can clear the fourth floor in a little over a minute, she should be able to breeze through the fifth floor, right?]
[Idiot, she’s going for SSS.]
[Oh… you might be right! Sharp thinking, buddy.]

There were also voices of concern raised at the appearance of this mysterious newcomer called Naia.

[But doesn’t the name Naia sound Latin American? Isn’t most of that region under Eclipse’s influence, except for Argentina and Brazil?]
[That is a bit worrying.]
[Still, plenty of people have emigrated out of there.]

Eclipse.
Currently humanity’s greatest headache.
A criminal organization that took root in South American nations during the Tower’s collapse.

[The possibility that it could be Eclipse made me uneasy.]
[If it’s Eclipse, things are truly dire.]
[Dear God….]

“Senior, senior. What are you doing?”
Journalist Park Hyung-jun had taken considerable interest in Naia recently.
Naturally, given how high public interest was these days, writing about her guaranteed solid viewership numbers.
Strike while the iron’s hot, as they say.
So he was digging through foreign websites trying to uncover material for Naia-related articles.
Most obvious content was already flooding the news cycle anyway.
“Are you going to run this as an article?”
At his junior’s question as he glanced at the monitor, Park Hyung-jun scrolled the mouse wheel and answered matter-of-factly.
“I think we need this angle too.”
Looking at it now, most articles focus on Naia’s overwhelming achievements
or her growth potential.
Publishing more of the same at this point won’t get readers interested.
“Won’t we catch flak for this?”
Still, knowing all that, his junior seemed somewhat hesitant.
Even poorly written pieces about Naia pulled higher-than-average views, given how intensely the public was fixated on her.
He worried he might be taking an unnecessarily difficult path.
After all, people only see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear, then obsess over it.
Raising the possibility that Naia might be affiliated with Eclipse would certainly stir controversy, but it wouldn’t please them.
One misstep and he’d face serious backlash.
Just thinking about it was grim and depressing.
“But getting criticized is nothing new.”
Park Hyung-jun had his own sense of mission as a journalist.
Times changed, and there was now an era demanding sensational, compelling articles.
Yet he still carried the idealism he’d dreamed of when deciding to become a journalist as a child.
“I’ll just take the hate.”

* * *

The past three days.
I’d spent them in rather tedious time.
Compared to those days when I started climbing the Tower and the dopamine was flooding, this everyday routine was endlessly dull.
Just sitting in front of a computer monitor.
Mechanically composing item sale posts and repeating static work.

At first it was genuinely difficult.
With no responses, temptation kept rising to just give up and sell it to the Association instead.
But once I pushed through that first day, the boredom transformed into sheer stubbornness.
My resolve hardened—I would sell it for exactly twelve million won, nothing less.

And today I finally sold it.
I went out and handed the item over at the Lucid headquarters.
There was an option to have the acquisition team visit my home to collect it,
but I was anxious about leaving something worth over ten million won in someone else’s hands, so I just went in person.
“Sigh….”
I returned home after going out and collapsed onto my bed.
Still, my effort had paid off in its own way.
I’d earned four million won more than when I’d sold to the Association last time.
“Hmm? A comment notification?”
I checked and found it was a purchase comment.

ㄴ Is Kinol’s Lightning Flute sold out?

It’s truly strange.
When I was determined to sell, there wasn’t a shred of interest.
The moment I’m done, they act like this.
I had no obligation to respond, so I simply ignored it and went back home.
The community was chaotic today as well.
“Don’t these people ever get tired?”
Looking closer, most of the posts were about me.
The name ‘Naia’ appeared in nearly every thread.
But today’s atmosphere felt subtly different.
“Huh?”
It wasn’t unconditional praise and anticipation—the tone had grown somewhat serious.

[How likely is it that Naia is Eclipse?]
[If it’s Eclipse, we’re screwed?]
[Eclipse’s influence is already expanding too much, and we’re keeping watch. I really hope it’s not.]

