The Roxie unit jolted backward in a sudden motion, building distance to Ryan and Maximus. Even so, it was quickly hit by another one of Gregor's bullets. Through his link with all of the spirits, Ryan was practically directing him to shoot the moment he saw a slight twitch in Roxie's antennae, as long as the direction made for a good shot.

  Due to the link between Ryan and Gregor, he was able to direct him to pull the trigger the moment he realized what was happening. It was almost some kind of instinctive response, like he had planned out an automatic response to it. Maybe it was just his subconscious trying to help him out now that his mind was completely overwhelmed with four extra sources of information. That being the case, with Gregor acting as back-line attacker, he had a way to heavily restrict the Roxie unit's movement, which was one of the most important parts that Ryan needed to have a chance of facing off against this thing. And of course, he could also actively direct Gaia to move around to give Gregor better vantage points, while also staying at a safe distance from Roxie the whole time.

  Gaia was great, but she had absolutely no combat instincts on her own, which was why Ryan wanted to do whatever he could to make sure she would stay safe. That was the bare minimum necessary for this unit. Ryan had absolutely no idea how Richard managed to create such powerful robots, but it most have something to do with some insane support from Bluesky. Right when Roxie jumped back and was hit by the bullet, recalibrating its next action, Maximus jumped at it and pummelled it with his hammer, Cailleach. It wasn't the most effective weapon against a robot, but it was better than a sword. Right now, the goal wasn't to damage its body anyway.

  At whatever opportunity he had, Ryan tried to hit Roxie. Of course, there weren't actually that many opportunities. The robot was able to act much faster than Ryan could physically move, so it often ended up with him being way too late. With how irregular Roxie's movements were, even his intuition wasn't able to help him all the way through that, at least not fully. However, the more he fought against Roxie, the closer he was starting to get. With each swing of his own icy hammer, he got closer to hitting her. But even more importantly, he was forcing Roxie into particular patterns. Basically, he was tricking the robot. This was the second quirk.

  Richard's only reference-point were fighting games. He was never in an actual fight before, no matter how interested he seemed in causing absolute havoc. That also, once again, showed in Roxie's design. He prioritised aesthetics over function in a lot of ways, and though his 'taste' had changed to be a little more psychopathic now that he was infected by the corruption, he still had those same priorities, especially with the Roxie units.

  While he installed them with weapons, their bodies weren't directly the perfect proportions for a fighter's body. They were more like... what you would expect to see in a fighting game franchise with slightly problematic female character designs. The men were bulky and muscular machos, while the women looked like thin supermodels that had never seen the inside of a gym. In a videogame, that didn't matter, since the character models weren't affected by actual physics, but this wasn't a videogame. This was real life.

  The Roxie units' balance was way off. Of course, due to the fact that they were robots, there were some ways to play around with the physical balance and weight distribution, but you could never get it right. However, according to Modak, Richard had used some of physical awakened or the martial-arts related major students to help him set up the animation sets for the Roxie robots. And Ryan knew exactly what they looked like, since he worked out with plenty of those women these days. They had realistic bodies, which the Roxies simply didn't have. And now that he knew that, Ryan could pinpoint what exactly felt 'off' about the robots' movements. The Roxie units moved as though they were much bigger and bulkier than they actually were.

  And so, now that Ryan was getting closer, their dodging-motions were way larger as well, far more exaggerated than they needed to be. And the more Ryan and Maximus closed in and got in small hits or got close to the robot, they were able to force those motions to be bigger and bigger. And every time the unit tried to escape this pattern, Ryan had Gregor shoot it and forced it back into that same pattern.

  Of course, this wouldn't work all the time either. Clearly, the Roxie unit was becoming more and more aggressive in trying to figure out how to get the upper hand, and it would soon try to break through the smallest gap that it was trying to find. And so, Ryan made a small opening on purpose. Since this Roxie unit wasn't controlled by Richard, but instead acted through an autonomous process, it wasn't able to see through that purposeful gap, and tried to break through. At that moment, Ryan pulled back the horn of shapeless water, making it melt.

