Arms race

"BOOM!" The sound of an explosion reverberated throughout the forest.

- "Now that's what I call a weapon!" Keith exclaimed.

With a single bullet, he managed to seize the thin trunk of a tree from thirty feet away. The recoil, albeit strong, was now much more manageable than it has been in the past. He added a few iron plates here and there to make his rifle heavier and thus having a less significant recoil.

As for the aiming, Keith was finally getting the hang of it. The gun itself seemed to shoot in a pretty straight line, so he has had to train so he could be hitting targets from really far away for a few hours. For that purpose, he also installed a sight at the end of the barrel to help him aim better.

'Reinventing the firearm... It feels like I'm doing things wrong but I can't quite do anything about it. The most populated guilds are already equipping themselves with bows and arrows, so a rifle is the only way I could defend myself from these people.' Keith meditated.

In fact, if his security was not at risk at the moment, he would much prefer to focus on learning everything necessary about steam generators and start developing electronical technologies. However, he was kind of stuck at the moment because Amber would always inspect his bas whenever he was not connected to the game and this left him forced to hide his most important resources elsewhere.

He knew about her movements because he scattered some really thin threads of plants across his base before leaving the game to attend to his university courses but they would almost always be moved around like someone stepped on them.

For now, he hid his most of his ores and some of his creations in a small hidden cave, but it was a really precarious hiding spot. If the New Dawn guild decided to ferret around the landscape a bit more, they would most certainly uncover this cave too.

Thus, Keith finally decided on improving his base. At the moment, he was lacking quite a bit of space to be able to work on his more recent project and his privacy was also in danger. He already started excavating the walls of his cave but it almost required an entire day to only gain a foot of room in a single direction. It was extremely inefficient and he had to find another solution to dig rocks.

However, the most important problem to adress was the security of his base. If he managed to prevent access to other players, he would be able to freely focus on his projects without the need of hiding them elswhere every time he disconnected from Project Overworld. For that purpose, Keith has thought about making a large steel door to block off the entrance of the cave.

It would be requiring quite a bit of time to do so, but he had some pointers on how to do it. Steel was not that hard of an alloy to produce and he already had all of the materials needed. As for the door itself, he would be molding it into existence. This required a really meticulours job out of him because he would have to mold the entire door before the first bucket of steel had time to cool off.

Fortunately, the entrance of his base was quite narrow and Keith only had to worry about the width of his steel door. He also had to think of a way to make the joint so the door could still be opened from the interior and the exterior. The only thing that would be preventing access to his base to other players would be a sturdy lock that only him could open.

Obviously, anyone could enter if they had the right tools to break off the lock, but Amber and the New Dawn guild would not do that unless they declared war against him.

Once back home, Keith started off by organizing an expedition towards the depths of his cave. He needed quite a bit of materials if he wanted to make his steel door, and his stocks were only enough to craft some tools and weapons at the moment.

By the end of the day, since Amber was not supposed to visit today, Keith started off a fire in his furnace to being working on his project. He melted some metal ores together and removed a lot of impurities to make some steel before transporting it using a tungsten bucket. He was actually quite glad that he managed to convince Amber to bring him some. His caves were really poor of some materials and had to rely on her to bring him anything he was missing.

Anyways, for now Keith only planned on making the hinges of the door, out of the same steel that he would be composing the entire structure. Afterwards, he started placing a wooden frame around the area where he wanted the door to be made and called it a day.

The next few days were consecrated to this steel door. Amber was initially quite surprised about the wooden frames placed here and there but he managed to defuse the situation by saying he wanted to reinforce the security of his base because the guild 'Pioneers' was going on a rampage as of recently.

As a tradeoff, she began asking for more developed weapons such as rifles and canons. For the first one, he easily agreed on it because he already had the knowledge on how to make some really rudimentary ones they would be pleased about. As for the latter, he had to postpone her demand because it would be a much more time-consuming project for him to work on.

However, Keith was quite pleased about his steel door project. It progressed really fast as he amassed all the materials he would need to mold the it in a single night. He had to make it over a few hours at most so he could be controling the heat of the steel and preventing it from solidifying too early. If any part of it cooled down before he was finished with the entire mold, its sturdiness would be really poor.

That was why, for now, Keith only focusing on making a few furnaces and gathering all the metal ores needed for the steel recipe.

_______________

Alan was examining various plans of construction in his office; temporarily built in a small cave until the foundations of their actual base were finished. Suddenly, a voice made him raise his head towards its origin.

- "Chief, I've discovered that the Pioneers guild is currently forging quite a lot of equipment using metal. They also managed to build some war structures such as rams and are expanding really fast. Yesterday, they took out the guild White Knights and made their base an outpost for them. Their scouts are getting closer to our base by the day, and it's just a matter of time before they discover our location."

Alan gave him a stern look, organizing his thoughts over the concerning news.

'Shit, and here I was, thinking we would be fine for a few weeks at the very least... Our equipment quality seems quite a bit better according our scouts' reports, but not enough to compensate for the difference in numbers. Even after relying so much on Keith's various creations over last few weeks, we still are far away from being safe.' Alan had to admit that Keith was an expert at manufacturing. He had already developed some rifles for them while most of Project Overworld guilds have been stuck with bows and arrows for so long.

The scout was still waiting for Alan's orders, so the latter had no choice but to tell him : "Thanks for the report on the situation. You should go back to observing the Pioneers and do tell me if they made any move towards our location."

The scout nodded in reply and quickly left Alan to his thoughts.

'I don't think guns and canons will be the only thing we we'd need to fend off attacks from the Pioneers. We should seriously consider building a perimeter wall around the hill we established onto. This place is actually quite favorable for defense, let's just hope we are able to build a sturdy wall by the time their scouts visit this area. As for our weapons, we should still rely on Keith for the time being. Also our own crafters should be inspecting his rifle prototypes to reproduce them on a larger scale.' Alan concluded.

- "Alright, time to get busy! We have a war to prepare." He exclaimed out loud, more so to convince himself than to convince anyone else.