Project Overworld

Around two weeks after getting back to their land base, Keith was mostly done with how he wanted to improve the 'Rocket assembler'. There was still a bit of optimization left that he wanted to accomplish, but his friends on the EOSS were all waiting for him to launch supplies up there.

He could not delay the construction of the rocket any further, as the situation would turn really dire if the changes he made to the assembler turned out defective. According to him, there only was about a month of oxygen left for the four of them when he left the EOSS two weeks ago. Since he spent all this time down there, leaving his station with no supply in the meantime, it essentially meant that the rest of Spacol members only had half of the remaining time as oxygen supply.

The construction and launch of a new rocket required about seven to eight days of total time, maybe less if he was there to help the automated assembler in its task. However, if anything failed during the first launch, his friends would have to wait another another two weeks to finally have access to oxygen. In the worst case scenario they could be disconnecting from the game so not to consume as much oxygen as they did when they were moving around, but Keith did not want such a situation to happen in the first place.

Thus, with the highest amount of focus he could put into the game, Keith started the construction of a rocket destined to transport several oxygen reservoirs to the EOSS. The construction itself took him almost seven days in total, but in the end he was fairly confident in his rocket being able to reach the intended orbit.

Keith also took the opportunity to modify the vehicle's program so it would automatically dock itself to the EOSS. This was a very risky maneuver to make, since the rocket could misread the position of the docking module and all, but it would be a lot more helpful in the future to have a completely automatic resource supplying process for their space station.

In any case, while this rocket was on its way towards space, Keith would be working on another one in case the first exploded in the air.

'With that, I should be able to stay down there for a few more weeks in order to make some adjustments to the rocket assembler.' Keith meditated. 'I hope they're doing well up there.' He wondered.

_______________

- "Michael, could you go and take care of the 3D printer Xena was having trouble with?" Leyla ordered.

Since Keith left the five of them to be taking care of their 'Rocket assembler', she has been taking the lead of the team. Not that they would not be doing anything without her, but she more or less knew where Keith's priorities were since she has been working on their Moon base plans with him for the past weeks.

In any case, having a leader would always be a good thing for a team. There was bond to be conflicts over tools and resources if people were free from working on whatever they wanted. The role of a leader was thus to compile the skills of his or her subordinates and affect them around according to their current needs. With such a type of organization, everyone could be focusing on their work with much more efficiency.

Going around the EOSS, Leyla entered the docking module where Tyler and Jim where currently working.

- "How is it going for the space shuttle?" She asked the two of them. However, they did not seem to hear what she said because they were cutting a metal bar with an electric saw. She decided to let them finish with this task before reiterating her question.

- "Oh, hello there! We're currently finishing the cargo area and building the frame of a metal door leading to it." Jim explained.

- "I see... Then I think I'll be borrow Tyler for the time being. Do let me know when you need him for construction of the engines."

Jim and Tyler both nodded at each other as farewell and the latter followed Leyla around their base. They joined Xena and Michael who were working on the frame of a giant three-dimensional printer destined to be assembling a dwelling on the Moon for them.

All of this was part of Keith's plans, they would be launching a ton of machines during the next few months so their base could be fully assembled by the time they finished preparing all the necessary materials to be living there. This was also why Leyla decided to hasten their work regarding the construction of their machines instead of their space shuttle.

In any case, this vehicle was not going to be helpful for now. Keith had decided that they should be launching their machines using small rockets instead of the space shuttle itself, because it would be much more efficient regarding their fuel consumption. If they decided on using the space shuttle to go back and forth between the EOSS and the Moon, they would be needing more than twice the amount of fuel that simply launching a rocket would require. Though, the latter would not be coming back so they would be wasting a bit of resources in the process.

- "Ok so Tyler, you'll be joining me on the elaboration of an automated drone that would be gathering basalt for our base. You've already participated in a meeting regarding the general design of such a robot, but I'll be training you over the next few days so you may understand how it should be working."

With Leyla organizing their group with efficiency, the five of them continued with the preparations regarding their future establishment on the Moon.

_______________

- "Are you ready, miss Amber?" The secretary of the mayor of Midgard asked her.

- "Yep, I'm finishing this letter and I should be ready in less than two minutes." She answered.

It was finally the day Amber has been anticipating for so long. Since she completed her tour of Project Overworld cities for the 'Inventopia month', she has so eager to unveil the secret project of Yggdrasil's municipal team to the world.

Finally, after several months of work, they were ready for the big announcement. Amber made a post on the forums regarding the fact that she will be talking in front of every Project Overworld citizen. Those who did not live in Midgard could be watching the official livestream that another member of the municipal team would be hosting.

Exiting the city hall, Amber headed towards the stage that was waiting for her. There were already several thousand players waiting for the big announcement, and more were coming by the second. Even though the livestream was not even started yet, hundreds of thousand viewers were already waiting for the event to begin.

'I hope their expectations will be fulfilled as much as mine were.' Amber meditated. 'Project vanilla will certainly be keeping them busy for the next few months at the least.'

She did not climb onto the stage yet, waiting for the time to turn seven in the evening. After a few minutes, she finally exposed herself to the large audience which has been waiting for her.

- "Hello fellow citizens! For several months, the community of Project Overworld has been very busy with large-scale projects. First, we got to establish cities on the Shyram and the Tattingmire continents. Not only that, several islands were also settled on by ambitious players, and our entire community grew large because of this. We have developed in the ship industry, in electronics and in power generation. Some of you may even have a computer of their own and progress is being made by the day. Recently, and airplane has been completed in Aeragate, and we should be able to move across continents much faster than ever before."

People in the audience started cheering after hearing those good news. In fact, Amber took the opportunity of this meeting to reveal that they would be mass-constructing airplanes. She let the public calm themselves a bit before continuing on with her announcement.

- "Finally, I'd like to talk about Asgard for a while. This city has been one of our biggest project on the Yggdrasil continent, both in terms of innovation and workload for our architects. I'm really glad that you were able to enjoy it as much as this project is close to my heart. For the next few weeks, our builders will pursuing on expanding the city and I will be keeping you all updated on the future games we will be implementing."

She took a brief pause, teasing the audience for a bit.

- "During the last Inventopia, I have been revealing everything about Asgard but I've also been teasing about a secret project the municipal team and I have been working on for a while. Lots of you already found out about the location of this place, wondering what was hiding behind those large walls. Today, I'd like to announce that Project : Vanilla is finally ready!" She exclaimed while pointing at a poster behind her. "This project will be emulating the same thrill that the first players who joined Project Overworld felt during the Dark Era. In fact, Project Vanilla is a game in which twenty thousand players will be taking place to survive for a total of a two months. By the end of this allotted time, a leaderboard will be organized to glorify the players who did well in this competition. Afterwards, we will be returning the state of the arena back to were it started so twenty thousand other players may be a part of this grandiose event in turn. Oh, yeah, may I clarify that there are no rules inside the arena, other than not breaking the spawn area? The only goal is to survive, and kill as much players as possible!" She roared to finish her speech.

The audience also expressed their hype about this new incoming game by talking loudly with their friends.

'Quite the reaction I got there. I hope the hype will stay for at least two months because this game is going to be the most ambitious reiterating event Project Overworld has ever known.' Amber meditated as she left the stage. 'I should be preparing for the next few days, they're going to get quite busy!'