14 Mobility

A sleepy-headed student let out a long yawn within the large amphitheater.

Since a few days ago, when the battle between the New Dawn guild and the Pioneers broke out, Keith has been spending every single second of his free time inside Project Overworld. While he has been working on building a few more cannons for his benefactors, he also managed to finish his generator design.

At first, it required a lot of maintenance because some pistons kept on jaming and a large quantity of steam would escape through a few openings instead of being re-routed into the system. In any case, it now seemed to be working as intended and Keith excitedly began working on new projects exploiting this new kind of energy.

However, his mind would now be constantly occupied by an eerie feeling of insecurity. Instead of being reassured by his allies' victory, he felt like it was time for him to move on, and sooner than later. In fact, the more he would be staying inside this cramped cave, the more complicated things would become.

First off, he required a lot more space for future machines and a cave was really limited in that regard. Of cource, he could be excavating its walls to gain some more space, but it would be a long process for a mediocre result.

Then again, the New Dawn guild would keep asking him for some tools and weapons, leaving him with less overall free time. At first, this cooperation really benefited him as he kept on stocking loads of resources that Amber would be giving him. However, as of recently, he started feeling like he would be spending mroe and more time trying to design new and improved weapons for them. When working on the cannons, he also realized the resources he would be gaining in that trade turned out insufficient to cover the costs of this full metal weapon.

Finally, the Pioneers would be coming back. Keith did not exactly know when they would be going for another offensive, nor did he know what type of weapons they would be coming back with, but he did not want to be around the area when another battle broke out between these two guilds.

Those were all the reason why Keith ultimately decided that he should be leaving far away from anyone else. He wanted to establish onto an open area where he could be expanding at his heart's content without being in constant fear of being attacked by another player. Since they were only sharing a continent between a few hundred thousand players, it would be extremely unliked that Keith ever crossed ways with other people if he went a few hundred miles away from spawn.

Letting out another yawn, the student tried to shake himself concious. His university courses would often be pretty tiring, especially since he was trying to plan things out for his escape inside Project Overworld.

However, Keith was also quite preoccupied wtih his future within this large and real world. He could not fathom missing some lessons just to spend more time inside a video game, nor did he want his parents to be disappointed by his results. That was why, he would force himself to study hard at home, while trying to take some important notes at school.

By the end of the week, Keith managed to design a vehicle that would be helping him with transporting his most important resources to a new spot. He did not know exactly when Amber would be asking him for some complex weaponry, but he wanted to prepare as fast as possible for such eventuality.

Its wheels and its overall structure were not really a problem, and Keith even had a pretty good idea on what its total size would average. The problem laid in the materials and resources he currently had access to. In fact, he had yet to discover petrolum and doubted he would be able to do so in another couple of years. Without this famous 'black gold' that was so popular in the 'real world' because of its multiple uses, Keith would be pretty limited in his options to make a vehicle.

That was why, he decided to go by a design of a charcoal engine. He did already make a generator and was pretty knowledgeable in regards of how he could be exploiting this material to produce energy. Of course, Keith did not expect the final product to reach high speeds, but even a few dozen miles per hour would be sufficient. As long as he was a tad bit faster than a human running at full speed, he especially needed a strong and sturdy vehicle that would be able to transport a whole ton of materials.

Near the end of the day, Amber visited him, just like he has been expecting.

'What the hell...' She thought upon getting closer to Keith's base. The place did change a lot since last time she came here. A large metal pipe was leading towards the interior of the cave while a loud buzzing could be heard from several hundred yards of distance.

It felt like she just entered a factory, and she even started half-expecting a few lights to turn on. However, the door was not closed so she invited herself inside. She was immediately welcomed by steam and loud engineering sounds. Keith was currently working some metal using a hammer, until he finally spotted the newcomer.

- "Oh, hello Amber! To what may I owe the pleasure of your visit?"

- "Erm... What is that?" She inquired while pointing at the large machine that was making so much noise.

- "Oh, just a generator. Nothing too shabby." Keith arrogantly replied. "I guess you wanted me to start working on another weapon design, right?"

- "Yeah... Erm... I wanted to ask three more cannons in the upcoming two weeks."

- "Pretty tight schedule, huh? I guess I could take care of it." He estimated. However, what he was actually calculating was the time required to finish working on his vehicle. According to him, it would certainly be possible to finish it in three weeks of time, that he would certainly be able to get by asking the New Dawn guild for some delays while convincing them that everything would be alright.

In fact, he had not planned to work on these cannons at all and would instead spend his entire time preparing for his escape.

'I should be able to foul them for at least two weeks and a half, after which I should have a bit of delay before they decided to come and take care of me.' Keith meditated.

Amber was dumbfounded. Everything around here looked like the inside of a factory with all these furnaces and a few metal workbenches here and there.

Keith did not even hesitated to comply to her order, and she was left speechless. She had prepared for complex negotations, but since he was able to make a generator it did not seem impossible for him to make three cannons within two weeks.

- "Well, I guess that was all I wanted to talk about." Amber let out in a breath.

- "Fine by me. See you in two weeks, Amber." Keith pressed her to leave.

- "Erm... See you I guess?" She started leaving the factory while being as confused as ever.

'Good, she left without elaborating on that working schedule or anything else. I guess she wouldn't try and come back here before another week, at the very least.' Keith jubilated. 'I should really focus on making that damn vehicle now!' He motivated himself.

_______________

After a few minutes of walking around the landscape, Amber arrived in front of her boss' office and knocked at the door. A deep voice came out from inside the room : "What is it?" He asked

- "It's Amber. I came back to report on Keith's situation."

- "Oh yeah, come inside."

Alan was seated behind his wooden desk, working on a few plans for several battle scenarios.

- "Did he comply on making those cannons?"

- "Yeah." Amber replied. "The weird thing is that he did not even try to negotiate  and simply accepted my order."

- "Maybe he did see that we were capable at successfully defending against the Pioneers. Or maybe did he realize we could be razing his base in under a few minutes. In any case, seems like a good things to me." Alan explained his point of view.

However, Amber hesitated and would not answer for a couple of minutes. Alan finally caught her to her reasonning and asked her : "Do you think he would try and escape? It wouldn't be a that great of an idea since he would be losing most of his progress up until now."

- "Yeah, I know that full well. That's why I found his reaction so strange." She breathed out. "Well, I should go and visit him in a week, to check on his progress regarding our cannons." She concluded.

- "Yeah. At that point, if he does try and make a foul out of us, we should be enslaving him inside our base. Actually, if it weren't for you I would have done so since the start of our relationship with him." Alan proclaimed. "Anyways, let's get back to work, we have a war to prepare."