With agonizing patience Tapper ran through his options for escape, eventually playing through the entire combat encounter with Zero and realizing how similar this predicament was. And since Drillbert was holding him, wouldn't that count for touching someone with a spell? The energy and the willpower slowly built up in his center until his speaker commanded the Suck spell, and even though his voice sounded muted and far away it managed to work. Drillbert twitched and lost its grip for Tapper to fall free, collapsing on the bottom end of the box between two seats bolted to the wall. Or the floor?

In his numb clarity Tapper noticed that the angled wall he had fallen down might have actually been the floor, which would mean the gap that Drillbert is currently stuck in would likely be a loading ramp. And if Tapper angled his head way back he'd be looking right at the underside of a dashboard, how interesting.

There were a few broken panels here, and under one flap Tapper noticed a gleam from the Universal Service Port, its preserved alloys shining in contrast to the dull and rusted metal that surrounded it. How useful! The bartender reached out a lazy hand towards the port, ultrafine crystalline fibers detaching and snaking out of the finger joints to automatically set themselves into the contact points.

No response at all, meaning that the contraption currently entrapping them was completely powered down. Attempting to feed energy into the port the mundane way didn't work either, but pushing in a point from his mana battery woke up some basic programming. Only the surface level programming that were all emergency alert messages, but feeding it another point was enough for him to look into the emergency protocols and that's where he found the manual override door reset. And if those pneumatic struts holding up the ramp were any indication…

The sharp hiss of escaping gasses was immediately followed by a massive crunch as the opening to the box snapped shut with force — or tried to, if the mining robot hadn't been stuck midway through. The squealing screech it made was one of the most horrible things Tapper had ever heard and there was no way to tell whether it came from garbled speakers, the crumpling of its metal torso, or both. After the mouth of the box crunched down one more time for good measure, whatever energies it was using to operate ran out and it went slack once again. But this time, Drillbert had been crushed enough to now fit through the hole.

The tactile feedback program finished rebooting just as the larger robot tumbled through the hole, replacing calm clarity with sharp agony and causing Tapper to curl into a ball. The flinch of pain let him narrowly avoid getting crushed, but the playback program was still running through the encounter with Zero and this time Aazran wasn't around to save him. He had to stay focused, especially since Drillbert still refused to terminate! Somehow the big robot was still functioning, even if it was only at a fraction of its efficiency.

A massive dent ran across the lower half of its torso with chunks of it torn away in places, showing the internal mechanisms as they pumped hydraulic fluid onto the floor. The legs hung at an impossible angle and didn't move at all, but the confines were so tight that neither robot would be able to get any distance even with full mobility.

In an odd twist of irony, that lack of maneuverability was currently the only thing keeping Tapper alive. A chair was all that stood between him and the arm that was currently trying to peel him open, but even with the malfunctioning robot's erratic movements his luck would not last forever. Stuck, alone, and in too much pain to think straight, Tapper saw no other option beyond using the one trick that had already saved his life twice and push with everything he had. "SUCK!" His voice was little more than a panicked squeal but it worked, only this time when the energy flowed into the other robot Tapper mentally grabbed onto the line and held it open like a faucet. The response was much more pronounced this time as well, Drillbert started to spasm and sparks flew out of several places all over its body.

But that damn drill just wouldn't stop, so Tapper grabbed onto the large arm with both hands and pushed against it with all of his meager might. The thin little spindles on his back even tried to help by pushing back against the wall, and inch by agonizing inch Tapper started to actually gain the advantage. By the time Tapper finally won out he had been screaming in an incoherent mix of emotional feedback with the volume cranked to max, loud enough to almost be heard over the sound of the drill eating into Drillbert's own chest.

It was impossible to tell exactly when Drillbert died. Tapper didn't know when it stopped pushing back, when the drill stopped spinning, or when the lights on its head unit winked out. Was it even appropriate to say that it died? Tapper just kept pushing and screaming and screaming and pushing until a single sharp DING! sound finally distracted him, loud and forceful enough to lurch the unstable ground and leave a ringing echo in Tapper's head. His optical sensors refocused and he had to manually force his verbal processor to hard restart before it would stop screaming, but he finally noticed that everything had stilled. It was just him, a mining robot with its arm elbow-deep in its own chest, and a pile of notifications awaiting his attention.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

[Injury: Shattered Legs

Dexterity capped at 1, speed capped at 5ft, distracting pain]

[Wounds: ⬤⬤⭘]

And it was indeed distracting, all the broken circuitry in his support pole was sending up every error message it could to his CPU and draining necessary processing power. There were even looping error messages on damage readouts of treads that no longer existed, which just seemed excessive at this point. Without enough computing power remaining to steady his hands it took a few false starts, but he was able to undo the maintenance latches on his lower torso and slowly twist the entire unit sideways until it clicked and fell off. Relief immediately washed over Tapper's mind like fresh liquid cooling, and he idly noted that the injury debuff changed to Missing Legs. His wound counter even lowered to a single crossed circle, giving Tapper a second dose of relief.

