Artificial Heaven

More than three months had passed since the Mechanical King renamed Jaya Island Titans, but as far as informed outsiders were concerned, a new little nation called Titans had simply appeared on Jaya Island, with Anaheim as its capital.

People with the relevant knowledge even mistook those names as a sign of some connection to Elbaf... In fact, Sephiroth had originally considered calling the place Cybertron.

Regardless, this nation, founded barely three months earlier, had been classified as a technological nation because its technology surpassed that of ninety percent of the world's countries. Inevitably, all sorts of people came to investigate, openly or covertly, hoping to reap some benefits.

-The Clock Tower.

Inside the general administration office, several female office workers in Clock Tower uniforms were sorting documents in front of the filing cabinets.

Their Victorian steampunk outfits certainly had a distinctive charm. Different mechanical collar badges indicated different positions and ranks. There were no strict rules regarding jewelry, though it was generally expected not to be too extravagant.

"Ms. Alpha, the current foundry personnel files have all been organized. Sorry for the trouble, but could you sign off on them?"

A tomboy in steampunk workwear jogged into the office carrying a document envelope. The copper nut badges on her collar marked her as a junior logistics worker.

"Of course. Thank you for your hard work."

The young woman called Alpha had the air of a capable career woman. After exchanging a few pleasantries, she accepted the envelope. The finely crafted silver valve badges on her collar marked her as an administrative clerk.

Watching the other woman's lively smile, she gently adjusted her tinted glasses. Her long blond hair swayed, and her purple eyes lingered on the departing figure for several seconds.

Titans appeared to be thriving, but that was really because this newborn nation was industrializing at an unbelievable pace. Workers were needed everywhere, and locals scarcely had to worry about finding a job.

Much of the situation could only be described as frantic. Development had significantly outpaced human resources, making it almost effortless for Alpha to infiltrate Titans' administrative organ, the Clock Tower.

Alpha, twenty years old, was an agent of the World Government's CP8.

Normally, the World Government would not have cared about a newly founded little country like Titans. Unexpectedly, it had managed to force a Shichibukai to compromise, then openly displayed technology beyond conventional standards.

The higher-ups had even considered sending CP9 to investigate, but not long ago, CP9's main members had suddenly been assigned other undercover missions... The details were beyond Alpha's clearance.

"Coffee, juice, black tea..."

Inside the office, a cart-shaped service robot was distributing drinks to the staff. Alpha deftly sorted her documents and casually took a cup of black tea from the cart.

The prosperity here rested on mechanical automation and inexpensive industrial products. Various robots had replaced nearly all basic manual labor, freeing ordinary people from tedious, exhausting work.

During her time undercover, Alpha had come to feel that this sort of life was quite pleasant. Still, her professional instincts as a government agent had gradually revealed various things about Titans that felt off.

There were no humans in this country's true inner circle. The humans here seemed to exist merely "to make it look like a normal country."

One major sign was that, outside restricted areas, this country's counterespionage efforts were practically nonexistent. She and her fellow CP8 agents had infiltrated all sorts of industries here with almost no resistance.

"Attention, everyone-an important guest is visiting. Alpha, come with me to Reception Room Zero."

-Reception Room Zero.

Built from brass, steel, and dark wood, this special reception room was decorated with intricate gear patterns and exquisite carvings. It was only used when the Mechanical King personally received important guests.

At that moment, Sephiroth, dressed like Executor the Ex Foedere from Arknights, arrived at the reception room's entrance with six attendants, escorted by mechanical soldiers and staff.

The mechanical soldiers pushed open the heavy oak doors. The first thing to come into view was a round reception table in the center of the room. Its polished marble top was edged with a finely engraved brass band, while a small steam-powered rotating mechanism cleverly embedded in its center occasionally emitted a faint hum and warm wisps of steam.

Across the table, "Babbage" sat upright in an enormous mechanical chair. Beside him stood Black Enchantress, wearing a white training outfit paired with a black qipao. Farther away, four mechanical soldiers stood at separate corners of the room.

"Welcome, my ally."

Babbage raised a mechanical arm, inviting Sephiroth to sit. Out of respect for his important guest, the chair directly opposite him was a luxurious, antique-style wrought-iron mechanical seat. Since the guest would most likely have a "flesh-and-blood body," its seat and backrest were upholstered in deep purple velvet and padded with springs and foam.

