Synthetic Survivor: Machine Age

The smell of blood and rotting corpses filled the air, surging flames were spread around the Dome as smoke rose to the sky. Hundreds of combat drones were flaming the surrounding forest to pave way for future construction projects planned by One and the Machine Network.

The bodies of the downed cavalrymen still littered the area, the drones burned them along with the trees and plants. Prince Avan was severely traumatized, strapped on a bed, he was alone in a room under the soil in the facility where the adventurers met their fate. One was thinking of using him as a bargaining chip to gain a favorable deal with the Kingdom of Yuhin without resorting to counter-productive violence.

The defense perimeter had been fully constructed. Basic facilities have finished their construction queues and the constructor drones are now focusing on building the major facilities. The first major facility was a 300 thousand acre air force base that would house and deploy hovercrafts and various other automated aircraft of the Machine Network, the second major facility was the oil pumps needed to extract the oil beneath the ground on the annexed Fortress City.

The third and last major facility was the Main Base itself, the Dome containing the wormhole was to be expanded and housing units for drones were to be built around it, factories for raw materials and new drones were also planned for construction to ease the strain of pulling machine power from Earth into Fiorg.

One was currently thinking of the monsters in the world, most notably, the Goblins. Goblins were described by the adventurers as short beastmen with green skin, their skin had wrinkles and they sported long noses and yellow eyes with iris resembling that of an eagle.

Goblins were often found in large groups of male and female, accompanied by small goblins called Goblites. Goblins were known to wield short knives and bows but were extremely agile, making them dangerous towards unsuspecting travelers who found themselves walking through their territory.

The goblins lived in burrows deep undergound, so far only a few burrows have been excavated and thirty goblins terminated, Goblins posed a threat to the drones' safety so they were labeled as hostiles, One was thinking about the Goblins on how to exploit them.

The continent had a profession called "Adventurers" these adventurers worked under guilds that were prominent across the state, adventurers could either be a solo human or beastmen or an entire party of them. These adventurers would take missions posted on their guild and get paid an appropriate price with each mission successfully done.

The missions included exploration of vast dungeons and cave systems, personal escorts, killing monsters and so on and so forth. These adventurers were scorn enemies with the goblins as the two sides would often clash with each other, resulting mostly in deaths to the goblin side.

Humans and beastmen despised goblins the most, goblins were infamous for committing heinous acts on entire villages before the founding of the adventure guilds. This laid an opportunity for One. By instigating the remaining goblin hives in the area, it would case widespread goblin attacks against villages in the forest, seeing how the forest was too dense for anyone to travel through in a shot amount of time, these villages would likely be massacred for being defenseless.

After the attacks, drones would simply sweep the goblins and establish control over the areas.

But the plan had faults, he still lacked enough information about the villages in the forest and if they didn't have easy access to the outside state. If a goblin attack was to take place on many villages at once and one of the villages attacked had easy access to the outside, it would cause a massive influx of adventurers into the forest, further increasing the risk of the Main Base being discovered.

It was too risky to go in guns blazing, the sheer firepower and threat of magic and the mages were not fully understood by the Machine Network just yet, all they could do was be cautious even if the evidence pointed that they were in an advantage.

Concerning the geopolitics in the continent, One was wary of the two superpowers. In terms of technological advancements, the Machine Network had the upper hand but M1(Magic) has proven to be mysterious energy that could potentially induce significant damage.

--

"Wormhole stabilization complete"

After a month of endless research by the Planetary Research Cores back on Earth, wormhole stabilization by the exploitation of Magic was discovered. The process was simple, a massive circular gateway of titanium-flexible-alloys was to be constructed around the event horizon of the wormhole, two objects with heavy concentrations of magic were to be placed in batteries and connected to the gateway, the magic flow from the two batteries will allow the wormhole to expand and contract along with the conduct. The research drones didn't fully understand how M1 was able to achieve this even though the energy concentrate of magic was too low to significantly power-up a massive energy signature like the wormhole. Nevertheless, this was proven as the case.

As of late, the batteries currently used are the comatose bodies of the two surviving men from the temple. The men were inserted into a tight chamber with needles embedded into their skin specifically designed to extract M1. Their bodies possessed a moderate amount of M1, the Machine Network was currently looking for an alternative battery due to the fact that the men will lose their magic in one month's time.

The wormhole was expanded by several meters, allowing for the transfer of heavy machinery and the Hovercrafts, the backbone of the Machine Network Air Force. Hovercrafts were enhanced gunsh.i.p.s capable of delivering devastating firepower even more so than the tanks. Reaching speeds of up to mach 5 and altitudes of 30 thousand feet.

One watched as the hovercrafts made their way through the wormhole, he was holding a tablet where he was micro-managing the delivery.

"I look like some sort of resource manager"