As the Joyeuse Gundam activated Trans-AM and brandished its Beam Greatsword, Milliardo was utterly dumbfounded.
At that moment, Milliardo could only rage inwardly, "If you had such a trump card, why didn't you use it from the start? I could've surrendered earlier! Were you just toying with me all this time?!"
Of course, these curses remained in his mind. In reality, Milliardo piloted the Gundam Epyon, raising its thirty-meter Beam Saber—which looked like a "sewing needle" compared to the Joyeuse Gundam's Beam Greatsword—and launched a desperate charge.
Since the Tallgeese II had yet to appear, Milliardo didn't know whether Treize and Relena had already left the Libra Ship. Thus, he decided to risk it all.
However, in response to the Gundam Epyon's charge, Reid simply swung his sword downward to meet it.
The Epyon System, designed to predict potential failures, was now frantically warning Milliardo, stimulating his survival instincts.
In the end, Milliardo didn't dare to confront the three-thousand-meter Great Treasure Sword head-on. Under the Epyon System's incessant warnings, he maneuvered his Mobile Suit to dodge the slash at the last moment.
The Epyon System had informed Milliardo that if the Gundam Epyon charged forward like this, it would instantly be cleaved in two by the Hyper Beam Sword. The Libra Ship would still be sliced apart afterward, rendering his efforts futile and costing him his life for nothing.
Thus, Milliardo could only watch as the enemy's sword split the Libra Ship in half.
However, Reid felt that activating Trans-AM just to deliver a single slash was rather dull. So, targeting the Gundam Epyon, he unleashed a combo attack: an upward slash—horizontal slash—diagonal slash.
Milliardo's focus was sharp enough that he managed to evade these three strikes almost completely.
The reason it was "almost" was that the Gundam Epyon's demonic wings were now reduced to stumps on both sides. Fortunately, the main body of the Mobile Suit remained undamaged.
Thankfully, in the vacuum of space, the wings on the Epyon's backpack served no purpose—they were only used for atmospheric flight. So, losing the wings didn't actually affect the Gundam Epyon's combat capabilities.
However, the Libra Ship behind it was utterly destroyed. Reid's slashes had cleaved it into over a dozen exploding fragments, dooming the ship and everyone inside to become space debris.
Oh, wait—that's not entirely accurate. A Mobile Suit burst out from one of the exploding fragments.
The Tallgeese II charged out from the flames of the explosion and, without a word, fired a shot at the Joyeuse Gundam above, which was wielding the Hyper Beam Sword.
The pilot of the Tallgeese II was now Heero.
Earlier, after receiving the Mobile Suit inside the Libra and parting ways with Treize and Relena, Heero had awkwardly realized he didn't know the way out.
Treize and Relena could take the ubiquitous pedestrian passages to quickly reach the Libra Ship's port.
But Mobile Suits clearly had dedicated transport channels. Unfortunately, Heero had no idea how to navigate them.
Thus, it wasn't until the Libra Ship was sliced into pieces by the Joyeuse Gundam, opening a path to the outside, that Heero managed to escape. Otherwise, he would've been lost for at least another half hour.
To be honest, when Treize told him inside the Libra Ship that the other Gundam pilots had been killed by someone claiming to be a villain, who was now slaughtering both OZ and White Fang simultaneously, Heero didn't believe it.
After all, Heero had only been inside the Libra Ship for a few hours—how could the situation outside have changed so drastically? It couldn't be that he had traveled to a parallel universe, could it?
But after stepping out and seeing a Mobile Suit wielding a Hyper Beam Sword that was at least 3,000 meters long, Heero immediately believed Treize's words. Without hesitation, he fired a shot at this villain.
However, even though Heero's shot was fired from a great distance and caught Reid off guard, preventing him from sensing the killing intent immediately, there was more than just Reid inside the Joyeuse Gundam.
When the Joyeuse Gundam's lock-on alarm sounded, Nein immediately activated the Mobile Suit's GN Field.
It's worth noting that the Joyeuse Gundam was currently in Trans-AM mode. Even if it were hit by the Dover Gun, let alone the authentic Buster Beam Rifle of the Wing Zero Gundam, the GN Field in Trans-AM mode would ensure the Joyeuse Gundam suffered minimal damage.
Thus, when the Dover Gun struck the Joyeuse Gundam's GN Field, it was deflected, scattering into beams of "spray."
However, Reid thought to himself, "Kid, you've successfully caught my attention."
With just one glance at the Tallgeese II, Reid knew the pilot had changed. After all, he had encountered Heero twice before and was quite familiar with his Psychic Power.
