After Godzilla's eruption, the war raged on, and had reached a fever pitch.
The Annihilation Wave had spread out completely, swarming like a tidal flood and covering the Solar System from end to end.
The Transformers were firing at full power—Planetary Fortresses, battleship particle cannons, flagship laser beams—both sides were locked in a fight to the death, holding nothing back.
To an outsider, it might even seem strange. This was the very first encounter between the Transformers and the Annihilation Wave, yet they fought as if it were a battle for survival itself. Both sides were throwing themselves in recklessly, with no thought of retreat.
The Ballerina Twins provided Lorien with real-time battlefield data reports.
"Master, the swarm is being eliminated at an average rate of 10 to 20 million per hour."
"Robot casualties average 100,000 to 200,000 per hour."
"Transformers are losing 100 members per hour."
"Countless other resources—ships, warships, ammunition, Planetary Fortresses—are also being consumed."
"This campaign consumes, every hour, the equivalent of an Earth nation's entire yearly productivity."
"One single day of this war equals the yearly output of the entire Earth."
The Ballerina Twins' report gave Cindy, Peni, and Mayday their first real sense of war's brutality and cost.
Resources consumed in one hour—equal to a nation's yearly production.
Resources consumed in one day—equal to Earth's entire yearly output.
What did that even mean? They couldn't wrap their heads around it. It was beyond anything they could imagine.
Perhaps if all those resources were piled together, they would form a mountain as tall as Everest? Or be enough to fill a volcanic crater? That was the furthest their imaginations could go.
But reality went far beyond that. The sheer energy the Transformers unleashed was something Earth had no way of even measuring. The energy alone was already an index so far above Earth's entire capacity it wasn't even comparable.
Yet for the Transformers, this wasn't considered a loss.
Because before the war, they had stored colossal amounts of energy inside the Space Stone. And now, that energy finally had a purpose.
"Boom!" "Boom!"
"Bang!" "Bang!"
The battle raged on. The center of the cosmic battlefield blazed with radiant light as countless high-energy reactions exploded one after another.
Lorien and the women had been watching for nearly two hours. After staring so intently for so long, they finally came to their senses and began to speak.
Cindy and Mayday turned toward Lorien. After a moment of hesitation, they asked,
"How long does a battle like this usually last?"
They had already been watching for one or two hours, yet the battle still seemed locked in its most intense phase. The Annihilation Wave and the Transformers Legion were still clashing fiercely, showing no sign of exhaustion.
They couldn't tell the total forces on either side—how much had been lost, how much still remained. All they could sense was overwhelming numbers, vast battlefields, and colossal consumption.
But to actually make sense of the situation? Impossible.
And that was only natural. Both sides had such massive numbers. Even if half of the swarm were annihilated, they would still blot out the sky.
By now, over a hundred million insectoids had already been destroyed. But compared to the swarm, tens or even hundreds of times that size—was that really a lot? Barely one percent.
It was like having ten thousand dollars and spending only a hundred. You still had nine thousand nine hundred left to use.
That is what "scale" means—the qualitative change born from sheer quantity.
Dump one hundred billion pigs onto Earth, and they could wipe out entire nations. Even if you divided them equally among all of humanity, each person would have to fight 1.4 pigs.
Drop them on a sparsely populated country, and each person might face dozens, hundreds, even thousands of pigs.
Forget being unarmed. Even with an AK-47 loaded with infinite ammo, you'd still be mowing them down for ages.
That's the power of numbers.
So Lorien shook his head and said,
"In a war of positions, there is no stopping short, no conditional negotiations, no sounding the retreat.
Only when one side alone remains standing on the battlefield… will the war cease."
Cindy, Mayday, and Peni's eyes widened at Lorien's words. They looked toward the distant battlefield.
If what he said was true, then in the end, one side would inevitably be reduced to nothingness.
But… the battlefield before their eyes was so vast. To imagine that one side must be utterly annihilated… how many lives would that claim?
It wasn't that they thought the death toll was wrong. It was that the sheer scale of it was staggering—so vast it left them shaken.
It was like… the battlefields of World War II strewn with corpses, where one side had to be completely wiped out. Not a single survivor. Mutual slaughter.
But this was what it meant for races to wage war. There was no victory or defeat. Only extinction.
Seeing the three women staring in stunned silence, Lorien smiled faintly and spoke a cruel truth.
"Do you know what the greatest respect for an enemy is in the universe?"
Cindy, Peni, and Mayday each thought for a moment.
Cindy: "A duel?"
Peni: "Negotiations?"
Mayday: "Fairness?"
Lorien shook his head.
"None of those."
