Fated to Die to the Player, I’ll Live Freely with My SSS-Class Ship!

I lost track of how many attacks I had blocked—or how long it had been since this madness began.

"Navigation System's back online!"

By the time Eva's voice reached my ears, I was already turning my gaze to the race standings.

Our timer had soared to 296 minutes due to the stack of penalties we'd suffered. That left us with only 4 minutes to finish the race—if we still wanted to secure our bet. But—

"Due to the damage the fuselage took, some of the axial thrusters are dead. Our top speed's down to half!" Eva reported with urgency.

We were halfway through the zigzag sector of the course. Normally, it'd take us 1 to 2 minutes to wrap it up from here. But now, with our top speed reduced, we were looking at a 2 to 3-minute finish instead.

"We're cutting it way too close!" I gasped.

Fortunately, Cassandra had long regained her composure. Without missing a beat, she slammed the pedals down and launched the ship forward, returning to the race at the exact point where we had been thrown off.

As we re-entered, I noted the remaining time on the counter before the 300-minute cutoff. We had exactly 3 minutes and 47 seconds left.

As long as we didn't draw any further penalties or run into interference from the other racers, we still had a shot at making it in time...

"INCOMING! Watch out—dodge downward!" Eva warned suddenly, forcing Cassandra to dive the ship in an emergency maneuver.

At that very instant, a golden ship streaked just above us, its engines burning brightly as it slipped by—traveling at what was clearly full speed.

"It's them again...!" I growled, a knot of irritation forming in my chest. "Eden Company!"

The fact that they came from behind confirmed it—they had completed a full lap while we were stuck off-track. As bad as that sounded, this actually worked in our favor. We didn't need to change our previous plan at all—eliminating Eden from the race was still our best shot!

"Cassandra, chase them down!"

Even with our max speed reduced, Cassandra's now-godlike handling and intimate knowledge of the racetrack would let her keep pace with any ship—even one running at full capacity.

"Y-Yesh...!"

"…?"

That response made me raise an eyebrow. Did she just bite her tongue while replying? Was she nervous now that we were cutting it close?

Regardless, the Hunter Frigate surged forward, weaving through the remaining corners. The first EMP trap was dodged with space to spare. Then the second. On the third, we finally caught up to Eden.

This time, though, we didn't smash into them like before.

Our ship was already banged up from the earlier scuffle, and we couldn't risk making it any worse—not now.

"…No choice." I muttered under my breath.

We needed to stay out of the Eden's melee range, avoid the Primula's sniper fire, and still finish the race in under three minutes. With time evaporating fast, we couldn't afford to be picky about tactics.

Although I would've preferred to do this myself, I couldn't hand over defensive control to Eva—she wouldn't be able to keep us alive. And I couldn't multitask this kind of attack while blocking incoming fire. So I had to trust her.

"Eva, use this on them." I tossed her a flash drive.

Inside was a little "Gift"—a program meant to act as our trump card. It was highly illegal, definitely grounds for disqualification if caught. In other words, it was a cheat.

"…This is a hacking tool, isn't it?" Eva asked after scanning the contents, raising a skeptical brow.

She was no stranger to hacking. While not on my level, her programming and software skills were good enough to run the tool without needing an explanation.

Without hesitation, she copied the file into her personal terminal, then used it to create a bypass and target the Eden Company's ship directly. After a beat...

"This is…" Her expression twisted into a frown. "They've got a three-layer firewall. It'll take a bit to break through. Casey, hold on by yourself for now!"

And just like that, the three of us fell into a heavy silence, each locked into our own task.

Cassandra focused on tailing the Eden ship perfectly—never too close, never too far. Eva hammered her keyboard with full focus, digging through layers of digital defenses to crack into the enemy's core systems.

Meanwhile, I kept working overtime to block every single shot fired by the relentless Primula.

My mind felt sluggish now. Fatigue had wormed into every corner of my body. My fingers throbbed with pain, tingling as if I'd touched a burning plate. I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep this up...

Then, nearly a minute later—just as we crossed past three-fourths of the zigzag—Eva looked up.

"Done! I broke through their firewalls!"

"Inject the program into their systems. Now!" I ordered, my tone snapping sharp with urgency.

Eva didn't hesitate. With a single keystroke, the program began transmitting. The file was small, built to be efficient, and it slipped into their system like a whisper. Within seconds, it was done.

Immediately after, Eva disconnected, severed the proxy connection, and swapped into a fresh one—erasing the trail behind her. Then, through an entirely separate interface, she triggered the final command.

---

"Damn it! They're still alive and kicking, aren't they?!" The Eden Company's pilot, Alkhein, growled as he checked the tactical feed flashing from behind.

