"Universe!"
The Guardians of the Universe answered with absolute certainty. They firmly believed they had no selfish motives—that what they protected was the universe, not a universe belonging to the Guardians of the Universe.
If they regarded this universe as the Guardians of the Universe's own universe, would they have stripped themselves of emotion in order to protect it?
They would not.
Emotion was the greatest obstacle to protecting the universe.
When emotional beings endured the passage of endless years, boundless desires would consume every emotional being.
Emotion was not necessarily good, especially for lives that spanned nearly infinite years. Either all ambition would be worn away by time, leaving them indifferent and regarding all living beings as ants, growing ever more ruthless and unrestrained—or, as with ninety-eight percent of the stellar-level powerhouses in the former Oa Star Pan-Stellar Domain Alliance, they would become exactly that way.
One after another, they were cold-blooded and unscrupulous. They destroyed star systems at the slightest provocation, used living beings for research, as slaves, or as food. There was no way to torment the universe's lifeforms that they would not dare attempt.
Had they not encountered He-El and been frightened out of their wits by his slaughter, they would never have obediently surrendered.
They were one kind of extreme.
There was another kind. After enduring the long passage of time, they not only failed to see through emotion or grow detached, but instead became increasingly emotional, with intense desires that drove them toward the extreme of a particular feeling.
For example, the Zamarons, who advocated protecting the world with love. The Zamarons were a faction that had split from Maltus. They created the Violet Lanterns, and their love was so extreme that others saw them as obsessive lovers, even as somewhat unreasonable.
No extreme