Relics were the unique items in this game aside from the resources.
Some granted access to entirely new Origin Units capable of changing the direction of a civilization’s growth. Some unlocked ancient technologies. Others granted direct power to the Origin themselves, altering genetics, abilities, or even the way the system functioned.
In rarer cases, certain relics could completely reshape a civilization’s development path altogether, unlocking entirely different civilization builds unavailable through normal progression.
If the other veteran players already knew that this world had the same coordinates as the game, then the next thing they would do after obtaining an Eternal Node would be to secure the relics they previously owned. For me, it would be no different.
Most relics were heavily protected, guarded by high-tier defenses or progression requirements that made them nearly impossible to obtain during the early stages of expansion.
Originally, relics were scattered randomly throughout the galaxy and were notoriously difficult to locate.
The relic I once possessed was no exception.
Back in the game, obtaining it required an extremely long progression chain mission.
It began with the search for a missing noble’s son who had eventually become a mercenary. That alone would lead players through multiple sectors involving pirate raids, bounty conflicts, and scattered investigations across nearby systems.
Eventually, the questline would uncover an ancient beacon.
Not an ordinary distress signal but a centuries-old transmission continuously broadcasting an endless SOS across space.
Following that beacon would lead players from one planet to another, battling Darken Spawns, pirate fleets, mercenary groups, and abandoned facilities while slowly piecing together the coordinates connected to the relic itself.
And after all of that, the entire chain would finally reveal a single set of coordinates.
A hidden location.
At first, I wasn't sure whether it was a relic or simply some random piece of loot. That was simply how the grind in this game worked.
In the end, blessed by the RNGoddess, it was a relic.
This time, I already knew where it was. Having those coordinates in my memory allowed me to skip the entire progression chain completely.
Meanwhile, back on the ship, I noticed Andrea quietly preparing the Voyager for the return trip home. Unfortunately, Andrea, we are not going home yet.
“Andrea…”
“Yes, Commander?”
“Set the ship to FTL Overdrive.”
Andrea’s golden eyes briefly shifted toward me after hearing the order, visible confusion appearing across her expression. After everything that had happened inside the Eternal Node, suddenly accelerating toward another unknown destination without explanation would naturally make anyone uneasy.
For a brief moment, she looked like she wanted to ask several questions.
But in the end, she stopped herself.
Instead, she quietly nodded and focused on the navigation systems in front of her, adjusting the FTL controls with practiced precision. Holographic flight panels illuminated across her face as route calculations rapidly expanded throughout the cockpit.
I silently watched her for a moment.
Back in the game, organic civilizations possessed something called a Trust Rating system. Of course, hivemind-type builds were exempt from it. Aside from Hive civilizations, this was one of the main reasons organic builds never truly dominated the meta.
Units could abandon, desert, or even disappear entirely once their trust in the player became extremely low.
Additionally, players possessed absolute command authority over their units.
They could issue Origin-enforced orders that units were fundamentally incapable of refusing. However, trust built through fear or absolute authority was never genuine trust at all.
Some players abused that authority heavily, only to discover their units mysteriously gone the following day. In more extreme cases, players would suddenly log in to find their own bases sabotaged from within, forcing an almost complete restart of their civilization.
At first, many players complained endlessly about the mechanic.
But eventually, instead of complaining, the community simply started mocking players who failed to maintain their unit's Trust Rating at an acceptable level.
Over time, it evolved into an entirely competitive aspect of the game itself.
There was even a top-ranked player named [YourSavior] who specialized entirely in organic civilizations. Instead of relying on fear or forced obedience, he built an entire civilization centered around faith. It was crazy work.
Nevertheless, for someone currently assigned to Atlas logistics and operational coordination, Andrea’s discipline and willingness to trust my decisions on her own carried far more value to me.
I silently commended Andrea in the back of my mind.
Perhaps there would come a day when I would have no other choice but to use the authority. But unless necessary, I did not want to use it.
Still, managing this civilization was honestly far more difficult than I originally expected. Well, managing people in general was never easy. However, right now, there was an objective I needed to accomplish first. I focused on that instead.
