An Unknown Soldier in the Sea of Stars

Jiang Ye, a raw recruit, takes a dead man's place on the enlistment roster and gets shipped off to mine on Ash Star. Ten years later, he is the most inconspicuous bookkeeper in the military supply office. He has handled three thousand ledgers, and everyone thinks he's a pushover who does nothing but work an abacus.

But nobody knows he's not really keeping accounts.

Beneath Ash Star lies the ashes of a game of chess that burned three hundred years ago. In a shipyard to the south rests a battered vessel that can recognize its master. And the wall that devours ships in the Chaos Star Zone is a chessboard left behind by the shipbuilder. For three hundred years, the Seventh Fleet has been feeding that wall for the shipbuilder. Every shipload of ore sent into it is another piece placed on the board.

The wall is the chessboard, the ledgers are the game record, and the key is a ship pretending to be dead.

Holding the last page of the ledger, with only one word written on it, "Collect," Jiang Ye decides to finish the three-hundred-year game on the shipbuilder's behalf and take the board away.

When the game reaches its end, the winner must take the board away for the loser.