Now, once they chose the laser cannon, and the selection box closed, two icons appeared on the left edge of the screen.
One of them showed the homeworld with wave-like rings expanding outwards, while the other was just the image of the laser cannon. Under each icon was a percentage which represented their progress to completion.
Curious, Ran clicked on the first one and a new screen appeared.
The title read, "objective: survey the local system."
Under the title, the description read, "using light transmitters and sensors, and sending them out in waves, you're able to view into the universe, however local that is."
This was, in fact, talking about those black rays that appeared briefly after first starting the survey. And even now, although the game is paused, rays of light will continue to shoot out only to come back at some point in time—creating an image.
Though, the rays were now invisible to the naked eye; we can't have the local population finding out now can we?
Under this description was the time left to complete the objective—about six months.
After taking in the information given, they moved on to the second icon, the laser cannon.
It's title read, "objective: construct a laser cannon."
It's description read, "using the monolith-like crystal, along with an enormous amount of energy, you can create a lethal laser capable of destroying targets at an extremely far distance."
Under this description was the time left to complete the objective—about two days.
Now, one thing to notice about the two objectives was actually the time needed to complete them. Actually, they were double their original amount which is represented with a separate and red text.
This was multitasking at hand. Normally, you can only do one thing at a time, but with it, you can do multiple things at once, however obvious that may sound. However, the effort you can put into any objective was limited and thus had to be split evenly across all active objectives.
Although, you can always pause any objective you wanted to, to reallocate the effort into the other objectives if needed; basically, this was what they did.
In reality, they did not know what rewards would come from the survey, though everyone had their speculations, and they would save an entire day on the laser cannon if they did so. Of course, they would need as much time as possible to fight against the space invaders, so they reasoned themselves to this decision to pause the survey.
Thereafter, they unpaused the game and two seconds later, it automatically paused again.
Ding!
"Congratulations for building your first weapon to fight against the treacherous space invaders! Remember, you must win no matter what, or else…"
It seemed the game really did want them to lose; it's almost as if there'll be real world consequences for it. Hmm…
Well, anyways! With its completion, all the energy needed to build it was deducted from the total—less than one percent. What can I say, I did say it was rudimentary didn't I?
Now, charging it is a different story. It took… get this, an entire percent! My GOD with capital letters, that's too much! It really is though; later in the game, you can't possibly think only one of these is enough do you? And again, it's just rudimentary…
And now, with twenty nine days left, can they defeat all the space invaders before it gets here?
Well they continued the game and found out. Of course, they didn't forget to unpause the survey before moving on.
The charge time alone for the laser cannon was a day, and it took a percent of the world's original energy total. The energy produced from the soulful beings this past year was actually only enough for like six charges. Indeed, the energy bar was at a hundred and six percent.
And when the day was completed, the laser cannon finished charging and automatically shot out a dense black beam a few hundred feet in diameter. Luckily, the world used a column of air that enclosed the beam to bend all the light going out and coming in by messing with its density—it was as if it was never there. Again, anyone finding out about any of this would be troubling (it wouldn't).
From the zoomed out perspective that the group was in, they only saw… nothing. The laser was black; space was mostly empty and therefore looked black as well, so it was hard to discern it had fired at all. Of course, the effect of its power was quite observable however.
A small part of the conglomerate of space invaders, numbering into a few million, was suddenly vaporized in a violent explosion when the laser impacted them.
When the laser hit the enemy, a long red bar suddenly appeared under the bars at the top of the screen. In the bar was white text which signified the overall health of the invasion. Right now, it says it was at ninety-five percent.
Meaning… one charge of the laser cannon killed five percent of the invasion? Just like that?
Yep, just like that. And going on from this, it would only take twenty days to completely demolish those invading bastards! Phew, sorry about my language, I was getting a little excited there.
It wasn't just me either, even the group got a little riled up when they saw they would be able to smoothly sail through the first year. It definitely wasn't just me manipulating my own creation to make myself look more… normal (it definitely is).
And so, the first ten days passed by pretty much undisturbed.