18 Studies

It has been over a month since Keith started building his base near that lake. One month during which he worked hard to rebuild everything he has developed since the start of this game. Fortunately, he did transport a lot of materials along with him after leaving the outskirts of the 'Spawn area'. On top of that, the young man had accumulated a lot of knowledge that he did not have when he started playing this game so it was not that much of a hassle to recreate his machines.

'This is such a peaceful place to live in.' Keith meditated. 'No requests, no latent war and no need to hide myself... Yeah, I really dig this new livestyle.' He sighed in elation while watching the now familiar landscape surrounding him. On top of being beautiful, this place seemed really hard to siege and the young man was already thinking of all the ways he could be defending his future base.

In fact, the lake he baptized 'Serenity lake' was right next to a hill where Keith started making plans for a building. Thanks to this elevation, he could easily be watching over his territory while installing hard-to-reach defenses.

However, this has not been his concern over the past few weeks he spent there. Instead, he searched for a few cave systems around the area and established a map of the lake and its surroundings. This has been a major help for him to get accustomed to this new place while making him realize where would be the areas complicated to defend from potential invaders.

Thus, Keith now had quite a better idea on what would be his future plans and how he would be able to achieve them. First of all, the young man really needed to exploit that electricity he started producing back at his previous base. Thanks to this new source of power, he would be able to dig the soil easily, install automated defense mechanisms and a whole lot of other devices.

Thankfully, he did dismantle his steam generator and embark its parts on his wooden car so Keith easily assembled it back in under a week. Afterwards, he started tinkering piping system that would be leading water all the way up the hill where he would be building his base. For the time being, the young man did not have enough materials to finish this system but managed to assemble about a fifth of the pipe.

Regarding minerals, Keith had spotted quite a few cave systems inside the nearby mountains used his iron pickaxe to easily mine some metal ores. In the future, he planned to be designing a drill he could be using for that purpose but he necessitated electricity to do so. Hell, he may even have to invent batteries so he could transport his drill everywhere.

Though, there were intermediate solutions using other sources of power like coal but such a device would have to be enormous to even run properly. For the time being, Keith preferred to be using his trusty hand and pickaxes to do the job and focus on established a base.

During this lapse, Keith also watched a few streams of people playing Project Overworld. The situation became pretty hectic back at the World Spawnpoint and people were fighting against each other based on which guild they were a part of. Some obviously joining in just to have fun beating other players up but overall this type of behaviour was unreasonable to the young man.

The game offered this much possibilities, and yet they preferred to be killing each other using medieval weapons.

'There are so many games on the market that could satisfy their desire for blood... Why would they waste their time like that inside Project Overworld?' He often lamented.

However, Keith little to no attention to this type of player. Instead, he plugged in the streams of people experimenting with interesting ideas. Some started developing vehicles, others were experimenting with energy production.

Overall, it seemed like Keith was pretty well advanced regarding technology. Sure, his car was really slow and could not transport more than a few tons of materials, and his generator was not even plugged in to a real electricity distribution system, but those were projects that he could be expanding towards quite easily. In fact, now that Keith was hundreds of miles away from the Spawn area, he was pretty confident in his ability to overcome any challenge.

'Let's hope war doesn't degenerate and lead those resourceful engineers to their demise.' Keith often meditated while watching some of his favorite streamers. Fortunately, some of the newer players were really uninteresting in those guild battles and started establishing a colony for people to be living in. Basically, their goal was to build a city where people could be trading all sorts of materials and expose their new ideas to the others.

In 2033, the internet connection between countries was not a problem anymore. The optical fiber connected everyone with broadband and the cultural mix within video games became a lot more important. Thus, in this Project Overworld server, players coming from America all the way to Oceania were interacting with each other without much latence.

Keith's friends at the university started talking about Project Overworld and how they would like to be a part of those large wars. Even the medias started talking seriously about this game, as it offered limitless possibilities and Human history was basically being rewinded there.

Seeing one's favorite game being recognized by the whole world really was a satifying fact. Keith was not different and he felt like his efforts were being valued up by the rising popularity of Project Overworld. What if he showcased how much progress he has made during the past few months?

Though, he did not really want people from finding out where he was established nor did he want to share his inventions to the others. Being ahead was also part of the reason why he was engaged so much in this simulation.

Thus, until he was not certain of his safety, Keith decided to keep focusing on his own projects which were becoming more and more demanding, both mentally and in terms of resources. In fact, things could only get more complex from now on and Keith worked really hard not to feel discouraged. He could not give up after all the time he put into this game, not before he accomplished the dreams that motivated him for so long, exploring space that was.

The fact that he could do everything by himself, without the need of anyone's help, made a huge difference between this world and the real one. He really felt like he could accomplish virtually anything in this game.

However, when looking at the possibilities Project Overworld offered and the level of knowledge he had to put in to make a simple contraption, he also felt quite a bit lost. His real world studies were not related to engineering in any way but since he only needed about a year and a half to complete his university diploman, he could only keep focusing and work hard to earn a living in the future.

'Anyways, I should really finish the foundations of my base so I may develop those side projects as soon as possible.' Keith thought before going back to work.

_______________

- "I'm here for the daily report, Sir." The leader of the scouting team announced himself in from of Alan's office.

- "Good. Let me hear what you've got." The later said after inviting the man to take a seat.

- "The West was a huge success. After we took down the Dark Raiders' main base, their troops dismantled by themselves and their members scattered here and there. This guild won't be posing a problem to us anymore."

Ever since the guild leader of the New Dawn, Alan, decided to conquer some land to expand their territory, the group managed to grow quite big. Not only did they gain several times more recruits into their ranks, they also took down some of their competitors while developing their technology even more.

The canons Keith had designed for them helped them quite a lot in their conquest of the world, but Alan would not recognize that traitor's usefulness and congratulated his own engineers for their good job at reproducing canons in mass.

However, things were not that easy for the New Dawn. The guild Pioneers was still one of the biggest in the world and they also managed to recruit new players while developing their armament. They almost got total control over the World Spawnpoint, but had to withdraw from there, in the end.

In fact, after they managed to build a few outposts near the Spawn area, people from other guilds saw the benefits the Pioneers could rip from such an advantageous position and started attacking from everywhere. Althought the large guild could easily fend off against these under-equipped players, the constant respawning near the World Spawnpoint meant they were vitually fighting against infinite hordes of players.

- "Unfortunately, we also lost an outpost to the guild Lasting Warcry in the southern area. Apparently, their army got dealt a huge blow in return, but they did deploy their whole troops for that."

'This isn't that disturbing, huh?' Alan thought. 'In fact, why don't we deploy one of our main squadrons to take care of this annoying guild at once?' He strategized.

Since the huge defeat the Pioneers went through by attacking the New Dawn's fortified camp, the situation worsened even more across the several dozen miles surrounding the Spawn area. Smaller guild came out from hiding and the newer players also got to establish new guild everywhere. Basically, this area was now a perpetual battlefield.

To Alan, this situation was heavenly. After tasting victory, it seemed like he could not get enough of it and started expanding his guild in every direction. They now were in control of over ten outposts, on top of their main base of operation.

'Well, we should really go on the offensive against the Pioneers now, shouldn't we?' Alan thought as a mischievous smile pointed on his face.