As it happened, some of Lier's enemies seemed to share that idea, and their manufacturing capabilities were no slouch either-
Humanity had tremendous industrial capacity. Putting all of it toward military production would threaten most people's survival, but the output would certainly be impressive.
By Lier's estimate, using the 250,000 nuclear weapons they had manufactured as a reference, close to a million nuclear weapons might ultimately have been committed to the war worldwide, nearly exhausting every known deposit of nuclear raw materials.
From then on, true all-out war lasted more than a decade. Thick smoke and ash shrouded the sky, their particles blocking even sunlight, plunging Earth into prolonged darkness and cold.
Radioactive dust drifted on the wind. Every so often, wounds opened across the vast land as enormous numbers of missile defense systems rose from the ground. Iron rain shot skyward, followed by terrifying fireballs lighting up deep within the dense dust clouds.
Lier himself had never been the sort to say, "It's just a war! What the hell are we afraid of? Kill them!" Yet he had ultimately become someone even more extreme.
Deep down, he also knew that whatever things had become now, tomorrow... tomorrow really would bring change. Perhaps he could just endure a little longer?
But in his dream, he no longer cared about any of that. A supposedly beautiful future was no longer something he yearned for. He had nothing left to cling to.
Besides...
People often said that the only lesson humanity learned from war was this: humanity would never learn from war.
Yet his crazed mind believed he was already learning. He was the chosen one who would learn that lesson.
The lesson was this: the war was not fierce enough. It had not taught everyone a lesson. The lesson was not