Wang Liu Mei's appearance startled everyone, making them wonder if the girl had truly been frightened by something beyond her comprehension.
Fortunately, her expression returned to normal the next second, resuming the demeanor of the young lady of the Wang family. She even smiled and said:
"Oh my, it seems I've given everyone a bit of a scare. However, there are more important matters at hand now. Miss Hana, shouldn't you tell us in detail about the circumstances of your meeting with Mr. Reid?"
Hana knew she had to explain, so she nodded and replied:
"Very well. Let the Gundam pilots join us as well. Reid Isaac told me many astonishing things—things that could shake the very foundation upon which the Innovators were established."
Since Hana had put it that way, Wang Liu Mei naturally did not refuse. While waiting for the Gundam pilots to gather, she first helped Hong Long treat the injury on his arm. Then, she woke up the security and service personnel lying unconscious outside.
After everyone had assembled, Hana recounted her encounter with Reid in a meeting format, holding nothing back. This caused a series of minor commotions.
However, none of this affected Reid for the time being.
At that moment, Reid had already returned to Star Palace City in the CE Universe.
As usual, he glanced at the assessment module. The mission involving the Innovators' intervention in the military exercises between the Mollaria Republic and the AEU had been completed. The recorded World Change Fluctuation Value was 13.012%.
The increase in the World Fluctuation Value was due to Reid's conversation with Wang Liu Mei. By directly exposing her hidden intentions, Reid may have caused slight deviations in the choices she would make in the future.
However, given the current change in the World Change Fluctuation Value, such deviations should be harmless.
Moreover, Reid was now almost certain that the theoretical limit for fluctuations in the World Change Fluctuation Value caused solely by the exposure of otherworldly invasions was around 10%. As long as he eliminated all invaders each time, the increase in value triggered by their appearance would decrease.
Reid also confirmed that merely appearing in the AD Universe did not actually affect the World Change Fluctuation Value. Only when he took specific actions that had tangible consequences would the value change.
The evidence was that even though Reid had told an enormous lie to the entire AD Universe, the World Change Fluctuation Value remained unchanged. This proved that his lie had little impact on the major events that would occur in the AD Universe in the future.
At most, people might proceed with their plans more cautiously, but the events that were destined to happen would not be canceled because of Reid's declaration.
Next, Reid turned his attention to the next event node in the AD Universe: the Celestial Being's [Top-Level Armed] Unit's Gundam Capture Operation.
Well, upon seeing this mission, Reid knew that the existence of the Granshaow would likely be exposed during the next mission.
The scale of Celestial Being's operation was too vast—they deployed hundreds of thousands of small detectors throughout the combat space zone. Even if the Granshaow approached with its stealth system activated, it would still be detected.
Even if the Granshaow did not activate its propulsion engines, it still had a physical collision volume.
A two-thousand-meter-long warship, with such a massive volume, simply could not avoid all the small detectors in this space zone.
Even if Hoshino Ruri were to seize control of the detectors' signal transmitters, it would be the same. The Granshaow, like the Ptolemaios, would expose its position due to signal malfunctions and fluctuations in the detectors.
As for learning from Ptolemaios directly entering the electromagnetic interference zone of solar power generators in low Earth orbit—let's not even go there.
Ptolemaios could pull this off because it's only 251 meters long, while Granshaow's length alone is nearly ten times that, not to mention its volume. This would be like demanding a fully grown blue whale to squeeze into a trench only large enough for a dolphin—utterly absurd.
Reid commented that while Celestial Being's tactic was clumsy, consuming so many resources just to pinpoint the enemy's location, this method of using sheer detector numbers to locate targets was practically unstoppable. Unless the system kindly placed their arrival point far from the combat zone, appearing would mean immediate exposure.
Of course, Reid considered piloting Aries next time, but without the large quantum computer assistance available on Granshaow, Hoshino Ruri would likely face the dilemma of "you can't make bricks without straw," leaving their systems vulnerable to direct invasion by Veda.
Thus, after less than ten seconds of consideration, Reid abandoned the idea of using a small ship for the next assessment. Compared to exposing Granshaow, having his ship's systems hacked was far less acceptable.
However, sometimes one's reasoning has blind spots.
When Ange and Noin noticed Reid's troubled expression and learned the reason, they immediately looked at him as if he were an idiot.