“Where to, Commander?”
I looked toward the endless starfield beyond the cockpit window before slowly inputting the coordinates from memory.
Before initiating the jump, I glanced back at the coordinates one more time.
They were game coordinates. At this moment, I felt a small trace of uncertainty.
Back then, everything existed inside a game system.
But now, this was reality. If the coordinates were even slightly wrong, getting lost in deep space would become a very real possibility.
However, the Voyager was an advanced spacecraft, and combined with the player system, it gave me enough confidence to take the risk. Obtaining that relic was critical. If I hesitated, I could lose a valuable advantage at this phase of the game.
Having decided, I took the risk and entered the jump sequence.
The ship went into Overdrive, the stars outside the cockpit distorted violently before submerging beneath reality itself.
There was no sensation of movement.
Only the low mechanical hum of the Voyager’s FTL core resonated throughout the ship while the navigation systems continuously recalculated the route through the distorted space.
Beyond the cockpit window, enormous fractures of pale light drifted endlessly across the darkness like broken cracks stretching through an infinite void. Distorted shadows and fragmented spatial echoes flickered in the distance for brief moments before disappearing again, as though entire pieces of reality were phasing in and out around us.
Andrea remained completely silent beside me while monitoring the fluctuating readings appearing across the cockpit displays.
Normal FTL travel worked by folding space around the vessel itself, allowing ships to bypass conventional distance without fully leaving physical reality. It was stable, efficient, and safe enough for civilian and military navigation across established routes.
FTL Overdrive was completely different.
Rather than merely bending space, Overdrive forcibly pushed the ship deeper beneath the surface layer of reality itself, briefly entering what the game lore referred to as the Void Space. A dark transitional dimension exists between physical space and nonexistence.
The transition only lasted a minute before the Voyager finally came to a complete stop within the darkness.
Here, there were no stars, no planets, nothing at all.
A faint mechanical sound echoed throughout the ship as the Voyager’s forward lights automatically activated, powerful beams cutting through the darkness ahead of us.
The first thing I did was open the map interface.
It was empty. Just like in the game, within this space, there was only manual navigation. Nodding, I closed the interface immediately.
“Scan the area.”
“Got it, scanning the surrounding space now,” Andrea replied as holographic sensor panels immediately expanded across the cockpit.
This time, the scan finally detected something ahead of us.
A seemingly broken structure drifted silently within the darkness directly in front of the Voyager. The holographic scan slowly reconstructed its shape across the cockpit display, massive metallic debris, and collapsed structural sections.
It's here… the structure was a mothership of an ancient machine civilization.
A machine relic.
Lost in an old war, drifted in space long enough to be sucked into a spatial rift anomaly, and ended up here in the void space.
Using the scan data, we instructed the Voyager’s onboard system to locate the vessel’s command room. If my memory was correct, the relic should still be there.
Fortunately, the ship only needed a few minutes to identify the most probable location.
Without wasting any time, I equipped a spacesuit before exiting the Voyager alone and diving through one of the broken openings along the ruined hull, while Andrea remained behind to assist with the ship’s lights and external scans.
The moment I entered the wreckage, silence completely swallowed everything around me. Fragments of shattered machinery and broken metallic structures drifted weightlessly throughout the interior corridors while emergency lights flickered faintly across sections of the ruined ship.
Eventually, I reached the command room.
Inside, the remains of the civilization that once operated the vessel were still there. Machine people. Back in the game, discovering this place had excited me because it meant I had finally found a relic.
But now, in reality, the scene felt disturbingly eerie.
The lifeless machine bodies drifted endlessly throughout the ruined command room, suspended silently within the darkness of the wreckage like abandoned corpses lost inside the void.
I quickly shook the thought away before continuing toward the center of the chamber. A faint red light blinked weakly within the darkness, its unstable glow pulsing slowly as though it was on the verge of losing power completely.
As I approached, I confirmed it was an active terminal.
The screen displayed only a single repeating message.
[SOS]
A faint smile appeared on my face upon seeing the familiar signal.
