Project Overworld

Keith was suddenly seized by a yawn. It was Friday's afternoon and he was currently attending his last courses of the week.

Since Monday, the day he finally got to space in Project Overworld, he decided upon stopping playing his favorite game for a while and focusing on his future projects. The first thing he did after disconnecting has been to call his mother and get some news about her and her husband.

He told them about how he has been doing lately and also told them he wanted to go and visit them this week-end. Chaila immediately accepted as if she had been waiting for this and told him he would always be welcomed in their house.

For the rest of the week, on top of attending his daily lessons, Keith searched every evening on the internet for any available job related to manufacturing. He wanted to find out what kind of job would suit him and also make sure that this sector would be buoyant.

He also ordered a few items on an online shop so that he could start forging on his own. For that purpose, he actually needed a lot more equipment than he has had in Project Overworld. Tools would not be enough for that kind of activity, as he could be making mistakes and hurting himself really badly in the process.

He needed some heat-resistant gloves with some sturdy glasses and a place to build his own little furnace. He thought about going to some forest or something like that but it would be quite the journey just to test out a few things.

Fortunately, his parents lived in the countryside and their home was built onto a pretty large terrain. That was why he really hoped everything he ordered online would be shipped over to him before the end of the week.

After the classes ended, Keith went shopping for a while. He did not order everything online because he knew of some nearby shop which sold what he needed. Afterwards, he came back to his flat and started packing up some of his clothes for the week-end.

He would only be taking the road tomorrow, but he wanted to finish the preparations at once. In fact, Keith had organized a party with his friends and he knew he would not have much time left the next day to prepare for the travel.

It has been quite a while since he last took part in an event with his group of friend, and he was happy that he left Project Overworld aside for a week.

Though, the conversation led them to talk about this game and Keith thought that he could never get rid of it completely.

Most of his friends knew about the advanced simulation this game was and some of them were even playing it.

- "Hey, Keith? I saw you take place in the last Inventopia event! You thought that you could hide away from us?"

- "Hahaha, Michael, I know for a fact that I can't avoid your h24 online-connected a.s.s."

- "What?! Not cool man, not cool..."

His friends laughed for a bit but Michael was not finished with his questions :

- "By the way, why don't you join Tyler and me? Where are you hiding away anyways?"

- "Well, it would be quite the hassle for you to visit my base. I settled overseas."

- "Hey, hey... you're joking right? You're telling me that you made a ship or some shit just to build a base away from the others? Talk about being asocial mate..."

- "Yeah, I was pretty much forced to do so. Whatever, I may come and visit your base in the future.

- "Wait wait wait!" Michael suddenly shouted out. "You should not come for now. We... Didn't quite play the game enough and we don't really have much to show you around."

- "Yeah, you did arrange some stone formation around your base resembling some familiar s.e.x.u.a.l shapes, right? That's why you don't want me to come in?"

- "How did you know?!"

- "I didn't, lol, you're just too predictable."

The laughters resumed as Micheal's cheeks turned red. The end of the party was pretty uneventful. Keith did not enjoy alcohol that much so he always kept sober to get his drunk friends to their place. He spent the rest of the evening with one of his female friends and came back home at four in the morning.

'Well, I won't be able to sleep much tonight.' Keith was dying of lying down on his bed but he despered as he saw the late hour. He would only have a few hours of sleep since he would be taking the road at around seven in the morning.

The next day, although a bit tired, Keith was plainly awake for his journey to Missouri. It took him a bit less time than he had expected to get to his parents house, but it was already late into the day regardless.

He hugged both of his parents and talked to them about his recent initiatives. He told them how his work as a watchmaker turned out be quite an enjoyable experience and told them about the results of his previous academic year.

They seemed quite pleased reuniting with their child and Keith could finally forget about all his problems for a few hours. The following day, Keith told them he wanted to test something out in their garden and built a small receptacle with some large construction rocks.

He equipped his protection gear and started the forge by supplying its bottom with a highly inflammable gas. He held a graphite crucible containing some silver alloy on top of the hole and waited for the metal to smelt. Afterwards, he poured the liquid metal into a delft earth mold which he had previously dug with the shape he wanted his first creation to take.

It took him a few hours to get to a satisfying result, since the metal did not correctly solidify in the mold, leading to him smelting the alloy a few times more than necessary.

After working on the solid object with his tools for a while, he finally managed to cut down the exceeding metal and get a smooth-looking bracelet. It was a simple shape, but a valuable first experience.

'Yeah, that's cool isn't it? I guess it lacks a bit of... ambition, though?'

Keith was pretty satisfied by this first experiment but he thought that he needed to envision more complex projects if he wanted to fulfill his dreams of manufacturing.

Anyways, it was time for him to return to his parents' house so that he could enjoy the rest of the day with them. He would be leaving in a few hours from now, since he needed quite a bit of time to get back home.

Because Keith decided that he would take a week-long break off of Project Overworld, he realized that he still had two full days and a half without needing to think about it. He did not know quite yet what he would be doing instead of playing, but he suddenly remembered that some of his recent lessons actually left him a bit confused.

'I guess I should focus on my studies for the time being.'

"Hello everyone, dear Midgard's citizens and people at home, today I am here to announce a really big project that the municipal team and I has been working on in the past few months."

Amber was currently standing on top of a plateform within the Midgard's center park. She has been promoting a mysterious project for the past few days and it was now time for her to talk about it to her compatriots. In fact, it was so big that she had to make a live announcement on various streaming platforms at the same time so that everyone could follow this event.

"As you may know, the size limitations of Project Overworld's first server has slowly been increased over the year and the few months since its launch. As of today, Midgard has also substantially grown in size to a point where it takes several dozen of minutes to get out of the city. As a matter of fact, some of you with poor internet connections started lagging down within some really populated areas. We, as Midgard's municipal team, decided that the city's growth should be controlled."

Amber took a deep breath before resuming her speech :

"To regulate such a rise in population, we started making plans for another city." People started chattering everywhere, and Amber had to wait for them to calm down a little. "But this won't be your everyday town. We wanted for this city to last in time and grow as much as Midgard did. Its location will be nearing the north edge of the continent, and as some of you may have guessed by now, our goal is to found a harbor city."

Another round of chatter, but this time Amber welcomed it as she needed a small break to get her ideas straight.

"As an inland city, we at Midgard developed and mastered the land-powered vehicles. But this game isn't all about innovation, it is also about the exploration of uncharted territories. With this new city, we hope to create large sh.i.p.s and let people explore the whole world that's awaiting us. Let set sail to this new city, the city of Niflheim!"

Everyone in the central park applaused at the same time. Amber was radiant as ever since she has been waiting for this moment for a while. It was time for them to look ahead for a bit and think about the future possibilities.

'It has only been a year a few months since I joined this game. Yet, I've seen so much development since we founded Midgard and I was in awe by that fact. Hopefully this next city will contribute as much, if not more, to the development of Project Overworld.' Amber puffed up.