In the end, Reid had to be carried back by Ange. Of course, his "chastity" was preserved.
Hilda now didn't dare to provoke Ange at all. After all, if she wanted to continue climbing the ranks in the New Misurugi Kingdom, she couldn't afford to offend the queen. Although Reid was the one who actually called the shots in the country, Hilda was well aware of the power of pillow talk.
As for Flay, she had wanted to enter the palace for Ange's sake in the first place; Reid himself was just a means to an end, a tool for her "indirect approach."
Ever since Reid's family had moved into the Royal Palace, it was no longer as convenient for Flay to see Ange as it was back on the Star Palace Colony Satellite, where she could just drop by. Furthermore, Flay knew she was bound to Reid for life and figured that the three of them sharing a bed wasn't entirely unacceptable, which led to her actions at the party.
However, after sobering up the next day, Reid immediately dragged Nein to the Factory Module to get to work, partly to avoid Ange's teasing, smiling gaze.
This time, he wasn't bringing Nein to prepare "new clothes" for her, but because he needed her technical integration skills.
Gaia and his team were already very proficient with the Kampfer Mobile Suit, so Reid didn't plan to replace it with another model. Instead, he would modify it based on the Kampfer's existing frame.
The original Kampfer actually had quite a lot of room for modification.
After reducing its weight with AC Gundanium Alloy, there was still plenty of room for upgrades even after changing to full-body armor.
The Lambda Driver, now a mandatory system for Reid's team, needs no further introduction.
For the engine, Reid planned to use a combination of an AC micro nuclear fusion reactor and a GN Drive.
To be honest, the thought of buying three GN Drives from the store at once made Reid's heart ache a little. But the Black Tri-Stars were a team, and their greatest strength was unleashed when the three of them worked together to perform combination attacks (in the SEED movie, the CE trio died because they fought individually). The GN Drives produced by the system had identical particle frequencies, allowing them to recharge each other.
In other words, these three Mobile Suits could share GN Particles. Whether it was deploying a GN Shield for defense or having one unit activate Trans-Am to carry the other two, there were many tricks they could pull off.
Moreover, the anti-gravity effect of GN Particles saved space on thrusters. They only needed to be equipped with acceleration thrusters powered by the micro nuclear fusion reactor.
In terms of defense, the presence of the GN Shield also eliminated the need for extra things like Phase Shift Armor.
However, to ensure frame strength, Reid installed a system that used the Lambda Driver to reinforce the frame, guaranteeing the Mobile Suit could handle all of their current and future armaments.
So what was all this saved space and weight for? To add more weapons, of course.
Naturally, Reid didn't intend to turn the new Kampfer into a porcupine bristling with cannons. "Adding more weapons" was more about adding various hardpoints.
The fixed armaments were actually not that many.
The Kampfer's iconic shoulder cannons on its back were to be kept, using the same Beam Rocket Launcher as the Z Plus Gundam, which could fire both beams and physical rounds.
Reid didn't plan any fixed equipment for the right arm; it could be fitted with any gun from a pistol to a sniper rifle, or even a Buster Beam Rifle, depending on the battlefield situation. The new Kampfer's frame could support it all.
There wasn't much to say about the left arm: a Beam Composite Offensive Shield. The exterior was a CE Beam Shield, with a built-in dual multi-purpose missile launcher. There was a magazine on the back of the shield, allowing it to carry various types of special ammunition for use as needed.
For close combat, a GN Solid Sword and a Beam Saber were mounted on the left and right sides of the waist, respectively, to be used according to the situation.
As for the remaining space, there were two more hardpoints on the back, which could mount beam lances, bazookas, or even two additional mechanical arms.
Excluding the sword mounts, the waist had four small hardpoints that could carry Beam Boomerangs, GN Daggers, various types of physical ammunition, grenades, and the like.
At the same time, the right arm also had a hardpoint that could be equipped with a large Gatling gun (beam or physical), a large missile launcher, or even the Super Beam Drill that Nein had created as a pet project (it was originally a swappable backpack plan for the Garibaldi Rebake, but was scrapped for being too impractical).
(The final product is as shown in the picture below, please imagine the shield on the left arm.)
Once the Mobile Suits were completed, Gaia's trio went wild testing them. Any problems could be fixed after they got the test data.
All the armaments on this Mobile Suit were calculated and installed by Nein, so there shouldn't be any compatibility issues under normal circumstances.
Reid gave the Mobile Suit the simple and direct name "Kyubey EX," indicating that he had decided this would be the last model in the Kampfer series he would develop. If they needed another upgrade in the future, Reid planned to switch the Black Tri-Stars to a different type of Mobile Suit.