[Drillbert the Drillbot level 4 defeated! +10 XP for participation]

[XP 27/25]

[LEVEL UP!]

[Welcome to level 2!]

[Please select the second half of your class]

This was followed by a final pop up that contained a scrolling list of nine class descriptions, similar to the first time this strange system assaulted him but thankfully half as long. Even though it refused to be dismissed, the massive message at least had the decency to make itself translucent when it became clear that Tapper was not going to read the entire thing right this moment. He was far too busy properly appreciating his predicament for the first time.

First and foremost, it didn't take a status message to tell that Tapper was completely immobile. His treads were now little more than metal shavings spilled all over the container, and even if they could be recovered he was not going to put that faulty pelvis back on until Mister Ricky could repair it. The mining robot was not in much better condition, and also dead. They were both crammed into the bottom of a metal box — no, was it possibly a vehicle of some sort? Two benches lined the longer walls and two swiveling seats sat at the far end, one with a steering wheel attached, which Tapper managed to climb over to show a full dashboard.

He had to get out of here. His proprietors had interjected with the miners, and if they were willing to go to these lengths to attack him then the young humans might be in just as much danger! It didn't occur to the bartender that the warehouse encounter was now several hours ago, nor that the miners likely could not tell what happened here, but it at least spurred him into action.

The first attempt of Tapper's grand escape strategy was to climb back out of the hole, which amounted to over an hour of him uselessly flopping about the floor. The bare metal surfaces and structures refused to give him any proper leverage, and all of the actual handholds built into the ceiling were always just barely out of reach. The highest vantage point he could reach was the dashboard, which quickly became his perch of contemplation after each climbing failure. He contemplated the controls that would not power on, he contemplated the windows doors on either side of the dashboard that were either locked or jammed beyond his meager strength, and he contemplated the windows that only showed rubble and broken concrete. If the entire vehicle was buried then going forward was, so to speak, out the window.

Tapper was so tired that he almost laughed at his own pun. A hardworking robot had no concept for being weary but his MP had bottomed out at 0 before he started drawing on his mana battery, and that was already down to 3/10. Whatever that meant, it had to be related to the deep exhaustion he was now fighting against. Etiquette protocol would advise customers that spent too much time drinking to go home and get a good night's rest, so maybe powering down for a diagnosis would help in a similar way. The spotlights of his eyes were already dimming, the only light source in the confined box fading away until the gloom revealed a tiny, glittering speck of light. It would be so easy to ignore, but with a whirring grunt of effort Tapper aborted the diagnostics program and focused on the light.

The twinkle could be seen rapidly blinking on and off through the windshield, flashing through cracks in the debris and so faint that any amount of light from Tapper would drown it out. But that meant there was something on the other side of the concrete, he wasn't completely buried after all! But the thick windows were made of transparent aluminum and showed no signs of damage despite all the rubble, so try as he might the robot was not going to punch through the windows any time soon. And he certainly took his time trying, flinging his limbs at the windshield over and over until a damage report on his hands forced him to stop. He spent longer than was necessary to verify the damage, settling down into a deeper contemplation on the state of his body. If he broke his arms then he would really be trapped here forever and frayed wires could already be seen poking out of his scuffed finger joints. Just a torso rolling around the bottom of a car until his battery ran out…

Inspiration hit the bartender like a shot of adrenaline. The Universal Service Port! In the stress of combat he had forgotten all about it, and as he struggled back underneath the dashboard a plan formed with surprising ease. If 2 points of mana allowed him to access the emergency protocols, then surely more mana would grant him deeper functions.

Bubbling excitement screamed for Tapper to just dump his entire mana pool into the car right here and now, but cold computing reminded that letting the reserves fall to 0 is an unknown and potentially dangerous variable. The mana description also said that it refills with a period of rest, so the solution here seemed straightforward — plug in, feed the vehicle 7 points of mana, run a diagnostic to force his rest condition, and repeat until he could access some function that allowed him to finally escape.