Within a day, the first hundred million new construction workers had been selected and notified to report for training. However, something seemed odd; there were no other movements on the construction side. No materials had been purchased, no construction equipment had been rented or bought, and so on, making people wonder what exactly was going on with the construction. Shouldn’t there be piles and piles of materials and heavy equipment excavating the ground or laying foundations?
But those questions went unasked and unanswered as people recalled that Hephaestus Heavy Industries was the company behind this megaproject. They had a history of always producing everything they needed in house, from materials to machinery, and even their “staff”, robots though they may be. The only difference now was the scale of the construction. HHI was known for operating under a strict veil of secrecy, sure, but how could they hide a project of this scale?
And taking it a step further, where would they even begin to source the materials? They would surely require iron, steel, cement, and everything else in the neighborhood of billions of tons, and the current mining industry would find it virtually impossible to deliver in that short amount of time.
One intrepid conspiracy theorist, who had been spoiled by lightsnovels, even privately believed that a system apocalypse was coming and the materials would be created in VR and somehow taken out in reality by a person with a system, or perhaps a regressor, transmigrator, or reincarnator, but even he had to shake his head and abandon that train of thought.
After all, something so fantastic could only happen in the fever dream of a mad author, but this was definitely reality. He could be sure of that because every time he pinched himself, he felt pain.
But people had finally learned their lesson and settled in to wait for the empire’s spokesperson, whoever it may be this time, to come forward and enlighten everyone. And they certainly weren’t disappointed, as the response came quicker than expected and in a manner that made all arguments null and void in the face of the evidence they saw with their own eyes.
……
Felix’s office.
[We’ve repeatedly simulated and reviewed everything, so you can calm down. Manage your mannaries, boss, the possibility of things going wrong is so close to zero as to be statistically impossible. Sure, some extradimensional being could interfere, or something might happen on a quantum level... but really, it’s impossible. Im-poss-i-ble,] Felix’s AI butler told him. He had noticed a spike in Felix’s heartbeat and wanted to bring it back down to normal.
“I’m not worried in the slightest—” Felix grinned, “—on the contrary, I’m excited!” He had been lost in thought considering how far he had come.
When the whole crazy journey had begun, he was just a first-
year law firm associate practically straight out of law school. But now, he was in a field that had nothing to do with the path he had thought his life would take. Instead of spending all of his time in law libraries, writing briefs, and handling tasks assigned by partners in a law firm, he was in an emperor’s inner circle. A true blue fucking emperor! How cool was that?
His life had turned out better than he could ever have imagined, and it was all thanks to a single decision made on the spur of the moment. And thanks to that leap of faith, he was a billionaire! Not that money really mattered to him, as with his benefits and position, he found it incredibly difficult to spend any of his immense wealth to begin with. Anything and everything he ever could have wanted was simply handed to him, oftentimes without even needing to ask for it.
In this specific instance, though, he was even more excited than normal. Almost every little boy went through phases where they thought of what they wanted to be when they grow up. They would fall in love with the idea of operating big construction machines and building things, or even tearing them down, and they would fall in love with the idea of being an astronaut. Or a doctor, or a wizard, or... well, the list goes on and on, really. Children are flighty creatures at the best of times, after all.
But now he was actually living those dreams! He could play with all the big construction machines he wanted, and he had already left his footprints on the moon next to great men like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. And soon, very soon, he would be a real life wizard. How could he not be in a constant state of excitement? All of his childhood dreams were coming true one after another!
Not only that, he was personally contributing to building not just a building, but an entire new world. And he had the good fortune of fulfilling his dreams alongside his two best friends. He sometimes laughed himself awake in the middle of the night just dreaming about it.
“How much longer until the equipment arrives?” he asked as he jolted himself out of his own head and remembered what he was actually supposed to be doing.
[Two hours, boss. Lots of red tape now that the shield is up and it’s been proven to be vulnerable to traitors,] his assistant replied. [The imperial space agency has to inspect everything before letting it pass through the shield, and since everything’s coming from our moon base after coming from different locations from the asteroid belts, that’s a lot of inspections that need to be done.]
“Then I’d better get going. I want to be the first person they see when they get to Olympus Minor,” Felix said, rubbing his hands together in excitement. “I haven’t forgotten those monsters since I first laid eyes on them in the simulation.”
He rose from his seat and headed to the door in his office, then paused and called Sarah. When she answered, he said, “Hey you. Care for another date? There’s something I want us to watch together.”
After their trip to the moon, the two friends were teetering on the edge of another kind of leap of faith and, he thought, both of them wanted to explore new ground in their relationship. Working so closely together could bring people together or tear them apart, and for Felix and Sarah, their work had only drawn them closer and closer until only the thinnest of paper was holding them back from moving from friends to lovers.
