Firing up

During the following weeks, Keith dedicated all of his free time working on a firearm protoype. Whenever he was at the university, he would draw some plans for the various parts needed to make a fonctional rifle.

Afterwards, he would put his ideas into play by melting some metal and refining it the way he intended. It took quite a bit of time, but he managed to build the butt of the gun, the mechanical part with a flint that would trigger a shot and finally the barrel itself.

The cross was the most simple part of the craft. Made out of wood, the only reason it took a bit of time was because he wanted a strong grip onto his firearm and he added a few plant fibers around it.

The trigger complicated things a lot for Keith. He had to think of a way to increase the action of pressing the trigger so it would be hitting the flint with enough force to let out a spark and set the gunpowder on fire. It took a half a week worth of time, including the week-end, for him to design this single rifle part because it required so much precision. Most of it was made out of iron and he has had to smelt it again and again until he was satisfied with the result.

Finally, the canon took him almost a week to complete. He still had a full Sunday before him to finish his rifle prototype but he was getting the hang of it. Keith has had a lot of trouble making the canon because he tried making it out of a single part. Either misdosing the amount of nickel ore he would put into his iron soup or having troubles with the mold itself, Keith thought he would not be able to accomplish the feat of creating a rifle canon until two weeks later.

Fortunately, the 'System' came in handy and made his alloy a lot purer so he only had to re-design his mold few times along the week. In the end, Keith was really satisfied about the result and could not wait to experiment it somewhere in the distance.

Of course, during the meantime, he also had to prepare more weapons for Amber who ended up placing larger orders onto him. It seemed like they were having troubles with a few other groups and started rushing for armement. She even gave up on asking him to make pickaxes for the time being and he focused on making bows and arrows.

Naturally, Keith did his best to hide the fact was refining metal into a rifle while appearing as friendly as possible towards her.

'This fits so well into the cross!' Keith rhapsodized while assembling his rifle. It was time for the final test and he was really excited about it. It was a very old model, though, with manual reload like in the Middle-Age. But it was his first try and he did not have enough precise tools to make a more modern firearm.

He only hoped that it would be sufficient for now. He heard on the forums that the large 'Pioneers' guild was going through an arms race and started mass-producing copper spears and a few armored parts for their members. Keith was kind of confident in being able to kill on of these players, but he did not know the amount of shots it would require exactly.

The best case scenario would be a clean one-shot to get rid of them since he had to reload after each shot. However, he did not know the power it would be able to output yet, nor if the rifle would be working at all.

After getting all the way to a nearby forest, Keith started stalking around looking for some wild animals. After a bit of time, he spotted a deer grazing peacefully a few hundred feet away from his position. Taking a deep breath, Keith aimed at the animal before releasing the trigger.

His arms were pushed back with so much force that he though his gun exploded in his hands. Fortunately, his firearm was still intact after the bullet successfully its canon.

'That knockback is surreal!' He thought. As a matter of fact, he did not even hit the deer with this bullet as he started galloping away in fear. Keith approached the site where he aimed towards and noticed a still smoking piece of metal. 'Seems like the amount of gunpowder in the rifle is a bit too much to handle.' He concluded at this sight.

There would have been no way this shot would have been lethal since the bullet was almost detroyed before even exiting the canon. Nevertheless, it has been a pretty good test for Keith and it gave him a lot of ideas on how to improve the design of his medieval rifle.

'I should be able to finish it by the end of next week.' He realized. 'Let's get back to work!'

Now that his firearm prototype was onto a good track, Keith had no plans left to work on whenever he would be at school. His rifle would be enough in terms of defenses for the time being, and an armor would be pretty much useless. Thus, he decided to focus on building a generator. This thing would be producing electricity for him which he could be exploiting to work towards bigger projects.

While disconnected from the game, he studied everything he could find about generators so he could have a better understanding on how to reproduce one inside Project Overworld.

For a couple of weeks, he accumulated knowledge and started experimenting in his favorite video game. This project would certainly be needed several weeks, nor months, before being accomplished but he had that time before him anyways.

To kick things off, he started designed the chamber of the generator which would be evaporating water into steam. He planned on using a furnace as its base since it was so easy to make, and use water as both the power generation and the coolant. For that purpose, he also had to design a pump so he could be supplying his generator with water from the nearby river.

'This is going to be a real headscratch...' Keith breathed out. This project was already giving him a lot of time inside and outside of the game but the more he delved into it the more he realized it would be requiring a lot of time.

Keith also started building iron weapons for the New Dawn guild in the meantime. He had to negotiate with Amber that she would be bringing him all the necessary ores for him to make weapons, so he would not have to tap into his own reserves. The job itself was not that hard to accomplish and he did not spend more than four hours every two days into making weapons for them.

It did restrict his schedule because he had to make some weapons for them, but the excess of resources he would get from the trade was sufficient to offset any constraint applied to him. He almost did not need to explore caves anymore, as he freely focused onto his blacksmithing tasks for the time being.

As a side project, Keith also made sure to constantly improve his rifle design so it would be stronger and faster to reload. He was pretty satisfied about it for now, but he knew it would not be sufficient in the future. Things were starting to get really tense throughout Project Overworld and it was just a matter of time before a war broke out.

_______________

- "It's been quite a while since we've got attacked by other guild." Amber remarked to the attention of Alan.

However, the man was a lot more concerned than she was and immediately replied :

- "We can't loosen our attention. I heard some of the bigger guilds were pretty advanced technology-wise and started making weapons out of various metals. We must prepare and get a few steps ahead of them before it's too late." He concluded.

- "Yeah, but how are we going to do it?" She asked

- "I think we'd need a technological breakthrough, like rifles, to do so. Tell Keith that he should be focusing on designing one for the time being."

- "Sure things, I was supposed to go there tomorrow anyways so I'll ask him to make some for us." She replied before calling it a day. It was one in the morning for her and she had to attend to her real-life occupations tomorrow.

'Looks like things aren't settled yet, we'll need to be extra careful.' She meditated. 'I hope Keith keeps on doing well because we sure will be relying on him in the near future.'