Seeing Reid's clueless and innocent expression, Ange bluntly remarked:
"Seriously, Reid? You're worried about Granshaow's size giving away your position? Why not just clear out a larger no-signal zone beforehand? Even if Minovsky Particles might collide with GN Particles causing unknown issues, just use a Neutron Jammer."
Reid suddenly had an epiphany—why bother evading detectors when he could just destroy them all?
It's worth noting that Neutron Jammers have an extensive interference range; just a few could cover the entire Earth (as stated in the settings). ZAFT scattered them everywhere as if they were free, mainly to prevent Earth nations from locating and excavating them.
This was also why Reid hadn't prioritized restoring Australia's wireless network after occupying it—even if all underground Neutron Jammers in Australia were destroyed, wireless communication still couldn't be restored. At this stage, it made more sense to focus limited energy on more meaningful tasks. Dealing with Australia's Neutron Jammers could wait until later.
But now that Reid had a need, he decided to excavate one Neutron Jammer.
As for their locations, the former Oceania Union government had already mapped them out, since ZAFT had provided coordinates for all Neutron Jammers destined for Australia.
ZAFT likely calculated that even if the Oceania Union dug up all their domestic Neutron Jammers, it wouldn't matter—after all, they only had coordinates for Australia.
Now, this conveniently helped Reid locate the Neutron Jammers.
Although buried hundreds of meters underground and extremely difficult to excavate, for Reid, the digging time would double as a rest period.
No matter how challenging, even using 20th-century excavators, a Neutron Jammer could be unearthed within a month.
Moreover, with the CE Universe's highly advanced mechanical technology, Reid estimated it wouldn't even take a week before he'd see the buried Neutron Jammer.
Just feed it directly into the system when the time comes—no need to play mind games with PLANT to beg for one or steal one.
However, when Reid openly started excavating the Neutron Jammer, PLANT was stunned.
In PLANT's eyes, Reid should have been trying to completely resolve Earth's neutron interference issue, and excavating one was meant for reverse engineering and research.
If it were the three nations of the Earth Alliance, PLANT wouldn't be worried at all, claiming that even ten years wouldn't guarantee they could figure out how to resolve the wireless signal and electromagnetic wave disruption caused by Earth's neutron interference without digging up the underground Neutron Jammers.
But Reid's research capabilities were unquestionable, and he had experts like Tem Ray, a master in high-energy particle research (in the CE Universe, due to academic papers, Minovsky Particles were considered practically realized by Tem Ray).
So when Reid claimed he could develop equipment to neutralize the electromagnetic interference waves of the Neutron Jammer, PLANT believed him.
Thus, PLANT instantly panicked. If Earth's wireless communications were restored, the productivity of the three Earth Alliance nations would quickly return to pre-war levels and, due to technological advancements during the two years of war, even surpass them.
By then, PLANT wouldn't be able to compete with the combined productivity of the three Earth Alliance nations.
Once the Earth Alliance nations rapidly recovered, it was obvious that PLANT would immediately face another existential crisis.
Moreover, this time, the Earth Alliance would surely bombard PLANT's homeland with various ultra-long-range cruise missiles, returning warfare to beyond-visual-range combat and greatly reducing the practicality of Mobile Suits.
But PLANT had no valid reason to stop Reid and could only fret helplessly.
Of course, while PLANT was unhappy, other nations on Earth were somewhat excited. Several officials in charge of scientific research within the three Earth Alliance nations even neglected the progress of Minovsky Particle studies and flew to the New Miserly Kingdom under the pretext of negotiating with PLANT (discussing which technologies to ban). They then pestered Reid, asking if he had a way to restore wireless networks and various radar waves.
Reid stated that he had no solution for the radio wave interference from Neutron Jammers but had several ideas to make the waves even more chaotic.
After growing weary of the harassment, Reid decisively announced he was going into seclusion, hiding in his Star Palace City laboratory and refusing to come out.
Although the main reason was to avoid the Earth Alliance officials chasing him with questions, Reid wasn't actually slacking off in the lab. Instead, he carefully reviewed the research reports from various scientific experiments in the New Miserly Kingdom.
Then Reid discovered a problem: scientific innovation in the New Miserly Kingdom had completely stagnated.
