May, Sea Circle Calendar 1519.
There were secret chambers on Artificial Sky Island X whose existence even Caesar, its nominal administrator, knew nothing about.
The control center-
Inside one particular chamber, the structure resembled the upper seventy percent of a sphere set down on the ground, with a flat floor making up the bottom thirty percent.
It was a room shaped like a spherical segment.
The walls were covered in a silver-gray, honeycomb metal lattice that seeped a faint, pale-blue glow. A mechanical sphere hung from the ceiling, slowly rotating.
As its rotation accelerated, however, arcs of electricity began erupting from the lattice in the curved walls, crackling loudly.
The arcs linked together, converging from every direction along the spherical walls and dancing across the flat floor, gradually joining into a single mass.
Bzzzt-humm-
The lightning took on Bondrewd's form.
This was also a teleportation node that doubled as a signal tower.
This time, it was not a remotely controlled precision-crafted proxy. Sephiroth had come in person, fully equipped.
[X, update report.]
After all, the forces under Sephiroth's command were growing ever larger, and he could no longer oversee every detail. Ordinarily, he could only keep track of important information.
For routine affairs, he generally updated his records on-site after arriving at a node.
[X, acknowledged. Updating...]
Sky Island X's central system synchronized recent matters, both major and minor, with Sephiroth in electronic form, including Caesar's research progress, the details of the Praying Hands' missions, and the status of newly recruited members.
Caesar's abilities were still limited, after all. But if things went smoothly on Shining's end...
As he thought, Sephiroth left the secret chamber. Following a hidden passage, he emerged through a concealed door into an ordinary corridor in the control center.
On the "second