Since Reid had controlled the length of the Super GN Beam Sword this time, there were still over ten seconds left in the Trans-AM duration. So, Reid retracted the Hyper Beam Sword, planning to eliminate the relatively more troublesome Gundam Epyon within these seconds and secure the Merit Points for the other protagonist Mobile Suit first.
Thus, Milliardo found himself bewildered—he hadn't even blinked, so how had such a massive Mobile Suit vanished right before his eyes? The Epyon System offered no explanation or feedback.
In fact, this highlighted the shortcomings of the Epyon System.
While this system could calculate and predict all possible failures and relay them to the pilot, the methods of failure had to fall within the system's understanding.
Ever since Reid successfully Quantumized the Joyeuse Gundam last time, he had reviewed the recordings from Nein multiple times in the Factory Module. As a result, Reid could now actively control the occurrence of Quantumization.
However, no matter how many attempts were made, the ordinary Trans-AM mode only allowed Quantumization to be used once.
Later, Reid risked activating the Star Inheritor skill, transforming into golden particles to use Quantumization three times consecutively—but only three times. Even if the Trans-AM duration hadn't ended, he couldn't use it again afterward.
Since activating the Star Inheritor without any external support (though there were many souls on the AD battlefield, albeit dragon souls) left Reid incapacitated for half a day afterward, the Golden GN Particle Mode remained sealed. After all, the weakened state of Psychic Power was unbearable.
After discussions, it was speculated that using Quantumization actually consumed an as-yet-undiscovered and undefined energy within high-concentration GN Particles. This energy was directly related to the quantity of GN Particles, which was why the ordinary Trans-AM mode could only use it once. In contrast, the generation rate of golden particles was much higher, allowing for three uses.
Clearly, instantaneous quantum teleportation was completely beyond the comprehension of the Epyon System, so it didn't react at all.
By the time the Joyeuse Gundam appeared behind the Gundam Epyon, any feedback from the Epyon System to the pilot would have been too late.
The Gundam Epyon also lacked a fully psychically controlled Psycommu System, meaning all operations had to be performed manually. Factoring in the Mobile Suit's transmission response time, Reid had enough time to land three or four strikes.
Thus, the Gundam Epyon was unsurprisingly backstabbed by the Joyeuse Gundam. Moreover, Reid was well aware of the Gundam Epyon's cockpit location, so with one thrust of the Super GN Sword, it was a clean entry and a bloody exit.
Afterward, Reid controlled his Mobile Suit to withdraw the sword, turned around, and kicked the Gundam Epyon away, achieving the "expert never looks back at the explosion" feat.
After instantly defeating the Gundam Epyon, Reid's next target was Heero.
To be honest, Reid was actually quite grateful to Heero. If it weren't for their first encounter, where Heero dropped a Fortitude skill for him, Reid would likely still only have Ange and Noin as his wives.
Because after being drained, a man truly has no desire to seek other women. Over time, it might even lead to fear—don't ask Reid how he knows this.
So, Reid thought, maybe Heero could drop another Fortitude skill for him this time. After all, Reid still had relatively frail individuals like Bargiruel, Murrue, and Lacus around him, and they could use some extra constitution from Fortitude.
At this moment, Heero was in a state of extreme shock.
And how could he not be? He had just witnessed the Joyeuse Gundam teleport and stab the Gundam Epyon to destruction.
Although the Joyeuse Gundam's Trans-AM had ended after dealing with the Gundam Epyon, Heero had no way of knowing that the enemy Mobile Suit could no longer teleport.
It should be said that it was fortunate Heero wasn't piloting the Wing Zero Gundam at the moment. If he were inside the Wing Zero Gundam, the Zero System inside would likely have overloaded and crashed instantly upon witnessing the teleportation.
The Zero System in the Wing Zero Gundam analyzes and predicts the development of various situations, then directly transmits all possible choices and their corresponding outcomes to the pilot's brain.
In short, it informs the pilot of the methods to achieve victory in advance.
But the question of how to counter teleportation was clearly too much for the Zero System. Given its nature of prioritizing victory at all costs, even disregarding the pilot's survival, it might have come up with a solution like luring the enemy to teleport nearby and then detonating the Mobile Suit's Miniature Nuclear Fusion Reactor to destroy both itself and the enemy—and that might have been the only answer.
And given Heero's personality, he wouldn't hesitate to self-destruct if presented with such a solution. In that case, Reid would have charged in to attack only to be met with the Wing Zero's self-destruction.
Of course, Reid would definitely sense Heero's death wish in advance, so a self-destruction tactic would be useless against him. The only trouble would be that if Heero self-destructed, the Merit Points and skills would be lost.
