Project Overworld

- "What..." Eric gasped. "How...?"

The rest of the group all joined Eric and had similiar reactions upon seeing this person in a full astronaut suit, lying on a deckchair besides his spacecraft. Or at least that is what it looked like to them.

'Well, looks like I should be connecting back into the game. My body isn't going introduced itself after all.' Keith decided after witnessing everyone's reactions.

It only took a few dozen seconds since his virtual reality headset was lying next to him, ready to take him all the way to Project Overworld.

Once he took control of his body yet again, he straightened back up and approached those confused people who were staring at him.

Although sound could not propagate in the void of space, the Starise group had ways to communicate using walkie-talkies and radio waves to transmit the information. The walkie-talkies they were equipped with were very rudimentary, and added a lot to the total weight of their spacesuits. Fortunately, they were on the Moon, so weight was changed significantly around here.

Regardless, it was an invention Eric had pushed his fellow comrades to develop since he estimated that it would be quite epic to be able to talk between each other in space. This also helped Keith quite a lot since he was now able to communicate with them directly. He found out about the wavelenght they were using thanks to Ericality's livestream, and adjusted the wavelenght of his own walkie-talkie to send them information.

- "Well, hello there!" He exclaimed. "Quite the magnificent view around here, isn't it?" He pursued while looking around him. "So, to what do I owe the p.l.e.a.s.u.r.e of your visit?" He said in an extravagently ironic tone.

However, as there was no answer from the other side, Keith mimicked a pouting gesture by crossing his arms before his torso.

- "What, did you forget to put microphones into your spacesuits? Oh, yeah that might be it! My bad!" He continued with the ironic tone.

Eric finally dared to activate his walkie-talkie and expressed : "That's impossible..."

To him, the whole situation was out of this world. He was talking to a random person who came in here with an actual spacecraft. Not only that, this player also spray-painted his own spacesuit to draw a smiley face on his headgear while moking them using their own talkie-walkie.

- "How were you able to get there?" He managed to articulate.

- "Well, don't you see my space shuttle over there? Anyways, if you came here to claim the Moon for yourself, you were just a bit too late. Sorry!" Keith answered while pointing at his flag. "I represent the company Spacol, standing for Space Colonisation, and I've already established around the Earth's orbit. There's actually several satellites of my own making orbiting around the planet, so I've been able to monitor your progress quite easily."

Leyla finally opened her mouth to ask : "So those terrorists' hideout, as well as this mysterious organization inside the forest near Midgard... Were these all your doing?"

Keith immediately understood what she meant : "Yep, they were disturbing the peacefulness of this game so I felt like I should do something about them. After launching satellites into orbit, making missiles was childplay."

Everyone watching this event unfold live finally understood who they were facing. He was not a simple random player who got there before them, he was part of the group who helped them taking care of the terrorists back on Yggdrasil. If group there was, however, since only one person was actully standing before the Starise group.

- "How many are you in your... Company?" She asked.

Keith chuckled and answered with a single word : "One."

'So he's alone, huh? And he actually outperformed us by this much? I wonder what we could have accomplished if I joined him. Probably not a lot more, though, he's actually really smart and elusive to have been able to keep all of this a secret until now. Wait, actually...?'

- "Do you remember putting down some automated turrets on the first continent about three months after the game started?" She inquired.

- "Oh yeah! So you were the unfortunate people who came across my base! Sorry about that, but I needed to defend myself."

"Pfft..." Leyla was seized by a nervous laugh after she deactivated her talkie-walkie. 'No wonder he landed on the Moon before us, he's always had a strong lead no matter what we did. We can actually be proud to have closed in that gap by this much, since he had such a good start.'

Eric got a shiver down his spine after remembering this vivid humiliation. He was also depressed after finding out he has not been able to catch up to the people he looked up to, in the end. Not only that, he just learnt that he has been alone all this time.

- "But why did you come out of the shadows, though?" Eric asked.

- "Well, I'll certainly need a constant supply of resources for my space station, so I should have to launch a lot more rockets in the future. However, people started establishing onto my continent and I could not really stay quiet for long." He explained.

'Space station?!' Eric's mind blocked on those two words.

- "If that was all you wanted to ask, I shall depart from this place at once. I have more important matters to attend to. Also..." Keith started before going inside his space shuttle and coming back out with two fuel reservoirs, rolling them over the ground. "That should be enough." He said while handing them over to the Starise group. "Have a safe travel on you way back."

- "What is you name?" Eric asked him. He wanted to at least remember the name of his rival before they parted ways.

- "Keith. By the way, don't get fond of yourself just because you made it to the Moon. This girl over there did most of the job anyways." He told Eric while pointing at Leyla.

With that being said, Keith went back to his vehicle and started off the engines. A few minutes later, he already was but a small point at the edges of the horizon.

- "What are those?" Larsen inquired while pointing at the reservoirs.

As nobody seemed to know the answer, Leyla explained : "I think those are fuel tanks. He just gave us our return ticket."

- "What do you mean?" Eric could not help but ask.

- "He certainly realized after watching your stream that we were lacking fuel to depart from the Moon. With this, we should have enough to escape the Moon's gravitation force and get attracted back to Earth."

Only then did Eric realize that he was still livestreaming. He did not even think about this while he was talking to Keith, but embarass.e.m.e.nt quickly got a hold of him.

'Shit, he basically said I did nothing in front of millions of people...'

As for his chat, people were alternating between laughs and excitement.

- "Omegalul"

- "Destroyed"

Those were the most popular comments which were being sent out to his livestream.

Once they got back home, after a really testing travel and an eventful landing, the Stars group was as desperate as ever.

- "What are we doing now?" Larsen asked.

Eric did not give his answer immediately.

- "I think we should join some community project and put our knowledge to good use. We already have a guardian angel who's monitoring the whole planet on his own, but I heard that Midgard's municipal team was researching for competent engineers to start working on a plane prototype."

Some of them immediately agreed as this prospect enchanted them but Leyla was really frustrated to stoop to that. Airplanes may be useful for conveniance, but she felt like it would not really be useful for humanity as a whole.

- "What about space colonization and everything we dreamt about? One defeat and you're already giving up? Hurry, get to work!" She exulted.

By the end of the day, the Starise group got a visit from Amber. With the municipal team and a few police members, they approached the heavily defended base using some white flags so the group of friends may understand their intention.

After a bit of negotiation, she managed to convince the Starise group to partner with Midgard and tasked them with launching satellites all around the globe so they could have access to long range communication.

Since Amber had direct ways to communicate with Keith, she could be notifying him about the Starise group whereabouts so he would not 'accidentally' be exploding their rockets.

_______________

'Ha... What a tiring week.' It has been so long since I was able to move around freely like that.' Keith breathed out while walking around his space station. He finally showed himself to the public, but he was not that concerned about it.

As for his future plans, well that was mostly why he has had to expose himself out the open. He still had a lot of modules to launch up there in space while finding a way to automate the whole rocket creation so he could be working from his space station all the time.

It was, in fact, a much favorable environment to be creating new space shuttle designs as well as other space related crafts. Since there was no gravity to be concerned about here, he would only need raw resources and oxygen to be able to produce everything he dreamt for.

'Well, looks like I got back to actual business. Let's resume those projects where I left them at.' Keith concluded.