Created on the far-off planet whose name has long since been lost to this world, the Manualbots are perpetually at war with their arch-nemeses, the Deceivercons. The war all started ages ago when one of the leaders of this ancient race betrayed—

  It then hit Nathan that he was reading an abridged entry of the entire history of the Transformers world. He brushed over the vast majority of it, which went on for about two thousand more words before it came to a stop at the bottom.

  Yes, it is waterproof. Obviously, attacks will slowly whittle it down. If you can find some kind of hacking pro, you could probably turn it over to your side. Odds are you don't have that, though.

  Thanks, [Inspect], Nathan thought. Helpful as ever.

  The Manualbot ran forward, its left fist raised. A long pointed piece of metal sprang out from above the creature’s wrist, Assassin’s Creed style. Nathan jumped to the side and avoided it without too much trouble. He reached out toward his inventory and pulled out his fishing rod. Last time he had fought an artificial golem, the neck ended up being the weak point. All he had to do was reach in and pull out all the wires that were connecting it.

  Nathan reared back his fishing rod and swung forward. The fishing hook sang as it moved through the air before it crashed into the internals of the neck. Nathan pulled and—

  The Manualbot grabbed the fishing line and twisted its fist, completely arresting Nathan’s momentum.

  Chad ran forward and jumped up into the air, his sword flickering and the wind beating at his back. He swung as hard as he could directly for the thing’s head. It crashed into the skull, creating a visible dent and embedding Chad’s sword halfway into the thing’s forehead. Chad managed to pull it out, then stabbed right into the neck where Nathan had been aiming.

  Apparently, having had enough of this treatment, the Manualbot used its other hand and punched Chad with all the force of a wrecking ball. Chad went flying off, his sword still stuck in the Manualbot’s neck. Nathan dropped his fishing rod and ran to the side, catching Chad—really, more getting them both to go into a controlled fall.

  Chad wheezed and shattered on the ground. “Never in my life did I think I’d get my ass kicked by Optimus Prime.”

  Nathan, a little bit more durable, managed to push himself up off the ground and bring Chad back to his feet. He reached into his inventory and pulled out a random sword he had gotten from [Astral Fishing]. As soon as Chad touched it, a burst of wind came from around it and nearly took Nathan off his feet.

  Chad’s eyes widened. “How many of those do you have?”

  “A lot.”

  A loud boom echoed in the parking lot, amplified by the fact that there was nowhere for the sound to go. Mara had pulled out a grenade launcher and had just launched one directly into the thing’s face. The Manualbot staggered backward, hands clawing at its eyes. Mara pumped her grenade launcher like it was a shotgun and aimed for the creature again. She fired another grenade, and it exploded near the leg. The Manualbot fell to the ground, whimpering.

  Nathan’s eyes widened. “Nice job. Any chance you have more of those?”

  Mara grinned and looked at him. “That was all I had.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Hey, do you have any idea how hard it is to find grenades down here? It isn’t like I can just go to the ammo shop and pick them up. Not to mention, I keep using them in fights.”

  Chad shot a glance at her. “You mean target practice.”

  She nodded, completely shameless. “Yeah, I mean target practice.”

  The Manualbot managed to push itself off the ground. Already, Nathan could see that the holes that they had made with Mara’s grenade were being patched up with pieces of metal from the inside.

  His eyes looked up toward where Chad’s sword was embedded. It had not been pushed out, and the head’s eyes were flickering.

  Now what’s up with that? he thought.

  An attack swung straight for Nathan’s head, a huge metallic fist. He raised his arms up for a block when there was a loud crash sound, like waves hitting the sand. A splash of water hit Nathan's cheek.

  He poked out his vision between a gap in his arms and saw that Sarah had her arm outstretched and that the Manualbot had been thrown backward. He nodded and gave her a grateful smile before he turned his attention back to the fight.

  The Manualbot was already pushing itself back up. Scraps of metal had been blown off, but the Manualbot stretched its arm out and the metal went flying back into the creature, reassembling into the main hole.

  It was capable of intense self-regeneration. So that meant Nathan had two options. He could either try to blow it all to smithereens so that not a single atom was left, or he could try to eject the body back into another world using [Astral Fishing].

  He had already done that with the worm, so why not try to replicate a confirmed solution?

  He focused on the section in front of him. The air rippled in that familiar manner, and Nathan could tell that the ability had activated.

