Chapter 46 Third Round
What I noticed was that all the robots were focused only on Victor, their weapons aimed straight at him. The details of this round were extremely vague, but I could tell that the robots’ target for this round was Victor. I then moved to a corner of the arena that would completely shield me from the battle since I wasn’t the robots’ target.
Each robot stood at roughly six feet tall, with lanky metallic arms and stretchable wires running through their joints. Their heads were rectangular-shaped, with two antennas sticking out from each side. They also had robotic humanoid legs equipped with small retractable wheels, which they could use to slide or make sudden maneuvers. In short, they were built as normal household assistants and rated to lift around one hundred to one hundred kilograms. However, it appeared that Victor had reverse-engineered them and armed them with laser weapons.
One hit from those weapons could literally put a hole through someone. What I didn’t know was whether the firepower had been adjusted not to kill, but either way, I didn’t plan on getting hit.
PHEW!
One of the robots fired at Victor, and he shot his handgun at the same time, his bullet and the laser beam colliding mid-air. Due to my intense training and probably some of my dad’s superhuman genes, I could follow the bullet and see exactly what happened. The laser beam cleanly sliced through Victor’s bullet and continued toward him, but he dodged in time. The beam burned part of his hair, making it erupt into flames.
Fuck. These weapons are at full power.
Cursing inwardly, I wondered if Victor was insane. But fuck this shit, I increased my guard and leaned further back to avoid getting hit by stray attacks.
Suddenly, Victor dashed forward. Immediately, all the robots began firing at him, but he dodged effortlessly and shot one robot a meter away, stunning it. He closed the distance, ripped off its head, and hurled it at another robot with powerful force, bashing its head in.
He moved with superhuman speed, and within seconds, about ten robots were already down, their parts littering the floor. Victor tossed away his handgun and grabbed robot parts, using them to attack the remaining machines. He even used their bodies as shields as laser beams rained down on him.
I was breathless watching his speed, it was comparable to Rudy’s, not to mention how he was tearing apart the robots with his bare hands. In a flash, all the robots were reduced to a pile of trash, stacked together with sparks flying from them. When one tried to get up, Victor crushed its head under his foot.
“Unprecedented attack from Victor! The robots were decimated before they could even fight at full power. Mr. Victor cleared this round in forty-five seconds!” the referee announced, doing his weird dance again.
A larger robot stepped forward and began cleaning up the fallen robots, stuffing them into a large leather bag before loading it onto a car-sized trolley that rolled away on its own.
Once the robot left, Victor glanced toward me with a smirk on his face as he noticed me shielding myself in the corner.
“Your turn,” he said with a smug grin.
I picked up my own handgun and walked to the center of the cage. Just like before, bright lights flashed on and multiple robots entered, their digital eyes glitching as they locked onto me.
“Target found. Locking onto target,” the robots said simultaneously, pointing their weapons at me. After closely observing Victor’s fight, I noticed there was a brief lag when the robots charged their first shot.
In that split second, I raised my handgun.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
My gun rattled violently, shocking me, I didn't know it had been modified to be fully automatic. I hadn’t realized this since Victor only fired once before switching to his bare hands.
Because of that miscalculation, I wasted five bullets but still managed to take down thirteen robots before running out of ammo.
As a barrage of laser beams fired at me, I dropped to my knees while in motion, sliding across the ground with my back nearly scraping it. I hurled the empty gun at a nearby robot, knocking it over beside me.
I grabbed its weapon, but the moment my hand touched it, the weapon went offline.
Shit!
Because of that mistake, I barely escaped a shot by a hair’s breadth. Still holding the offline weapon, I slammed it into a robot’s legs, knocking it over, then punched through its head, sparks flying everywhere.
Then I yanked an arm off and used it to attack the remaining robots, smashing their weapons and disabling them with a single blow each. One laser skimmed past me, grazing my skin and burning it.
After what felt like an eternity of dodging laser attacks, I finally took out the rest. I was panting heavily, blood dripping from the wound where the laser had grazed me.
“What a wonderful performance from Miss Layla! Despite being quirkless, she performed a superhuman feat and took out all the robots in one minute and twenty-five seconds!”
“The winner of the third round is Mr. Victor! He cleared his round in forty-five seconds!” the referee announced. The cage gates rolled open, and Rudy immediately dashed toward me, grabbing my bloodied arm.
“Are you okay, Layla?! We can quit this match immediately—screw them!” Rudy yelled, veins bulging on his forehead as he tightly wrapped my arm with a bandage.
“I’m fine. It’s just a graze caused by my own miscalculation. I didn’t realize the laser weapons could only be wielded by the robots,” I said, gritting my teeth as the sting intensified.
“You bastard! I’ll kill you!” Rudy bellowed at Victor, who was approaching us.
“Woah… easy there, buddy. I’m really sorry about that. I thought she could handle the robots based on her assessment. I could tell she broke the rule by trying to use one of their weapons. Relax, the rest of the duel won’t draw blood,” Victor said before walking away.
“What a jerk, not even a proper apology,” I scoffed.
“There’s no ‘sorry’ on a real battlefield, nor detailed information about your opponent. You should know better,” he replied without turning back.
Suddenly, the scoreboard shifted to 2:1, making me let out a sigh. I thought this was just going to be a gun duel, but it was turning out to be far harder than I expected.
“Can you win the fourth round, sister?” Rudy asked after finishing the bandage.
“I doubt it. He’s faster than me. There’s no way I can reach supersonic speed, even if I’m stronger than an average human or some quirk users. That guy is on another level,” I said, shaking my head.
Suddenly, the lights blared, signaling that the fourth round was about to begin.