"Indeed, but... these ordinary employees...?"

Sephiroth's expression remained calm, betraying no particular emotion. He took the seat directly opposite Babbage, and the six knights lined up behind him.

"There is no need for concern."

With a faint hiss of steam, Babbage spoke.

"I see."

Controlling the Babbage mech through Titans' ubiquitous signal towers, Sephiroth began holding a deliberately cryptic conversation with himself. He went all in on advanced doublespeak, seemingly letting slip all manner of ambiguous scraps of intelligence.

At the small bar in one corner of the room, the four female clerks also breathed sighs of relief. Each had been summoned from her department by her immediate superior, and each was a young, attractive office worker who stood out for both her looks and her abilities.

On their way here, they had been briefed on the visitor's background. He was a partner no less important to Titans than the Shichibukai Heavenly Yaksha-the king of Babylon on Sky Island.

For most Blue Sea People, Sky Island's existence was merely a legend, so they were quite curious. Upon actually seeing Sephiroth, with his enormous white wings and halo, looking like a real angel from mythology, they felt the trip had been worthwhile.

"Regarding Doflamingo..."

"Understood. No objections..."

"According to the calculations..."

Their conversation revealed quite a bit of information, but touched on no core secrets.

"..."

At the start of the meeting, Alpha had been ordered to sit at a side seat closer to Babbage and take the minutes. As a member of general administration, she was better suited to this task than her colleagues from the other three departments.

Though she privately wondered whether things were going "too smoothly," she considered Titans' virtually nonexistent counterespionage and the fact that this city had only gotten on track two or three months earlier. She set her concerns aside somewhat, scribbling rapidly while watching for and analyzing valuable information in their conversation.

First, she could confirm that the two had known each other before the Mechanical King founded Titans. Babylon could be considered Titans' angel investor.

Second, this king of Babylon was very likely a user of the Human-Human Fruit, Mythical Zoan, Model: Angel. That was troublesome. His strength was estimated to be no less than a Shichibukai's. Considering Sky Island's terrain and the possible existence of aerial forces, Alpha's professional judgment told her that Babylon was at least a Shichibukai-level power.

-So that really was one.

Mixing drinks at the bar, Monet glanced out of the corner of her eye at Black Enchantress, who stood silent and motionless beside Babbage. She privately reckoned that this must be the so-called "Artificial Angel."

In fact, the so-called "Artificial Angel" that her young master coveted was, technically speaking, a modified version of the Servo Angels-intelligent robots-on the moon.

Since the original lunar robots already had humanlike synthetic skin, Sephiroth had gotten the idea of "customizing faces" while creating his Artificial Angels, rather like playing a certain heavily modded, girl-filled Elder Scrolls game.

Moreover, to avoid unnecessary trouble, although the Artificial Angels carried complete intelligence modules and manual-control modules, they had no emotion modules installed.

This was based on his personal preferences, as well as his malice toward Doflamingo, who was bound to come looking for trouble.

When it came to characters who attacked with "threads," he had modeled the experimental puppet after Black Enchantress from the fighting-game engine Mugen. Her fighting style was similar, too: magnetic fields controlled metallic fluid created through electrothermal metallurgy, using it like the original's "rays" to recreate various moves.

The primary purpose of creating this puppet was actually to serve as a tank.

That was right. Compared with other experts, Sephiroth's close-combat skills were awful. And frankly, even after transmigrating into the world of One Piece, he lacked the willpower to train. Since obtaining the Rumble-Rumble Fruit, he had only done a little cheating-style training through electrical stimulation.

Sure enough, this sham training could only compensate for some deficiencies in his stamina. In a real close-range fight, it remained largely useless.

Under Sephiroth's control, Black Enchantress could fight at the hundred-million-bounty level. If he only supplied energy and left the fighting entirely to her AI, she could reach the sixty-million level. If he supplied no energy at all, she barely reached the ten-million-bounty level.

On the bar before Monet sat an assortment of steampunk drinking utensils and several copper containers filled with homemade steam drinks.

