Great, we're doomed now!

The demon that wiped out the entire squad in an instant is right here!

"Ugh!" The captain gritted his teeth and glared fiercely at the steel giant.

But he didn't know what to do, and his fierce demeanor was just an instinct.

"I will not surrender..."

laugh--

As the air pressure was released, the Gundam's cockpit slowly rose, and a figure emerged.

"!"

The captain's pupils shrank instantly. He didn't understand why the other side was doing this, but as a soldier, he instinctively raised his gun and pointed it at the enemy.

"..."

The gun barrel trembled violently, and the captain's rapid breathing caused him to feel dizzy and as if he were lacking oxygen.

He ultimately did not fire immediately.

"It really was you..."

When the captain saw Ye Shou's appearance, and saw that he had exposed his body to his shooting range without any defense, a look of confusion appeared in his eyes.

"Why...why didn't you kill me?"

He clearly wanted to ask the other person why they risked their lives to show themselves, but instead uttered completely irrelevant words.

He was probably extremely puzzled. If the goal was simply to capture prisoners, leaving one alive would have been enough. But from his perspective just now, although the squad's mobile suit had been destroyed, the cockpit remained intact. Just like him, the probability of survival was high.

"Why go through all this trouble... Answer me!"

otherwise--"

"Fire," Ye Shou said softly.

"!"

The captain stared in disbelief: "You!"

"Shoot me."

Ye Shou showed no fear on his face, nor did he display the arrogance of a victor. He simply gazed at the man calmly and with pity.

"What are you saying... Aren't you afraid of dying?"

"If killing your own kind makes you happy, then shoot."

"..."

If that's not the case, why add another layer of guilt to your heart?

Ye Shou said to him in a calm tone, "I won't kill you... There's already enough human blood to be shed."

"what……"

The captain looked up and stared blankly at Ye Shou, the gun in his hand unconsciously slipping to the ground.

At that moment, he wasn't thinking about anything; he simply felt calm, and just looking at that figure made him feel no fear whatsoever.

"Who...who are you?"

"I am Kuze."

A ray of dawn broke through the horizon, gently bathing the earth and enveloping Ye Shou's figure, obscuring his expression.

Only those eyes, so bright as if they could see into the future, remained deeply etched in the captain's heart.

"The days of humans killing each other are over."

I came into this world not to start wars, but to turn calamity into peace!

Chapter 172: The wind blows down, stars fall like rain!

Sydney, the only major airport in the Southern Hemisphere, or rather, "the only one left".

M·A's rebellion dealt a heavy blow to humanity, but they were, after all, AIs that acted according to orders, and were relatively rigid in their strategies and tactics. As long as the patterns were figured out, they could be tactically guided to a certain extent.

Among the many instructions written into their underlying logic, one is extremely important:

When faced with multiple options, prioritize the more efficient path.

Therefore, at the beginning of the rebellion, M·A amassed a large force to attack the super cities of the human side, bombarding the surface with powerful beam weapons. Without the constraints of international law and morality, and without feeling fatigued, they simply turned the killing into a simple assembly line operation.

Nearly every day there are tens of millions of casualties. In just one month, three large metropolitan areas have been wiped out, and the population has been reduced by more than 500 million!

Throughout the entire history of humankind, such a horrific scene has never been seen before.

If this were a war, they would have won from the start, with humanity seeing no hope of victory whatsoever.

But sadly... or perhaps fortunately, M·A had no ambition or desire. It was born as a weapon and faithfully carried out orders, so it would not negotiate with the human side. Its destructive steps never stopped.

It is precisely because they cannot even surrender that humanity has been forced to persevere. After discovering their patterns of behavior, they began to employ strategic camouflage and tactical manipulation, and even organized several Pyrrhic victories in local battles.

Fortunately, after eliminating its main targets, M·A never again organized a military force as large as it had at the beginning, and the War of Calamity thus entered a long stalemate...

Ultimately, however, M·A can multiply as long as there are resources, while humans need time to reproduce and grow. Pilots are also one in a million talents, so it is ultimately a zero-sum game.

Australia did not suffer too much damage during the "month of purgatory," and this sparsely populated continent became an important base for humanity, retaining considerable war potential.

The Human Alliance has built numerous arms factories based on the mineral resources here, and it is said that about a quarter of the mobile suits are produced in Australia.

Sydney is also an extremely important airport because it houses a mass accelerator that is now rarely seen. Its maximum power is enough to launch a medium-sized warship into space, making it a strategic asset!

There might be two or three more in the Northern Hemisphere, but there's only one in the Southern Hemisphere!

Some distance from downtown Sydney, a mobile suit squad and ground troops arrived to meet the base convoy. Ye Shou and the surrendered military police did not show up; instead, Agunica met with them and negotiated.

Although it's unknown how much undercurrent and power struggle there is between the higher-ups and behind the scenes, at least for now, things seem very harmonious. The welcoming team showed Agunica great respect and gave him the treatment a hero deserves.

However, since they were carrying Gundam frames, they couldn't enter the city directly and had to stay at a military base on the outskirts. This was simply following procedure, and Agunica had no objections.

On the way to the new base, when passing a certain high ground, without the obstruction of buildings, Ye Shou saw a huge and bloated city. Countless factories, residential areas and military camps spread out like a mixed pizza, occupying the entire field of vision, and extending all the way to the artificial land reclaimed on the coastline.

