Yet.
Though violent ripples spread across the shield of light, it never broke.
The Origin Barrier, the ultimate defense that combined the energy of all eight planets in the Solar System, finally held firm at the most desperate moment.
The Mount Olympus Defense Line.
Deathly silence.
Of the hundred thousand elite soldiers, fewer than forty thousand remained.
They were covered in the grime of battle, their armor in tatters.
Some had lost arms; others had lost their eyesight.
They stared up blankly at the enormous golden net in the sky that separated life from death.
Who knew how much time passed.
Clang.
A rifle with its energy magazine already emptied fell from a soldier's hand onto the scorched red rock.
That crisp sound was like a switch.
"We survived..."
The soldier's knees buckled, and he dropped heavily to the ground, covered his face with both hands, and burst into sobs.
Then.
A second, a third, a hundredth, a ten-thousandth.
Among the surviving soldiers, some cried, some laughed wildly, and some embraced one another, smearing blood and machine oil across each other's faces.
They were warriors seasoned by a hundred battles, but before a natural disaster on this cosmic scale, they felt their own insignificance and fragility as "humans" for the first time.
Meanwhile, at the very front of the defense line.
Among the ruins of the Great Wilderness Labyrinth.
Bang!
A hovering rock weighing dozens of tons was shoved aside by a battered mech with only its right arm remaining.
Scarface sat in the cockpit, gasping for breath.
His forehead had been split open by an impact, and blood streamed down over his lone eye, blurring his vision.
The mech's life-support system was sounding every alarm, its red indicator lights flashing like ghostly flames demanding his life.
"Cough, cough, cough..."