"Attention, all individuals! Assemble immediately! Extreme emergency!"
Room 1174 on the tenth level of the White Light Civilization's Illusory Void Layer, the spatial layer where the Civilization Overseers resided.
Vast quantities of information converged here.
"Retreat countdown: 5, 4..."
"Let us remember this invasion of our universe. Even among space-level civilizations, there are thieves and destroyers!"
"Let us honor the countless lives throughout the universe lost in this invasion!"
"Wait! Hold on, give me ten counts!"
"What's wrong, No. 7?"
No. 7 said, "Look! The invasion readings are dropping! The universe's matter is being returned! Its volume is rapidly recovering! It's coming from the regions they occupied!"
"The Fighter Corps is still trapped. Even if the universe's matter is being returned, we have no way to regain control of the entire universe!"
"No. 7, if you really want to wage an all-out war, you must consider how much more we stand to lose! This one universe isn't worth staking our entire civilization on an unknown gamble!"
"Timeworn space-timeless space bubbles-can provide an endless stream of technology and development for a civilization war, but without universal matter, we cannot shake the Endless Void and conjure something from nothing."
"And even if this war continued to the very end, the best outcome would be an entire universe's worth of matter dissipating like foam in battle. We still need universal matter to preserve our civilization as we face the void and the unknown."
"..."
One voice after another extrapolated possibilities from No. 7's perspective, as though countless additional versions of him had appeared.
But No. 7 never objected to them. He had one vote, and all he wanted was ten counts in the greater universe!
An incredible scene unfolded in the greater universe outside. The vanished matter was returning, and vast swaths