Fated to Die to the Player, I'll Live Freely with My SSS-Class Ship!-Chapter 53: Entering Kariki Star System

"Exiting Wormhole travel in five, four, three..."

Eva’s voice rang through the cockpit, each number hammering down like a countdown to judgment day.

I tensed, gripping the controls like my life depended on it—because it did. The probability of an ambush was low, but low didn’t mean zero. If our enemies had somehow surrounded our exit point beforehand, we’d be stepping into a perfectly laid trap.

"Leaving the white hole! Prepare for impact!"

A split second later, the ship’s visor shields peeled away like curtains, unveiling a stage. For a brief, blinding moment, the universe was pure, searing white. Then—darkness.

The sheer, vast emptiness of space returned, the silence almost deafening after the chaos we’d just endured.

I wasted no time scanning the sensors and radar. They were updating annoyingly slowly, every second stretching into eternity. The tension made my fingers twitch over the controls. But finally—

"Coast’s clear. No ships within 0.5 AU of our position!" Eva announced, exhaling heavily.

I let out a long, relieved sigh. "Guess we can rest easy for a bit..." Then I cracked my neck, rolling my shoulders. "But first, we should check in. Eva, patch us through to the employer. Announce our arrival."

"Hah?"

Eva shot me an incredulous look.

"You do it yourself!" she huffed. "I’m not built for buttering people up—I might end up cursing them out until they snap instead!"

I paused, giving her a long, blank stare.

"…Good point." I sighed, shaking my head. "I’ll do it." The right person for the right job, after all.

Quickly, I adjusted my appearance, checking my reflection on the internal camera. My silver hair was a little messier than usual, but that just added to the rugged mercenary charm, right? Clearing my throat, I initiated the call.

Soon, the main screen flickered to life, revealing our employer—Blas Kariki.

Despite his name being synonymous with obscene amounts of wealth, the person before me was not what I expected. Instead of the image of a round-bellied, shrewd merchant, I was greeted by a figure with distinct rodent-like features.

Large, round ears. A long, twitching snout. Thin whiskers. And front and center—two massive, golden incisors gleaming like trophies.

His body was small—too small. More on the frail side than the "healthy" side, like he hadn’t seen a decent meal in a while. One glance was enough to tell me this guy’s health was not his top priority.

I straightened my posture, putting on my best professional mercenary face.

"It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sir Blas Kariki," I said smoothly. "I’m Arthur Grail, leader of the mercenary band Knights of Camelot. We’ve arrived per your request for a survey of the Kariki Star System."

I nailed the tone. Calm, professional, confident. As an ex-office worker, my fake customer service smile had been honed to perfection. If I had to rate my delivery? 9/10.

Blas Kariki blinked, then responded.

{Yes, I have received confirmation of your acceptance of my request from the Mercenary Union.}

His voice matched his appearance—high-pitched, slightly squeaky, and just grating enough to make me wish for a mute button. I kept my expression neutral, but internally, I could feel my soul trying to escape through my ears.

This chapter is updated by freēwēbnovel.com.

{I have already added your ship’s UUID to the whitelist. The defense system will no longer target you. Do your job quietly and report back any anomalies you find.}

As soon as he finished speaking, a series of notifications flashed across our ship’s interface.

One confirmed our whitelist status, ensuring we wouldn’t be instantly obliterated by automated defenses. Another contained past inspection records, likely for reference. And lastly—

{I have also sent you the Security Key to enter the system. Just do as you were assigned to do... and nothing else.}

There it was. An indirect threat. The subtle way he emphasized "nothing else" was all but screaming, "Stay in your lane, mercenary, or else."

And then—click. Without so much as a parting word, Kariki cut the call.

I blinked. Wow.

Eva, watching by the side, let out a sharp whistle. "Whelp. That guy has the charm of a collapsing neutron star. Is that really that shrewd zillionaire Kariki?"

I smiled bitterly, shrugging at her question. "Who knows? At least we got what we needed. Security key, whitelist status—we’re all set."

I turned to the two with a grin.

"Alright, let’s move! Next stop—the Kariki Star System’s core: The Noble’s Playground!"