  “Hey, tin head,” he shouted. “Your movies were garbage.”

  The Manualbot turned and glared at him.

  “That’s right. Dark of the Moon was an immature, stupid, dumb film that barely made any sense.”

  The Manualbot made some kind of unholy metallic screech. Nathan was pretty sure that it had no idea what he was talking about, but that it could tell that he was insulting it.

  It jumped into the air and spun around like a top before it shot its leg out for a perfect side kick directly to Nathan’s chest. Nathan dived forward underneath the dimensional portal. The creature missed spectacularly and landed with a loud thump. It turned around and launched a punch directly toward Nathan. Its fist disappeared into the air and Nathan closed the dimensional opening with a mental command.

  There was a crunch and all of a sudden the Manualbot was without an arm.

  It reared back and slammed into the wall. Nathan opened another opening just in front of him. “Come on, you big turkey.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Instead of responding to the insult as he expected, it backed up further into the wall and stared at him. Then its eyes locked onto the ripples in the air and Nathan knew the game was up.

  It circled around the opening with a few quick steps and held out its hand toward Nathan. There was a low rumble and a bright blue glare from a pipe attached to the top of its hand.

  Driven more by instinct than rational thought, Nathan dived to the side just in time to avoid a laser blast. It seared the ground and liquefied the concrete.

  Nathan looked at the damaged area for several seconds. “Yeah, probably shouldn’t get hit by that.”

  Chad, with a blast of wind at his back, appeared behind the Manualbot’s blind spot and jumped into the air, slashing a long gash right on the back. Already, Nathan could tell that the thing was regenerating before their very eyes. Chad broke off to the side to avoid the counterattack and glanced over at Nathan.

  “Tell me that you’ve come up with some sort of strategy to beat this thing,” he said.

  “Don’t worry,” a new voice shouted. “I have an idea.”

  Nathan looked back at Sarah and raised an eyebrow. Maybe she had actually come up with something helpful?

  “Here’s the plan.” She slammed her fists together. “We group up and hit it till it dies.”

  Nathan slapped his palm into his cheek. This was his sister. This was the person his parents endlessly compared him to, believing he needed to be more like her. Granted, she was at least capable of holding down a steady job, whereas Nathan spent most of his time in his room eating two-day-old pizza.

  He looked back up toward its head. Despite the metal visibly shifting around the sword stuck in its throat, it had yet to repair. Not only that, but the headlights were still blinking. A half-baked plan started to cook inside Nathan’s mind.

  “Chad,” he said. “You think you can stab that thing again? Anywhere. Spine, arm, head, body. Whatever.”

  Chad looked at him in confusion. “Yeah, but I would end up losing my sword again.”

  Nathan reached into his inventory and pulled out two blades with one hand. He took one of them and shot it into the air straight toward Chad. Chad snatched it with ease and glanced over at Nathan. “Oh. You have a lot of these, don’t you?”

  “I kept on intending to distribute them, but I never found the right time.”

  The sound of a low rumble reminded Nathan that they were not alone. The Manualbot’s laser pipe reflected in Nathan’s eyes. It was pointed right toward Mara. Mara’s eyebrows shot up and she scurried to the side, but her dexterity was so much lower than Chad and Nathan that it looked more like she was speed-walking.

  “Sarah!” Nathan shouted.

  “I got it.”

  An orb of water appeared in midair and blasted out toward the thing’s hand. It knocked the laser beam off course and turned a line in the roof into thick, gooey slabs of magma.

  Mara breathed a sigh of relief, but her eyebrows were furrowed together in some kind of conflict. She looked over at Sarah and Nathan knew something was going on in her head.

  Unfortunately, Nathan did not have time to figure out what on earth was happening. He was too busy with the current issue.

  “I’ll distract it.” He looked over at Chad. “Go.”

  Nathan reared back his fishing pole and slung it directly at the thing’s eyes. The hit landed and the hook embedded into the head. Nathan pulled back and the entire thing staggered forward.

  Chad rushed forward and stabbed one sword directly into the torso of the Manualbot. It flinched and Chad followed up with a stab to the thigh. The Manualbot swung out blindly with its arms and Chad was forced to retreat backward. Nathan pulled out two more swords with one hand and threw them over to Chad.

  The Manualbot stumbled backward, only one of its legs functional. The metal was groaning and screeching and wheezing in some attempt to reform itself, but the swords’ durability was too high for it to absorb them into itself. Nathan could tell that it was trying to warp the direction of the blades, but they were too high quality for that to happen.

