Damon ran. The adrenaline thick in his veins being the only thing keeping him going full throttle.

The grove wasn’t too large. He’d likely get to the other side within just a couple of minutes. It was a conglomeration of glowing blue trees nestled comfortably between two hills that were otherwise mostly devoid of anything that could offer the smallest amount of cover or protection. Considering he was being chased by a sentient washing-machine that had opted to take classes in sushi making with half a dozen glowing red-hot knives, that cover was the only thing that would keep him alive when the robot inevitably reached him.

He could outrun the thing, for now.

But it was an unrelenting robot, and he was not.

Damon couldn’t really tell how long its batteries would last, but he couldn’t be placing bets on his ability to outlast the thing. Every bush he jumped over the automaton would just cut its way through, searing through branches and leaves like… well, hot knives through butter. The downpour likely kept them from igniting, but it was still a sight to behold, the flickering dying flames of the bushes in the darkness as the death-machine kept its pursuit. Its singular large glowing robotic yellow eye focused on Damon and only on Damon.

How could he engage against an opponent he couldn’t approach? The answer was explosives, or guns, preferably lots of them. But with a lack of modern weaponry, he’d tried throwing rocks, and that had mostly appeared to annoy the thing.

Damon would not be able to keep this up, he had to fight. And his only weapon was a bent sword that looked like it was one good thwack away from breaking. And he didn’t want to get close to the glowing knives to begin with.

He wouldn’t fight if he had the option to avoid the fight entirely! It would’ve been so much safer to just find Sybil and Han, give them the warning, and be on his way back with them in tow.

“Oh.” The idea of avoiding the fight reminded him of the rats. His eyes glinted.

Damon ran towards the largest tree within range. The only one he might trust could hold his weight. The robot could not fly anymore, maybe he could find a way to just get out of its reach for the time being? As soon as he jumped to climb up, he realized the large branch had been partially broken, too late.

It snapped, sending him tumbling back down to the forest floor.

[...]

Congratulations!

You ‘made’ an improvised weapon (again)!

Gained: 2 Survival Points (Always better when not stealing from a knight, right?). Total: 9

You can…

[...]

“Dismiss!”

He glowered, looking down at the chunk of wood he’d been holding onto. Thrice as long as the sword, it was more like one large club. Could this even be of…? Damon tilted his head slightly, glancing at the incoming robot, its six thin arms. Then, he glanced at the twisted blade he’d been holding onto, bent from the blow that entirely removed one of the cube’s rotors along with its ability to fly.

Then back at the thin arms the robot was using.

“This can’t be that fucking simple.”

Growling, he felt the annoyance wash over him, glancing at a side and hurrying his way out of the grove, to open space. The anger was growing with every step. He was drenched from head to toe, cold, tired, hurting. He’d been marching for hours without shoes. His feet had long since gone numb from the cold.

No more tricks, no more dodging and running. The branch felt heavy in his arms.

“I marched through half the fucking mountain.”

In a sprint, he broke out of the grove and into the open space of the hills, carrying the two meter long branch that was as thick as his thigh. The thing should have weighed too much for him to carry back on Earth. Here? The weight felt like he was carrying something a bit heavier than a broadsword.

“I thought you posed a fucking threat to Sybil and Han.”

Damon turned around, facing the forest, watching the six red glowing spots moving between the trees, cutting down the small bushes in its path. Its singular yellow eye focused on him, glowing blades swinging wildly as it began getting closer and closer.

He raised the thick branch like it was a massive baseball bat.

His grip tightened.

The wood groaned in complaint under his grip.

“So I hope this really hurts!”

The robot got within range.

Damon leapt forward and swung.

The creature had seen the attack coming, it had raised the three arms on the side to try and block it. The glowing blades sank slightly into the wood, but did not cut the whole way. And it had not been able to stop the impact, or slow it down any. The robotic arms were just not built to be strong, only fast.

