About half an hour later, a vast stretch of land appeared on the sea ahead of the Mana Airship squadron.
As they drew closer, they could see that it was an enormous island, more than ten times larger than any of the small islands they had seen along the way.
And unlike the uninhabited islands scattered across the Endless Sea, this enormous island had a cluster of buildings on it, with a small harbor built along its shore. It clearly already belonged to someone.
A sizable plaza had also been leveled out at the island's northeastern corner. After the Mana Airship squadron reached the skies above the island, it landed directly on the plaza.
Xu Yi and his entourage stepped out of the Mana Airship, but he did not see that familiar figure among the people who had come to welcome them.
"Where's Akali?" Xu Yi asked Doroen, the deputy director of the Overseas Branch of the Xinfei Merchant Guild's Mana Communications Research Department, who was responsible for welcoming them.
This enormous island was the Overseas Base Akali had chosen for her research into hyperspace space magic communication.
More than half a year had slipped by since she last returned to the Xinfei Merchant Guild's Main Base, recruited a group of new research assistants, and brought them here.
Since there was still no true means of long-distance communication through hyperspace, Akali had only been able to send back information with the fleet that delivered supplies each month. She had not left the island at all during that time.
According to the information she had sent back, her research over those months had resolved most of the difficulties. She was about to establish a hyperspace space magic communication relay station, enabling real-time mana signal transmission with both the Sains Continent and