  He splashed the water at Roxie. Of course, the unit was waterproof, so that didn't cause any damage itself. Instead, however, it caused the robot to break through a thin stream of water, which quickly solidified again - it took on the form of a net. Since he got down here, Ryan had become much, much more creative with his use of the horn.

  The moment Roxie was caught in the net, the robot tried to escape again, stopping and reversing its momentum, but Maximus was waiting behind it and smashed it in the back of the head. Specifically, he was aiming at a particular small connector-piece that Roxie had been trying to protect in this whole fight. It was the connector panel for the antennae. It was damaged quite a bit already, now. That was why, when Ryan made the ice melt again and turned it into a hook around the antennae, he was able to cleanly tear them both off the robot's head.

  The Roxie unit stood there, its head twitching while it tried to figure out what damages had been done to its systems. This was the third quirk that Ryan was taking advantage of. Richard was cocky. He believed so much in his own skill at controlling Roxie that he made some mistakes in the construction, or particularly, with the defence of some of Roxie's parts that he figured nobody would be able to touch.

  Ryan stood there, breathing heavily. He could feel his sight growing blurrier by the breath as his deep migraine grew stronger. This was a side-effect of the mana potion. Right now, it was hurting so bad that he was basically incapable of seeing anything at all. So much pressure had built up behind his eyes. But in a weird way, it actually lightened his load. The sensory information he got from the spirits was a lot 'cleaner' and focused than his own. So, with his own senses failing him right now, he could focus much more on those of all four spirits.

  "What are you waiting for, you pile of walking scrap-metal? Come at me," Ryan grinned broadly. To be totally honest, him and Richard had the last of those quirks in common. Ryan was also incredibly cocky.

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  Without the antennae, it wasn't as though Roxie wasn't able to use its special function. The only thing that this changed was that the robot would now be a lot more reckless. It immediately accelerated forward and attacked Ryan, stabbing forward the spike that had replaced its arm. He had been cut by that a few times in this fight already, though luckily only in shallow ways. Ryan swung forward his hammer in a wide motion, trying to force Roxie to stay back a lot more. But while he did so, Roxie just dropped down onto the ground, basically squatting. As if it turned its forward motion into a downward motion, making it look like the robot landed from a ten-metre drop.

  Her legs were constructed in an almost spring-like fashion, so it bounced off and basically dodged underneath the swing of Ryan's hammer. But by then, Maximus had already gotten in the way, jumping through Ryan's leg into his domain and back out of Ryan's chest. He slammed Cailleach into Roxie's wrist and diverted the attack from the spike.

  It cut through Ryan's arm. It was a shallow wound, but he could still feel blood flowing down over his elbow to his hand. Most importantly, he could feel Tiar writhing around on his arm. While the symbiote was fused with Ryan's entire body, you could say that a lot of their senses were concentrated there on the left arm, so they felt things that happened there much more intensely than anywhere else on the body.

  "You're fine, Tiar! Come on, we can push through this, don't worry!" Ryan ground his teeth together, trying to calm the symbiote down. He didn't have the time to check the back of his hand, but he figured that Tiar wouldn't be able to 'say' much all that much right now anyway. Either way, it was clear that they were entering the last phase of the fight right now. After all, Ryan had been doing all this for the fourth, and most important, of Roxie's quirks.

  The cooling system. All of these special movements were made possible by the energy transformer inside of Roxie's body. It could translate kinetic energy to mana to electrical energy and back. This was why Roxie was able to interrupt her physical movements or jumpstart them later. However, this energy transformed was a vastly inefficient thing. It was basically a prototype, which was why it took so much extra mana to make work, and why Richard was the only one to viably make use of it anyway. Though Bluesky had plenty of resources, Modak said that it was unlikely that they managed to build an energy transformed that fixed all of these inefficiencies in such a short amount of time. Instead, they probably just supplied the Roxie units with batteries that could hold vastly more mana than before.

