ตอน 24: Crossing the continent

On this day, Keith's disappearance went totally uneventful. He did not come across the group of people he had eliminated a few weeks back, nor did he cross ways with any other player. This relieved him off a lot of the tension he had been building up so far.

If it had not been for the several months of rest he had used to build the premices of a base as well as some impressive machinery, it almost felt like to him that he was constantly being pushed off farther away from the World Spawnpoint.

Up until now, Keith had never felt secure for as long as he has been traveling through the continent. In fact, that was the entire reason why he decided that he would be establishing himself all the way across the ocean. Only afterwards could he focus on developing the defense of his base and not have to worry about having to respawn all the way back to the World Spawnpoint.

'It's almost as if I'm playing on hardcore mode...' The young man realized. 'If I die, I may as well lose eight months of progress at once.' Were his thoughts on the current situation. Keith invested so much time into this game that he could not withdraw from it as of now. He had some advantages over most of the playerbase and he could not let himself become lazy.

Keith had prepared for a really long trip, though, and it would not be suprising to him if this journey lasted entire months.

During the day, the young man was driving his all terrain locomotive through the uneven landscape while thinking about the future. It was a really long process because the engines were not functionning at full speed for safety reasons, but once he would be dozens of miles away from the location of his second base he would certainly have to look into it and tinker around to move a bit faster.

The nights of this game were a bit trickier to the young man, however. Keith could not clearly see some of the obstacles he came across so he limit his progress during this time so to make sure he would not leave any of his wagons behind. Thus, he mostly used these night cycles to craft and resplenish the fuel reserves of the vehicle's engines.

On top of that, Keith was also preparing for the second part of the journey where he would have to cross a whole ocean. For that purpose, he spent every single bit of his free time in the game and in the 'real world' making plans for a large enough boat to transport all of his resources at once. Fortunately, the procession of trolleys did not require manual input to keep going forwards, other than the occasional refueling of their motor. That way Keith could freely focus on other projects when the terrain allowed him to go in a straight line for a while.

Plains quickly became his most favorite places of all and he cursed at the mountains and other forests he came across.

_______________

'The problem would be the occasional encounter with land...' Keith realized. Whenever he was working on his plans to make a ship, the young man came across some recuring problems that he could not find solutions of.

First of all, there was the direction control. Having a sail was mandatory for his build but it was a much more complicated challenge to find a way and change the sail's direction. If Keith made it lose so he could easily change it by hand, it meant powerful winds could also make the boat shift in direction at any moment. Though, the young man had been studying designs of ships in his free time and he had a pretty good idea on how to connect a wheel to the sail and have its direction changed using mechanical forces. These forces could also make sure the sail could not be toyed around by the wind as easily.

However, there was also the problem of land encounters. However, there was also the problem of land encounters. Keith would not be connected round the clock to Project Overworld during this lapse so his boat could crash on land while he was away and there were huge risks of him losing his life in the process. For the time being, the only solution he could think of was to dock his ship to one of these islands before disconnecting, but he could be traveling for days without finding a single piece of land. It was too small of an eventuallity for him to rely on it so this was out of the question.

In the end, Keith concluded that he needed to wait for the holidays to go on this journey. There were regular holidays throughout his academic life so he could be using one of these to make as much progress across the ocean as he could. Though, this trip would clearly last a lot longer than an holiday would so he would have to pray and find an island during this lapse.

'Am I worrying for nothing, though?' Keith meditated. 'The ocean is really vast so the probability of me coming across land should be pretty small, right?'

After thinking about it for several days straight, the young man finally came across a solution for his problems. He would be installing engines to all cardinal positions of his ship for stability and make sure it would not budge that much while he was away. After all, just like he determined coming across an island would be a really unfortunate event to occur so he would not try and think of a solution about that. Instead, he wanted to work on one of the sturdiest builds he could with the resources he currently had at hands so his ship would not be overturned by the huge waves that could be generated by appalling weather conditions.

For the following couple of weeks, Keith made sure to put as much distance between him and the rest of the playerbase. He had already traveled hundreds of miles, but it still was not enough for him. Along the way, the young man had spent an entire week taking care of the engines, cleaning them up and working on their cooling system so he would be able to push the whole vehicle to a nice and comfortable twenty miles per hour. It was not anything impressive, but considering the small amount of time he had been working on it and the roughness of the landscape he was traveling through, he was pretty proud of his work.

Other than that according to Keith's calculations he was getting quite a bit closer to the ocean as of now. Since the model of this planet was the 'real world' Earth, the young man had access to all the information he needed to find its way to the ocean. On top of that, the developpers of this game had communicated that the World Spawnpoint was set in Africa and even shared a map of where exactly they spawned.

Although the model of the landscape was the Earth, it did not share a lot of similarities regarding the climate itself. First of all, the scenery was set a few dozens of million years in the past. The position of the continents were not that different to the current Earth, but the climates were changed. On top of that, the developpers added a few quality of life changes to the landscape by adding forests here and there so players could always have access to these essential resources.

In any case, Keith determined that the best continent to settle one would be America. It was far enough so people could not get all the way here without having a large ship at their disposal without being too far from Africa that he would require years of travel to get there. Thus, he set his destination to the western point of the continent and went in a straight line all the way there. Well, not that straight actually since he had to avoid a few mountains ranges and forests along the way.

'I should already have crossed over two thirds of the distance separating me from the ocean.' He excitedly thought. 'Let's get away from this continent as quickly as possible.'