---

The Kariki Star System was small—relatively speaking. Roughly 30 AU from edge to edge, which wasn’t much compared to typical solar systems. And when I said edge, I meant it literally.

The entire system was like a massive block of rock and metal, riddled with holes—some as small as 100 meters wide, others as wide as 0.1 AU.

To put it simply, the whole damn place was just one gigantic floating chunk of debris. No planets. No stars. No stable orbiting bodies. Just like an astronomical-sized anthill someone had cleaved off and left to drift in space.

And that meant one thing—

"What a godforsaken maze this place is..."

Even though we had access to a 3D system map courtesy of Kariki’s security key, the layout was so convoluted that we could only process a small chunk at a time. The endless tunnels, gaps, and passages overlapped in ways that made it hard to even confirm where we were at any given moment.

And as if that wasn’t annoying enough—

"Another alien detected ahead." Eva’s voice came through, completely deadpan. "It’s another Gallbrion."

"Again?" I groaned, slumping into my seat. "These eels have serious attachment issues…"

The Gallbrion was one of the many alien species we’d encountered so far. And by many, I meant dozens. These weren’t just random space creatures—they were deliberately bred in the Kariki Star System.

And that led us to the real reason behind Eva’s ever-worsening mood—money. Specifically, the fact that we weren’t making enough of it.

Every alien corpse could easily fetch around 100,000 Credits on the market. But thanks to Kariki’s insane tax laws, we were only entitled to 25% of the spoils. The rest? Straight into that rodent bastard’s pocket.

I could almost hear Eva grinding her teeth.

"Do we really need to keep hunting these things just to fatten that greedy rat’s wallet?" she snapped. "We’re basically his unpaid laborers!"

"That’s... not entirely wrong," I admitted, keeping my eyes on the navigation system. "But technically, these creatures are his livestock. We’re just here to help ’cull’ them. Getting a 25% cut is already pretty generous."

But deep inside, I understood Eva’s point... Was Kariki being generous? No. Unfair? Absolutely.

But this was his system. His business. And no matter how much it made us want to scream, the numbers didn’t lie—it was profitable as hell.

"Either way, we’re not here to farm aliens," I added, grinning. "Just consider them a little bonus side income! Haha!"

After all, what’s our real job? Surveying this entire damn system. Normally, that would take months—if we followed standard procedures. But who am I again? Right. One of the top 10 players of TSO. Standard procedures were for amateurs!

Currently, the Range Falcon was following the main path—the widest route that connected most of the system. But there was a problem.

The Falcon was too big to fit through the smaller tunnels and crevices. Meaning, we couldn’t fully explore everything.

And that’s where my little toys come to play: my drones. These little guys were half-meter-wide AI-controlled bots, designed for scanning and reconnaissance. I deployed them into the smaller paths the Falcon couldn’t reach.

But even that wasn’t enough to efficiently scan the branching paths of this nightmare of a system. So I had a little trick up my sleeve.

Each drone carried hundreds of thousands of OB Nexus 1000 Stealth Nanobots—tiny, advanced stealth units. Whenever a drone reached a branching path, it would take the widest route, while the Nanobots split off to explore the rest.

All of this was handled automatically by the AI.

And thanks to this setup, we’d already surveyed 1% of the entire system in just a few hours. At this rate, we could finish the whole thing in two galactic days.

Well, assuming we didn’t run into any surprises.

"But as expected, the [egg] is still nowhere to be found…"

The egg—our main objective.

To advance the main quest, we needed to retrieve it and deliver it to either Major Terrence or Mercy for identification. The problem? It was buried deep in this system.

Following the structural theme of the Kariki Star System, the deeper we went, the higher the level designation. Right now, we were just about to enter Level 2. The egg? Likely buried at Level 100.

So yeah. We still had a long way to go.

The only good news was that this was basically a leisure quest.

Sure, the aliens would get stronger and trickier the deeper we went. But there were no pirates, no enemy ships, and no surprise battles waiting for us.

According to the game’s plot, there were no anomalies in this system at this time. Meaning, that we should be able to complete this mission without issue—or it should be.

"What the...?"

At that moment, my drones had just picked up something. Something that wasn’t supposed to be here.

A sign of an anomaly—one that wasn’t in the game’s original plot.