The world situation changed rapidly amidst the war, with the British Isles officially falling into the hands of the New Misurugi Kingdom.
Europe began to take on a tripartite balance of power.
Athrun led his elite ZAFT forces, coordinating with troops from Gibraltar Base, to swiftly defeat the Eurasian Federation forces in the former Spanish region.
Thus, all areas west of the original border of the Netherlands, Belgium, and France in Europe were now under ZAFT control.
Meanwhile, the former regions of Germany, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Poland, and areas further east remained under Eurasian Federation control.
As for the Noble Alliance, they took advantage of ZAFT's invasion of Europe to expand their territory. Now, the European regions south of the former Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Romania were under their control.
However, ZAFT clearly had dealings with the Noble Alliance as well, and at least on the surface, the two were now jointly attacking the Eurasian Federation.
After retreating to central and eastern Europe, the Eurasian Federation finally began to demonstrate the resilience expected of an established power.
The officials from the western regions of the Eurasian Federation, having lost their territories and family support, naturally lost their influence as well. Forces led by military officers from the eastern regions of the Eurasian Federation seized the opportunity to rise to power, displaying an exceptionally uncompromising approach.
Under their forceful suppression, noble activities in the Eurasian Federation's Asian territories quickly died down.
Subsequently, numerous munitions factories in the former Ukrainian region worked together to mass-produce the Strike Dagger Kai.
Yes, that's correct—the Eurasian Federation began mass-producing the Strike Dagger, a Mobile Suit widely criticized during the First War.
Of course, these Strike Dagger Kai units were slightly upgraded, with electronic equipment and Beam Rifle firepower meeting the current Windam standards.
However, the Strike Dagger had its advantages. Due to its thin armor and low demand for advanced equipment, coupled with the steady stream of industrial resources from the east, its production speed was astonishing. With the entire eastern region of the Eurasian Federation contributing, hundreds of units could be produced in a single day.
Thus, alongside large-scale recruitment, the Eurasian Federation's main MS forces seemed to magically reappear.
Of course, these Strike Dagger Kai units, piloted by a group of rookies, suffered devastating loss ratios on the battlefield. Against ZAFT, the loss ratio approached 4:1, and even against the Noble Alliance's weaker forces, it reached 2:1.
Nevertheless, these makeshift forces effectively fulfilled their mission.
Despite heavy losses, they managed to hold the Eurasian Federation's current territory through sheer numbers.
In areas with elite troops, they even organized several successful counterattacks.
For example, the special unit where Canard Pars served.
Canard Pars was now a renowned ace pilot of the Eurasian Federation. After the eastern military faction rose to power, they fully recognized the honors he deserved for his previous combat achievements.
Canard Pars was directly promoted to the rank of Major in the Eurasian Federation, earning the nickname "Wall of Sighs."
This nickname originated from his leadership in defending against an attack personally led by Athrun. As the only Eurasian Federation pilot capable of holding his own against Athrun without quickly being defeated, Canard Pars naturally earned the title.
However, with Europe now embroiled in a three-way struggle, Reid's phase mission was naturally complete.
In fact, Reid had not been away from the New Misurugi Kingdom for long. While still sailing around Africa in the Indian Ocean, the stage mission was completed.
The seventh stage mission given by the System was very clear: prevent the forced implementation of the Destiny Plan. Mission reward: key to the internal pathway of the Super G Universe System. Failure: death.
Clearly, what the System required to be stopped here was only the version of the Destiny Plan envisioned by Durandal and Aura.
Just as Reid had anticipated, the Destiny System could indeed be useful for career choices and professional studies, but it must be entirely voluntary.
According to Reid, as long as one could endure the harsh realities of society and did not violate the law, everyone should be free to pursue the work they desired.
However, the mission reward being the key to the internal pathway of the Super G Universe System proved that this mission was the final stage task in the CE Universe. Upon completion, the System would judge the CE Universe as cleared.
Reid could understand this, because Orla Maha Haibel and her Coordinators had already stepped forward and officially joined Durandal's side, meaning the original storyline from the movie no longer existed.
But this also proved that the final battle would undoubtedly be more difficult than the one in the movie. Since the stage had been skipped, the difficulty of the last two stages must have been combined.
After all, in the original movie timeline, the second war ended only a year later. Having certain elements appear a year earlier didn't seem unacceptable.
As for the failure penalty being death, Reid didn't pay it much mind.
