Project Overworld

- "Damn, we should take the remaining explosives and secure them back at our base." Spirit Fragment ordered to the last few of his subordinates who did not get caught by the police as of now. They were still around seven remaining around the stack of explosives, but only four people were required to transport the weapons thanks to the inventory system.

"You three." He pointed out at the 'Rebellion' members whom he deemed the most elusive out of the remaining ones. "Go and destroy as much building as possible, most of the explosives has already been laid down, so there is no need for you to transport more."

They all agreed instantaneously since they were ordered to accomplish such an honourable task for the cause they believed in.

Even if they risked imprisonment, it would only last for a week in the worst case scenario.

In any case, they would most certainly let themselves explode alongside the buildings they wanted to attack to prevent this sort of punishment.

In the meantime, Bluecraze and two other members of the 'Rebellion' stuffed themselves up with explosives.

Spirit Fragment then picked up whatever remained of their weapons' stack and followed them towards the outside of the city without having a single glance behind him.

'This whole operation is a failure, but that doesn't mean we won't be coming back here. We'll eventually destroy this city to ashes.' He reassured himself.

_______________

- "We caught another two of them, chief."

'Again? How many of them were there dispersed throughout the city?' The chief policeman lost patience.

- "Don't let you guard down." He finally said. "How is it going concerning the operation at their explosives' site?"

- "We haven't been able to neutralize them. By the time we got there, they were already gone.

- "Good, that means they won't be destroying anything for the time being." He breathed out.

However, just as those words came out of his mouth, a loud explosion happened a few hundred feet away from him. A nearby house just went up in flames.

But it did not stop there, several other buildings followed up and were destroyed in a matter of seconds. Nobody had time to react to this.

Several policemen blew up with the structures and chaos spread across the city.

Amber could only think of the players who disconnected inside these destroyed buildings. What would be their reaction, seeing that they died within Midgard? Would they ask for compensation? Would they leave the city at once?

This was such an unfortunate event that she was left speechless, witnessing the large quantity of smoke being dispersed in the atmosphere. Those were buildings whose she gave her agreement to being constructed, and they were now being torn from her beautiful and supposedly secure city.

- "Follow the trail of explosion, they must still be alive somewhere around this area!" The chief policeman screamed to cover the deafening cacophony caused by the explosions.

The chase carried on for a few dozen of minutes. Every time a building was blown up, every policemen suffered from pain within their heart. They were first and foremost citizen of Midgard and seeing that they were unable to protect their beautiful home left them utterly destroyed.

Once they caught up with the terrorists, however, their anger blinded them to the point that some of them immediately started beating up these morons with their policemen sticks.

This did serve no purpose because it was impossible for the Simulated Reality headgear to replicate any sensations. Its only purpose was to intercept the player's brain signals in order to move their character.

Anyways, these terrorists were eventually all tied up alongside the others, excepting from one who died from from the injuries caused by several policemen. These policemen in question were severly reprimanded since they only managed to free the criminal up instead of punishing him.

Everyone in Midgard heard the explosion, even from several miles away. Most of them converged to the direction of the terrorists' attack and witnessed the policemen transporting the criminals, all tangled up in ropes.

Everyone present here wanted to get revenge on these individuals. A rain of garbage fell onto the terrorists as Midgard's citizen all threw their useless items at them.

Amber did not move an inch to interrupt this scene whatsoever. She also wanted to join them and spit on these criminals but she had to hold back since she was supposed to be the mayor. Instead, she closely escorted the policemen towards the jail before returning to her office.

Unable to hold the tears back, she disconnected from the game and curled up on her bed. For so long she has been able to hold on to the pressure caused by her position within the city.

Today was different, though. She witnessed this project she was so proud of being pillaged mindlessly. All her efforts seemed to have been trashed around without any warnings.

The following day, she made a post on the official Midgard forum about the recent terrorist attack.

Soon, every media knew about this event and this made the cover of the newspapers.

She could not help but think that the terrorists won this round flawlessly.

_______________

The morning, when Keith got up from his small but restful night, his first reaction was to check his phone.

He always checked whether he had messages or other notifications on hold.

'Midgard attacked by terrorists? What is this post?' His curiosity was piqued upon seeing this notification.

After checking up on the news, he realized his favorite city has been attacked by a large group of individuals. They laid down explosives around Midgard and destroyed some important buildings.

Some even said that if it had not been for the policemen, the whole city whould be unrecognizable by now.

'I should do something about this. What if they attack Midgard again, or even Niflheim?' Keith thought.

For now, however, he had classes to attend to for the whole morning. At his university, most of his friends were talking about the terrorists' attack.

It was a first for such a peaceful game, and people were really shaken up after witnessing their favorite simulation game going down such a path.

This was also Keith's opinion. He could not help but think that he should eliminate every danger from Project Overworld. What if these people attacked his own base?

He was obviously a lot more prepared than Midgard because he had installed automated defenses and he used resistant materials for his base's structure.

Yet, it would hinder his progress in a similar manner. If such a large city with giant walls was not even safe from terrorists, what could he, as an individual, do all by himself?

While cooking up a plan for the rest of the morning, he could only thank the fate that this afternoon's schedule was free from any courses.

During the past week, he has been able to work on his third 'Watchdog' satellite and its launcher 'Satellite A-4'. It was almost ready for take off, only requiring a few more assembling on the rocket itself.

Yet, Keith immediately went and checked the data collected by his current two surveillance satellites orbiting around the planet. They were conveniently installed on an axis connecting the two poles of the planet, and his base as well as Midgard were installed along these axis.

This meant that his orbiting watchdogs were recording pictures from this particular continent. With a bit of luck, the data sent to him could unveil some clues about the terrorists' hideout.

However, the task turned out to be more difficult than expected. He had yet to create classification system for images so he would be able to go through the data more efficiently with a few filters of his choice.

For now, he had to go through every single image recorded by the satellites and compare its capture date to the date of the terrorists' attack before opening the image renderer and checking whether they were taken at the correct location.

After half an hour of going through this process, he finally found an image of Midgard. It was really blurry since their was a lot of smoke on the picture, but thanks to this he was able to tell it was taken just after the attack.

Another half an hour working through these images made him discover one that was taken before the attack.

Unfortunately, he was not able to find anything relevant on this one. He decided to keep going for another few hours since he had a whole afternoon before him anyways.

'What is this?' Keith suddenly stopped on a strange picture. It was taken in the surroundings of Midgard, but he did spot something unusual on the familiar landscape.

In fact, there was something resembling a trail of some sort.

'Are those animals? No way, there were no such animals going through migrations on this continent.' He thought. 'So it must be a group of players. They seem to be coming from the north-east relatively to Midgard.'

After checking up a few more pictures of surrounding area, he unfortunately did not find any other clue about this human trail.

He estimed that he was quite lucky one of his satellite did pick up something, since they were only recording the same location every few dozens of minutes after having made a revolution around the planet.

'Well, now I know from where they were coming from. For the next few days, nay weeks, I shall investigate this area more to find out were these morons are exactly hidding. Afterwards, they will taste the power of an intercontinental weapon.'