"At this point, the Nirvana Plan should count as a success, right?"
"Of course. A massive success."
Once news of the campaign against the Son of Evil God returned to the homeland, it sparked world-scale celebrations.
After all, that war had been the moment humanity came closest to destruction.
The truth was, if the battlefield had not been their home ground, if the warriors of this world had not risked their lives to drag it into their world and use Earth's "trap" to grievously wound it, they could only have watched as it slowly devoured Earth.
There was no need to say what losing one's Mother Star meant for a race.
Those who, like the Phosphorus People, found a new home and became humanity's subordinate races were still considered Lucky Ones. It was already fortunate if a wandering race managed to survive. Most simply vanished from history as they traveled.
Yet that victory had also allowed the corpse and flesh of a God Above Gods to merge into the planet, becoming the foundation for the great development that followed. It could be said that both the upper and lower limits of the entire human race had been greatly raised. The old struggle to reach the third tier, once the ceiling, gave way to the widespread emergence of the sixth tier.
A greatly raised lower limit meant a greatly increased chance of producing an upper limit. Rule-level beings had become something that could be "mass-produced."
And those powerful top-tier Transcendents could obtain even more resources in the outer realms, further feeding them back into the entire race.
This was the "life-and-death threshold." Cross it, and it was heaven, with smooth sailing ahead. Fail, and that was the end.
"Perhaps it's our turn now to test other races. Just kidding. At least,