There it was again—that familiar ship unmistakably chasing them down. Its chassis mostly gray and silver, with streaks of red, blue, and yellow tracing its body—a Hunter Frigate—the vessel of the Knights of Camelot.

"What the hell are those old bastards even doing?!" he cursed louder this time, gritting his teeth in mounting frustration.

Sitting silently behind him, a woman named Nyssra narrowed her eyes.

She was one of the minds behind the Primula's functionality. As someone deeply familiar with its structure and operation, she knew firsthand how terrifyingly destructive the Primula was when properly deployed.

She knew all too well—it wasn't something a mere shield could handle with ease.

'And yet... they managed to block every single attack for the past fifteen minutes straight.' Her thoughts flickered between frustration and admiration. 'Whoever's controlling those shields can't be an ordinary person!'

Out of sheer curiosity, she tried to put herself in Arthur's shoes—but her imagination failed her. She couldn't even see herself stopping one shot, let alone a relentless barrage that comes every 10 to 15 seconds, with barely a second to react.

The variables were mind-boggling. Laser origin, angle, power. Shield positioning, energy levels, response time. Charge rate, deflection strength, system feedback delays—each had to be calculated in real-time.

A single wrong judgment would've spelled instant disaster.

For her, those calculations alone would take several seconds—far too long to make a meaningful move.

Her ability to assess herself so clearly only deepened her understanding of just how insane Arthur's performance really was.

"I'm getting seriously curious about who's behind that defense…" she whispered under her breath, the corners of her lips twitching ever so slightly.

Then, without warning, alarms began screaming throughout their cockpit. A flood of warning signals burst across their visor display like a visual explosion—so many that the racetrack itself was practically drowned out beneath them.

"Shit! What now?!"

Alkhein barked in frustration, pulling the lever hard to make a swift spin-stop—or so he intended.

But it didn't work.

No matter how violently he jerked the controls, the ship didn't respond. The steering resisted. The braking mechanism failed. The ship simply kept sliding forward, totally disconnected from the track's path—cruising into oblivion.

Then, like a switch being flipped, all warnings vanished—and the ship's power died completely.

"…!"

Nyssra's eyes shot open in disbelief. She had only been momentarily distracted, but that short lapse was all it took. She hadn't even noticed what had hit them.

Ever since the Primula came into play, she'd been operating in the background—executing covert tasks, disturbing rival ships with subtle disruptions.

She was in charge of managing the ship's auxiliary systems, launching compact but potent data bombs—small, dense packages of encoded digital chaos. These were made to overload the decrypting systems and firewalls of nearby ships, interrupting their controls for just a few seconds.

A few seconds that could cause total wreckage in a high-speed race.

But this time, she'd been caught off guard. She hadn't seen it coming at all. A different kind of program had made it through—one designed to annihilate everything. A stealth injection that executed a full system wipe, over and over again—ten times, without pause.

No recovery. No backup. No chance of revival.

"We're completely neutralized…" Nyssra muttered, her voice blank. "Even the Primula's locking protocol was wiped clean…"

Just as those words left her mouth, a ship zipped by outside the window. Its appearance was unremarkable—metallic, mostly gray and silver, with no flashy lights or gaudy branding. No logos. No insignias.

Just a clean, functional ship, slipping through the chaos at breakneck speed.

Nyssra finally let her shoulders sag. She leaned back into her seat, listening absently to the frantic shouting of her teammates around her. None of them seemed to realize how cleanly they'd just been eliminated.

And with a soft, almost amused whisper, she said to herself—

"Knights of Camelot, huh…"

---

After the injection of the "Gift" was completed, Eden's ship failed to make the next turn, instead sailing straight past the edge and veering out of bounds.

With the Gift wiping their entire system clean, it wasn't just their navigation that went offline—whatever process tracked our position to feed the Primula its targeting data must've gone down as well. I waited a full ten seconds, scanning the sensor readings for any sign of retaliation—but, as expected, no laser fire followed.

"…Finally done…" I murmured, letting my body fall back into the chair.

My hands felt like they were on fire—burning with the aftershock of constant strain. They definitely needed some attention in a Medical Pod, maybe even a full nerve scan if the damage was internal.

As the pain throbbed dully, I let my gaze drift toward the front display, watching as Cassandra guided the ship through the last few corners of the racecourse.

This final section was more straightforward. No sharp turns, no traps, no mines—just a clean sprint to the end. She floored the accelerator without hesitation, pushing the ship's damaged thrusters to their limit in one last burst of speed.

And then, with a roaring burst of inertia, we zipped through the final loop—the luminous line marking the finish—crossing the boundary that signified the end of it all.

The final record locked in.

Fifty grueling laps, completed in a record-breaking time of 4 hours, 58 minutes, and 33.79 seconds!

At long last, the race was truly over.

And with that, we had secured first place.

We were victorious!