Project Overworld

- "There are none." He explained in the dullest tone he could think of.

Again, surprise shook all the remaining engineers in the competition. Keith then proceeded to explain his trail of thoughts : "In fact, none of you really managed to convince me to recruit you. Some did quite an okay job, but I don't think they would fit into a company with so high expectations. I may be organizing another event in the future, I hope I'll get to see more impressive builds then."

With that last sentence being pronounced, a lot of player let out their anger and detroyed both their own creation and other player's. Some even tried to go on stage and protest about his decision, but Keith eliminated whoever got close to him using a semi-automatic rifle.

'Good thing I specified no one should bring weapons into the competition. However, seems like some did not quite respected this rule.' He thought while looking at player who were armed themselves with various firearms. Before they were able to do anything, though, the automated turrets activated themselves and eliminated those dangerous players.

- "Oops." Keith simply expressed. "Looks like I forgot to deactivate my turrets. Damn, nobody is allowed to move yet?"

He had expected this kind of behaviour and purposefully let them active so they would kills players who left their turf. Of course, a few innocent players also got shot dead in the process but they would be reappearing within the 'AFK Room' anyways.

Keith took the opportunity to inspect the players who did not move yet and let the carnage end. 'They're quite interesting.' He thought.

- "Alright!" He said once every troublemaker got rid off. "You can all go home now."

The whole situation was actually part of his plan too. It both served to confirm the intentions of the players he did retain while protecting their privacy.

Since Spacol was so well known within Project Overworld because of Keith's exaggerated introduction on the Moon, he could not simply recruit player publicly. After announcing he would not be recruiting anyone, every player who indignated themselves certainly cared a lot more about the fame joining Spacol could bring to them than the actual job itself.

Thanks to that, he was able to remove a few more players off his list of potential condidates. There were now six engineers who held his attention. Obviously, Leyla was one of them. He suspected she even understood his intentions from the get go and pretended like nothing was out of place.

As for the other five, he would have to analyse their behaviour a bit more to take a decision. There was still the possibility they just did not want to die from the turrets or simply hid their real intentions for later on.

'Well, looks like I'll have to think of a phase three to organize for them.' He thought while leaving the arena. After he got back at his base, he disconnected from the game and sent a message using the official forums to Leyla. He simply said she passed the test with success and invited her to his base.

As for the others, they would have to wait another couple of weeks for the results.

- "Hey Michael, how is it going?" He asked while pointing at the crafting machines.

- "Well, the rocket parts seems to have been fully printed out. I made it produce a little more in the meantime. Still sequestring people inside your crazy arena?"

- "Haha! Nope they killed each other and called it a day."

- "What the hell happenned in there?!" Michael exclaimed after realized his friends was dead serious.

- "I may have told them I didn't pick any winner out of the competition, leading to some sort of a general indignation."

- "What?!"

- "Regardless, I'm gonna send another round of parts I'd need by the end of the week to the machines. You're gonna watch over it as always?" He asked his friend.

- "Maybe not, I kind of want to see how I'm doing with building actual engine. Since we have so much leftover parts anyways, I'm gonna help you assemble the next rocket."

- "Nice! However next week I'm gonna need you and Tyler to help me build another base."

- "Wait... You're serious right now?"

- "Don't worry, it's gonna be a fake one."

However, this only added to Michael's confusion. 'What is this devil planning again?' He wondered.

- "Oh and by the way, we're gonna welcome another member in our company tomorrow, or maybe later on depending on whether she read my message already or not."

- "What? But didn't you just said there was no winner?"

- "I only said I didn't pick a winner, though." Keith replied with a funny grimace while walking away.

_______________

'What was he thinking?' Amber thought while shaking her head. She just learnt on the forums about the failure that has been Keith's recruitment competition.

Several players were raging about him and saying how horrible this experience has been for them. However, there were also people who tried defending him by saying they just were not good enough.

All in all, be it in negative or positive, this added even more to the popularity of Keith's and Spacol's related posts on the forums.

As for Amber, she was kind of disappointed by Keith's behaviour in that recent event. He could have let them down in a much more peaceful manner, assuming those players did not have the necessary knowledge to join Spacol. She even started thinking that his popularity made him full of himself.

'What a pity...' She thought. However, she was not really prone to judge a person only because of other people's opinion, and was actually quite eager to learn about his side of the story.

She did send Keith a message after a while, hoping to get a reply in the following hours.

During this time, she continued working on her usual business. There was so much to manage now in the city that she could not take much time off her schedule for other hobbies.

It was a first for them, and this actually took a bit of planning ahead to get there. One could not simply put a stop signs everywhere and the municipal team has had to re-organize the roads and their signage here and there to fluidize the traffic.

On another note, Amber got to witness the progress of several top engineers she had partnered with. Their plans to build airports in each city was eventually getting closer by each day.

For now, those engineers were only at the designing phase and managed to make the prototype of a small airplane. Amber had been there to attend this premiere and was really hyped up about the result.

Finally, the Starise group got to launch their first satellite into orbit. It was not really functional since it could only relay information to the sender, but a good start nonetheless.

'Everything is coming into place. Soon, we'll have a working community all around the globe, able to communicate with each other over several thousands of miles.' She concluded.

_______________

'Invited to a mysterious location yet again?' Leyla thought while looking at the notification on her phone.

After the carnage that had happened at the arena where the competition took place, she left the building and went to Lionheart. She wanted to see if there was a ship that was about to set sail or not. In the end, since the next one was only expected to be leaving the port by the end of the next day, she decided to call it a day and disconnected within an hotel.

She was not quite sure what to think about this whole situation yet, and only after she got back inside her flat was she able to free her mind from agitation. Leyla was quite certain that Keith had actually planned for this all along, but could not do anything about it.

She could only wait in hope he contacted them again or made an announcement on the forums.

It was exactly at this moment that she received a notification about a private conversation on Project Overworld's forums. This time, the direction that had been sent to her was relatively far away from the arena. No way for the participants of the competion to accidentaly cross this place.

In the message, Keith stated that she has been selected to join the company Spacol and that she would be starting her job by tomorrow. There was also a large doc.u.ment of privacy policies linked in the message. She browsed through it in a few minutes before realized this was only applicable within the game.

'No way this is a trap.' She thought. In fact, the username of the sender was exactly the same as Keith's. On top of that, the coordinates he had sent were situated in a totally blank area of the official map communicated by the municipal team of Midgard on the forums a few weeks ago.

'I feel like I'm about to discover Atlantis or something like that. I'm guessing that's also the reason why he said he did not pick any winner publicly. He certainly wanted to stay in the quiet for now.' She meditated. 'Well, let's connect back into the game, no need to wait for a ship after all.'