《MagicMiner™》 Chapter 0: Destruction I crept up to the edge of the pit and looked down at its immeasurably dark, beckoning void. I stared in amazement at its depth and width, it being a perfect cylinder 50 meters in diameter and unknowably deep. I looked down at the remains of what used to be a mountain, now peppered with holes of the same characteristics as the one stated before. The mountain was rich in titanium, gold, and aluminum. The once great formation must have been torn up and mined by automated vessels. I turned my head to the side and ran down the rocks towards a nearby grassy plane. As I stopped to recover from my exaustion, I gazed up in amazement. The unit towered over 600 feet above me. It was a monolithic structure, ridiculously efficient and powerful, probably costing over 100 million dollars. Its mere presence almost had a mental aura, pressing on my temples and forcing upon me its ominous presence. I wondered why it was stationed in this field, alone, without any other vessels anywhere near it. I thought that it must have been placed here for a special reason. I heard a faint rumbling in the distance, and realized that the materials produced my the automated mining vessels were probably being collected. I knew that they would probably transport the ore from here last, since it was the furthest away, and so I had about 2 hours before I needed to leave. The planes passed by overhead as I laid on the moist grass. I counted the planes flying overhead. "One plane, two planes, three planes, fou-Woah! Why is it so fast?" More streaks passed through the sky at blistering speeds, and their trails left red imprints on the blues and whites of the sky. I heard alarms beginning to blare as the sonic booms of the projectiles ruptured my eardrums. "S--K S-L-TR D- OT T-MPT CUAT-ON" I heard loud voices yell over the alarm system. I couldn''t make out what they were saying, but I thought they said ''SEEK SHELTER OR ATTEMPT EVACUATION," so I ran as fast as I could toward the mountain. I felt the exhaustion set in, but I continued with my adrenaline. I ran towards the transporters but they had all already gone into the pits created by the automatic miners.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it Then, the realization set in. I can''t crawl into those pits, I''ll die. But I''ll die if I stay up here too. I don''t know where any shelters are. I''m going to die in a few minutes. I accepted the realization and ran as fast as I could down the mountain once again. 2 minutes later I came to my beloved mining unit, still mining ore. This thing, this inanimate object, was the best thing that I could reasonably spend my final moments with now. I watched as on the horizon, a bright orange line extended out of the burning, red sky as the trail of a brightly shining star. Once it collided with the ground, it exploded in a near perfect bubble fashion, expanding at over 40 times the speed of sound, destroying and burning everything it touched. I stared in disbelief as the entire mountain was obliterated into rust colored sand in a matter of seconds. The sand and dust was thrown torwards us by the explosion, breaking down the outer layers of the automatic mining unit. Only one grain of dust hit me, breaking off my entire leg. The fields shone a brilliant yellow as they were torn and destroyed, and I stared happily up at the automatic mining unit as the explosion approached us, reducing us to disconnected and plasmised atoms. Chapter 1 - Reestablishment My surroundings were gone in an instant, and my physical and mental existence had been erased by the explosion. I sensed a brightly shining light far away, I''d predict hundreds of kilometers, and somehow instinctively knew that if I didn''t reach it, I would be trapped in darkness forever. There didn''t seem to be gravity or air in this space, so I wasn''t moving towards or away from the light. I sensed a star, shining close to me, about the size of a human, that was quickly accelerating towards the light. I had another instinctive piece of knowledge, telling me that if it got to the light first, I wouldn''t be able to reach it. I ejected 1.5 tons of unrefined iron ore, and ended up in the way of the star. The star slowed down dramatically, but then sped up again and began bringing me towards the light very quickly. After what I estimated to be 34 seconds, I was 3 kilometers away from the light, and I ejected 4 tons of unrefined material, boosting me into the light as it closed off, trapping the flying star in the void forever. The entirety of my surroundings consisted of white light, and it turned to black as my electromagnetic sensors dissapeared. I didn''t remember having them installed in the first place. My systems came back online as I was transported back to reality. Under me was packed dirt and some stone. I did a quick