Project Overworld

The 'rocket assembler' was getting bigger and larger by each day. Keith and Xena had made a model of the machine when they started working on it and everyone was now following their plans.

Thanks to the crane, it was really easy to build upon the robot and assemble its various parts. In the meantime, another binome would always be working on the rest of the machines which were necessary to build every parts of a rocket.

These machines were all connected to the main assembler using conveyor belts so Spacol members could be testing the robot with actual parameters.

All in all, the construction was going pretty smoothly and Keith did not have to change their organization for this kind of 'big' project. This also meant that their project related to the EOSS was being active and binomes took turn to take care of this matter.

'How are the other players are doing?' Keith could not help but wonder. He has not been learning a lot of things recently on the forums, apart from the latest buildings contructed in some random city he was not even interested in.

Starise was being quite silent and the few other projects that Midgard's municipal team had instigated were not either being talked about. This was such a strange fact because Spacol has recently boosted their production rate and Keith felt like they could accomplish so much more now.

Excepting from the perfect location he built his base upon, he has not even had a lot of advantages over other communities and he had expected to hear more about people reaching space or something like that. Instead, people fell into complacency and enjoyed their time within the large cities that were built onto the various continents of this world.

Well, even though he said that in his mind, there has been quite an amount of achievements reached by people unrelated to any city. He has heard in the past about one group which was really advanced with rocketry science, but lost it all when they were invaded by an annoying herd of player killers.

Actually, this was certainly the reason why Keith did not hear about a lot of successful groups around the world. Yggdrasil was only so big, and there were players with varying goals in this game. Some did enjoy their time creating the most beatiful house in Project Overworld. Other only connected a few days per week to check how their base were doing. A lot of people were also obsessed with the survival trait of this game and often invaded other bases to steal all their food and materials.

Thinking about it some more, Keith realized he has been quite lucky throughout his journey within Project Overworld. First, he managed to get into the the first day of the launch of this game. There has only been twenty thousands players at that point and he definitely got several weeks, nay months ahead of the next batch of player joining the server.

He also got to be 'protected' by the New Dawn guild, from which Amber has ironically been a part of. Keith could not help but comment in his head : 'Two successful players of this game have actually been closely related to the New Dawn at one point.'

Afterwards, the fact that he did establish onto another continent gave him an edge over people installed onto the first. A lot less unwanted attention and more resources for his own use... Keith has had a pretty peaceful time since then.

However, even considering all of this, there should have been a few other people having the same, or similar, odds.

'Well, nothing really to be concerned of.' Keith concluded. For now, he had formed the best team he could have imagined and they were all full of ambition.

Another couple of weeks later, Keith launched into space yet again. This time around, Michael would be joining him on the EOSS. Everytime he got there, Keith was really excited about witnessing his space station grow up.

It was around one hundred and thirty square yards in size and its total number of modules now exceeded twenty. Also, most of the critical rooms of this base were reinforced with huge steel platings to prevent micrometeorites from piercing one of his fuel tanks or oxygen reservoirs.

Michael was also quite excited about working from up there and joked with Keith during the whole travel. It was a bit easier for them to get inside the spatial base because Keith had brought another space suit with him this time around. Since he needed all of his comrades to be working from up there, they would be requiring a large amount of spacesuits for the occasion. They would need at least five of them as well as a few replacement ones.

Just like the other times, Keith teached Michael how to navigate around the base and repair any impact done to the hull. Afterwards, they expanded the EOSS with the new modules Spacol has launched up there during the last month and a half.

By the end of their stay up there, they also made sure to improve the design of Keith's space shuttle. According to him, it was finally becoming one of those interesting spacecrafts from movies and it could even fit another person into it. Three of them could now be sitting inside its c.o.c.kpit while its cargo part could fit several hundred tons of various materials.

'Mhh... Should we try and install a few mining drills in there next time around?' Keith wondered. Being able to gather resources from meteorites was also one of his goals for the future and having various tools on his space shuttle would prove kind of useful. However, he did need to find a solution to gather all the bits of meteorites he would be digging, so there would be a few more planning out to do before starting to install anything crazy on this vehicle.

Just like that, Spacol members took turn to work one the two main projects Keith had set up. Every six weeks or so, Keith would be going into space with a one of his friends to teach them all the necessary tricks to being able to work from up there. By the time he finished going there at least once with each of them, they were already quite advanced with the building of their 'rocket assembler'.

The crane was getting a bit tiny to work on this project and Keith has had to expand it upon itself by adding metal frames. It now measured around one hundred and sixty feet tall as the structure of the assembler itself was as high as eighty feet.

They had finished the process of building the engine of the rocket and assembling all the necessary electronics needed there. They also managed to add several strong arms onto their robot to transport the main liquid propellant tank on top of the engine.

This process was really simple and the tank was not even assembled to the engine yet. For this purpose, they would need a much more precise machine which could be handling a torch to seal everything together.

However, each member of Spacol was improving by the day to the point Keith was not even concerned about leaving them onto his most important projects. They still lacked the large amount of knowledge he has acc.u.mulated over the years he has working within this base, but in terms of engineering they were almost as proefficient as himself. The latter also improved a lot since he started working with his five employees, but more so in the management of his team and of his projects.

Since his engineering skills were not as required as they did when he was alone, he instead focusing on the organization of their team as well as designing models which could be understood by everyone. To Leyla's eyes, Keith now had the stature of a really successful company owner and she would not even be surprise if he founded his own company in the 'real world'.

Obviously, there would also be monetary problems to take into account but along the many conversation they have had when working together one some projects, he had told her he completed an economics diploma. If he did ever decide to form a company, she was pretty certain she wanted to be a part of it.

One day, she could not help but ask him the crucial question : "Since you're not really having fun in your factory right now, why won't you make your own company?"

It took a bit of time for Keith to understand she was talking about real-life.

- "Well, I've thought about this. However, I'm already quite busy with Project Overworld and I don't think founding a company would be that easy."

Leyla thought for a bit before continuing the conversation : "Well, we could take care of Spacol while you focus on making your company in the real world."

Keith rose his eyebrows at this proposition.

- "That's not a bad idea. However, only Michael and Tyler live in the same city as I do. I know you live in the States as well, but Jim and Xena are living really far away from us. Other than the five of you, I don't really know which people I should be recruiting nor the type of activity our company should have. As a matter of fact, I don't even think we'd be able to have the same goals as we do in Project Overworld. I've thought about this for a while, but companies related to rocketry are needing a ridiculous amount of investment, nothing we could ever dream of financing."

With this long explanation, Keith sealed off this matter and pressed Leyla to focus back on the current project they were working towards.

'Well, there might be a way.' Leyla thought while some interesting possibilites crossed her mind. However, for now, she did not want to expose her ideas yet and instead resumed working on the conveyor belt they were trying to optimize.