“To be or not to be.

Rather than that,

a much more pressing matter assails me.

What to do and what to wear

In a forest where I break into tears

For after drowning in the open sea

I find myself a lonely immortal

Accepting the rain and my lost d.“

 

The rain is over and the whole mud spot is smiling, but what to do now I’m not sure.

“*Sniff* *sniff*”

I pretend to cry about being an undying android powered with uncanny amounts of energy.

With a hand wiping nonexistent tears, I throw away the twig i drew with.

‘For now let’s just look around.’

This forest has a lot of magical trees among the normal ones. I can see two that don’t have a trunk or any branches just leafs and fruits, like a vine is pretending to be a tree. Grabbing a fruit to pluck, a face forms on the leaf trunk.

“ROAR”

Running feels really different, the flooring was even back in the carrier, but now I can feel my feet and legs slightly adjust to the ground on their own. I’m a 100% sure the clumsy me would have slipped 10 times in this forest land before getting a 100 meters away from that Ent.

‘It also feels great I don’t have to stop and breath after running. Anyways this is really a magic forest, huh.’

I stop under an invisible tree. I thought for a second it was an open spot but on another wavelength it’s clear that there are trunks and leaves shielding me. No, don't touch it!

‘There’s no problem right? It’s not alive like that one, I mean, not AS alive.’

I guess. The breeze here is nice, trees like this would have been great on Earth for areas with eroded ozone layer. They absorb the EM spectrum that ozone would. I wonder why it isn’t white, though.

‘If I learn magic, I can be a ninja robot assassin right?’

Yeah, yeah. Go ahead and brush through its roots I can feel a power source of sorts.

‘Around here?’

Yeah… OK it’s deeper, now dig.

‘ I’m on it.’

Brushing away the dirt for a minute my hand passes through something jelly. It creeps me out, EW. Take my hand away.

‘Wait a second, isn’t this what we were looking for?’

Oh, yeah. Pick it up, let me scan it.

‘What’s it?’

Not done, yet. Hmm?… It’s a magic source? Maybe some kind of magic potato? There’s a lot to unpack here and I don’t know anything about this world yet.

‘Magic potato… do we still have taste buds?’

Yea- wait you’re not gonna eat it right? What are we!? A four-year old!? You’re big enough to know you shouldn’t put stuff you literally found on the ground in your mouth come on, throw it back.

“NOM-”

AH- That’s pretty good. We should try this with some sauce. Cooking this seems hard unless it's a soup, we should just sprinkle stuff over it. NOT stuff from the ground, let’s make that clear.

‘ ‘K, mom.’

OH! Take another bite, quick.

‘That’s quite the change of heart, you’re not going to tell me to at least clean it?’

Just eat it!

Okay, yeah, wow. This is great. Let me search for more of those right now!

‘We don’t really have to? Thanks, but I’m fine with just eating one. We don’t need food… right!?!?’

Sorry, sorry this is not urgent, don’t be scared. Look at the battery capacity.

‘HM? What about it?’

Can’t you see it?

‘Yeah, I can. Did it change?’

You didn’t notice!? It charged by 0.5%!

‘Potatoes could power the world all along?’

Finish eating it and let's go. There's another one under that weird, banana shrub thing.  FASTER!

'Calm down. Wow. They don't have legs to walk away. No need to rush.'

They don't?

'They do?'

I think so, isn't this a magic forest? Shouldn't you be the first to say that you want to find a flying tree?

'Yeah... haha, right.'

With a nervous gulp the magic potato finishes another half percent in charging me. More than one whole decade of energy use for the entire human civilization in our previous planet.

One potato. My scan keeps tingling as more are found, I might get up to 54% apparently, if all of them contain roughly the same amount of energy.

'Potato farming will save the world. Living off the land on another world, a slow life for me!'

Hmm, how do we get these potatoes back into the carrier.

'We forgot to name it. Supah sounds good?'