This was the relic.
The moment I touched it, the screen suddenly expanded outward.
My vision distorted violently as if my consciousness had been dragged somewhere else entirely.
Then, everything turned white.
Confused, I found myself standing once again within a seemingly endless virtual realm.
An empty world of pure pale light stretching infinitely in every direction.
My eyes narrowed slightly.
Back in the game, none of this existed. I would have simply received a notification stating that the relic had been acquired.
But now, something was different.
Standing before me was a figure. Not the same machine-like entity from the game. Instead, it was a woman. And the moment I saw her, my body froze slightly.
She looked similar to my mother. No…That should have been impossible.
Did the relic somehow access my memories?
The woman looked directly at me.
“Have you come to save me? Atlas Jacobs”
For a brief moment, I completely froze.
Seeing my mother’s face again, even hearing the same voice calling my name, shook me far more than I expected. However, I knew this was only an illusion. It had already been far too long since my mother passed away, and I had accepted that reality long ago. Still, it took me several seconds to steady my thoughts.
Then I realized it. The relic was asking the same question it had asked back in the game. Just like before, since it was calling for SOS, I came here to answer it.
“Yes…”
The moment the words left my mouth, the white space distorted instantly.
Everything happened too quickly, barely giving me enough time to even think.
The next moment, she suddenly stood directly in front of me.
This time, her appearance was different. Yet I immediately recognized that familiar presence. It was the same Origin Unit I had once obtained back in the game after obtaining this relic.
I remembered naming her Evie.
Before I could react, the woman gently wrapped her arms around me.
“Thank you. Master…”
Her voice was soft and almost fragile.
Suddenly, my vision distorted once again before I was violently pulled back into the dark command room of the ruined vessel.
'Fuck…' I cursed in my mind.
Even though the transition itself felt harmless, the sudden shift was disorienting enough to make my head spin slightly.
The faint white virtual realm had completely disappeared.
At that moment, the repeating SOS signal was gone.
Instead, a hidden mechanical compartment slowly opened beneath the terminal, revealing a metallic cube resting quietly inside.
Its surface was smooth, dark silver in color, while faint pale-blue lines pulsed slowly across its edges like flowing energy.
Finally…
Slowly, I reached forward and picked it up.
Ding!
[Relic Acquired!]
[WARNING: Relic Integration Process Detected]
[Assimilation is Permanent]
[Process cannot be reversed after confirmation]
[Proceed with Integration?]
[Y/N]
I smiled faintly. This was the civilization I had used back in the game.
There was no mistaking it.
“...Yes.”
The moment I accepted, the metallic cube suddenly dissolved.
Its solid structure suddenly collapsed into a stream of silver liquid that spread across the surface of my spacesuit before forcing its way through the sealed suit at a molecular level, phasing directly through the material and sinking into my skin.
A sharp burning sensation immediately spread throughout my entire body, as though molten metal was being injected directly into my veins.
Even with my newly upgraded genes, the pain was intense enough to make my body tremble slightly.
Still, I gritted my teeth and endured it.
[Initializing…]
Ding!
Ding!
━━━━━━━━━━━
[Genetic Sequence Updated!]
[New Origin Unit Available!]
[New Construction Options Added!]
━━━━━━━━━━━
Then suddenly, the system interface violently distorted.
━━━━━━━━━━━
[1#$!@^%@#@()%!]
[#%*@$@@#@!$@]
[%#@@!#^@#%!]
[ERROR — ERROR — ERROR]
[%$#@!#%@!]
[#%*@$@@#@!$@]
[UNKNOWN SIGNAL DETECTED]
[■■■■■■■■■■■■]
━━━━━━━━━━━
“What…?”
At that moment, the entire system looked as though it was breaking apart.
Notifications flickered uncontrollably across my vision while corrupted symbols flooded the interface faster and faster, almost as if something inside the relic was forcefully interfering with the system itself.
Then, everything suddenly went silent.
A single new notification slowly appeared before me.
━━━━━━━━━━━
[Master…]
━━━━━━━━━━━