Cybrex Alpha System, Stellar Base.
From here, the star encircled by the Ring World was clearly visible-in fact, a ring of energy fields surrounded the Stellar Base's outer shell, dimming the incoming light so that even staring at the star with the naked eye would not cause burns.
Three enormous Construction Ships hovered just above the star's surface-they were extremely close to it, but their sturdy metal hulls shielded them from the heat it emitted.
Almost pressed against the star, they extended specially made mechanical arms thousands of kilometers long, assembling vast quantities of metal structures in space.
Hundreds of transport ships followed behind them, taking off from the Ring World and arriving near the star loaded with metal structures.
A large crowd of scientists, architects, and officials from the Empire's governing bodies watched the Construction Ships eagerly, their hearts full of hope.
The project director held the blueprints with a solemn expression, surrounded by a multitude of floating holographic windows, and kept looking up at the star.
"Ideally, we could enclose the entire sun in thirty pentagonal and hexagonal metal panels. It could produce as much as, uh, at least 40K units of energy credits for us every month."
"Of course, building a Dyson Sphere is impossible for us at present. But we can start by building its basic version-a megastructure we call the [Dyson Cloud]."
The Dyson Cloud project director adjusted his glasses and continued staring at the Ring World's sun.
Wrapping a star in an incalculable quantity of alloys-using alloy panels many times larger in area than Earth-would require a volume of alloys equal to one or several Earths.
Of course, its energy credit output would also be staggering. For balance reasons, the Dyson Cloud only produced 4K energy credits a month in the game. In reality,