I idly uproot the shrub of suggestive, blue fat bananas. There's a slightly smaller potato here. I start to eat it but this one tastes like actual dirt.

'Aw, this is awful.'

Now put the shrub back, you brought this upon yourself, wait, this is great! It actually has double the amount of energy from the previous one! We might actually get fully charged from this!?

' *pfft pfft* Why does it always have to taste bitter when it's good for the body?'

Don't you dare spit it out! I can feel the taste too so don't screw this up for me. Do your best, you can do it! Who's a good boy? Eat it all. There you go, good boy, good boy!

'Where is the next one?'

There are a lot of them, you should be able to see them... now? I'm putting through some image overlay can you see the marks now?

'Yeah, that helps. What is different about the trees that have those and the ones who don't? The glowing trees don't have it while the normal ones do?'

No idea. These normal ones might actually be Ents. Be careful.

' 'K, I will poke them first.'

I eat six more to get to 20% charge. It appears I will be getting to around 70% charge. This is just incredible. I use the average amount of energy two households do in a single day every hour. It makes me question why I have such battery, will i ever use all this up? Probably I have it since the technology is there so why not give me the best, and maybe I can charge up the carrier like this, very slowly.

The amount required to activate me would get me to 50% charge if my neural pathways didn't require 40% in a single outburst for the activation procedure. Leaving me with 'only' 10% of my battery capacity.

'The tastier the magic fruit, the lesser the power it gives. That's just sad.'

OK, this next one looks like that one Ent from before. If it moves, uproot it. Well, at least I think we can do that.

'Slowly, slowly. I will cut the red cable now. Repeat, I'm cutting the red ca-'

”ROAR“

I crouched to brush off the dirt and get past the roots of the Ent, but as soon as I tried forcing some roots away from the potato it awoke. It also looked far angrier than the last one.

”Sorry to disturb you, but I'm hungry and after I eat this you can go back to making another one!”

I grab a hold of its roots, as it tries to flail me with its leaves. They hit against my head and torso but only leave marks on my skin, there's zero actual damage. There's a lot of force backing up these leaf vines, I would have stumbled if I wasn't holding onto the roots. I'm a great punching bag but I'm not taking this for long, I pull up with all my strength and among creaks and snaps the roots get loosened from the ground or torn off its length. While still flailing its vines the Ent tumbles over helplessly. It slowly stops moving as if giving up. Its angry mouth remains but it's close slowly as if really sad.

“I will plant you back, just wait there for a moment.”

The glowing potato is fully exposed now, there's no effort to take it. I reach my hand in excitement, this one looks better than the others, I eat half of in a bite right after the first bite.

“It's so good.”

Delicious. And half of it gave me more than 2%!? We are taking them all, even if we reach 100% let's store some until we figure our how to send them back home.

'Where is the other side of the teleporter? Maybe it was a one way thing.'

It takes a while to get most of them, but my energy is at 59% by the time I fell the last Ent. A lot less than I hoped for but more than I had estimated. This last Ent screamed so loudly when I brought it down it scared me. The others weren't nearly as despaired, could I have accidentally killed this one?

A strike of cold like a chill ran down my spine, I feel there's something coming.

'Isn't this... really, really bad?'

Listening.

I focus on all directions, my sense of hearing projects out like a sphere as I make sense of the surroundings like a sonar. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, until I open my eyes again and the invisible tree's arms are smashing down on me.

Two trunks of transparent black, heavy wood come at me from above. I jump a second before it hits the ground and sends dust and dirt flying all over. It doesn't roar like the other ones, it's just here to stop me.

“Hey, hey. Okay I'm leaving I won't bother you anymore... Until a few months later when you have replenished.”

It raises up standing on a single leg, it's trunk. The shadow tree hovers over the ground more than walks its way towards me, it's roots are whips of blackness. I should try to escape by running towards the direction that is packed trees, and jumping over obstacles, I don't think it can follow me after I'm out of the forest.