This stage mission had no time limit, meaning Reid could spend his entire life completing it.
The so-called failure and death likely meant that only if he died would the mission be judged as a failure by the System.
Therefore, this stage mission did not affect Reid's subsequent plans at all. For now, he would continue as planned. Only by becoming strong enough could he prevent Durandal's stubborn insistence later on.
As for eliminating Durandal and Aura in advance to solve the Destiny Plan at its root—
Reid carefully considered this idea but ultimately abandoned it.
Because the System's stage mission did not specify who proposed this forced Destiny Plan. If Durandal died, the System was perfectly capable of bringing out a "Durandal" replacement.
Just like the previous stage mission to prevent Colony Satellite debris from falling, the System would not allow him to take an easy shortcut.
So, between a known enemy and a completely unknown one, Reid would definitely choose the known one. With an unknown enemy, you wouldn't even know when they would launch their plan. What if the System introduced a secret child of Durandal who would initiate the plan over a decade later? He would have to wait more than ten years just to complete the mission.
Thus, Reid temporarily set aside this final stage mission, which could not be completed in the short term, and turned his attention to the last three G Invasion Missions.
UC 0096, Industrial 7 Colony Satellite [Mawaraniga], the secret revelation battle of the Laplace's Box.
UC 0097, Unicorn Gundam 03 Phenex capture operation.
AW 0015, the decisive battle of the Eighth Space War.
To put it simply, these final three G Invasion Missions were truly pushing the difficulty to its limits.
First, the final battle of UC Unicorn, Unicorn Crystal Mode—honestly, Reid had no idea how to fight it. With just a wave of its hand, it could disable enemy Mobile Suits, even controlling time itself.
Second, to be honest, there weren't many enemies in this one, but how do you fight a Mobile Suit driven purely by a soul, capable of moving at sublight speeds, and emitting Mental Waves that disassemble the mechanical structures of other MS?
For these first two battles related to Unicorn, the enemies were the kind Reid would want to call the police on just by looking at them.
As for the third battle, it was a bit better than the first two—at least the enemies here were something humans could fight.
But Reid didn't even want to explain the status of the Moonlight Cannon in the Gundam Universe.
The AW Universe comes from the anime Gundam X, a series that has always been relatively obscure among the many Gundam animations. However, the fact that the Moonlight Cannon consistently ranks in the top three strongest real-type Mobile Suit armaments in Gundam shows just how absurd this weapon is.
(Here, we're talking about armaments; abilities that require special pilot skills to activate are not included. During the DX era, there were ways to activate the Moonlight Cannon even without Tiffa.)
Even now, the only weapon that can firmly rank above it is the Moonlight Butterfly. The others are all debatable.
After all, most weapons with higher absolute destructive power don't have its range, and none of the weapons with longer range are mounted on Mobile Suits.
To put it this way, the Gundam 00 Qan[T] being able to swing a Beam Saber over 30,000 kilometers is already incredibly strong.
But X's Moonlight Cannon—its prerequisite is firing an extremely compressed beam from the Moon to Earth, guiding microwaves to inject into the X Gundam.
Just think about how insane those microwaves are: traveling directly from the Moon to Earth across 400,000 kilometers, and even without injecting into the Gundam, passing through the atmosphere and hitting the ground with enough power to evaporate a large lake.
Of course, whether this beam now acts as a catalyst or energizes the Moonlight Cannon is still unknown to Reid. In any case, the Moonlight Cannon was originally defined as a super weapon capable of firing from a Mobile Suit with power and range comparable to a Colony Laser, and it can be fired consecutively.
If it weren't for the Moonlight Butterfly's ability to decompose and destroy all matter (including organic and artificial materials), while also absorbing explosive impacts and Beam attacks, and covering the entire surface of the Earth, it wouldn't be the top real-type Gundam armament.
In short, the Moonlight Cannon is essentially a Colony Laser mounted on a Mobile Suit. The beam diameter might be smaller, but its power and range more than make up for it.
You could say that if the Moonlight Cannon were fired at the Gran Chaos now, Reid's only options would be to dodge or activate Miracle to try and counter it. There's no other solution.
Although these three battles are filled with overpowered opponents, far from realistic, capturing their Mobile Suits and obtaining their related technologies would yield immense rewards. Even facing something like the EQM-Y148 "Destroyer" Converged Heavy Nuclear Beam Splitter Cannon of the Extraordinary Strike Freedom Gundam—another overpowered weapon—wouldn't be a problem.