The three of them: "?"
They looked puzzled. Then what was respect for an enemy? How could one truly show respect?
Lorien's gaze stayed steady as he spoke calmly.
"The greatest respect for an enemy… is to exterminate them completely."
The three women: !!!
The words struck like a thunderclap. They were left in shock.
This was yet another brutal reality of war.
What was respect? A duel? Negotiations? Fairness? What a joke.
Respect meant annihilation.
Even if there was only a one-in-a-billion chance that the enemy could rise again, you still would not gamble on that chance. You would not allow it. That was respect.
Faced with their shock, Wanda, Gwen, and Hela—who had been with Lorien longer—found it much easier to accept. They nodded.
Especially Hela.
In her early campaigns across the Nine Realms, whenever she faced enemies with potential, she had always killed them if she could—preferably eradicating the entire race. That was respect. And she knew it was absolutely true.
With this new perspective and understanding, Cindy, Mayday, and Peni looked back at the cosmic battlefield with transformed awareness.
They no longer saw the war as mere chaos or random slaughter, but as a clash of wills.
It was as if phantom spirits loomed above each side: one, the mechanical spirit of the Allspark; the other, the overlord spirit of the swarm. Both fought desperately.
Lorien watched the distant battlefield.
Even with Godzilla having mastered a new ability, fighting with all his might and greatly improving his AoE and clearing power, it was still just wave after endless wave.
So, how long this war would drag on… was unknown.
It certainly wouldn't end anytime soon.
Lorien didn't wear a watch, so he reached out with his senses toward Earth's time.
8:00 PM. Not bad.
By 10:00 PM, he figured he could head home, rest, and sleep. Tomorrow after work, he could come back and check again.
That was his plan.
He told the others. Wanda and Gwen both nodded in agreement.
Hela raised her hand.
"Reporting in, I want to stay up and watch. I'll teleport home myself afterward."
Lorien nodded.
"Alright."
With Hela's strength, there was no issue leaving her to watch alone.
But then Cindy, Peni, and Mayday exchanged glances, raised their hands, and said,
"We want to watch too."
Gwen frowned and reminded them.
"You have classes tomorrow. Are you really going to stay up all night?"
Lorien waved it off casually.
"What classes? If not tomorrow, then the day after. But if you miss what you want to see now, you'll never get another chance. You can stay with Hela."
Hearing that, the three immediately nodded gratefully.
"Mm-hmm!"
Ignoring Gwen entirely, they looked at Lorien with excitement and appreciation.
Gwen: …..
...
With the plan settled, Lorien and the others prepared to watch a while longer.
But just then, a purple light appeared from Earth's direction. At first it was nothing more than a tiny, almost invisible speck, but before long everyone had noticed it. The purple glow streaked swiftly across the cosmos, heading straight for the battlefield.
The others couldn't make out who it was yet, but Gwen's sharp eyesight and Wanda's magic easily identified the figure.
"It's Galacta," Gwen turned to Hela, who hadn't reacted yet. "Your good friend's here."
"Really!?"
Hela froze. Galacta had actually come? What were the odds?
"Wanda, quickly, call her over."
Wanda nodded. She focused on Galacta, flicked her fingers, and the next moment spoke aloud.
"Galacta, over here."
In mid-flight, Galacta froze at the sound of Wanda's voice. She stopped instantly in space, looked around, and asked,
"Where? Wanda, is that you?"
"It's me, along with Lorien, Gwen, Hela, and the others. We're all here. I'll open a portal for you."
"Alright."
Wanda immediately opened a crimson portal. Galacta trusted her without hesitation, flying straight through, and in an instant appeared beside Lorien and the rest.
Seeing everyone gathered together, Galacta's eyes widened in surprise.
"Wow~, you're all here!"
Hela waved the moment she saw her. Galacta was her close friend—the one she had fought beside, slept beside, and shared meals with.
After greeting the others, Galacta landed next to Hela. She looked toward the colossal battlefield in the distance, swallowed nervously, then turned back to Lorien and the group.
"You all knew this was happening already?"
"This looks like an alien invasion. I need to deal with it quickly."
As mentioned before, Galacta—also known as Devourer Girl—might slack off on Earth, but she was responsible for stopping invasions by alien bacteria, pathogens, and other major threats. She wouldn't bother with minor ones, but for dangers on this scale, she had to intervene. Otherwise Earth could never endure it.
But clearly, she hadn't expected this.
Hela tilted her head and said,
"It is an alien invasion, but this is Lorien's Transformers civilization fighting the Annihilation Wave. We're just here to watch."
Galacta: "Huh?! Wait..."