Drilling machine

As time went on, Keith's base went through a lot of construction. First off, the young man built some sturdy foundations using lime as a glue to make concrete. Though, this process alone took him several weeks to figure out because it was something new to him. On top of that, he needed to reach really high temperature within a furnace to successfully melt some limestone into lime. That was why, he first had to spend a few weeks creating the best furnace shape he could think of to retain heat as much as possible.

In the end, Keith made quite some progress in masonry and managed to mold a good fifty percent of the foundations of his base. All of this was made according to the plans he has been designing ever since he had the idea to leave his previous base. He had in mind a somewhat large mansion with several rooms where he could be hiding all of his future machineries.

For now, this project seemed quite complex and actually a distant dream the young man was trying to reach, but he had quite a bit of time ahead of him now that he was free from the grasp of the 'New Dawn' guild.

'It's here that I'm going to spend the next couple of years, hopefully. I should be making it as comfortable as possible after all...' The young man thought.

As for Keith's other projects, he has not been making a lot of progress in that regard. In fact, he really wanted to have a safe base where he could be hiding from the other players before embarking onto the eleboration of complex devices.

However, he did finish building the pipe system leading to his now re-assembled steam generator so he had access to electricity. For the time being, this did not prove that useful but he did start making plans for electricity-powered tools like drills, stone cutters and other things he may need in the near future.

Just to be safe, Keith did not just allocate all of his time within Project Overworld to the construction of his base. He knew people would eventually reach this place after fleeing the commotion near the Spawn area. Even if it took months, maybe years for him to cross ways with another player, he had to be ready in case of the worst.

That was why, the young man also continued working on his firearm design in the meantime, slowly getting to know how these things could be improved. The firearms he has been making were really simple up until now. Some barrel were the bullets would be deposited and a gunpowder compartement, without forgetting about a large butt so one could have a firm hold onto the weapon so it does not fly away after each shot. There was also a trigger made out of metal part hitting a flint at huge speed thanks to some mechanical gears leading to the gunpowder being ignited by a spark.

Overall, this rifle design seemed pretty primitive but it was sufficiently advanced to have an edge in those medieval wars that were going on at the moment. Nothing too overpowered, though, as bow and arrows could easily be distributed to more people and were of similar power at the very moment. Sure, a rifle was certain of digging a large hole inside of a player's armor, but the rate of fire of this thing was so slow that it did not really matter. It got a lot of range, though, and in a full on war, rifles were really useful as a defensive weapon like how the New Dawn guild defended their base, hidden behind huge stone walls. Back then, the Pioneers had not really been prepared for this type of defensive measures and their archers got shredded open by a mix of arrows and bullets.

However, when Keith looked back on what happened that day, he realized the offensive strategies of the Pioneers were not on point. They could have easily defended their archers while slowly marching towards the walls of the New Dawn base before unleashing a deadly volley at their enemies.

Fortunately for Keith and his past allies, they did not do any of that and the battle ended up on a sounding victory for the defending team. Now that the young man had a bit of a leeway relatively to player conflicts, he realized that there were quite a bit of improvements that had to be made to his rifle design.

He did spend weeks upgrading his tools and his weapons until he was finally satisfied by his creations.

'For the time being, this should be enough to keep me safe from some wandering players.' Keith meditated. As an added benefit, hunting animals became a much easier task after he improved the aim on his rifle.

In Project Overworld, lots of animals wandered around the plains and the forests. Although their number were not quite enough to feed large parties of players over extended periods of time, just like farming was several times faster in the game than in the 'real world' because of Project Overworld's day and night cycles being complete in under a few hours, animal husbandry was also an easy task for its players.

Every guild and player parties had to resolve themselves to farming or breeding animals at one point to have a steady food income. Though, these needs were clearly not as demanding as in the real life and a player could be living off of berries for eternity as long as their they remembered to go and collect some in the nearby forests.

As for Keith, he prefered to hunt some animals so he did not have to spend hours collecting berries every single day. Depending on the game he managed to get his hands on, he could be feasting on its body for several real life days.

'This does seem quite cruel from me, but it is just a simulation, after all.' Keith deplored.

_______________

After activating his generator, Keith plugged some of the wires coming off of it to the device he had just finished working on. With a roaring mechanical sound, the large metallic part of the build started rotating at a sluggish pace.

Several dozens of second later, the machine finally reached its performance peak and the drill started rotating at over a thousand and a half turns per minute. It was not anything impressive, but Keith felt really joyful at this very moment.

'I did it! I made a working drilling machine!' He excitedly thought. This project had been at the back of his mind since he started establishing himself inside his previous base and since then he went through iterations of plans one of the other. His machine was not really efficient at the moment, but the fact that he was able to complete it was a huge boost for his morale.

Just like he expected, though, after trying to test it on a nearby rock the machine could not hold off against its sturdiness and the generator turned off after throwing sparks everywhere.

'Oops, did I forget about something?' The man realized. In fact, the generator should not have turned off from just this. Even if it could not generate enough power for his drilling unit, it latter should have just slowed down by a lot and nothing should have turned off like that. 'Was my ground plug not working, did a short circuit destroy my generator?' He could not help but worry.

Fortunately, after tinkering around with the generator for a while, it did power back up like normal. Nothing has been lost in the process but Keith realized he had to improve his generator design so he could start producing more electricty. Afterwards, he also had to find a way to upgrade his drilling machine and the young man would finally be able to quicken the pace at which he was digging through the ground.

'Well, let's get starting with the construction of that improved generator then!' He motivated himself back to work.