Pro of being stranded in the middle of a sea of tall grass? We aren’t being teleported around randomly anymore. Cons? Basically everything else. Since we landed in this god forsaken weed forest, we’ve been besieged on all sides by horrible critters. So far I’ve counted three different models of giant earwigs, two almost invisible moles, and one snake with far too many tails. 

On top of that, I’ve been defending both me and the stupid child, since he’s currently passed out. Apparently disarming high tier spatial magic is tiring or something. I think he’s just faking it so he doesn’t have to walk through this heat. 

I mean, I’ve destroyed four more attempts at whisking us off to god knows where effortlessly. What’s that? I have a specialized organ made to do nothing but that one task? Well, I have the perfect response to such a criticism, shut up voices in my head.

As I slowly lose my mind, again, I notice the air a few feet away rippling. I thought after the last try they learned their lesson. They haven’t tried again for a few hours at least, so what’s this about? 

I stare as the warped space gets more and more bent. I quickly realize that the spell isn’t attempting to close around me this time as it rapidly completes. The sphere of purple light vanishes in a flash, leaving behind an odd looking passenger. 

Dropping the few inches from where it appeared, a large egg of metal crashes into the ground. I just stare at it, taken completely off guard by the suddenly appearing object. A blue light blinks on one side of the egg. The circular glow quickly spreads over the entire surface of the ovoid, tracing complex glyphs into it as it goes.

Once new runes stop appearing on its skin, the egg bursts open, its pieces rearranging midair. The whirling mass of metal and light quickly begins to make a familiar shape. A very humanoid shape. Seconds later an eight foot tall, four armed, humanoid robot stands in place of the metallic egg. The thing’s upside down pyramid skull scans the area with its singular blue eye. Its searchlight gaze stops as it passes over the sleeping child and me.

Instantly, every light on its body, including its eye, turns a deep emergency red. Its upper pair of arms split apart at the wrists, forming strange ‘y’ shapes. Meanwhile its lower pair reconfigures into massive claws. After quickly rearranging its anatomy, it rolls its shoulder like it’s warming up, and then throws itself towards us.

Not having time to put Betton down, I instead throw up as many limbs as I can. Most of them are instantly eviscerated by the android’s serrated fingers, but the inner, thicker, ones hold against the vicious onslaught. Just as I get to catch my breath from its sudden attack, something on the robot flashes.

Searing pain screams from many of my rubbery limbs simultaneously. Which is pretty odd, since they usually don’t even whine when they get cut clean off. After sorting through the sudden mental noise, I realize I’ve been shot. And that something smells like bacon. A hole is pierced clean through every single limb defending me, and through my main body as well. The smoldering shot only missed my sleeping minion by a few inches.

The magitech being starts to immediately use this new weakness to its advantage, shoving its claws into the still burning hole. It quickly digs in with its fingers, using the small tunnel in my many arms to advance.

In response to the artificial creature’s tactic, I shift all of the limbs under the first layer, moving the hole so that they’re no longer lined up. But that’s only bought me time. I’m sure it's already charging up another shot. 

I form eyes on every exposed surface I can, giving myself as much coverage as I can get. My human consciousness strains under the sudden deluge of information, but I push through. Thankfully it seems like my monster brain doesn’t have the same hangups as the rest of me, and quickly sorts through the forty viewpoints for useful info.

The robot… It has laser guns. Its upper arms are two massive laser rifles. The left one, which must’ve been the one that already shot me, is smoking extensively, detached and discarded to the side. The right rifle is currently nursing a growing sphere of yellow light between its two long ‘fingers’. 

Great, fantastic. I thought this was a fantasy world, why is there a god damned android shooting lasers at me?! …Whatever, I’m a modern gal, I know how to use a smartphone, a robot shouldn’t be much harder than that, right? 

First things first, I can’t get hit by that gun again. I have no idea what it’s made of, or what it fires, but the skin it burned still isn’t healing. I spread out my body further, making more and more tendrils until I feel like I won’t get one shot even if I get nailed again. With that done I start digging a hole in the ground behind me to hide Betton in. 

…I don’t know what else to do with him, okay? We’re in the middle of a fucking field, where am I supposed to h— Aww, shit.

I wrap several sets of tendrils together, hastily making three much thicker limbs. Without a second of hesitation I fling them at the android. Two get grabbed immediately by the demon machine’s lower limbs, but the third makes it through the robot’s defenses. The club-like arm slams into the underside of the robot’s upper arm just in time to screw up its aim.

With the sound of thousands of geriatric men cracking their knuckles simultaneously, the beam of light fires in the sky. I keep an eye on it as it pierces the atmosphere, not trusting it to not turn around and hit me in the back with some bullshit. Thankfully it seems the light weapon follows some rules and the glowing line just destroys some clouds ‘harmlessly’. 