This was mainly because Elvira Hill and Tem Ray no longer had the energy to initiate new research.
Elvira Hill was fully focused on analyzing the principles of GN Particles in mental conduction, essentially studying GN Particle applications rather than how to generate GN Particles.
As for Tem Ray, he was researching nanotechnology for the "Nanomembrane Armor" and "Wing Pack" technologies as per Reid's requirements.
However, the research progress had hit a bottleneck. The existing equipment in the New Miserly Kingdom couldn't produce qualified nanomachines, so Tem Ray had shifted his focus to improving the equipment instead.
Witnessing the situation, Reid realized that the research team needed expansion. Nami was still studying, and it would be a long time before she could independently handle major tasks.
Moreover, Nami's talents were entirely focused on weapon system programming and artificial intelligence programming—she was more of a software-oriented research talent.
As for Hoshino Ruri, she showed no signs of wanting to engage in research, despite having previously provided the theoretical model for the Boson Treaty.
So, Reid looked at the three ten-pulls he had on hand and decisively prepared by purifying himself... Well, burning incense wasn't allowed in the lab.
After a thorough sterilization, Reid set his target to "research personnel" and started pulling.
The first ten-pull didn't trigger the golden guarantee. Amidst the common blue and white results, a character named Kirst Mosjous appeared (from Mobile Suit Gundam Side Story: The Blue Destiny).
Reid recalled that this person was known for developing the EXAM system, which could enable ordinary pilots to achieve Newtype-level abilities.
However, the EXAM system had significant side effects, comparable to various Zero Systems in the AC Universe—the kind that could easily drive ordinary pilots insane.
Additionally, this doctor was rather old-fashioned and stubborn. It was hard to predict whether his collaboration with Elvira Hill, who also researched psychic fields, would spark intellectual synergy or lead to a catastrophic clash.
Still, Reid felt Kirst was acceptable. If necessary, he could simply assign him and Elvira Hill to separate projects. Coincidentally, the further development of the Epyon Gundam's Zero System had no one in charge, so his arrival was timely.
Encouraged by the decent first ten-pull, Reid decided to strike while the iron was hot and proceeded with another ten-pull.
This time, the guarantee triggered, yielding a golden glow—and even a double gold.
Reid grew excited and tapped the first golden result, only to be momentarily stunned.
The first gold wasn't a person but a technology related to creating people... No, it was a technology for creating artificial beings.
The technology was named [Perfect Bionic Android]. According to the system's explanation, it could directly produce a bionic android indistinguishable from a real human. Moreover, if produced by the system, loyalty was guaranteed (self-production based on the technology did not guarantee loyalty). It seemed the original inhabitants used this technology.
However, this version of the technology differed from what Reid understood. One note stated: "Injecting strong artificial intelligence can create a bionic android with intelligence."
Strong artificial intelligence? Reid recalled that he only had the source code of Hachi, obtained from Erika Simmons, which was suspected to be strong AI.
But after feeding Hachi's code into the system, the resulting artificial intelligence wasn't as intelligent as expected, though it did modify some code based on needs.
Currently, this AI resided on Nami's personal computer, serving as her digital companion.
Just as Reid was pondering where to find a strong AI, he casually opened the second golden result and instantly understood.
No wonder the system had given a double gold—the second result, which should have been a character, wasn't human. It was System 99 (codenamed Nein, the protagonist unit system from Super Robot Wars V, an ultra-free AI bionic being capable of leaving its Mobile Suit far behind).
This super AI, Nein, which should have been categorized as a technological creation, was classified under "characters" and even placed in the "research personnel" category.
However, after careful consideration, Reid realized that Nein in the game had no combat abilities herself, yet she did help the protagonist build the second-generation main Mobile Suit. With a mind full of advanced technology, it seemed she could directly create super-class Mobile Suits if given the materials.
The system categorized her as human, and Reid suspected it was to prevent him from mass-purchasing such super artificial intelligence through the store.
Still, Reid now wondered if Nein's rating was too low. If she truly possessed the game's advanced tech, even an S-rank red glow wouldn't be excessive—could it be that she was given a barebones version?
The more Reid thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. Two gold-tier rewards with one as a bonus—the system practically hinted that the earlier [Perfect Bionic Android] technology was the vinegar specifically for Nein, and thus provided the dumpling to go with it.