  So, with that being said, that excess, inefficient energy didn't just dissipate. In most cases, this sort of energy showed itself in the form of heat. And the more aggressive and reckless Roxie got, the more inefficiently the robot would end up moving, and the more of an energy loss it would cause. Basically, without the antennae, the unit was going to heat up way faster.

  And a robot like Roxie must have some pretty sensitive machinery in her. They were going to be protected against certain impacts, but internal heat was usually not on that list. Especially since it was originally designed for Power Duels. Power Duels usually just went a few minutes at a time. With how big Roxie was, it was producing a massive amount of heat way faster than it would have in its usual size. At this point, moving away from offense, Ryan was moving defensively. He was trying to force Roxie into big maneuvers, trying to make her use the energy transformer as much as possible to produce as much excess heat as possible.

  Of course, at the same time, due to its antennae being broken, this was a perfect opportunity to make the robot 'accidentally' run into some of the other stuff scattered around, which it would have usually dodged. But this time, Ryan managed to make it run straight onto the pile of coins in the middle of the room, which didn't make for the most stable footing.

  Roxie nearly tripped over the ground, forcing it to change her momentum in an awkward way. At this point, the heat the unit was giving off would be enough to give Ryan some burns if he touched it.

  "Come on!" Ryan grinned broadly, trying to get Roxie to run straight at him. He could tell that the robot was already twitching and moving in way more awkward ways, like its internal machinery was getting damaged more and more. They were getting to the end of the fight.

  But it seemed like Roxie was also able to see this. Sparks flew off its body, and Ryan had a bad premonition. He tried to dodge out of the way at the last moment, but before he could, Roxie seemed to have used the last of its energy to shoot forward to try and stab Ryan one more time. In the last moment, though, Jester had jumped forward. With his attempted dodge, Ryan had gotten close enough that the harlequin could enter the domain, and jumped directly through in front of the reckless Spirit Keeper.

  The metal spike that was Roxie's arm pushed straight through Jester's chest, where his core was.

  The robot was basically fully out of energy now, giving Maximus the opportunity to jump onto its back and just hammer down on the back of its neck until it fell to the ground, just twitching slightly here and there, while Jester fell to the ground.

  Ryan stood there, staring at Jester in a moment of silence. The spirit raised his arm toward Ryan, as if trying to reach out to him, when he just... laughed.

  "Get up, you little drama-queen," Ryan said, squatting down to help the spirit up. Jester immediately straightened his back as he sat up. He stood up and mimed a large, exaggerated laugh. He pulled up his shirt, revealing a slightly dented metal plate that was covering his chest. Of course, usually, this wouldn't be enough to push through an attack like that, but Jester had a pretty special skill.

  [Cost has been calculated as 187 MP]

  Ryan let out a slightly relieved sigh. This was a ton of MP, but it was better than dying. As he picked up Jester, Gaia had approached Roxie and quickly stomped her heavy, rock foot down onto the robot's head, crunching it under her weight.

  "Thanks," Ryan smiled lightly as he stretched. He still had adrenaline pumping through him, so he couldn't quite feel the side-effects of the mana potion perfectly, but it was definitely starting to affect him anyway. He barely even glanced at the other system messages in front of him.

  [The -Knight's Attack- Skill has levelled up!]

  [The -Knight's Defence- Skill has levelled up!]

  [The -Harlequin's Act- Skill has levelled up!]

  [The -Harlequin's Trick- Skill has levelled up!]

  [The -Artillerist's Drunken Stupor- Skill has levelled up!]

  That being the case, Ryan didn't have a ton of time, "Gregor, take a look at Roxie's body. Use my phone to take as many pictures as you need."

  The spirit quickly did as asked, of course, getting out his tools to pry open Roxie to steal as many tricks from Richard and figure out the technology as possible. And, to actually use Ryan's phone, he used a small phone-pen to navigate it properly. Luckily, he had enough arms to do all this at once.

  In the meantime, Ryan did something even more important. He rushed up to the door on the other side of the room. The door presumably leading to the dungeon core.

  And as he pushed his hand onto it, a message appeared in front of his eyes.

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