Synthetic Survivor: Machine Age

There was an ample breeze around the forest. When One entered, he found the trees rather interesting, sick to say the least. He followed along the dirt path which was laid before him and hovered above it and followed it into the forest to reach the nearest village.

To find what he was missing, his identity and his humanity, he set forth in this journey of his. He wanted to adventure, not because it was fun, nay, he did not need fun in his life, rather, he needed to regain what was lost of him personally.

There were no birds singing or nesting over the trees, there were no creatures of large either, only small insects of odd colors populated the foliage and the ground beneath. The soil was damp and cold, it was weird and surely was not natural for a forest this large. Or so he thought.

The entirety of his journey so far has been nothing but endless wandering, following a certain dirt path. This is stupid, he would always think. To go on such an undertaking without proper preparation and planning ahead. But he was in a rush. Why did I rush in the first place, he questioned himself.

Hailey was not that big of a threat and his drones have so far been completely loyal to him and followed his every order to their fullest and so why was he in a rush? He did not know himself nor will he probably know anyway. He had already gone far enough, well out of the reach of Hailey and his Machine Empire for now but they could still send out a strike force if needed in just an hour.

"Strange" He suddenly muttered. He went down to the soil and walked on it and knelt down. There was a dead squirrel on the ground. He picked it up and examined it, there was no sign of external damage, no bite or scratch marks; maybe it was poisoned? he thought.

Going against all orthodox ways of dissection, he placed his two hands on the squirrel's c.h.e.s.t and ripped it open, exposing its insides. The intestines protruded outwards and blood spewed but it was not fresh blood, it was already rotten. One dipped his finger into it and analyzed it, it was indeed rotten and judging from the rot, the squirrel has been dead for quite a few days.

The analysis of the blood showed no poison, rather, there were strange particulates in its blood that have somehow bonded with the magic in its bloodstream and effectively 'choked' the squirrel's circulatory system and may have likely caused its death.

"Strange" He muttered once more and to his credibility, it was strange indeed. An unknown particulate bonding with magic at a molecular level and resulting in 'choking' the victim was.. a surprise and not a welcome one.

The village should be near, but I doubt I'd find anyone alive there. He pressed on and abandoned the squirrel's body to nature. He could have analyzed the bark of the weird trees or the leaves but he bothered not to and decided to press on and see if he would find a village or a graveyard. Death and destruction, it did not waive him. He felt nothing.

As he followed the dirt path further into the forest, the sickly looking trees became even more apparent and more dead bodies did he stumble upon more often. There were many bodies, even deers, he would split them open and analyze them and the same result every time, choked to death.

He went on for 30 minutes, by the 25th minute he had already stopped ripping open everybody he found because they became too much for him to waste his time on and the results were practically the same. He then stumbled upon goo-like trees, trees that for some reason, have melted, they appeared like goo and when One touched one of the trees, his hand sank into it.

But the trees still had shape but they appeared drooping, it was strange and because of it did One finally take a sample and analyzed it. By taking a sample, One simply shoved his hand in a tree and pulled out whatever was in there and analyzed it accordingly.

[Unidentified]

Huh? unidentified? It's a tree. Yes, it was but One came to the realization that it seemed like the trees have been altered in a way that they don't really identify as a tree anymore and have changed. A strange place, this is, I wonder what the research drones would say of this, he thought.

He somehow subconsciously smiled at the thought of his research drones finding intrigue in this particular specimen of a tree. Now that he has analyzed the goo tree, a certain question popped in his mind. What species of trees are these? He could not really determine it since it was unidentified and the structure and appearance of the tree, he could not recognize.

Then he walked over the path once more and threaded the eerie forest. The weirdness of the forest was immense and if One was like any other human at this point, he would have freaked out.

What happens if I try and burn it? The idea was outright stupid, but One still considered it. If he did, he had the chance of igniting a forest fire that would tear the forest apart and reduce it to ash or the flames don't come and the goo actually cannot be burned.

It was cloudy when One finally reached the other end of the forest, the dirt path was now clearer but the surrounding grasslands were dead. The grass was withered, brownish and bodies of large beasts and animals littered the landscape. It was a horrible sight for a human but an intriguing sight for One. The animals and beasts all seemed to have run off to the grasslands and died there.

There were hundreds of bodies, no, there were thousands and if he considered the dead insects, there would be tens of thousands of dead. There was no point in having a disguise this puffy, there would be nobody alive at this point. If there were people alive in these parts, to begin with.