With a crunch, the branch slammed against its robotic body. The cube was sent rolling to the side, legs flailing madly. Two meters, four, six, sparks flew out of its body as it came to a stop.

Damon looked down at the branch. The three glowing blades that had tried to block the chunk of wood were still embedded into the branch. They were detached from their owner, sparks flying from the shattered limbs. The branch itself was cracked, with the second half barely holding on. It would not be able to take another hit like that one.

He approached the robot. It had fallen on the side with the remaining blades, legs flailing as it tried to stand back up.

“Oh no you don’t!”

With what remained of the branch, Damon swung at the liveliest of its legs. The limb didn’t shatter, but it definitely bent at an angle it wasn’t meant to. The metal carapace crumbled like tinfoil, revealing servitors and tubes. He flung again with the remaining chunk of wood as the familiar’s flailing became more desperate.

This time the leg snapped off, sparks and dark fluids raining on the grass, running off under the torrential rain.

“DO YOU LIKE THAT!?”

Raising his arm, he attacked the next leg. Two swings and the branch broke again. He kicked the leg off. He picked it up, jumping onto the box and pinning it firmly on the ground, leaning over the edge to stare at the glowing yellow eye. Raising the metal limb, he swung down against the lens with the new improvised club. It was like hitting a padded wall. It bent but didn’t break. Another swing, and this time the box burst underneath him in a burst of air.

Damon was sent tumbling off, falling to the grass as the robot had cracked open like a rubix cube that had exploded.

The orange blob creature leapt out from inside, like a vengeful towel with a murderous agenda. It clung to Damon, gooey limbs wrapping around his arms. He struggled, rolling through the grass and swinging wildly. It was like trying to fight against the bedsheets when waking up from a nightmare. The creature let out an all too familiar wheezing noise. The unblinking eye aimed at his face as the blob bloated like an inflating balloon.

Realizing this was not a good situation, Damon stopped trying to fight it off, hands flailing around in search of anything to grasp at. The monster was tightening its hold, having doubled its size and still growing, the wheezing becoming more insistent and high-pitched.

Damon’s fingers wrapped around one of the severed knife-arms. He swung against the creature as hard as he could.

The creature’s side burst like a balloon, letting out all the air it had gathered and a spray of orange goop. The blob let out a shrill scream, contracting and letting go. Damon didn’t relent, stabbing it again and again and again. More of the orange goop sprayed out, covering his arm and chest, but he didn’t stop, stabbing over and over and over. He kept going well after the creature had stopped moving and making sounds.

With a grunt, Damon thrust the blade into the familiar’s eye.

He stumbled back and fell on his ass, heaving for air, everything throbbing and tired.

The rain fell on him, Damon’s mind was devoid of thought, just letting himself rest and catch his breath.

He’d killed it.

He laughed, screaming in triumph.

He was alive.

He did not move until he began feeling the chill seeping into his bones.

[...]

Congratulations!

You have defeated automaton “Isthatit”

Gained: 3 PvP points (Are you trying to become a bandit?). Total: 9

You can redeem points in exchange for upgrades!

Nearest booth located at: 5͟͠҉&̶̴̡_̀͢:̶̀̕̕͢ȩ͝2̷̢͜2̸̨

[...]

“I really need a word stronger than ‘fuck’.”

With a groan, he stood up, looking down at the cracked robot, sparks still raining from the broken limbs. Damon’s brow furrowed. The temptation to just leave it here was great, but then what? If he came back to the village, he’d need proof.

Besides, wasn’t the thing supposedly worth something?

With a heavy sigh, he picked up the orange blob’s corpse and removed the lens with the aid of the knife. Following this, he dumped the severed limbs into the empty husk, along with the squishy lens.

Damon left the box there for the time being. Slowly, he made his way to check on the location the familiar had initially been waiting at. It was a pain, but it was a job he had to do, slowly walking around the area, drenched, exhausted, but confirming whether there had been a fight or not.

Whether Sybil and Han had been attacked or not.

