Its outline was an irregular oval, like an insect pupa, covered in cold, hard carapace and even finer scales. Its chitinous outer armor looked as if it had been polished and buffed with the utmost care, its surface reflecting starlight as though imbued with a mysterious spirituality.
Sharp spikes sprouted from its carapace, like ramming prows capable of piercing a battleship's armor at any moment.
Wasn't that a Leviathan hive ship?
And yet it was so enormous, like an ancient holy relic from the previous universe. It was as if the radiance on every plate of armor held the distilled essence of a civilization.
Compared with this "mothership" that had suddenly arrived in the star system, her own hive carrier seemed like an inferior knockoff, incompletely evolved.
...But that raised a question. If that thing was a mothership, what did that make me?
Shally was lost.
Of course, what was truly impressive was that even though she was so bewildered she'd begun questioning her entire existence, it hadn't affected her high-speed escape or her stealth in the slightest.
The navigator aboard the Holy Sword Karagang was just as bewildered. She gazed at the enormous warship that had suddenly appeared in her field of view. Her expression was still as numb as a robot's, but her eyes shimmered with an unsettling, iridescent light.
"Oh, spirits of the universe above, what is this? What is this thing? This is nothing like what I imagined. Yes, nothing like it, but this is Altis's will. Our destiny lies here. Whatever it is, we must embrace our fate. Oh, hahahaha, I see now."
To be fair, when a woman with a blank expression rambled through the above gibberish at an unnaturally rapid pace, it was downright mind-corrupting. Even the sight of it was deeply disturbing.