ALL NOVEL Can He Unbuild It? Maybe He Can
The bear robot started to circle around Bob, as though making a show out of its final moments.
It really looked like it was a hopeless situation for Bob and there wasn't any way for it to turn this situation around.
"Well, not surprising I guess," Someone muttered from nearby. "It's just another defeat for him."
"How many does this make it?"
"You mean this season or total?"
"Oh damn, just this season then?"
"This would be the fifteenth loss."
"How is he able to afford to repair it and even upgrade his battlebot after losing so many times?"
"Dude's probably taking out loans and got into debt…"
"Man… I don't know if I should pity him."
I tuned their conversation out and turned to Ries, "Guess we lost this bet after all."
However, Ries had a determined look in her eyes, "It's still not over yet, Boss! Look!"
I turned back towards the boxing ring and saw that Bob was still half kneeling in the same position as before. Teddy was still circling around it, slowly getting closer towards its target.
"What?" I asked, wondering what she saw.
"They've not announced that the match has ended yet!"
That is true… But what can Bob actually do now?
As if to prove my point, Teddy turned and charged towards it, aiming to finish Bob off.
But instead of just sitting there and taking it, the bull head robot lifted its remaining arm to slam it onto the ring, sending a shockwave out that forced Teddy to stumble backwards from it.
I thought that Bob was just buying time for itself and the Roboteer controlling Teddy seemed to think so as well since Teddy quickly recovered and lunged towards Bob again.
That was when Bob swung its arm to the side, sending the chained ball flying out and away from it.
It seemed like the punch from earlier had sent Bob's other arm flying up into the air, giving it the chance to use its chain to catch it while it was in midair.
Bob then swung the arm back, causing the chainsaw arm to go flying towards the mouth of its opponent.
A high pitched grating sound came from the bear robot's mouth as the chainsaw struck the robot directly in the mouth.
Teddy tried to pull out the chainsaw from its mouth but it seemed like it was completely lodged inside its mouth, the chainsaw cutting up the insides of its mouth.
Using that to its advantage, Bob pulled on the chain which made Teddy stumble forward to crash onto the ground.
It then yanked its arm to free the chain from the chainsaw, allowing it to retract its spiked ball back to its arm socket.
All the while, the chainsaw was still revving and decimating the interior of the bear's mouth. Judging by the sound and the smoke coming out from there, I think it was doing quite a lot of damage.
Teddy tried to push itself back on its feet but it made the mistake of leaning on its mangled limb that Bob crushed earlier, causing it to finally snap from the weight and sending it crashing back down on the ground.
Then, as if this was all part of the plan, Bob managed to limp towards the downed opponent before raising the spiked mace above the bear's exposed belly.
Pausing just long enough for everyone to realise what had happened, Bob The Unbuilder smashed its fist down, crushing through the armour plating and into the interior of the robot.
There was a loud whine before flames spewed out from the crushed belly, right before smoke started to plume out from it and the light in Teddy's eyes quickly dimmed until it completely shut down.
As if waiting for that to happen, the chainsaw on the dismembered limb stopped, revealing the fact that Bob had control over it all along.
It then slowly brought the leg that was crippled up to lean against the downed body of Teddy to prop itself up before it raised its one good arm into the air.
Unsurprisingly, the reaction from the crowd was quite mixed with a select few cheering out loud while even more of them were cursing out loud. No doubt the former were people who had bet on Bob while the latter were people who bet on Teddy.
The emcee only needed a second to recover from their surprise before roaring into the speakers, "Would you believe it?! This is a historical moment!! Bob The Unbuilder has defied all odds and won!! Has he finally broken free of his shackles of defeat?! Who knows?! But it's a fact that we are witnessing the first victory of Bob The Unbuilder after a long history of defeat!! Congratulations!!"
"Boss! Boss!! You're awesome! You're really, really awesome!!" Ries cheered, hugging me tightly.
Err… I'm not sure why you're saying I'm awesome when I didn't even do anything here… Bob was the one who managed to win this by itself… Or rather, the Roboteer behind Bob is the real winner for this.
One of the girls from the lesbian couple beside us noticed Ries's reaction and gasped, "No way… Did the both of you actually bet on Bob?"
Her partner also looked at us in surprise, "You really did? That's some serious luck! He's been on a losing streak for so long! What's the payout?"
Someone else answered from behind, "Four to two. If you ask me, it should have been higher. They only lowered it because the opponent was still relatively new."
Hearing those numbers the couple beside us quickly lost interest.
"Huh… Only four times payout? You must not have bet a lot right?" One of them asked.
I nodded, "Yeah… This was our first time here so we were just having some casual fun. I only bet a hundred on Bob."
Of course, I intentionally left out the 'thousand' behind the 'hundred' since I saw no reason to let these people know about our bet.
The other girl giggled, "Well, that's not too bad. It could get you some decent drinks at the bars around here."
I nodded at her, "Of course. Well if you would excuse us…"
I got up and pulled Ries along, the cat girl still clinging to me happily while making purring noises.
The others knew we were going to collect our winnings and some of them didn't even bother hiding their jealousy at us.
We only managed to take a few steps before a large sized man with a clearly cybernetic head stood up and blocked our way, flexing his arms in a clearly threatening manner.
"Hey… Heard you bet on Bob?" The guy asked in a not so friendly manner.
I couldn't help but groan, "Ugh… Really? Are you going to demand that I hand over our betting slip so you can take our money or else you would beat us?"
He smirked, "It's good that you are a smart gal, this saves us a lot of time then. Alright, hand it over and I won't need to hurt you."
I gave him the fakest smile I could before answering him with a single word, "No."
His smile quickly turned into a frown, "What do you mean 'no'?"
"You should be able to connect to the GalNet to search up the meaning of the word 'No' right? While you're doing that, we'll just go and claim our winnings~"
He was obviously not amused by my words and cracked his knuckles, "You think you're funny huh? Let's see how you can laugh after I punch your face in~"
Ok, I didn't really think he would actually start a fight here. Shouldn't there be some rules to stop things like this from happening? Otherwise people could just go and threaten the winners of the bets and take their winnings, right?
And if that happens… People will be less incentivised to come here to place bets right?
Or maybe it's because we said it out loud that this would happen… So we should have just shut our mouth about it…
Taking a moment to look around quickly, I realised that everyone around us had taken a step away and were clearly trying their best not to get involved with us.
Tch… Should have expected the bystander effect to be something here…
He pulled back his fist and seemed fully intent on trying to punch me so I pushed Ries behind me while I focused on the fist that was sent flying towards me.
The world around me seemed to slow and at this point, this kind of felt familiar for me so I wasn't too surprised by it and just maintained my attention at the fist coming towards my face.
I leaned a little to the right while moving my left hand up to push against his wrist to redirect the path of his punch towards the side.
I then reacted with a kick in between his legs, which seemed to speed up the world back to normal again.
He doubled over in pain and I took a step forward and smashed my elbow against the side of his face, knocking the bigger guy down onto the ground.
Unfortunately, that did not knock him out like I thought it would. Fortunately, the kick to his balls really hurt him and he wasn't going to recover any time soon.
Without missing a beat, I took Ries by the hand and led her out of the stands without a second glance back.
That will teach him to try and threaten me~