In a field near Maisytown.
Emmet looked down satisfiedly at the large lattice of interleaving tervoriam pillars laying out in front of him. This was to be the base structure of his new Sky Wheel ride - he had spent the past five days carefully laying it out (using several auxiliary formations passed down from Maisy), and this morning, he had finally finished the underground base structure. Although it was currently only a modest height, just looking at it, he could already imagine the structure stretching out from the ground and up into the open sky.
By now, he had already pre-purchased the bulk of all of the required materials, and thus, his wallet had taken a big hit. As it turned out, such a project required not only a tremendous amount of materials, but the required materials were also quite high end and expensive. However, at the moment, Emmet wasn’t afraid to invest his wealth. Swiftly, he made multiple deals with the school for the required materials in bulk, including a dozen shiploads of tervoriam (weighing hundreds of tons), hundreds of massive jade circuit wire reels, and thousands of smaller connecting parts. All in all, he ended up spending about seven hundred thousand points, and that was just for the raw components!
If this had been even just six months ago, Emmet would have been shocked speechless at such a reckless expenditure of points. However, the more he engaged in these grand constructions, the more numb he became to the numbers. To build such an ambitious structure, one needed to invest a corresponding large amount of time and resources. Further, with this design, he had actually saved quite a lot on assets - his structure was streamlined, using cost-efficient metrics, resulting in little excess waste. Although, Emmet had to admit, building such a thing in the snowy winter season was unprofitable. At the beginning of the construction, there had been a light covering of snow blanketing the ground, so in order to start the construction, Emmet was forced to painstakingly build up a series of heat arrays all around the area to melt it up.
Time was of the essence. If he wanted to construct a project, he would do it as soon as possible, and couldn’t afford to wait for the season to be right. As for his points, so far, despite the extra cost of wages, Maisy’s Debugging Depot was profitable as expected, giving him a comfortable buffer to spend great amounts. Ultimately, this was an investment - he hoped that the ride would attract enough business to eventually pay for itself.
The main challenge Emmet now faced was of how to properly approach building up such a tower and enormous structure - clearly, his usual strategies of lugging around the parts wouldn’t hold up! In his three years of tinkering with formations, he had never quite tackled an arrangement of such a scale, and thus, Emmet was very careful about it, making sure the base especially was built properly and securely, strictly following guidelines he had read about in an advanced textbook about large-scale constructions.
Letting out a satisfied sigh, his eyes wandered out toward the large lattice, where there was the familiar dancing figure of a colorful six-winged bird. It jumped back and forth between pillars, peering toward the various aspects of the construction curiously.
Emmet couldn’t help but smile laughingly. “You’re excited too, huh Fruity?”
Looking out toward the sky and imagining the completed structure high up, stretching out into the clouds, he balled his fists, unable to stop himself from shaking with excitement. He had never built anything near such a structure before, so he could learn a lot from the experience.
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Over the next few months, Emmet alternated between managing Maisy’s Debugging Depot and building up the ‘Sky Wheel.’
Over at Maisy’s debugging Depot, the debuggers at the company had slowly gotten faster and faster, the entire workforce running like a well-oiled machine. Emmet didn’t know whether it was because of the new changes he had implemented, but it seemed that the company had largely become self-sufficient, and were able to keep up with the rising demand. After the first month, Emmet really only needed to step in occasionally to fulfill basic managerial duties.
Later, it would only be during peak season that he once again actually was required to help debug through the overflowing piles of formations, mostly the advanced ones that took a large amount of time to figure out. Thus, in this time, Emmet could dedicate almost all of his time to constructing his new project.
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When building up the structure, he was forced to use secondary auxiliary formation structures for transport. Luckily, Maisy had left behind a lot of the formation constructing equipment she had used for building her rollercoaster ride, including large cranes and flying cargo carriers, so Emmet could just modify this equipment for his own use, saving on time and expenses. It took just a few days to modify them appropriately, and then he got to business.
