Project Overworld

'Let's see how this camper reacts to this!' Keith jubilated. He then proceeded to take out a small ovaloid object from his inventory and prepared for the next attack.

It seemed like Jim was not going to move from his safe position, and only his head was sticking out from time to time to check Keith's position. At this view, the latter's smile streched even more. He unhook a metal part off of his 'secret weapon' and threw it towards the stone formation Jim hid inside.

'Spot on!' Keith exclaimed in his mind. After a couple of seconds, the object detonated and Keith could hear the surprised voice of Jim being sprayed with paint. Waiting for this signal, Keith came out from behind his tree and exclaimed : "Well, looks like we have a winner!"

Without giving a glance behind him, Keith joined his friends waiting for him at the edge of the forest.

- "What happened?" Michael asked after noticing Keith had not a single trace of paint on his clothes.

- "I eliminated Jim, he should be returning there at any moment." He explained to his friend.

- "Wait... What?" Michael manifested his surprise.

- "Regarding the competition..." Leyla started. "What was that paintball gun you were using?"

- "Oh this?" Keith mimicked a surprised face. "Simply an improved paintball gun, nothing to be really concerned of."

Leyla replied with an amused smirk and instead focused on the agitation between the trees.

- "That's cheating!" Jim came out of the woods, covered in paint from head to toes.

- "What do you mean?" Keith feigned a concerned look.

- "You just cheated! You used a different type of weapon!"

- "Well, there's nothing against the rules to bring our own personal weapons into the competition" Keith remarked.

- "Yeah, but... What about sportsmanship?"

- "Haha! Look at your frustrated face! Listen, you have to check every bit of information at your disposal before blindly trusting everyone to comply the rules. On this day, you lost the paintball competition because someone else exploited the rules to get an unfair advantage." Keith took the opportunity to teach Jim a lesson. He was a young sixteen years old man and had the tendency to be really naive.

Although the main point in Keith using a paint grenade and an automatic paintball gun in this competition was to have fun, Jim would remember this humiliation for a long time.

- "Anyways, those were prototypes I wanted to implement into our paintball games. It'll be a bit more interesting to have various types of weapons to choose from." Keith exposed. They had already added a few interesting obstacles to their karting course and he wanted to add more features to each and every one of the games they currently were playing.

After the event, every Spacol member returned within their base and started organizing themselves for the following week.

'Alright, we should be finishing off the rocket assembler in two weeks.' Keith thought. 'Let's get everyone to work onto the same project for the time being.'

Before any of them disconnected from the game, Keith announced that he wanted everyone to focus onto the rocket assembler. Since they were almost with it, the more people took care of this matter the easier they could detect any problem or faulty part.

Finally, thirteen days later, Spacol officially inaugurated the 'Rocket assember v1.0'. Since it has been the way they designated this machine from the beginning, they decided to stick with this name while only adding the version of the machine at the end in case they decided to revamp it. The structure was around one hundred and sixty feet tall and its base was almost one hundred square feet.

It was a really impressive construction, but the rocket it would be assembling were quite a bit smaller than the ones Keith used to erect. It was not that concerning since these would only be transporting materials into space, and not satellites or space station modules.

What concerned Keith the most was the power consumption of this machine since he did not really improve his coal factory lately. Fortunately, since only some of its parts would be used at a specific moment, there would be no need for more electrical power for the time being. Though, Keith noticed a bit of efficiency loss when the resources train routed resources towards their base while several of his machines were working at the same time.

While the others would be testing the 'Rocket assembler', he would instead be installing another generator or two into the factory. He has been having a coal surplus since he improved his drilling units anyways, so he was pretty certain there would be no other maintenance needed other than adding generators.

The third week into the month, Keith started the construction of improved coal generators, sometimes helping his friends taking care of the 'Rocket assembler' while waiting for some parts to be produced. By each day, he could witness the work of the assembler being done and was really impressed about what it could accomplish.

However, there were a lot of imperfection being done by the machine and Spacol members had to manually take care of these mistakes if they wanted their rocket to be able to launch. While Leyla and Tyler both worked onto the design of the machine itself, noting every part to be improved and thinking of solutions, the others were fixing the launcher and the robotic arms themselves.

From an external point of view, they really looked like a proficient team used to rocket conception for several years. Keith was really glad he could be counting on trusty engineers, and friends on top of that, to take care of very picky matters while he was focusing on more urgent ones.

After a week of total time working on his coal factory and the new generators he installed there, Keith finally joined his friends back and helped them with optimizing the design of their 'Rocket assembler'.

It did take them more time than they had expected to be finished with the second version of the assembler, named 'Rocket assembler v1.1'. The month of May had just finished and they a few days into June, meaning they could not make it within the time schedule Keith had planned for.

However, the latter was totally unaffected by this change. Those were only temporary deadlines, used to get an idea over what they would be doing next so there would not be some transition time between a project and the next one.

Instead, Keith wanted to be certain a machine was completed before rushing things out and having something either really inefficient or that could break at any moment. This was also one of the advantages in doing all of this within a game. There was no investors, no money to be concerned of and they could be releasing their next product whenever they felt like it.

- "So, are yall ready for the real test launch?" Keith asked his employees.

- "Yup!" Michael confirmed.

The others also gave their approval as they could not wait to see the results of their work. They all took shelter within the control room giving a plain view over the entirety of the spatial room thanks to its reinforced glass window.

One of the final concerns of Keith would be that the 'Rocket assembler' could be damaged by the launch of the rocket, so he installed several more vents on the sides of the launching pads and asked for the base of the machine to be reinforced with tungsten plates which were really resistant to heat.

Keith activated the computer installed within the room and selected the rocket that they wanted to launch. Since some of them had been working on another rocket for their incoming departure to the EOSS, he double-checked if he chose the right one before pressing the button starting the ignition phase of the launcher.

A signal was sent via radio waves to the rocket and its engine started producing smoke and flames. For now, everything seemed to go according to plan but nobody within the control rooms dared to open their mouth in fear they might bring bad luck to their work.

If this did not work now, they would be working on the 'Rocket assembler' for at least another couple of weeks. They were really exited to start working in space and did not want to delay there launch anymore. Xena and Tyler even had yet to be initiated to their first launch.

After only a few minutes, the main engine was sufficiently heated up and the launching phase started on its own. The rocket started lifting off the ground after the boosters activated themselves. In a couple of seconds, the attachment pylons were decoupled from the rest of the structure and their first automatically assembled rocket launched into the air.

Everyone in the control room started celebrating for their success, totally eclipsing their previous failures. Even Keith found himself smiling like a small child, before repressing his emotions to follow the rest of the launch actively.

For now, the rocket seemed to follow the intended trajectory and was already a few miles up the air. Only time would tell if this launch had been a real success.

However, hope insinuated into the hearts of every Spacol members as these six intense months of work were finally coming to an end.