With Kowloon's Mobile Suit shot down, the terrorists on the Marshall Islands naturally scattered like monkeys from a falling tree. They all fled into the dense jungle, afraid that if they were too slow, the three Union Flags, scrambling for the spoils, would come in for the kill to silence them.
Thus, Reid's trio, who did not pursue them deeply, easily transferred Gundam Nadleeh away.
However, Reid did not bring Gundam Nadleeh directly back to the Gran Chaos.
This was mainly because Reid was unsure of Tieria's condition. According to his Newtype Sense, he should still be unconscious, but there was no guarantee he wouldn't wake up the moment they returned to the Gran Chaos. Deciding whether to let him go then would be very troublesome.
After all, with Gundam Nadleeh in his hands, Reid felt it would be an unforgivable sin against heaven not to study it thoroughly. Opportunities to obtain a GN Drive this easily wouldn't come again.
Moreover, Reid wanted to test something here: for the World Change Fluctuation Value, was the person more important, or was the GN Drive more important?
Therefore, Reid's trio only transported Gundam Nadleeh to a nearby deserted island. After having Hoshino Ruri confirm there were no satellites watching from above, they directly activated a Neutron Jammer to prevent surveillance from drones and other monitoring machines, and to ensure that even if Tieria woke up inside the Mobile Suit, he couldn't connect to VEDA to transmit information.
Subsequently, Reid had Xia Yulan pilot the Mystic Lightning to the deserted island to perform "cutting surgery."
Of course, the so-called "cutting surgery" was just using the Lambda Driver to control the precision of a beam cut to within one centimeter to forcibly open Gundam Nadleeh's cockpit.
As it turned out, after opening the cockpit, Tieria was still unconscious, likely suffering from a severe concussion.
However, in Reid's view, Tieria probably wouldn't suffer any serious brain damage.
So, Reid directly left Tieria on the beach of the deserted island and brought Gundam Nadleeh back to the Gran Chaos.
After returning to the Gran Chaos, to prevent any positioning signal transmitters on Gundam Nadleeh, Reid placed the Mobile Suit directly into a factory workshop with fully blocked signals.
Elvira Hill, her eyes gleaming, entered the workshop with Nein. She had long coveted the GN Drive that could disperse GN Particles, and now she could finally study it properly.
As for Reid, he believed in seeing the act through to the end, just in case Tieria wasn't recovered by Celestial Being's equipment recovery team. (Celestial Being did have a dedicated equipment recovery team; after all, in the anime, Setsuna was always throwing away swords and shields. Without recovery, those discarded parts would be enough to build another Gundam.)
After Gundam Virtue F Type appeared, Reid guided it all the way until it found Tieria.
In truth, Fon Spaak, the pilot of Gundam Virtue F Type, didn't actually agree with Celestial Being's ideals, especially after Reid's last public speech.
Normally, he wouldn't save a Celestial Being pilot; he only needed to recover the GN Drive. (During the final battle of the first season of the original story, he was the one who recovered the Dynames's GN Drive, but he didn't recover Alleluia.)
But this time, Fon Spaak had circled the island several times without finding Gundam Nadleeh. He could only take Tieria back first and see if he could get Nadleeh's whereabouts from him after he woke up.
After Fon Spaak recovered Tieria, Reid, who had been monitoring the whole process, noticed the World Change Fluctuation Value instantly drop by 20%, becoming 23.012%.
Reid immediately breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that in the system's eyes, the person Tieria was more important than the GN Drive.
But on second thought, it made sense. Even if one GN Drive was lost, it wasn't as if Celestial Being was completely incapable of building another; it was just a matter of time. Besides, Gundam Virtue F Type was currently using the Gundam 0 Original Solar Furnace.
If they were truly short on combat power, they could just build another Gundam Virtue and use the GN Drive from Gundam Virtue F Type. It wasn't even out of the question to send Gundam Virtue F Type directly into battle.
The rest would be simple. Although a World Change Fluctuation Value of 23.012% was still in the failing range, he just needed to return the GN Drive later to basically erase that extra 10%.
As for whether Tieria would be questioned for losing his Gundam and be barred from piloting one again, Reid thought not.
The reasoning was simple. If this had happened to any of the other three Gundam pilots, they might very well have been stripped of their pilot qualifications.
And the one pushing for it would definitely have been Tieria.
But since this happened to Tieria himself, he might fall into endless self-doubt, but given the personalities of the people on the Ptolemy, they certainly wouldn't kick him while he was down and revoke his pilot status.
