Project Overworld

This day was the day. Eric and his fellow comrades gathered together on this week-end to, hopefully, land foot on the Moon and claim this achievement their own.

Thanks to the few days some of them took off of work for the occasion, their first week of working on this rocket had been very fruitful. They had, in fact, built a whopping eighty percent of the rocket with the most important parts of the structure already being tested and working as intended.

For the rest of the allotted time, they focused heavily on improving these core mechanisms of the rocket as well as strengthening the whole structure using metal plates and large nuts.

On this hopeful day, Eric could not help but give a motivational speech to his team while livestreaming the event on his favorite streaming platform.

- "... And thanks to our achievements, Humanity will emerge from it enhanced. Today, our names will reach beyond the limited frame of this game. Today, we shall rewrite history and prove that one achievement may be reiterated in a totally different environment. Today, we shall land foot on the Moon." Were the few last sentences of Eric's speech. Leyla did not really pay attention to what he was saying and got busy checking the engines of their rocket.

The four of them started climbing onto the c.o.c.kpit and installed themselves tightly to their assigned seats. Leyla was really glad she managed convince Eric that having a smaller c.o.c.kpit would be helpful in trying to reach the Moon. Because he wanted to go all out on this flight, he accepted her proposition almost immediately.

Having four members on board of the rocket still felt useless to her, but she was satisfied with it nonetheless.

After a successful launch, they rose up in the air to about four hundred miles of altitude. At this point, they had a bit over sixty percent of fuel left within their tanks and Leyla almost jumped out of elation.

Last time, when they reached orbit at about the same altitude, they had around forty to forty-five percent of fuel remaining. However, they also had a lot less total fuel than this time around and, by making the connections, she estimated that they had in their possession double the amount of fuel that they had on their flight with 'Apollo 7' at around the same altitude.

'This should be entirely sufficient to reach the Moon.' She concluded. Even if they did not have enough fuel remaining to get back on Earth, their main objective would still be accomplished and their achievement just as big.

In human history, during the Apollo missions, Armstrong, Aldrin and Conrad were not really expected to be back on Earth by the end of the 'Apollo 11' flight. In fact, the president of the United States of America had prepared a speech for his fellow citizen in case this mission ended as a failure, or more likely if these astronauts were not able to exit the Moon's surface.

Regardless, once the Starise group reached the calculated coordinated to escape the Earth's orbit, the rocket resumed its incessant shaking when its engines ignited yet again.

- "Activation of the acceleration maneuvers." Leyla commented.

Everyone was holding their breath on board of the 'Apollo 8' rocket. They had already been there two weeks ago, and were all hoping that this journey shall be their first landing on the Moon.

After what felt like an eternity, Leyla finally breathed out the air contained within her lungs and simply explained to her comrades : "We've successfully left the Earth's force of attraction. We're on our way to the Moon now."

They screamed their joy in unison, just like a group of kid whose favorite football team won the latest international tournament.

This would not be the end Leyla's troubles yet, though. She would be focusing all of her attention to eventually correct their rocket's trajectory and save as many fuel as possible while trying to reach the Moon.

As for the others, they were only assigned with checking the vital data of the rocket and report the situation to Leyla every ten minutes or so. This way of working was limiting the strains on her mind and let her fully control the vehicle instead of checking each screen every now and then.

'Let's do this!' She motivated herself.

It took several days for them to travel the distance separating them from the Moon. Fortunately, they had planned for this event to take place during the week-end so they had a lot of free time before them.

Additionally, Leyla had accelerated the structure a lot more than the programs of their rocket had initially planned for. It really was not that efficient since they would have reached the Moon with a ridiculously slow speed anyways, but they did not have years before them to do so.

Eric informed his viewers on social medias about the current progress of their mission, until the distance closed to only a few thousand miles. Since it was a Tuesday, the whole crew had to take a day off of work to be there when their rocket landed on the Moon.

When they connected back into the game, a magnificent view welcomed them. A giant celestial body could be seen from the few windows of their c.o.c.kpit, its surface reflecting sunlight everywhere.

Eric and his friends were rendered speechless for several minutes until he finally decided himself to start off his livestream. According to Leyla, they were only on to two hours away from reaching Moon's orbit and another few dozen of minutes from reaching the expected landing point.

Everyone was so hyped up for this Moon landing, including most of Project Overworld's players who specifically stopped working on their task in order to watch the event unfold live. There were hundreds of thousands of concurrent people viewing Eric's livestream, all expecting for the same outcome.

Obviously, this number fluctuated a lot during the following hours since the maneuvers needed to land on the Moon took a lot of time, but the total viewer amount piked to about one million and a half once the Starise group was only one hundred miles away from the celestial body. This was the most this streaming platform has ever known, and this popularity was not olny limited to Project Overworld players. Some were initially uninterested in this game but still were intrigued by what was taking place for there to be such an amount of people watching a single livestream.

Eric was jubilating to see his numbers skyrocketing to such an amount and could not help but think about the future. During this time, Leyla was as focused as ever. She felt like she could take a whole day of sleep after everything was over because this travel has been so demanding to her.

- "Landing in T minus ten minutes." She said. The rest of the crew held their breath to let her concentrate as much as possible so they would not fail during the last maneuvers.

Several minutes later, they could already perceive the rugged reliefs of the Moon as well as the somewhat regular terrain they would be landing onto.

Eric wanted to get out of his seat to watch the landing from closer, but was retained by his friends preventing him from unclipping his seatbelt.

- "Landing in ten... Nine... Eight..." Leyla started the final countdown. The closer they got to the ground, the clearlier they could see its granulous surface. "Three... Two... One." Leyla continued. The last second felt like an eternity as they were all expecting for a powerful impact.

The rocket and its landing gears finally landed on the Moon. The crewmates would have been ejected towards the top of the c.o.c.kpit, if it were not for the powerful harnesses which tied them to their seats.

'Is this it?' Eric almost slipped out his mouth. He held back it however, as it would seem pretty unprofessional to say such a thing before a million and a half people.

They all unclipped their seatbelts and got up at the same time. The landing gear seemed to have held the impact quite well since the structure was stable. Eric waited for his friends to get behind him and opened the sealed door.

'What a breathtaking view!' He thought, in awe. He unclipped the ladder hooked to the side of the c.o.c.kpit and started climbing down. Once only a few meters away from the land, he jumped down and proclaimed : "A small leap for me, a giant leap for humanity!"

The other members of the Starise group all followed up by jumped down on the Moon's surface. They were paralyzed with elation and did not know what to do next.

The chat of Ericality's livestream showed their excitement by sending a lot of various emotes.

- "Pog" Some were spamming in the chat.

- "Wow!" Others exclaimed.

Eric decided to take a stroll around the area but was suddenly stopped in his tracks by a quite peculiar view.

In fact, there already was a strange structure waiting for them a few dozen feet away from their landing point. It was none other than Keith and his space shuttle, parked there to welcome the newcomers. He was lying down on a deckchair of his own making, while his newly made logo was being shown off on a flag he had put down next to him.

Him too, had been viewing Ericality's livestream until now, and he was now witnessing the chat's reactions changing from excitement to incomprehension.

Question marks were now spammed everywhere, although some smarter ones had already understood the situation and were posting 'PepeLaugh' in the chat.