“Eclipse? Me?”
I skimmed through the posts to understand how this theory had spread.
There were essentially two reasons.
First, there was the name itself.
Someone had raised the possibility that Naia was a Latin name.
South America—which became a criminal organization stronghold after the Tower’s collapse.
Since it was a common name there, it was enough fuel for that hypothesis.
“The other piece of evidence is the blocked Mailbox… I suppose?”
The Mailbox was something the Tower’s system provided to Awakened Players.
Because I’d had receive restrictions enabled from the start, it only deepened people’s suspicions.
The reason for the restriction was simple.
Players were assigned a Unique Player ID.
Since it got recorded in the Hall of Fame, I’d anticipated being flooded with guild recruitment offers and messages laced with curiosity from the moment I started to make waves, so I shut it down.
But being treated as Eclipse wasn’t something I wanted to deal with.
I had no choice but to open receive restrictions.
Ding-ding-ding—
An endless barrage of notifications hammered against my mind.
Tens of thousands of messages flooded in.
Among them, I decided to send a message to a sufficiently credible organization stating that I had no connection to Eclipse and they needn’t worry.
Information about nationality would inevitably come to light once the tutorial ended anyway.
I figured I might as well disclose it a few days early.
I scrolled through the Mailbox, reading the messages.
From first-tier guilds famous worldwide.
To Player Associations from each country.
I was scanning through when I stopped cold.

[Naia, let’s open a new world together with Eclipse.]

A recruitment letter from Eclipse.
“So people’s worries weren’t unfounded after all?”
A wry smile slipped out.
I scrolled down quickly to send my clarification and handle what I needed to, when I finally spotted it.

[This is the Korea Player Association, Naia…]

I drafted a reply.
Since I’d already blocked receive mode, I wouldn’t be getting a response anyway.
Still, I made sure to write clearly that I had no connection to Eclipse.

—I have no relationship whatsoever with Eclipse. I simply don’t wish to receive attention for the time being. It seems many people are making unnecessary worries…

“Is this enough?”
I sent the message and closed the Mailbox. Lying on the bed, looking up at the ceiling to catch my breath, that was when it happened.
Bzzzzzz—
My phone vibrated.
When I checked, the payment from Lucid had been deposited.

[Balance: 14,803,607]

“They transferred it faster than expected.”
Normally, I would have bought Magic Stones while I was out and then headed home.
But today I just returned to the apartment.
The reason was that Lucid had vaguely suggested I wait until the transfer arrived today.
They’d said it would be deposited sometime today, and I thought it was inefficient to stand around outside waiting indefinitely.
So now that things had gotten tangled this way, I was conflicted.
“Hmm….”
That’s how human nature usually works.
Once I stepped inside, I felt reluctant to go back out again.
Part of me wanted to just put off buying Magic Stones until tomorrow since I was already home.
I checked the time.

[PM 2:04]

It had just past two in the afternoon.
“I guess… I’d better go….”
Leaving Naia idle was essentially wasting money.
There was no special reason to postpone, and I couldn’t just throw money away.
I went out, purchased the Magic Stones, and returned home.
I entered the Pocket Dimension and gave the production order.

『Commencing operation of Adjacent Small Factory K-09B5.』

The light from the Core Center grew brighter, and shortly after, one of the buildings in the city began to glow.
That must be the factory.
As I gazed at that light, I heard Naia’s voice in addition.

『Frame Assembly Line startup initiated. Magic Power Compression Core installation safety check in progress. Full operation confirmed. Transitioning to active status. Beginning manufacture of the ordered models.』

It was the moment Naia’s voice finished.
A timer appeared before my eyes.

[Manufacturing time required: 23:05:11….]

During the rather long manufacturing wait time, I returned to my room to rest, came back at the appointed hour, and only then could I meet the finished models.
I received full ownership and left.

『Wishing you victory, Seon-u.』

“Got it.”

『Wishing you victory, Seon-u.』

“Understood. I won’t break them!”
I left Naia behind—her subtle reminders and all—and entered the tower.

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