As for VEDA, it was even less likely to make the decision to fire Tieria.
One had to remember that among Celestial Being's frontline forces, only Tieria could connect directly to VEDA. Tieria's authority within Celestial Being at this stage was immense; they would fire anyone before they fired him.
Of course, adhering to the principle of seeing the act through, Reid had Hoshino Ruri transfer several billion US dollars into Blood Lily's account, then moved the money out through various means, erasing some of the key transaction information.
It could be said that unless the entire world's banking systems were directly linked right now, the governments of various countries wouldn't even know where the money in Blood Lily's account came from, let alone trace its final destination. Not even VEDA could do it.
With this maneuver, Reid could claim that he had secretly bought the Mobile Suit back when he returned the GN Drive.
Of course, he couldn't just return the GN Drive for free. To make it realistic, Reid had to ask for something in return.
He just hadn't decided what to ask for yet. Fortunately, he had plenty of time to think. He definitely wouldn't return the GN Drive during this mission; it would have to be fed to the Factory Module upon his return.
By the next mission, from Reid's perspective, several months would have likely passed.
Moreover, the current mission would be quite long. If Reid remembered correctly, the current terrorist cleanup mission occurred not long after the battle in the Mollaria Republic.
Sumeragi and the others were still enjoying a rare holiday on the beach, sponsored by Wang Liu Mei.
Afterward, there would be a peace period of about one to two months. The world's governments could do nothing about Celestial Being, and both the Union and the AEU had announced they would only take military countermeasures if Celestial Being operated within their territories, which was pretty much an open admission of defeat.
And after this round of annihilation, the terrorists had also quieted down. The world truly entered a short period without any large-scale conflicts due to Celestial Being's military suppression. (Here, large-scale conflicts refer to conflicts involving MS.)
Then, the Celestial Being, not wanting a Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads forever, planned for a period before launching the subsequent Celestial Being "Top Martial" unit's Gundam Capture Operation.
In other words, Reid now had at least a month of free time. He just needed to keep an eye on the Celestial Being's movements so as not to miss the Gundam Capture Operation.
After waiting another day and seeing that no Otherworld Entanglement had occurred, Reid was basically certain that what the system called an "extra distortion node" referred to this incident where Gundam Virtue was nearly captured.
Without Reid's intervention, this event would have been enough to severely affect all subsequent events in the AD Universe.
However, this problem was now basically solved. Reid planned to use this one-month window to go to the moon and find VEDA, to see if he could get more technical data.
Although Reid didn't know VEDA's specific location on the moon and couldn't rely on causing a massive Earth-Moon system blackout to find its traces like in the manga.
But VEDA's location couldn't possibly be too far from the various lunar bases. After all, Celestial Being couldn't have built a server room large enough to house VEDA out of thin air. They must have secretly completed VEDA's construction under the cover of some lunar development project.
So, with a month's time, he should be able to find VEDA if he searched carefully.
But after Reid announced this plan to everyone, he was met with opposition from Hoshino Ruri. She spoke with a rare and exceptionally serious attitude.
"I object, Reid. The quantum computer on the Gran Chaos has less computing power than VEDA. We have no chance of winning in a direct confrontation. In other words, we can't gain access by hacking into this quantum computer. If we were to physically move VEDA, we would have to guarantee an immediate return. Otherwise, our position would definitely be exposed to the whole world by VEDA. It could even lead to the Gran Chaos being hacked, causing an information leak."
Hearing this, Reid instantly calmed down.
Yes, the quantum computer he had was less powerful than VEDA. Going to the moon wouldn't be an invasion; it would be serving himself up on a platter.
As for moving VEDA, Reid had never even considered it. The moment VEDA was lost, the World Change Flctuation Value would surely shoot past 100%, declaring his evaluation mission a failure.
One must know, VEDA was the lifeblood of Ribbons and his group of Quasi-Innovators. Stealing VEDA was no different from digging up Ribbons' roots. That man would definitely go crazy, and the world would immediately spiral out of control.
So, Reid very wisely gave up the idea of extracting data from VEDA. Instead, he had Hoshino Ruri arrange new identities for everyone on the ship. For this month, he was prepared to slack off, be a spectator, eat, and drink, and decide whether to take additional action based on how the world changed.
However, while Reid was slacking, the impact of this battle immediately began to ferment around the world.
The terrorists on the Marshall Islands had been recording video. This was originally Kowloon's bait, intended to announce the capture of Gundam Virtue to the world, lure various political leaders there, and then wipe them all out in one go.