  His hook still attached, Nathan dug his heels into the ground and tugged back as hard as he could. The whole thing stumbled to the ground in a massive flop. Chad rushed forward and stabbed it twice, once in the head and once directly in the center.

  The Manualbot seized on the ground. It tried to raise its neck over and over, only for it to flap against the ground uselessly. This continued for nearly a full minute before it stopped and turned silent. The lights went out of its head and the Manualbot went limp.

  [You have leveled up!]

  [You have leveled up!]

  Nathan let out a sigh of relief. The ground in front of the Manualbot flickered and a treasure chest flashed into existence. To the center of the room a blue light appeared, and Nathan instinctively knew that it was the exit.

  He walked over to the treasure chest and opened it up. Inside was a simple keychain with an electronic car-unlocker. He frowned and inspected it.

  [Manualbot Override]

  Have you ever wanted to have your very own mecha, Gundam style, except not actually because I am ripping off Transformers and not Gundam, despite the latter being the superior franchise by far?

  Then boy do I have the item for you. Once per day this item allows you to summon a mecha to pilot around and destroy monsters with for five minutes. It scales with your level, so don't worry about it becoming too weak. The tricky part will be learning how to control it. It would take a true weapons-master genius to use this tool effectively. Someone who has dedicated their life to understanding the art of marksmanship and artillery. I mean, how many people do you know like that?

  Nathan looked over at Mara, then back at the keychain, then back at Mara.

  She tilted her head. “What does it do?”

  He grimaced in her direction and weighed what exactly he was going to do.

  See, Mara would be the perfect user of this particular item. He had no doubt that on her first attempt using it she would already have the controls down perfectly. She would become a ballerina of destruction, using the Manualbot mecha to cause mass damage and casualties.

  The problem was he was not sure if the casualties would remain contained on the other side.

  “Chad,” he said in a low tone. “Come over here for a second.”

  Chad walked over to him. “What’s up?”

  “Mute the stream and inspect this item.”

  Chad raised an eyebrow but did as Nathan asked. He even pointed the window away from the inspect window so that his stream would not be able to read what he was about to see.

  When Chad started reading through it, his eyebrows shot up higher and higher into his skull before he was staring at Nathan with a terrified expression.

  “Please don’t tell me you’re actually considering giving it to her.”

  Nathan sucked in a breath. “I mean—”

  “Nathan, you’re not giving a giant robot to a sadist with a gun fetish.”

  “Look, it sounds bad but—”

  “What’s this about a giant robot?”

  Both Chad and Nathan looked to the left to see Mara. Her hands were clasped on both their shoulders and she had a wide grin.

  “You have a giant robot and you weren’t going to tell me about it?” she asked.

  Chad looked away and coughed into his hand. “You have to understand, Mara, we just… You see…”

  He looked over at Nathan, as if begging for an out.

  Nathan sighed, a long drawn-out sound.

  He handed over the keychain to Mara. “Please don’t cause any trouble with it.”

  She looked down at the keychain in confusion. An inspect window popped up in front of her. She read through it and started to shake uncontrollably.

  “I… I have a giant robot?” she asked. “A super-fighting giant robot?”

  Chad looked up toward the ceiling, a faint and resigned expression on his face. “That’s it. We're all doomed.”

  Nathan gave a strained smile. “I’m serious. Don’t make me regret doing this.”

  Mara closed her fist around the keychain and put it into her pocket. She looked over at Nathan and smiled.

  She looked like a slasher in the making.

  “Have you ever known me to be the type to cause trouble?” she asked. She stopped and held up a hand. “Wait. Don’t answer that. What I meant to say was… have you ever known me to be the type who intentionally causes trouble?”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn.” She reached up and scratched her head, then shrugged. “Well, it’s too late. There’s no way I’m giving this back to you.”

  “I’m aware.”

  He glanced over at the blue exit. “We should get going.”

  He had been trying to take it leisurely throughout the entire dungeon, careful not to come first. Of course, there was a chance that everybody else was just so incompetent that he would end up winning anyway, but he really hoped that wasn’t the case.

  The group of four wandered over to the blue exit portal one at a time, leaving Nathan as the last. He stepped up to it and felt his consciousness drift away as his body was disassembled and reassembled to another location.