Fortunately, the Tallgeese II didn't have such an inhumane system. Although Heero was unsure how to face the enemy, he hadn't yet reached the point of considering self-destruction.
However, Reid had no intention of giving Heero too much time to think.
Although the twin GN Drives were currently in a weakened state after Trans-AM, the dual power sources ensured that the Joyeuse Gundam's combat effectiveness hadn't actually dropped too much—it was just that the Super GN Sword could no longer be used in its concentrated beam mode.
Thus, Reid chose close-quarters combat, firing two Magnum Beams as a diversion before charging directly at the Tallgeese II.
With the enemy attacking, Heero had no choice but to temporarily abandon his thoughts and focus on dealing with the assault first.
After evading the two Magnum Beams, Heero retaliated with a shot from the Dover Gun.
However, as expected, this shot from the Dover Gun missed, and the battle once again entered a melee phase.
Due to the weakened state of the two GN Drives, the Joyeuse Gundam's output wasn't significantly higher than the Tallgeese II's, so the first clash between the two ended in a brief stalemate.
But Reid activated the Sword Saint System at this moment—Funnel Weapons were something no one in the AD Universe had ever seen before.
Heero had always assumed the two large swords on the Joyeuse Gundam's armor were backup weapons, but now, at point-blank range, they suddenly moved.
Caught completely off guard, Heero had no time to react. The two main thrusters on the Tallgeese II's back were instantly severed by the two GN Buster Swords, breaking the stalemate in an instant.
This time, the Tallgeese II was truly sent flying by the Joyeuse Gundam, and with the loss of its two main thrusters, its mobility plummeted to rock bottom.
To make matters worse, the attack from the two GN Buster Swords wasn't over yet. After circling halfway around, they plunged straight into the Tallgeese II's back.
Meanwhile, from the front, Reid controlled the Joyeuse Gundam to fire two more Magnum Beams, pushing the Tallgeese II into a desperate situation.
However, Heero reacted swiftly. He immediately threw his shield to block the Magnum Beams, using the explosion to obscure the enemy's line of sight. Seizing the moment, he turned and swung the Dover Gun like a baseball bat, intending to knock away the two GN Buster Swords attacking from behind.
Yet, the two GN Buster Swords were far harder to deflect than Heero had anticipated. In the end, he only managed to alter the flight path of one, while the other severed the Tallgeese II's right leg.
At the same time, the Joyeuse Gundam had already closed in behind the Tallgeese II.
Heero had no time to turn around now and could only draw his Beam Saber, thrusting it backward in an attempt to force the enemy to evade and buy himself time to turn.
Unfortunately, Reid directly controlled the mobile suit to deploy the Beam Shield on its arm, deflecting the Beam Saber, while the other arm swung the Super GN Sword, cleanly bisecting the Tallgeese II at the waist.
With that, Heero was eliminated from this universe, and the battle was effectively over.
Treize, who had already withdrawn to the Leo Mothership fleet, saw that all the Gundams had been shot down. Realizing that continuing the fight with the remaining Space Leos would only result in unnecessary casualties, he decisively ordered all forces to retreat, abandoning even the M02 Resource Satellite. He left a squad of Space Leos to hold off any pursuers while the rest withdrew to Earth.
Treize was already thinking about how to unite all forces upon returning to Earth, develop new Gundams, and defend against the impending terrorist attacks that the antagonist was sure to launch at any moment.
After all, if the goal was to use fear to unite all factions, then this antagonist would undoubtedly attack every one of them.
Unfortunately, Treize was destined to waste his brain cells. After OZ's forces retreated, Reid immediately ordered the others to clean up the battlefield and began recovering the Virgo IIs.
There were at least a thousand Virgo IIs remaining in this space zone, and moving them back to the Gran Chaos one by one would be far too inefficient.
So Reid decided to transport one back first, have Hoshino Ruri crack the White Fang's program, then replicate the signal to reactivate the Virgo IIs, allowing them to fly back to the Gran Chaos's hangar on their own.
Treize was somewhat stunned to see the antagonist's MS unit recovering the Virgo IIs, because he believed that based on the technological prowess displayed by the antagonist's Mobile Suits, they shouldn't need these puppets—or rather, they could definitely build better ones. Surely they weren't capturing these Virgo IIs just to strip them for parts?
In truth, if Treize had known that Reid's primary objective for this mission was precisely these Virgo IIs, he would have roared alongside Kangz Calamity, who was already in hell:
"All you wanted were some Mobile Suits? You could have just said so!! Was it really necessary to nearly wipe out both of our forces?"
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