He found nothing. No signs of a fight, no blood, no corpses, no gear.

With a sigh of relief, he dragged his way back to the familiar’s corpse.

Time to head to the village.

It was going to be a very long night.

Emilie checked and triple-checked the readings. The ship had entered the system’s heliosphere. The warp bubble was disengaging, but the threat of the accumulated super-heated matter was not going away. It just wasn’t dispersing.

And that was bad.

The moment the bubble lost enough of its integrity, it would mean that the trapped matter would impact the ship. And she’d become little more than a plume of gas and bits of debris at the edge of the system.

The core of the problem was that the matter should have been dispersing, but it was not. Somehow, despite being heated to the point of turning into plasma, despite space unraveling around it, the matter was sustaining itself in place, concentrated into a singular ever shrinking point.

She could only think of one plausible explanation.

Functional first wave tech.

“Ram me sideways. I found treasure and it’s going to get me killed.”

There had to be a way to avoid becoming atom-sized salsa. Her chitin began to itch. She was in danger. What was the nature of the danger? Why wasn’t it dispersing? Emilie scrunched her face, desperately trying to remember her technical lessons in superluminal travel.

“The bubble isn’t perfect, there’s always a small pocket where matter gathers… disengaging makes the pocket stretches out one bit at a time, so the matter at the edges drifts off and… oh.”

The super-heated matter was being compressed as the pocket was being stretched out. It was the only way for it to not have dispersed. That meant it was being actively manipulated, likely by something she’d hit right as she was entering the system’s heliosphere. And if it was a weapon meant to avoid ships from surviving entry into the system, then it had to have a condition to release all that mass… right?

“If I were an evil hyperintelligent artificial entity wishing to kill all life in the known universe, how would I design this? What would be the trigger for it to go off?”

The answer was a simple one. She could only grimace.

If the spatial pocket stretching out meant the weapon’s reaction was to compress matter… then once the bubble was fully gone…

“That seems about right.”

With a shuddering grimace, Emilie knew what she had to do, and did not like it. She stood up from her chair, hurrying down the metal corridor to the kitchen. With shaking fingers, she opened the refrigerator unit and, after a quick rummage through the shelves, pulled out a singular can with no labels, only a green circle to mark its importance.

The zuun returned to her pilot chair, opening the can.

Her fingers became slick with oil as she pulled out one of two preserved salted fish cadavers. Opening her mouth, she slurped on the tasty non-factory-grown meat. The taste was entirely worth the penalties the ship’s AI was going to issue the moment it checked the recordings. With a sad little gulp, the second one was eaten in a hurry. Her hand tossed the can over, not particularly caring of the mess it would leave in its wake.

Slurping her gloved fingers clean, Emilie turned her attention to the singular thing that could potentially save her life.

Turning the engine off and on.

It would be just a flicker, a tiny brief moment, not even a fraction of a fraction of a second. Her command to turn it off would succeed, and the AI’s preservation initiatives would kick in to turn it back on. But the gravity bubble would flicker, and all the bad things would break loose. The gravity generators would likely get severely damaged, the generator might get slagged, and she may or may not end up killing herself. But it would dislodge the bomb that was going to surely kill her if she didn’t.

Hopefully the bomb would detonate and release the gathered mass well behind the ship.

With a deep sigh, she navigated through the control panel, then over two dozen warning prompts, then the disclaimer that she would take all responsibility for what was about to happen, then another dozen warning prompts.

Then a confirmation that she had her will in order.

“YES! Do it!”

Emilie checked she was strapped to the chair properly, and she pressed the button four more times before it read as confirmed. The lights went out, the ever-present hum of the engines stopped right before starting back up.

She didn’t get the chance to hear any of that properly, however. She barely had time to recognize the warning of extreme G-forces inbound. The next, she felt as if the ship had been hit by a meteorite. Everything spun out of control, warning lights flashing madly in every direction.

The last thing she did was close the visor of her EVA suit before blacking out.