Unfortunately, Reid didn't dare to rush into these three battles. So, he needed to deal with the Atlantic Federation first and then find a way to further optimize the Light Ring Propulsion System. With enemies packing such overwhelming firepower, direct confrontation wasn't realistic—mobility would be the key.
Therefore, when Reid arrived at the Ascension Island Base later, he did not immediately lead his troops out. Instead, he reconsidered how to attack the Atlantic Federation's mainland.
The Ascension Island Base is located between South America and Africa. If they didn't take the route through Cuba, the supply lines would be stretched too long, and there would be no friendly territory along the way.
Thus, Reid decided to change his attack route and turned his attention to the Azores, which were currently unoccupied by any faction.
The Azores are situated directly west of the Strait of Gibraltar. In Reid's previous life, this place was a famous tourist destination.
Of course, that was in his previous life. During the last war, these islands were far from a tourist hotspot.
Due to the presence of ZAFT's Gibraltar Base, both the Eurasian Federation and the Atlantic Federation had repeatedly attempted to establish military bases in the Azores as maritime bridgeheads for attacking the Gibraltar Base.
However, ZAFT had managed to thwart the plans of the Eurasian Federation and the Atlantic Federation every time.
As a result, there were no tourists or residents on the islands now, only various bombed-out, dilapidated ruins of unfinished buildings.
However, due to limited manpower, ZAFT had not occupied the Azores to build another base.
As for setting up an outpost there, ZAFT had tried it, but it was casually bombed by Eurasian Federation forces within a couple of days.
Given its highly sensitive location, the Azores were now an uninhabited archipelago, so Reid sending troops to occupy it wouldn't cause much trouble.
After all, Europe was currently under Athrun's control. If Reid explained that the islands were only being used temporarily as a transit point, Athrun likely wouldn't object.
Currently, ZAFT still needed to consolidate its control over Western Europe, and the plan was to continue pushing eastward. They could only turn a blind eye to the New Misurugi Kingdom stationing troops right at the doorstep of the Gibraltar Base.
As for how to proceed after occupying the Azores, Reid planned to mobilize some forces from the British Isles, combine them with the troops from the Ascension Island Base, and head directly west to attack St. John's. They would then occupy the entire island of Newfoundland, which had Placentia Bay—a natural deep-water port.
Moreover, the straight-line distance from there to the Atlantic Federation's capital, Washington, D.C., was just over two thousand kilometers. The Atlantic Federation would undoubtedly redeploy a significant portion of its forces from the western region back to the east. The Paradise Island Base wouldn't be able to retain its personnel either, as orders would surely be issued for reinforcements.
As long as Reid could secure a foothold on Newfoundland, the Paradise Island Base would soon be breached, allowing them to advance into the Atlantic Federation from the north via Greenland.
Simultaneously, the Atlantic Federation's western region would be left with significant vulnerabilities due to the lack of troops, enabling Noin to invade the Atlantic Federation's mainland as well.
After finalizing his strategic plan, Reid immediately ordered the Ascension Island Base to stock up on ammunition and supplies and set out directly northward.
The mobilization of the New Misurugi Kingdom's forces at the Ascension Island Base was actually quite deceptive.
This force was heading directly north. Based on its route, other nations assumed it was intended to support the attack on the Paradise Island Base.
After the New Misurugi Kingdom's forces occupied the British Isles, as the new occupiers, they needed to allocate a significant portion of their troops to maintain order on the islands.
This directly resulted in the New Misurugi Kingdom's forces on the British Isles having little spare capacity to attack the Paradise Island Base.
This also explained why, after the previous surprise attack, the New Misurugi Kingdom had remained inactive, not even launching any probing assaults.
Forcing a breakthrough of the Paradise Island Base would inevitably result in heavy casualties, as the base was certainly not made of clay.
If they had to occupy both the Paradise Island Base and the British Isles at the same time, the New Misurugi Kingdom Army would face a shortage of troops.
Therefore, the New Misurugi Kingdom Army chose the principle of "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," deciding to first secure the British Isles firmly.
Now, with the troops from the Ascension Island Base advancing northward, they were clearly heading to reinforce the British Isles. Once their forces were replenished, the New Misurugi Kingdom Army would naturally launch another attack on the Paradise Island Base.
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