With both of its gun arms now inert, I turn my attention to offense. With a few new sets of gnashing jaws and razor sharp claws I throw myself at the metal barbarian. With a loud screeching sound my claws bounce off its hard exterior, and my teeth hardly fair better. Similarly, any damage the robot does to me with its snippy fingers just grows back immediately.

…We’re going to be here all day. I am not going to sit here until one of us runs out of patience or gas, and honestly I have no idea who would be first. I don’t even know if the stupid thing has a limited power source, or if it can keep just brawling forever. All I know is I can’t.

So, like any rational adult in a life or death situation, I fiddle around on my phone. If the last message I got from the system is accurate, I still have two hundred points to spend. That should help at least some with this situation. Maybe. 

I scroll through my menus, lazily perusing the options. Most of the good ones are out of my budget, just like when I went shopping on Earth. I guess some things are constant even between worlds. That is, me being poor.

Man… so many options and nothing to choose. I guess some of these could help. Like harden carapace, or magic digestion, but like… those are laaame. I want to do something cool, like rip out the robot’s still beating harddrive and wiggle a magnet over it as it watches on in horror. But some part of me is saying, ‘No Alex, don’t get a dumb flashy ability, get something useful for more than just this moment’. And, yeah, that annoying voice is right, but I wanna do stupid flashy shit.

Which leaves one option, find something stupid, flashy, and useful. It’s not like I’m rushed for time, the stupid robot is still hacking away fruitlessly at my sphere of unending flesh. And if it burns through my food reserves, I can just send tendrils underground to pull up rabbits or something.

…Maybe Betton had a point about me being freakishly resistant. Whatever, I have to find a dumb— I mean useful— skill! I turn back to my menus, and start to browse.

────────────

I think I found it, the perfect combination of useful, and stupid. I could’ve gotten an ability that lets me kill this robot instantly, but where’s the f— I mean, what if things in future are resistant to such a tactic? So instead I thought to myself, what am I currently lacking in? And the answer is simple. 

I’m tired of shit not breaking when I hit it. It’s only happened twice, but twice is enough for me to know I hate it. A lot. And so, I’ve found the perfect thing to rectify my issue. 

It’s perfect, beautiful, wonderful, everything a violent girl could ask for. With this little baby, no matter how tough my opponent, I can just keep whaling on them and they’ll eventually die! How great is that? 

But Alex, what if the robot you were facing right now was able to fire its guns multiple times, wouldn’t it— Shuddup, I say, this is perfect, okay? 

…I’m starting to talk to myself a little too much. I’m sure it’s fine. 

Armed with my new ability, I disassemble the sphere of pink that’s been protecting me. On the other side sits the robot, who is… It’s drawing in the dirt? 

Seeing that I’ve opened back up, the robot launches itself from its spot on the ground. Its large claws of shining black metal again cleave through my flesh. And again that means nothing as the bubblegum colored meat rapidly regrows. Suck it, robot! 

As the robot is focused on fruitlessly harming me, I take my time preparing my own offensive. I whip up a batch of limbs, each a few inches in diameter. On the ends I make small bulbous bits, basically crude fists. Once I’m satisfied with my preparations, I let 'em fly.

Thirty or so vine like limbs shoot towards the mechanical menace, but it just ignores them. It seems to be under the impression I can’t harm it, which until a few minutes ago was true. But times have changed, tin man! 

One time, when I was young, my parents took me on a trip, I don’t really remember to where. During the long car ride home, a massive thunderstorm whipped up out of nowhere. All we could do was pull over, and listen to the rain violently pummel the roof of the car. 

That’s the sound the stupid robot is making as I hit it as many times as possible. Each time one of my small limbs makes contact, I quickly pull it back and spring it forward again. You could hardly even call this an attack, I’m basically tapping my fingers against the metal without any force behind it. Just… with thirty or forty fingers simultaneously. 

And, thanks to my shiny new ability, the magic construct quickly racks up some serious damage. Each hit makes a miniscule dent, but it's a dent all the same. And at around a hundred hits a second, it doesn’t take long for the poor machine to break. After around ten seconds of continuous assault, the lights on the robot flicker out, and the thing falls over with a thundering crash.

I grow a mouth, just so I can smirk at the smoking corpse of my mechanical enemy. That’s what you get for fighting a modern girl! Sure, I ended up using brute force… 

Oh that’s neat, it counted as a monster? Lucky me, I guess. Now do I loot it, or…?

I whirl around as I hear something behind me move. On alert I scan the area and find… Betton, crawling out of the dirt.

The kid looks up at me with huge, betrayed, puppy dog eyes. “Did you bury me?”