underground scan and found that I was positioned in an unregistered type of biome. the ground was covered in dirt, with rocks jutting out 2 feet into the air every 2 meters in every direction. The grass nearby had a low moisture level and appeared to be of an unknown species. It was sparse and appeared to feed off of the high blood content in the dirt. For the grass to specifically evolve this way, means blood must constantly be spilled in this area. Due to the high content of blood in the earth, there was a high content of iron in the rock, suggesting that the blood had been being spilled for hundreds of thousands of years. Further into the stone, there appeared to be valuable nuclear resources. They were too far down to identify, but they were definitely emitting nuclear radiation. This amount of nuclear materials meant that this was a very valuable site for mining, but there were likely to be external biological influences, so first I decided to fabricate scouting and building bots to keep my area safe. They were powered by electricity and came in 3 variants. The first were scouts, which acted as a defense system and allowed me to further examine territory. Scouts were by far the cheapest in terms of time and resources, and required the least amount of energy to run. The second type of bots were constructors. Constructors were 30 to 50 times as expensive as scouts in terms of resources, 3 to 5 times as expensive in terms of time, and 40 to 70 times as expensive in terms of energy, and required a constant flow of resources. Constructors were used to create structures and alter existing ones. The last type of bot was a power plant, which created energy in the most effective way possible, including solar energy, fossil fuels, or extracting energy out of certain ores. Power plants were the most time and resource consuming to produce and allowed for the running of other bots.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. I began creating 40,000 scouts and 1,000 constructors, using up 30% of my avaliable resources. After 23 hours, I had completed 8,357 scouts and 230 constructors. I made the constructors add several electromagnetic wave sensors onto me, which I then wired up. I saw a group of foreign humanoid lifeforms look up at me. Their bodies were defined by red, cracked skin and long, silvery horns protruding from their heads. Each of them were 15 feet tall and had sharp, jagged, grey teeth. They didn''t appear to be any kind of native creature to Earth, but seemed to have human characteristics. They were also close to biblical depictions of demons, suggesting that they were genetically engineered, but there was no evidence of this. I sent out 12 scouts to monitor them and began preparing the rest in a defensive formation around me. The defensive formation was not for them, but to protect from future threats. The lifeforms looked towards me in confusion. They were positioned one kilometer away from me, and it took my scouts 30 to 40 seconds to cross that distance. The lifeforms looked slightly afraid and began talking among each other in an indecipherable language. It sounded to be similar to that of Japanese before the language was influenced by China, but not close enough to help. After a few seconds, they seemed to come to an agreement, and one of them walked up to one of my scouts, and punched it. His punch was travelling much faster than expected, unnaturally so, and would damage my scout if it connected, so my scout dodged to the right and ejected a tendril into his forehead. The tendril then came back into the scout''s body, taking a large portion of a brain out of the lifeform''s skull. At that point, one of the lifeforms screamed and told the others something. The others seemed to launch a coordinated attack, with 12 staying behind and 12 attacking each of my scouts. My scouts easily dealt with them in seconds via decapitation, slitting their bellies and peircing their hearts. The lifeforms actually had eight hearts, so I peirced their brains instead. The lifeforms who had stayed behind had begun chanting strange words with their arms outstretched. The space around their arms began to bubble and heat up, and they all simultaneously yelled a word, and hot balls of burning air flew towards my scouts. 9 dodged, and 3 were lightly damaged. The scouts immediately shot out tendrils at the speed of bullets and grappled from lifeform to lifeform until they were all dead. I decided to call the newly discovered species demons, as that was what they were most similar to. Next it was time to investigate what they had done to create those fireballs. I started the production of 5 power plants, costing me 9% of my resources. I also diversified the scouts into several different types to allow for the more effective subjugation, infiltration, information gathering, and communication.