All sorts of thoughts flashed through her mind, but her hands never stopped. She and two other colleagues were serving as attendants for this meeting... responsible for pouring tea and serving drinks.

Monet prepared the lemon tea requested earlier. With her experience as a maid, she was thoroughly familiar with this kind of work. Carrying a tray, she first refilled their guest Sephiroth's tea, her movements and manners equally graceful.

As for her own boss, Babbage... no one had ever seen his real appearance. There were even rumors that the Mechanical King was literally a robot.

Skipping Babbage, Monet also topped up Alpha's drink. The two beautiful spies met each other's eyes and exchanged polite nods.

-Now this was interesting.

Sephiroth watched the two of them. One was a spy sent by Heavenly Yaksha, and the other belonged to the World Government.

To probe someone's thoughts with his Mantra, he needed to establish an active electrical connection, which the other person would clearly notice.

If he merely passively received the faint brainwaves their brains emitted, he could not discern their specific thoughts. He could only sense their general emotions and intentions.

As a result, he also knew which powers had sent spies to infiltrate his territory. Take today's four female employees: aside from these two, whose appearances in the original story made them look familiar, the other two were also spies. One came from Big News Morgans, and the other from Deep Ocean Current Umit.

He might as well put on a show and use them to pass along the information he wanted the outside world to receive.

There was one thing, however, that left Sephiroth somewhat puzzled.

Wasn't the World Government being a little too efficient? From his memories of reading One Piece fanfiction on Blue Star in his previous life, no matter how much trouble the protagonist stirred up, the World Government always stayed utterly unruffled and generally never sent spies.

-I'd only been in the Blue Sea for just over three months, and CP9 already had its eye on me? Wasn't this progressing a little too quickly?

This was actually a misunderstanding on Sephiroth's part. He thought Alpha was an alias used by CP9's Kalifa, but she was actually Kalifa's younger sister and a member of CP8. Their father was a veteran of CP9.

They had no real familial connection, however, since they had been raised separately. Each knew the other existed, but their lives almost never intersected.

Had Sephiroth not caused all this commotion, Alpha would have participated in a special mission involving the Tyrant Kuma two years later, in 1517.

And this year, 1515, happened to be when Kalifa and the other CP9 members went to Water 7 to begin their five-year undercover mission.

-After more than ten years in this world, Sephiroth could no longer remember these details clearly.

"Sephiroth, at 14:37:55 on the eleventh of this month, an official from the World Government contacted me, hoping that Titans would become a World Government Member State."

"Oh? What do you intend to do?"

Hearing them discuss this subject, Alpha's hand paused almost imperceptibly. Her expression remained unchanged, and she made no other unnecessary movement.

"I have decided to agree."

At Babbage's answer, Sephiroth lightly tapped the tabletop.

"I have no objections either, but as you know, Babylon isn't suited to becoming a World Government Member State."

...What if the Celestial Dragons heard about Sky Island and insisted on visiting?

The Celestial Dragons generally did not visit unaffiliated countries, except for certain collective "spring outings"...

As for the problem of those "spring outings," Sephiroth actually intended to use his angel persona to make a major impression in the Blue Sea next, particularly by displaying his mobility and destructive power.

He did not need to do much. He just needed to make the World Government feel that it "wasn't worth it."

The reason he wanted Titans to become an Affiliated Nation was to facilitate the construction of a global base-station network... or rather, a global strike system.

Nominally, these would be the Mechanical King's commercial partnership outposts. Internally, they would house signal base stations, laying the groundwork for future surveillance satellites and space-based weapons platforms. They would also allow Sephiroth to travel between signal nodes at sublight speed after transforming into his elemental form.

With the current technology, though...

The so-called surveillance satellites were not satellites at all. They were crude surveillance devices floating in the stratosphere, created by brute-forcing the problem with the Rumble-Rumble Fruit's cheat-like power.

The so-called space-based weapons platforms were much the same: magnetically levitated platforms in the stratosphere that could serve as launch devices, allowing him to unleash lightning strikes through them from very far away.

He could only hope to recruit proper scientists in the future to solve the technological issues.

Without the status of an Affiliated Nation, achieving this kind of global deployment was basically a pipe dream.

And, following his personal tastes, Sephiroth had named this "grand plan"-the Artificial Heaven Project.