The goal, naturally, was to throw the world into chaos. Kowloon never actually intended to pilot Gundam Virtue himself; all the madman wanted was a chaotic world full of war. Then, he could search for "Saints" like Kasim amidst the conflict.
But now, Kowloon had been shot down and had decisively fled. The remaining terrorists, perhaps unwilling to accept that their organization had been wiped out by Celestial Being in a matter of hours, directly released the footage of Gundam Virtue's defeat to the entire world. They even released the footage of Blood Lily swooping in to snatch the prize.
The whole world was in an uproar. Celestial Being's golden body of invincibility had been broken. Regardless of whether the terrorist organization "Eden Lai" was now defunct in all but name, it had proven that Gundams were not invincible.
Once a god bleeds, its deterrent power is greatly diminished.
The only good news was that the real deterrent in the world now was Reid's unit, because Reid's Mobile Suits had demonstrated performance that surpassed Celestial Being's Gundams.
Therefore, apart from the public opinion on the internet, there had been no reckoning or counterattack against Celestial Being from other quarters. The major powers knew that even if Celestial Being had stumbled against terrorists, their Mobile Suits' performance still crushed the MS in their own hands. Blindly seeking revenge on Celestial Being was a complete death wish.
So, the most urgent task for the various governments was to find the three mercenaries from Blood Lily and find out who they sold the Gundam to.
Yes, photos of Gaia's Trio were now at the top of the search lists of every intelligence agency and underground black market in the world.
But no one could find the three of them. After all, the information Hoshino Ruri had arranged for them was all fake; only the photos were real.
After all, Blood Lily was too easy to investigate. A quick check revealed it was a marginal PMC registered in the Mollaria Republic.
So, various countries simultaneously discovered that Blood Lily had undergone a complete change of personnel just before the Gundam intervention in the Mollaria Republic's military exercise. It was obvious that the mastermind had been targeting the Gundams since that time.
At the same time, based on the footage, the Mobile Suits piloted by Blood Lily were three clearly modified Union Flags.
As Mobile Suits that only the Union's elite MS units could be equipped with, the various corporations within the Union instantly became the primary suspects, because only they could obtain and modify Union Flags.
Moreover, the funds transferred into Blood Lily's account could not be traced to their source or destination, a clear sign of the methods used by financial magnates. Even the various corporations within the Union began to suspect their "old friends" next door of being Blood Lily's secret backer.
Of course, Celestial Being was also desperately searching for Gaia's Trio.
After Tieria woke up, he decisively fell into a depression. He had just been questioning the other Gundam pilots for not following the rules, and in a turn of events, he himself had lost both a Gundam and a GN Drive.
However, Tieria still obediently told them everything he knew. The problem was, everything he knew had already been made public by the terrorists, rendering it worthless.
Now, the whereabouts of Gundam Nadleeh and its GN Drive were a complete mystery. Even VEDA couldn't locate Gundam Nadleeh, nor could it find the three members of Blood Lily.
Actually, from Celestial Being's perspective, they had already placed their suspicion on Reid's side.
As per Reid's request, Celestial Being had already changed their codename from ET to SDP.
Based on the current situation where VEDA could find nothing and Celestial Being's supporters could find nothing, Sumeragi, after analysis, judged that Gundam Nadleeh and its GN Drive had, in all likelihood, fallen into the hands of the SDP organization.
Of course, Sumeragi's judgment had no evidence. The only logical basis was that VEDA and Celestial Being had so far found no clues about Gundam Nadleeh and the GN Drive. This was something only SDP could achieve.
Another point was that Tieria had clearly been deliberately left on the beach. The mercenaries who hijacked Gundam Nadleeh had no reason to spare Tieria's life; this could only have been a request from the mastermind.
That meant the mastermind clearly had no intention of interrogating Tieria for information about Celestial Being. There were only two possibilities.
One, the mastermind was one of Celestial Being's own people. He didn't need to ask for information, and not killing Tieria could mean he still found him useful.
Two, the mastermind was SDP. They knew more about Celestial Being than most people within the organization, so they naturally didn't need to ask. As for not killing Tieria, it was likely because SDP saw no point in killing him and making an enemy of Celestial Being.
The SDP's mission to destroy the Mobile Suits and people associated with the Otherworld Entanglement phenomenon could still be confirmed, although their stated purpose remained questionable.
But it was clear that SDP did not want to be disturbed while carrying out its mission, so its relationship with Celestial Being was rather ambiguous. Neither side really wanted to be hostile.
(End of Chapter)