“Okay, a year, a year! I'm not bothering you for a year! Come on, I need that energy, how long does it take to grow back a few potatoes?”

Unwavering, the shadowy arms raise up in front of me and strike down predictably. I have no trouble dodging it, I can see its move from a mile away. I try to talk to it to get a reaction but nothing, it doesn't have ears. It is a mindless guardian or maybe it's already dead?

A whistle sounds out, deep and fast. I don't know where it came from, but I feel i can't escape this fight.

“OK, you want to do this the hard way. I will kick your ass and get it planted back into the ground is that how you want it? Cool! BRING IT!”

I try to sound though but still no reaction. OK can't avoid this, now what? I don't think I can take its strike, but if I avoid it and then hit it like this is a video game, I might just make it. Decido to prepare to jump out of the way just before it strikes and keeping close watch of its arms so it doesn't change directions and I dodge to where it hits. That would be dumb, but then I realize it's attacking with only one arm this time. I barely jump out in time but down comes the second one smashing me into the ground.

“ARGH- Damn, I should have asked for some martial arts downloads.”

The shadow tree's left arm pins me to the ground and where it touches me it grows fingers, or rather dark tentacles that wrap themselves around me holding back my arms, borrowing into the ground and making sure I can't escape. The other arm joins together to wrap even more dark ropes around my body and slowly lifts me into the air. I think it wants to smash me against the ground hard and squeeze life out of me since it can't win against my metal armor. Too bad it is not an armor, it's actually me.

“It still hurts! AHH HHH — Do something!”

Something. Okay we are high up in the air, and this guy connects us right to the ground, let's try the obvious.

Discharge.

With a thought I release a burst of energy of half percent my battery. The ground obliges and takes all of it in, right from the shadow's roots. It is charred black and some it actually bursts out together with small pieces of glass. The shadow tree begins glistening a deep blue that gets lighter and lighter all through its body, until it's arms turn into white flames and drop me down. I'm no longer causing damage to it and get up to attack again, but the flames only get brighter and stronger.

“I didn't come here to start forest fires!”

I jump out and kick it as it runs away, so it doesn't touch any other tree. It falls down obediently to a spot with no trees but with a few shrubs that catch fire and disappear on the spot. There's no heat emanating from this fire, rather it might be endothermic, as it consumes the tree and it's trunk becomes visible as a white birch log. Unremarkable other than it's cactus shape due to its arms and having tried to kill me just now.

'There's something about this log though, it looks just like the potato? Except much denser and bigger. How much energy can I get out of this?'

After a tiring day of work... actually, should we really eat it? It was alive, and what we did might not have been all that innocent in retrospect? Were we eating magic tree babies or something?

'NO! No, no we weren't. Most probably we ate the shadow tree's food, The other trees gave it nourishment while it protected them from outsiders like us. Except we meant no harm to the trees and just wanted their potatoes.'

Really? You can do mad math now? Where did you get the statistics to say that.

'... Not THE most probable case, but still very probable and the one I want to believe in yes. What about the other trees, are they alive still? They don't seem to move at all now.'

Damn, it’s my fault, I should have realized this would happen. They are alive yeah, but I think they lost most of their magic. This feels more like a normal forest in a fantasy setting rather than a fantastical forest now. I don't know if those potatoes were replenish able actually.

'We don't know if this is a good or bad thing, big head probably sent us here to charge up, I don't think we did anything bad.'

I don't want to think I did that either. Let's finish eating this and move on. Actually, can we really finish that up? Our energy will definitely surpass 100% if you try. You should plant the left over trunk back in its place.

'... I will do that.'

Our conversations happen in a fraction of a second. And just as we were done a level up prompt appeared right in my face.

'Are we really seeing this? Or am I hallucinating? Can androids get high?'

Gods be damned. This is a RPG planet.