Fated to Die to the Player, I'll Live Freely with My SSS-Class Ship!-Chapter 115: Type-3 Eternum Core

In games, usually somewhere between the late-mid to final stages, players would unlock some form of quick travel. Some titles give it right from the start, but that's more for the player's convenience than the characters themselves.

This Warp Nexus is, in fact, the module that grants players a kind of pseudo-fast travel system in the game world.

Once fully processed and properly installed, the Warp Nexus allows a ship to traverse infinite distances in an instant. Of course, there are caveats. It can only teleport to places the player has previously visited—specifically, locations logged in the ship's Black Box records.

When I first acquired my Warp Nexus, my idea was to open a freight company in-game. Sadly, while TSO boasts high levels of freedom, it isn't a total sandbox. NPCs don't come running to offer jobs; rather, players are the ones seeking out quests.

But what about now?

Now, the world of TSO has become indistinguishable from my reality.

With the Warp Nexus at my disposal, the idea of running an interstellar express delivery service is not just viable—it's genius. I could charge an absurd premium to ship goods across the galaxy in the blink of an eye. A guaranteed route to unfathomable wealth.

"Well, not like I'm doing that though..."

"Doing what?"

Eva's voice snapped me back from my wandering thoughts.

I rolled out from under the bulky crate resting before me and replied, "Nothing important. Just some forgotten dreams I was reminiscing about."

"Hmm..." she hummed, barely acknowledging me as she kept working.

She continued unscrewing bolts from the massive metal-encased package in front of us. It was none other than the mysterious relic we received as a prize from the GP—the so-called "ancient module."

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*CLANK!*

Finally, the metal shell came off, its thick panels collapsing onto the dock with a resounding crash. And inside...

A giant rock. An asteroid.

"This is the prize? A rock?" Eva scoffed, arching a brow. "We got swindled, didn't we? Should've just asked for cash instead."

I shook my head, laughing at her skepticism. "We already received 1 quadrillion credits—well, half for now. And you're still unsatisfied?"

Incidentally, I had suggested we divide the bet's reward evenly. But both girls had turned that down, insisting it wasn't "fair." In the end, I received 250 trillion, Eva took 180 trillion, and Cassandra got the remaining 70 trillion.

Their choices had surprised me. I'd honestly expected Eva to fight for a bigger cut. And Cassandra asking for so little? That part was odd too, though not nearly as shocking as Eva's restraint.

Anyway, with 180 trillion, even after taxes, Eva could easily support her mother and still live comfortably for a century. And yet she still wanted more?

Greed truly knows no bounds.

"Haha, it's no ordinary rock." I pushed aside my internal rambling and returned to focus.

I pressed a hand against the rock's rough exterior, letting my senses feel it out. Faint vibrations pulsed beneath the surface—subtle but definitely present.

"Yep, just as I thought." I grinned. "Cassandra, turn on the antigravity module for the hangar. Eva, give me a hand hauling this boulder to the Industrial Material Extractor."

"Yes, please wait a moment."

"Carry this? To that monstrosity?"

Eva looked far from convinced. Still, she didn't argue much further. Though... each time our eyes met, she'd quickly look away, pretending nothing had happened. Her "confession" must still be weighing on her mind.

And I...

*ZOOOM!*

Before I could wander too deep into thought, gravity in the dock was nullified. I nearly floated off, but managed to grab hold of the ancient module's jagged surface just in time.

Despite its massive size—roughly three meters on every side—it surprisingly fit into the service elevator. The three of us were tightly crammed into opposite corners. Unsurprisingly, Cassandra stood next to Eva, not me.

Eventually, we reached the top floor where the Industrial Material Extractor—the gigantic MRI-like contraption—was waiting.

Since I'd already taught Eva how to operate it, she knew how to lock the object in place. With her help, setup took less than two minutes.

"Alright, step away from the yellow line," I warned, standing at the control panel. "If you wander in by mistake, don't blame me if your bones decide to leap out of your body."

"...!"

Cassandra flinched and stepped back quickly, her expression wide with alarm. I was half-joking... but hey, better safe than sorry.

After inputting the necessary parameters, I finally slammed the big green button.

Instantly, a deep hum began vibrating through the chamber. For extra safety, I activated the protective barriers—both physical and optical—around the machine, just in case something exploded.

The massive circular emitter began spinning. Invisible lasers emerged, slicing delicately into the rocky shell of the ancient module, slowly disintegrating its surface layer by layer.