And so he walked the dirt road once more and strutted forth. There was death everywhere, the bodies of animals lied wherever he went and as far as he could see. As he went further into the forest, he noticed flocks of dead crows around the bodies of several land animals. They must've died a few minutes or hours after the land animals did.

The smell of rotting flesh had begun to stick onto his villager clothing. He then decided to remove the clothing entirely and just walk forth as he One. He went and dusted his black uniform and made his way through the plains once more.

He was expecting a village and he was not disappointed. There it was, a wooden palisade surrounded it. Goo-like trees, dead shrubs, and tall grass littered all around, the once long vines that climbed up the palisades were now oozing. One got near the wooden gate directly connected to the dirt path. The path leads directly into the gate and nowhere else, maybe there were other paths and other gates that went to different directions and areas?

He decided to investigate and walked around the wooden palisade. It took him ten minutes of endless walking before he walked around the entire palisade and found no other gate and no other path. This village was all alone and the only sign of civilization in the area.

He went back to the gate and stood there. No dead humans anywhere outside, he thought. Maybe they lied dead inside these walls, One assumed the latter and decided to enter the village. The wooden gate was shut tight and required a considerable amount of force to burst open, luckily One did not need such force.

He stretched out his arm and exposed his palm directly pointing at the door. He fired a concentrated beam of energy and carved his entrance. The beam was hot, so hot in fact that it began to burn the gate. This is fine, One thought as the gate slowly burned. Nobody was going to complain anyway, he assumed.

After he finished carving his entrance, he pushed it and that part of the wooden gate now detached from the rest of it fell inwards and crashed to the ground. He then went in.

The village had wooden structures everywhere, paths connected them all. He walked around the village, not entering any buildings. He came across a small well in the middle of the village, there was an awful smell coming from it.

Curious, One decided to take a look and flashed a bright white light at the well. There was a figure underneath, in the very deepest reaches of the well. It did not move, it was black all-over, no clothes or anything. It lied motionless there, a purely black humanoid figure whose skin appeared to be oozing too.

He then went out and decided to explore the village more to see if any more bodies were outside. There was nothing but dead grass, dead livestock and dead trees. Still, he had no idea what caused this mess.

Suddenly, as he stared at what seemed to be the village hall, he remembered that he detonated a nuke not far from here. This must be a Yuhinic Village, and it must have been abandoned when the storm he nuked was brewing towards it. It was a theory of his but held much credibility. Yuhinic Villages directly in the path of the storm were abandoned by their inhabitants and if he considered weather conditions, he came to one startling condition.

"Fallout," The words escaped his mouth. This must be the cause of radioactive fallout actually being swept towards this direction after the nuclear detonation. It was not normal fallout, normal fallout does not result in oozing trees or the other weird things he has so far come across. The particulates he found must be the result of that fallout, bonding with magic and subsequently creating another form of matter that choked a living creature.

But it does not explain why the hell trees began to ooze instead of dying and rotting.

Suddenly, he heard something bash against the doors of the village hall.

His adventuring spirit has disallowed him to use most of his enhanced sensory capabilities but seeing this a very real possible threat, he decided to use them. He activated his infrared sensors to see through the walls of every structure in the village.

There were humanoid figures, cold figures. They were standing around inside the village hall, some were wandering while three of the humanoid figures were lazily bashing against the door in front of them and One.

It was dangerous, they were also oozing. They were no longer normal, whatever they were now, they were not human and One deemed them as a threat to him, his machine empire and to this world. He did not care about the world if it fell but something gave one an unsettling prenomination that whatever was trapped inside this building cannot be left to stay alive and thus should be eliminated for his own betterment.

How should he eliminate them, One thought for a good minute. Until the door in front of him began to show wear and tear. It was about to break and the creatures inside, whatever they were, would be released and god knows what they'd do. He needed to act fast and swift.

He could've called on for a research team, containment team or anything to contain and study them but One was really unsettled. A tingling feeling of uneasiness made him feel something he did not want to recognize, he felt fear.

He has seen destruction, he has seen death, he was the sole survivor of an apocalypse that wiped out billions of his kind.

But yet, he was afraid of oozing unknown creatures?

It was strange, but One was not going to ignore it.

He placed his hands together and pointed at the building. The door was about to break as soon as the next bash came.

"Hm,"

He then unleashed a fiery pillar of destruction, completely obliterating the village hall and whatever structure was behind it. Even the wooden palisade behind it was not spared from the immense power.

And then, One sighed.