The mass accelerator is located in the northwest corner of the airport. A large cleared area stands out prominently on this "pizza," with three long runways running east to west, and a ramp hundreds of meters high standing in the middle, pointing proudly towards the distant universe like a rhinoceros beetle.

"Isn't it spectacular?"

Agunica knew that Ye Shou only had a superficial understanding of many common-sense facts about this world, so she took the initiative to explain to him: "When mankind entered the universe, no country had the ability to explore alone, so they joined together to build ten mass accelerators, and Sydney was one of them."

"Hmm~" Ye Shou glanced around and frowned slightly. "Doesn't the M·A prioritize attacking densely populated areas? Didn't the scale of the attack in Sydney attract attention?"

This is because of the Yahab reactor.

Agunica said seriously, "M·A is just a machine after all. It is judged by the amount of energy consumed in the region. Therefore, we have separated the power supply devices for the factory, MS hangar, and important facilities and placed them underground."

Because the Yahab reactor can operate semi-permanently, is relatively easy to maintain, and can shield against electromagnetic fields, there isn't much overt energy consumption during our production activities.

Ye Shou seemed to be thinking: "It's actually targeting 'productivity' rather than simply 'population'."

Agunica fell silent, letting out a long, wistful sigh.

In the early stages of the Great Insurgency, the Allied forces used this characteristic of M·A to conduct strategic deception. For example, they deliberately created large-scale electromagnetic fluctuations in a certain location and deliberately had the AI ​​intercept false intelligence, thereby luring the enemy's main force to areas of low value and buying time for troop deployment.

But how many people were sacrificed in this process... is not even recorded in the internal documents. It's not that it's top secret, but rather that there was no statistic at all. Everyone tacitly avoided mentioning it.

In order to withstand M·A's early frenzied offensive, the Allied Forces had to use various means to fight against them, and this was just the tip of the iceberg. It can be said that every human being today carries the burden of original sin.

Ye Shou didn't continue the discussion. Instead, he looked around and noticed the MS squad that had come to escort them.

"Heh, it seems you're quite valued."

"You mean these things?"

Agunica chuckled. After experiencing the ups and downs of the past few days, his mindset had changed. He didn't show any cynicism, and his eyes were very calm.

"The big shots must be arguing like crazy by now. I wonder how much precious time they'll waste on this."

"It seems quite interesting, tell me about it?" Ye Shou leaned casually against the tarpaulin—he now rubbed against Gundam whenever he had nothing to do.

Agnukka organized his thoughts: "Now, whether in Sydney or the entire alliance, although there are many political groups, it all boils down to a conflict between three ideologies: 'counter-offensive,' 'defense,' and 'coexistence.'"

“I can understand counter-offensive and defensive strategies; I know what they mean just by listening.” Ye Shouyi asked curiously, “What do you mean by coexistence?”

At this point, Agnica couldn't help but laugh and say, "Many people think that M·A only attacks industrial civilization and eliminates advanced human productivity, but they don't actually need to compete with humans for living space."

Therefore, by reverting to an agricultural civilization, strictly limiting the population of each settlement, and banning the development of electronic technology, we can reduce the aggressiveness of M·A and thus coexist with it.

"...It actually makes some sense."

“Yes, that makes sense.” Agnukka shook her head. “But isn’t it precisely because of this kind of wishful thinking that humanity has fallen to its current state?”

Never expect things to go smoothly when making any plans, and especially don't expect the enemy to act according to your ideas—there are too many negative examples in history, and it is highly likely that they will continue to appear in the future.

"The coexistence faction is already relatively rational, and there is also the 'Apocalypse faction' which has a relatively large influence among the people and believes that the M.A. rebellion was not accidental."

'God created humankind with his own hands, and humankind created M.A. with his own hands. When humankind questions God, M.A. will question humankind.'

—The Apocalyptic school believes that this war was God sending 'angels' to punish humanity, and that humanity should undergo a great purge, with the chosen survivors establishing a new civilization.

After saying that, Águnica looked annoyed and said, "That's utter nonsense!"

He then glanced at Ye Shou again, pondering to himself:

Even from a theological perspective, it would never be as the Apocalyptic school claims, otherwise the wondrous being Kuze Yoru would not have appeared.

"It's normal to place your hopes on religion when you're in despair," Ye Shou said dismissively. "So, what sect are you from?"

"The counter-offensive faction led the entire 'Solomon Project'—the production of seventy-two G-series mobile suits."

Even so, this is only a very rough division. The current Human Alliance is an extremely complex political system. The power of the old-era nations has not diminished, the new consensus is not stable, and internal organizations of all sizes are interconnected... Strictly speaking, those who support us are only a small part of the counter-offensive faction.

It's important to note that those who exposed the plan and attracted M·A were also from the counter-offensive faction, except they believed that a stronger M·A should be created for the counter-offensive.

"I'm a soldier, and I don't understand political struggles very well. I've been won over by many people, and I think what they said makes a lot of sense... The reason I chose the G series was just based on intuition."

Don't you have your own opinions?

"No... of course, that was before."

Agunica wanted to stand up, but didn't want to raise her gaze higher than Ye Shou, so she simply stopped straightening her back.

"There cannot be two suns in the sky. From now on, I will only have one ideology and one sun in my heart!"

He didn't say what it was, and Ye Shou didn't ask. The two then started discussing what to do next.

Agunica was very optimistic about this: "As a hero who single-handedly defeated M·A, you deserve the honor and status that match you, and there will certainly be many like-minded people who unite under your command."