Over the next few months, Emmet worked long hours every day, slowly building up the construction. Luckily, he had planned it well, and construction went smoothly, aside from some occasional hiccups, namely complications due to the scale of the project. By a month in, he had finished constructing the central wheel-holding tower. By two months in, he had placed a barebones wheel within this tower and was constructing the skeleton around it. By three months in, he had built and installed the cars and finished the inner foundation of the structure.
Finally, in the final fourth month, Emmet threaded all the thick cable circuitry, installed the central mana powered locomotive system, implemented a large scale protection warding formation around the structure, and filled up each of the cars with cushioned seats and protection railings. For the last step, as a last decorative action, he gave the entire structure a layer of light blue paint, complementing the dynamically royal blue Maisy Mega Marvel, which lay only a short distance away, quite nicely.
When the last drop of paint was plastered on, Emmet excitedly lowered himself back on the ground, took a step back and just stared out at the finished construction, a fully constructed grand-sized wheel that seemed to float in the sky.
Just staring at it, he couldn’t help but feel emotional - in the end, he felt it had turned out better than expected. On the one hand, it was huge and towering, but at the same time, he also felt it was also subtle and endearing, tinted a nice sky blue, as if blending in with the sky. On each spoke of the wheel hung a little car that hung downward, and at the top, the cars could reach over six hundred feet into the sky! He couldn’t help but feel a strong sense of pride. This was the most ambitious and physically demanding formation project he had built by far, and finally looking at the finished project, he suddenly felt that it was all worth it.
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Early morning. Tauruk and Emmet sat leisurely at their dining room table, conversing with each other with laid-back demeanors. Fruity sat in between them in the middle of the table, picking at some laid out fruit and lazily grooming its feathers.
“Today’s the day, huh?” Tauruk smiled as he reached across the table to stroke Fruity with long, slow moves. Fruity seemed to enjoy the touch, curling its body up with pleasure on each stroke. “Maisytown Park’s official opening.”
“Yep,” Emmet laughed, enjoying seeing Fruity enjoying itself so much. Still, he couldn’t help but tap the side of the table agitatedly. “After three days of inspections, it’s finally approved for opening. I’ve put some ads into some local papers to spread the news, but I don’t know if people will actually be interested. I just hope people actually come…”
“You worry too much,” Tauruk shook his head with a sly smile. “Don’t you remember how popular it was last year? There’s no way it won’t be a hit - with Maisy’s name, there’ll be few who aren’t at least keen toward it.”
“Yeah, but the ‘Sky Wheel’…” Emmet rubbed his chin. “Nobody’s ever seen it before. I don’t think anyone has even ever built anything quite like it. Who knows if they’ll respond well to it?”
“The ‘Sky Wheel’?” Tauruk let out a laugh. “Emmet... that thing is damn amazing.” He stared out toward Emmet with confident eyes, admiration leaking out from his gaze. “When you took me for a ride the other day, I was completely and totally blown away. Like… just the fact that you were able to build such a thing… and the atmosphere at the top... I think the city folk will react similarly well.”
“I hope so…” Emmet pondered a bit quietly.
“Well, I gotta head to class,” Tauruk checked the clock formation on the wall and gave Fruity a final pat before standing back up and slinging a bag over his shoulder. “Really, I wouldn’t be worried at all. I’ve never seen anything like the Sky Wheel before… it’s honestly incredible, Emmet. I’m constantly impressed by your creations, but this one just is on a completely different level.”
“Thanks, Tauruk,” Emmett gave a grateful smile, also standing up to get ready for the day. He turned to pat the colorful bird resting on the table. “Fruity, let’s get ready to go.”
Cheep, cheep!
Fruity responded happily, jumping up and flapping up onto Emmet’s shoulder. By this point, it was nearly double its original size, its body overshadowing Emmet’s figure as it perched on him.
“Ha…” Tauruk couldn’t help let out a breath. “That guy has really grown, huh? How big do you think he’ll get?”
“Dunno,” Emmet could only shrug. “Not even the guy who sold him to me knows what species it is. I can’t imagine him getting much larger than this, though.”