The Way of the Future: Age of Machines(Completed)

Another One

A few days passed since the incident and as such, Artemis has forgotten all about it except the lingering feeling within his stone-cold heart. The days have gone by with little to talk or worry about, the clouds of smoke and ash continue to cover the sky above and the fires continue to engulf the forest around the Machine Base.

Artemis has taken upon himself to spearhead the eventual defeat of the Theocracy, this time he was to employ modern warfare against the Theocracy as a show of strength. To set up a foothold and to ensure that other states would recognize him and his country as another of their own, he needs to set up an example.

The following months have been rather tedious for both sides, not only did the Machine Empire get pushed back from its patrols in the eastern part of the forest, it's lost a considerable amount of military Androids even if they're merely patrols. If an enemy that only relies on swords, spears ad something called Magic can do that much damage against sophisticated and technologically superior machines then Artemis has underestimated them greatly.

His underestimation did not come without merit. Ever since they came here, they've only experienced victory after victory and only recently did they become entangled with losses even in the slightest.

Artemis was the only strategist in the Machine Empire, although he had supercomputers back on Earth, he did not have such a luxury in this world and thus he was the main strategist with Caitlyn as his adviser. According to his estimates, bringing the sophisticated AI to this world would require a huge amount of energy, something they won't reach until they manage to create a small fusion reactor.

A small fusion reactor required a lot of robotic expertise, robotpower and resources. Robotic expertise and robotpower could be easily acquired but resources were a complicated matter. The wormhole allowed anything to come through it from either opening but it was small, up until now the machines have been relying solely on live human beings to maintain the wormhole.

A few months ago, the wormhole almost collapsed in what could have been the end of his entire mission. The two humans that were the main source of power for the wormhole expended all their mana because of a slight miscalculation during an experimental wormhole gate expansion. The two humans experienced total organ failures and subsequently combust into a pool of rotten flesh and blood.

The entire Machine Empire was thrown into disarray as the wormhole began to fluctuate out of control. Artemis had five of the nearest humans kidnapped regardless of their magic aptitudes and forcefully made them into living batteries. The wormhole stabilized but because 2 of the 5 kidnapped humans were inept, they suffered the same fate as the first two.

With research back on Earth entirely focused on wormhole stabilization and magic extraction, other fields were left relatively abandoned and thus Artemis had to micromanage. Although all of it was tedious, even for him, he was enjoying the work regardless.

And now, he wanted to end the scourge which was the Theocracy and finally set up a permanent foothold.

To do that, he has decided to completely abandon Caitlyn's newly enforced protocols for him and go to the frontlines instead.

Artemis made it known to Caitlyn that he was stubborn but Caitlyn was even more so.

"If you want to go to the frontlines, I will only let you IF you bring one thousand of your finest with you!"

She stubbornly said.

"But, my two personal Elite Androids could handle it,"