Gradually, a shape began to reveal itself. Though encrusted in rust and age, a faint glow pulsed from within—subtle, yet intense. A molten warmth lingered just beneath.

"This is..." Eva mumbled, her eyes wide with disbelief. "An engine...?"

Her guess was close, but not quite. It wasn't just an engine.

A regular engine, calcified and trapped between layers of metal and rock, wouldn't be producing the kind of "heat" this one was.

Exactly one minute later, the Extractor finished its work and returned to standby mode. The object now hovered freely in the middle of the bench, completely liberated from its rocky prison.

As Eva had guessed, it was indeed an engine.

"This isn't just any engine. This is a Perpetual Engine," I clarified.

"Perpetual...? You really believe in that crap?" Eva shot back sharply, as expected.

Perpetual motion. A concept that has sparked endless controversy. Countless individuals have claimed to create "perpetual motion machines," but all were nothing but phonies.

According to our current understanding of physics, such a thing as "perpetual machine" is impossible. The friction from spinning components alone is enough to break the balance between energy input and output.

With modern technology, it's impossible to generate more energy than what's being put in.

All those spinning toys created by "geniuses"? No matter how much they tried to balance the input and output, they would never last. As soon as you try to extract even the tiniest bit of energy, the whole system shuts down. So much for being "perpetual," right?

But this Perpetual Engine was no scam.

For one thing, this engine… wasn't from this universe. It hailed from a parallel one, one far more advanced than ours—at least, that's what the flavor text said in the game.

There was a guy, somewhere in reality, a TSO no-life player, who tried to "explain" how the Perpetual Engine worked. Even the game developers had to admit his theory was impressively sound.

String Theory. The concept of extracting energy from a higher world—one whose form of energy was far more refined than ours. "Living" energy, able to adapt to the user's needs. It sounded like nonsense at first, but the more you thought about it, the more you realized there might be some truth to it.

With his hard-to-accept yet hard-to-refute explanation, the developers decided to honor his efforts by including his theory in the game's lore, scattered across random books.

"Once, I tried to figure out how it worked by dismantling a Perpetual Engine..." I began, my voice drifting off as I recalled the experience.

That was back in the game, and I died twice just trying. The internal workings weren't that different from any standard engine, though. In fact, it was more similar to an internal combustion engine, complete with pistons and other familiar components.

I thought the developers had been too lazy to imagine what a perpetual engine should look like, so they just took the easy route.

But now, seeing the 3D X-ray scan of this engine, I was left speechless.

It was... perfect. So perfect that I couldn't fully comprehend what I was looking at.

At the center, energy was being generated continuously. How it worked was still a mystery. Then, surrounding it, there was an outer field that converted the energy into heat. A complex, tube-like structure used that heat to power a flywheel.

The power was generated by boiling some kind of liquid within those tubes, but from the motion, it wasn't water, alcohol, or any gas I knew. Perhaps a form of Newtonian fluid? No, that wouldn't cycle well...

And then there was the flywheel. Spinning at an astonishing 5 million revolutions per minute.

It was spinning so fast that if it were made of any regular metal alloys, it would have shattered by now. But the material of the flywheel was somehow strong enough to withstand the powerful centrifugal forces pulling it apart—holding steady for millions of years, nonstop, until today.

Oh, and I forgot to mention: this engine... had been running continuously long before we found it.

It didn't require any input from anything or anyone. It was truly a mechanical marvel beyond understanding.

"Theoretically, this little engine could output around 5,000 GJ/s of energy," I explained, watching Eva choke on her spit as she did a double take.

"F-Five...! 5,000 GJ?!"

"Yep..."

"...?"

Only Cassandra, who wasn't particularly interested in engines or ships, remained completely clueless. But, to give an example, take the Eclipse Sovereign—a colossal ship that needs thousands of engines working together just to produce about 10,000 GJ/s of output. And this tiny thing in front of us? It could produce half of that energy output on its own.

Curious, I asked Percy to display any data the engine's memory had retained. Unfortunately, most of the information appeared to have been erased.

[---

Manufacturer: ---

Type: Perpetual Motion Machine—Type-3 Eternum Core

Version: ---

Output: 10 TJ/s

Fuel Type: Lr0z#&xw!H7t^qD~l#Rf92bWf1

Energy Efficiency: 250%

---]

"..."

I take it back. It wasn't limited to 5,000 GJ—it was a full 10,000 GJ. What a beast.