The Kyubey EX performed exceptionally well in Gaia's hands during testing. The three of them activating Trans-Am at the same time was just bullying. In a three-on-one fight, anyone on Reid's side would be thrown into disarray for a long time, and a single mistake could lead to defeat.
Moreover, Gaia and his team would switch equipment based on their opponent. In one simulation battle, they caught Ange off guard at the start by activating their Trans-Am Systems and using their three units to create a Shock Net, resulting in her being instantly defeated on her first encounter with the tactic.
Reid himself had to rely on the fact that his Gundam Artemis also had a Trans-Am System to level the playing field in terms of mobility, allowing him to endure their burst phase thanks to his shield.
It could now be estimated that the Black Tri-Stars with their Trans-Am System activated were powerful enough to contend with the Xia sisters using their Mental Link System.
Afterward, Reid looked at the three decommissioned Amazing Kampfers and the NT-X Gundam in the warehouse. He decided to remove some of their special systems and give these four Mobile Suits to the outstanding pilots trained by Noin.
He would then send these Mobile Suits to the Jupiter exploration team to serve as escorts. As long as he ensured that over eighty percent of the team were natives and added a remote shutdown system, he could guarantee the exploration team remained completely under his control. There was no need to have the entire ship staffed by natives.
After Reid shared this idea with Une, she believed that the exploration team could recruit more elites from other countries, which would effectively increase the New Misurugi Kingdom's influence.
In any case, the factories producing the GN Drives could be staffed entirely by natives. They would only recruit a few dozen of these foreigners from different countries. On a 4,000-meter-class warship, they wouldn't be able to make a single ripple.
However, building a new Jupiteris-class ship couldn't be done in a day or two. There was plenty of time now, so Reid didn't need to build the entire ship using Factory Modules; he only needed to create the factory section for constructing the GN Drives.
The other sections of the ship could be completed by the New Misurugi Kingdom's existing factories.
And to keep the other CE nations busy, Reid didn't even bother with pretenses this time. A few days after the module orders for the ship were sent to factories across the country, the other four major powers all received intelligence that the New Misurugi Kingdom was building a new type of warship.
To be honest, the other four powers in the Earth Sphere were already a bit numb. They were thinking, Hasn't it only been a few days since Orb released that inferior version of the Minovsky Particle Fusion Reactor? We're going all out trying to master Minovsky Particle Fusion Reactor technology, and now you, the New Misurugi Kingdom, are stirring up trouble again.
Then, the think tanks of the four powers analyzed that the New Misurugi Kingdom was likely causing trouble at this juncture to interfere with their development of the Minovsky Particle Fusion Reactor, hoping to distract the four governments with other matters.
But this analysis was useless. They couldn't just ignore the fact that the New Misurugi Kingdom was building a new warship. According to preliminary intelligence, this warship was at least 3,000 meters long, even larger than the Gran Chaos.
The New Misurugi Kingdom's super beam cannon technology led the Earth Sphere. Only they knew what kind of cannons could be mounted on such a massive warship.
The Balki Fortress floating in geosynchronous orbit was already a huge headache for the three nations of the Earth Alliance. If a mobile super-cannon were to be added to the mix, could they even play this game anymore?
Thus, the various nations could only try to probe Une for information about the warship. Since the New Misurugi Kingdom wasn't even trying to hide it and wasn't bothering to lock down intelligence, the other countries naturally skipped the formalities and directly hinted that this was detrimental to world peace.
But Reid's side was devious. They kept it a secret for a full week before publicly announcing that the New Misurugi Kingdom had invented a new type of interstellar propulsion technology, the "Lightwave Thruster." They would be restarting the Jupiter exploration project, building a new super-large vessel, and shortening the round-trip time between Earth and Jupiter to one year.
At the same time, a new type of Medical Pod capable of regenerating severed limbs was announced. They also invited the former famous PLANT commander, the Desert Tiger Andrew Waltfeld, to experience the limb regeneration technology.
The announcement of these two technologies once again sent the Earth Sphere into an uproar.
These were no small matters. The foreign ministers (or council members) of the Atlantic Federation, the East Asian Republic, the Eurasian Federation, and PLANT all expressed that they might as well buy a house in the New Misurugi Kingdom's Star Palace City. Only four months had passed in C.E. 72, and they had spent most of that time in the New Misurugi Kingdom. Returning to their home countries felt like a migrant worker only coming home for the holidays.
But no matter how much the foreign ministers (or council members) of the four powers grumbled, they could only fly to the New Misurugi Kingdom immediately.
The two technologies announced by the New Misurugi Kingdom would have an immense impact if they were real.
