The moment Ostana Vezig Bar, a lieutenant general in the Holy Galactic Empire's military, stepped into the bridge hall, she paused thoughtfully.
She raised her head and gazed up into the heights beyond the dome, at the cosmic abyss dotted with countless bright points. The boundless expanse of space and dimensions formed a surging force that pressed down upon her.
The universe seemed to ceaselessly display its eternal grandeur through its very existence. It also constantly reminded humanity—and every intelligent species that had built a civilization—that they were small and fragile before the vastness of nature.
However, for someone like Ostana, who was accustomed to wandering through the boundless expanse, these occasional fluctuations in emotion caused no trouble.
The slightest dip in her spirits was all but extinguished the moment it arose, before the steadfast fortress of reason and knowledge.
Humanity had always been blessed by the stars, voyagers into the depths of space. If they lacked the ambition to explore, adapt to, and conquer nature, they would never have been worthy of venturing into the universe in the first place.
And didn't the Dawn Angel, the ship she was aboard, prove exactly that?
This enormous artificial construct, over twenty thousand meters long and sleekly streamlined from end to end, sailed serenely through the boundless sea of stars. The steel-fortress warship raced at near-light speed, the colorful points of light stretching into streaks almost impossible to make out against the endless starfield.
And so the boundless universe seemed to turn into a smooth, tranquil stream.
Like all the Empire's main battlefleets, the Dawn Angel's bridge was laid out in a vast hemisphere. The spherical section looked like a transparent glass dome, but was actually one enormous screen. It offered a clear view of the space outside while also projecting hundreds