11 Base securing

Releasing the string of his balista, Keith witnessed a huge bolt leaving the wooden frame at a huge speed and cutting down several trees in half on its way.

'Woah, that's much powerful than I thought!' He realized. After finishing the design of his new defensive weapon, Keith decided to test it at the nearby forest and see whether everything was working as intended or not. Fortunately, he had equipped it with small wheels which facilitated the transport of this weapon. Upon launching, the wheels could be blocked off by large wooden piece to prevent recoil from affecting the balista too much.

'Amber should be happy about this.' Keith thought. 'I don't know how she's gonna carry it up the hill, though.' However, these thoughts left his mind pretty quickly because it would not be his problem in the end.

Getting the balista back in front of his base, Keith continued working on the small underground water pipe he started assembling. This project was supposed to be pretty secretive so he always had to bury the pipe up whenever Amber was supposed to visit. Fortunately, she would be coming tomorrow and he had several hours before him to advance as much he could before going to sleep.

Since he finished working on his steel door, Keith felt a lot more secure than before and did not need to hide all of his important resources away. This, in turn, gave a lot more free time that he would be using to work on his generator project. Whenever he was at school, he would improve and complete its design, leaving him with the manual labor once he connected to Project Overworld.

He was really happy about his current progress and realized this game has been a really fun experience up until now. It has only been two months since the start of this server, but its capacity increased severalfolds. From the initial twenty thousand players, over a hundred thousand people were now competing for survival within the small area that was the world spawnpoint.

Large guilds like the Pioneers gained a lot more members within their ranks and little battles turned into full on wars. Keith liked this situation, for the time being, even though it was kind of stressful. He often went into the official forums and watched various videos and streams about this game. Everytime, he would witness technological advancements and see new weapons being used in the battlefield.

This situation was not to the liking of everyone on the server, though. A large portion of the community, mostly newer players, were protesting against these wars and demanded that the spawnpoint should be left out of every conflict. However, there was no way that the Pioneers and the few other guilds which were fighting against each other would disregard the potential new recruits they could be gaining from the new influx of players. That was why, the most contested territory would always be the 'World Spawnpoint', at least for the time being.

By the end of the day, Keith could give an approximation on the amount of work that was left for his generator project. Accroding to him, the pipe could easily finished in two days, which would be perfect since it was Wednesday and he would have the whole week-end to started working on the generator itself.

'Okay, the balista should be ready and I left a sign for Amber stating the resources I'd need. Let's disconnect for the night.' Keith concluded.

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Upon investigating Keith's base, Amber realized she would not be able to transport the balista on her own. In fact, the man has been foreseeing and told her to bring a few members of her guild on the message he left her.

'Yeah, that's not really useful now...' She breathed out. Amber had already traveled the few miles of distance separating her from Keith's base and she would have to go back and forth to bring another few members. 'Should send a message on Alan's phone?' She pondered. However, the guild master of New Dawn would be connected round the clock whenever he was at home. Alan would sometimes disconnect to take care of his kids and wife, but Amber would not know unless she saw him disconnect.

That was why, with a grunt, Amber went back all the way to her base. 'Well, that gives me the opportunity to bring Keith all the resources he asked me to give him.' She realized. Since she was one of the officers of this guild she easily convinced three members of the resource gathering team to come along with her so they would be able to transport the balista all the way to their base.

After an hour and a half of intense transportation methods, the New Dawn finally counted a balista within their defenses.

'I don't know how they're going to carry it all the way over that tower.' She meditated after remembering where Alan wanted this balista to be placed. 'That's not my problem, though. I should be notifying Alan about it and go back to oversee the scouts.'

Entering the cave he was established inside for the time being, Amber noticed her superior was buried inside tons of battle plans.

- "What are those all?" She could not help but inquire.

- "I'm trying to think of every possibilities for the incoming war. I'm only working with what my scouts reported to me, so there's some blurry areas in the offensive capabilities of the Pioneers for the time being."

- "Oh, I see. Well, one of our scouts named Lastrazor recently noticed three more rams that have been used by that guild, if that may help you."

- "Shit, they're going deep into the siege weapons development. Let's just hope they won't be developing catapults or tebuchets for the time being. If they ever build one of those, we're as good as dead." Alan said in a grave tone. "So, what did you want anyways?"

- "Just wanted to say Keith had finished building the balista I had ordered to him. It's waiting at the bottom of the eastern tower of the north wall."

- "That's good new!" He exclaimed. "Assign two members of the lumberjack team and two people from the north wall division to carrying it on top of the tower." He ordered to Amber. "Have you asked Keith for another balista, by the way?"

- "Yeah, I've left a message before his base." Amber replied.

- "Nice, our preparations are getting more and more interesting. I think we should be able to hold off an unprepared attack from their part." Alan announced while thinking about the Pioneers guild. "Let's just hope we get some more free time before they start discovering our base. What happened to the Dragonairs and the New World Soldiers guilds?"

- "The Dragonairs are getting eviscerated by the Pioneers, I don't think they'll be able to hold off another attack on their part. As for the NWS, they're assuming a defensive posture after the last battle they've had."

- "Shit, if those two get destroyed by the Pioneers, we should be the next ones on the menu. Good, continue your scouting job after you've assigned those people to the installation of the balista."

- "Understood." Amber replied before leaving her boss' office.

'Things are getting quite dire around here. Maybe I should insist on Keith to develop a canon for us, after all. I should ask him next time around.' She concluded before getting busy with her officer job.

_______________

- "Yes!" Keith exclaimed. He had just finished building his manually activated pipe and water was being routed all the way to his base without inconveniance. The bucket he had place by the end of the pipeline was now completely filled to the brink, and that was after only a few seconds of him turning the wheel.

'Okay, now onto the hardest part of my project. Building a generator should be taking me a few weeks of time, at the very least.' He meditated.

However, Keith had finished with his most urgent projects about defending his base so he would be able to freely focus on developing this contraption. After he was done with it, no doubt his progress would rise by severalfold. Electricity was the most important type of power Humanity had ever discovered, and Keith was finally about to take his first steps in this domain.

'Amber asked me for another balista, though. I should be able to shave off another few hours from the contruction since I know how to do it efficiently and I should not have to test it, too. Let's see, I should be done in a full day of work, leaving me with a full Sunday to work on my generator.' Keith pondered for a while.

What flabbergasted him the most was that he would be kind of disorganized before even playing Project Overworld. Now that he has been confronted to so many projects inside his favorite game, he realized he started thinking more in the long term while planning things out constantly. That was only a result of his own survival because he was forced to optimize his every movements if he wanted to keep an edge over the other players of this game.

'Okay, let's start the construction of this balista already!' He motivated himself after thinking of a complete working schedule for the week-end.