Ark

Arc: Volume 3 Chapter 5

"Then, the second unit will be..."

When the young Lord turned his gaze, the warrior in charge of Platoon 2 lifted his head stiffly. He thought he was the obvious choice after Alan. But the person the young Lord chose was a nameless, ordinary player.

"Ark, it'll be good to leave it to you."

"Huh?"

Alan and the leaders of Platoons 2 and 3 made bewildered expressions.

This was something Ark had never expected, so he wore a shocked expression. Ark's contribution points were still struggling in the mid-upper levels. How could he be suddenly entrusted with such a task?

If someone was registered as a commander of a special task, of course they would get additional EXP and contribution. Alan was able to take 1st place in the rankings because of this. Because of this, anyone would want to become the commander of a large operation.

But passing over the leaders of Platoons 2 and 3, who were in the top 10, and giving the position to Ark was something they couldn't accept. As expected, Alan immediately raised an objection.

"Please wait a moment! That person still hasn't accumulated enough contribution for this. To entrust such a large undertaking to him, it's not a sensible judgement. Also, it isn't fair."

'Dammit Alan, you bastard. Saying useless things...'

Ark wondered inwardly. New World was a game, but NPCs thought the same way real people do. They couldn't act without sufficient reasoning, and this was more pronounced in management NPCs like Lords. They would help someone they had high intimacy with if it was something trifling, but they couldn't designate command of an operation with Jackson's fate depending on it without any justification and intimacy alone.

Alan was pointing that out as he demanded a revision. But the young Lord's decision was a result of factoring in a value that Alan, and even Ark, hadn't known.

"That's not it. This task is being entrusted based on operation performance evaluation criteria; according to Raymond's report, you, the commander of Platoon 1, have the highest operation performance evaluation, and then Ark. Though, it's just a hair's breadth from Platoon 2's commander."

'Operation performance evaluation!'

That was the value he had raised while doing Raymond's quests. He hadn't even imagined such a thing would come into play like this.

He completed about 30 small sub-quests, thanks to that, his operation evaluation had risen considerably; on the other hand, since Alan and the commanders of Platoons 2 and 3 got contribution and EXP just from being there, they had ignored Raymond's meagerly rewarding quests. As a result, the only operation evaluation they had was what they had received from being registered as commanders.

Alan clenched his teeth as he looked at Ark. In such a case, there was no way the decision would be reversed.