First, if that "Lightwave Thruster" was real, the Mars colony could set off fireworks for a month straight to welcome the New Misurugi Kingdom's new ship for a visit. Afterward, Mars would absolutely cling to the New Misurugi Kingdom's leg and beg to be carried along.
After all, at this stage, a one-way trip to Mars on a transport ship took about half a year, and the ships couldn't be too large. This meant they couldn't carry many supplies, and the crew would consume a small portion of them en route (a larger ship would require a lot of space for nuclear fuel, which was not only dangerous but also extremely uneconomical). This led to a severe shortage of life-sustaining resources on the Mars colony, preventing it from developing properly.
According to the speed and consumption of the "Lightwave Thruster" announced by the New Misurugi Kingdom, a journey between Earth and Mars could be completed with the power output of a regular MS, and the one-way travel time would be compressed to about a month.
Moreover, the 4,000-meter-class transport ship announced by the New Misurugi Kingdom could carry enough food and water to sustain the entire current population of the Mars colony for a year in just a small portion of its space. No matter who the current leader of Mars was, as long as they weren't an idiot, they knew what to do next.
For the other four powers in the Earth Sphere, the New Misurugi Kingdom teaming up with the Mars colony was not a good thing.
Although the Mars colony was short on life-sustaining resources, it was not short on various industrial raw materials. Special ores and materials were practically lying on the ground for the taking, which was the main reason the Earth Sphere hadn't completely abandoned the Mars colony all these years.
Once the New Misurugi Kingdom obtained Mars's industrial raw materials, with Reid's hoarding tendencies (hiding so many troops in a single Star Palace Colony Satellite made him look like an expert hoarder in the eyes of other nations), only heaven knew how many troops he could hide away.
Therefore, the other four powers in the Earth Sphere gave their foreign ministers (or council members) a strict order: they had to get a piece of this Jupiter exploration team and absolutely could not let the New Misurugi Kingdom go alone.
That's right, none of the four Earth Sphere powers even considered stopping the New Misurugi Kingdom from restarting the Jupiter exploration.
Back in C.E. 29, when the Tsiolkovsky returned to Earth from Jupiter with Evidence 01 (the winged whale fossil), the wars on Earth had never truly ceased.
Now, 43 years later, the Earth Sphere had returned to peace (at least in the eyes of the public). Restarting the exploration of Jupiter held great significance and was simply impossible to stop.
Moreover, this time the round trip would only take about a year. Many scientists from all nations were getting restless. If the four Earth Sphere powers didn't participate in this exploration, these people might just defect to the New Misurugi Kingdom. This was a blatant scheme by Reid and Une.
Then there was the announcement of the limb-regenerating Medical Pod, which concerned every single person in the Earth Sphere. If it was real, this level of medical technology could guarantee that as long as a person was still breathing, their life could be sustained.
Few humans truly aren't afraid of death, especially the rich and powerful.
The appearance of the Medical Pod caught the attention of every financial conglomerate in the world. The current heads of all these conglomerates rushed to the New Misurugi Kingdom almost immediately, hoping to get firsthand information.
If this Medical Pod was real, these conglomerates couldn't even imagine how much its technology was worth.
To be precise, evaluating this Medical Pod's technology with money was something of an insult to it. This life-extending device was priceless; it was a money tree in itself. It could monopolize the entire medical industry of the Earth Sphere, or at the very least, swallow up the most lucrative high-end sector.
Of course, politicians are human too, especially the politicians of the three Earth Alliance nations. Most of them had reached an age where they were contemplating their futures.
If this Medical Pod could guarantee their quality of life in their later years, many politicians in the Eurasian Federation and the Atlantic Federation would probably be willing to sell out their countries to get one for their private use.
So, Reid went into "seclusion" again, stating that he would not come out until the day of the Medical Pod product demonstration.
As for the scientists, politicians, and businessmen who had flocked from all over the world, the scientists were taken by Une to observe flight tests of a test unit equipped with the "Lightwave Thruster."
Regular politicians were stalled by the secretariat, while the European nobles were received by Ange.
The businessmen were ignored for the time being. Money was useless right now; they needed connections to even get a meeting with someone from the government secretariat.
In fact, many of the major conglomerates weren't in a great hurry to see Reid, Ange, or Une. They chose to let the dust settle, waiting to confirm the technology's effectiveness before making their move. During this time, aside from their usual scheming against other conglomerates, they were sightseeing.
Many parts of Australia were tourist cities, and the New Misurugi Kingdom hadn't drastically changed the local character after taking over. So, this wave of visitors also gave the economies of various cities a boost.
(End of Chapter)