Needless to say, in this star system, the most out-of-place thing was probably this huge, unwieldy cylinder.
It had once been part of the Seder Fortress. After being infected by the will of the Void Lord "Root Demon of a Thousand Eyes," it had become the material vessel for the entity's descent into the real world.
The Empire had wanted the Void Lord to awaken inside Seder Fortress. Never in a million years had they expected that this occult bomb would hurt no one else—and blow up in their own faces first.
Of course, the "cosmic log" that had proved so effective in this great battle had already exited center stage after the iconic scene of the Void Lord battling the Imperial fleet.
The Void Lord's charge had sent the fortress's detached section spinning and wobbling onto the battlefield. That was all.
In the battle that followed, it had continued moving at a steady speed, like a comet pushed along by the ubiquitous particles in space, gliding along a smooth trajectory away from the fiercest fighting.
At that moment, whether they were Earthlings, Imperial soldiers, or the Void Lord's avatars, everyone seemed to have been bewitched, completely overlooking the existence of this enormous object.
But that wasn't so strange. The universe was, after all, vast beyond measure. A space several million kilometers across could fit hundreds of Earth-like planets, but by the standards of fleet combat, it was already a perfectly viable battlefield.
A mere irregular cylinder, just over fifty kilometers long and twenty kilometers thick, was indeed as insignificant as dust in such a vast space.
Without lights, signals, or energy signatures, it might even have had less presence than an asteroid.
It made sense, at least...
Then, somewhere inside this enormous "cosmic log," Tai'a opened her eyes.
Her