After Cruze and Xiao Ran's conversation, the world was also shaken by the battle between Orb and the Combined Fleet. The Earth Force, despite committing three times as many troops, had instead been defeated. Orb, which had been the least favored, had few forces, had remained weak for two years without much development, and according to various Outside World investigations had produced only one new mass-produced mecha in those two years, had somehow emerged victorious. With less than one-third of the Earth Force's strength, it had achieved a near-total victory.
There had been two major highlights in this battle. The first was the Midnight Gundam. On its maiden deployment, it had brazenly provoked the Earth Force during the harassment operation and fought one against three. During that battle, it had directly destroyed one of the new models. Under the Midnight Gundam's lead, just over thirty machines had achieved terrifying results against the Earth Force's overwhelming numbers, destroying more than a dozen Earth Force warships before withdrawing safely.
The second highlight had been the Justice Gundam. When the Earth Force launched its retaliatory harassment operation, many had guessed that the Midnight Gundam's beam-reflection capability had indeed given that silver machine a tremendous advantage in the previous battle, and that the Earth Force's counterattack must have found a way to deal with it.
Yet to everyone's astonishment, aside from the golden Dawn Gundam deploying, the silver Gundam that had served as the absolute main force did not appear. It was replaced by a new all-black machine resembling the Justice Gundam. Once deployed, this black machine displayed astonishing combat power. The Floating Weapons that had appeared once two years ago for atmospheric use, then vanished after the war ended, had reappeared. In an extremely short time, they irresistibly destroyed four customized mecha on