⛭ Chapter 20 ⛭

Chelbie scooted out of the way as fast as she could to avoid becoming another meat sack being bested to death.

Using the special glove without anyone seeing, she popped out a flamethrower to everyone’s surprise as that blurred the bot’s vision immediately. Using it all up, she kicked the metal can in its face while back flipping further away to keep the machine from laying its hands on her.

“Enough numbskullin’ around needlehead! Let’s see what you got,” she said while preparing to take on the metallic monster.

By this time, Trax, Zadz, and Mache had finished making it towards the end of the level, but they were already a bit late to try and help her out of this situation since they were back in Daylight Stadium.

President Daylight and Cyphra were also watching the onscreen footage from that same judge’s booth. Observing Chelbie’s capability to hold her own ground against The Skullspiker even interested the crowd to a certain degree.

Never had any racer faced off against this ruthless robot before like this.

The clashing continued as Chelbie used her roller skates to dodge the trashed cars that were being thrown at her. In some cases, she would also turn on the rocket boosters to push herself farther up or forward.

“Catch up skullslacker!” she teased the machine as it missed and rushed towards her headfirst.

When Chelbie attempted to kick The Skullspiker’s head, the AI grabbed her right leg and then swung her entire body against the broken door of a brown convertible.

It was then that the energy of The Eternal Light of Surreality kicked in from her prosthetic boots as it created an orange glow surrounding her like a forcefield when it happened.

While this did work, the power wasn’t entirely enough to prevent her from getting tossed around like a rag doll the moment Skullspiker caught Chelbie in a weak spot.

Sending violent attacks her way, the bot ended up being a lot stronger and more capable of delivering aggressive tactics. Some of which included carrying around and smashing down a worn-out tank .

The strength being used to do this must’ve came from the red X, Chelbie thought to herself.

She didn’t have time to waste trying to defeat The Skullspiker in a battle, but she would certainly be better off getting to that finish line to end it.

As she started to run towards the goal, it developed into her roller skating with rocket boosters on one last time for this match.

A chased ensued with the giant machine stomping on from behind her.

She went faster…

And faster…

Until finally after passing the checkered flag, she closed her fist with a baseball-sized stone appearing in her gloved hand (unbeknownst to the audience) and threw it as hard as she could at The Skullspiker.

Unfortunately, although its large robotic fist caught the rock, its programming seemingly did not allow it to run or even throw anything past the boundary.

Looking back warily at the robot who was still staring her down, Chelbie stuck up both middle fingers at it with no regrets as she walked through the portal that led her back to the Daylight Stadium.