He pulled another smoke grenade from his waist and smashed it down with a bang, then quickly wove through the vision-impaired, frenzied Robins, looking back to fire two shots and successfully evaded them.
Of course, he knew that he couldn't outrun these monsters by sheer speed alone; he was only buying some time. Jason immediately deployed the spaceship and zoomed away on it.
Originally, he hadn't planned to use the portable spaceship he got from Darkseid, because while it had many benefits—being compressible to the size of a cellphone-sized metal piece, ready to be released for a quick getaway, equipped with weapons and an invisibility device for stealthy infiltrations—
it was actually designed for one-time reconnaissance use. Since it was intended to be disposable, not meant for retrieval, once deployed, it couldn't be recovered for a considerable period of time due to its long cooldown.
That's why Jason hadn't planned on using it for travel immediately. But since that disgusting thing called King Robin had set his sights on him, flying off in the spaceship to meet up with the others became the obvious choice.
Jason glanced at the locator and felt he was close to the target location. Since the spaceship was fast, he decided to fly directly there to activate the switch, then pick up the other two on the way back.
So he flew straight toward the target location, which took only a few seconds to reach. He remained on the ship, cautiously observing the activity below. Seeing no ambush, Jason equipped all his gear before disembarking.
He parked the ship close, ready to board it instantly if anything unexpected happened. Sure enough, he found the security system's switch at the target location, but Jason, still cautious, didn't press it directly. Instead, he fired an ice cone and lodged the switch inside.
Jason clapped his hands in satisfaction and turned to walk back to the spaceship. But just at that moment, fog began to rise again.
Jason hunkered down cautiously, crouching in a corner to survey the surroundings. He noticed the dense fog quickly filling the room; he didn't dare to run blindly like before, knowing that remaining in one spot could be dangerous, but he decided to observe the situation first.
The place he was in wasn't ideal—a vast, open factory workshop. If any monsters appeared, they'd spot him in an instant, and with poor visibility in the fog, aiming the Freeze Gun became difficult, rendering an unobstructed view useless.
Jason thought it best to head to the surveillance room he had passed earlier. The layout was favorable, and it had a back door for escape, which led directly to the spaceship.
Jason moved out cautiously, on guard for any monsters that might leap out of the fog. But just as he stepped out of the factory door, there was a faint whoosh, and Jason fell straight down.
In the second before losing consciousness, his eyes widened in disbelief as he looked at the empty ground outside the factory, then realized—the fog had not descended; the fog he saw was fake.
Smirking, King Robin emerged from the dense fog, waving his hand as a small disc flew back to him. It was the device he had just created, a fog machine that perfectly simulated the onset of fog.
Since the fog had thoroughly disgusted him, how could he not return the favor? Simulating fog wasn't too difficult—simply modifying a smoke grenade would do.
After several fog incidents, everyone had deduced the pattern: upon seeing the fog descend, the instinct was to carefully follow the rules, which greatly shifted their attention, causing them to overlook dangers that were right under their noses. He could at least use this trick to ambush each person once.
"Shall I tie up these little birds and stew them into a big pot of chicken soup?" The wicked thought flickered through King Robin's mind, but he decided to still focus on the previous plan, to first toss Jason over for a brainwave invasion.
King Robin brought the captured Jason back to the top floor of Wayne Tower and put him in a chair, fitting him with the helmet of the brainwave invasion device.
He also installed a surveillance system inside the helmet, which allowed him to see in real-time the scenes of Jason's activities in the Psychic_Battlefield. It would help him determine whether there were traps on the other side and if it truly was Batman's mental world.
Jason's consciousness quickly sank, and as the brainwaves were transmitted, he began to explore the vast unknown areas.
A door appeared in Jason's field of view.
King Robin frowned slightly, unsure whether there were traps behind the door, and Jason, completely oblivious, pushed it open — behind the door was the bedroom of Wayne Manor.
It seemed like Batman's usual resting place, but one couldn't conclude just from this room that it was indeed Batman's mental world.
Jason wandered around the room and found another door next to the bookshelf, which he pushed open to discover the Batcave.
King Robin immediately sent a mental suggestion to Jason's psyche, telling him to take a look at the machines in the Batcave. There were many machines that only Batman could have invented, and such unique knowledge was surely stored in his mind. This knowledge was the best proof of Batman's mental world.
Unfortunately, this Batcave seemed very desolate, there was nothing inside, just two pieces of Bat Armor hanging there, looking quite odd, and the experimental tables were covered in cobwebs, as if they hadn't been used for a very long time.
King Robin felt unsure because this could be a Batcave that had been abandoned. He knew that this universe's Batman had more than one Batcave, and maybe this was just his nostalgia for the old place.
Finding another door in the Batcave, Jason pushed it open once more, and King Robin found it was an office with a view from the window that was unclear, but from the style, it looked like an academic staff office at East Coast University.
The place was truly lackluster; everything was so ordinary, prompting Jason to look for another door to push open and walk through, finding an extremely, extremely, extremely narrow room. The room was cluttered, the bedding was messy, and old women's clothes were scattered everywhere. Cat posters were plastered on the walls, and what was particularly eye-catching was a shimmering little glass bottle on the nightstand.
Jason passed through the clothes and cluttered posters, once again pushing open a door.
With a whoosh, Jason was engulfed by a flood of papers. King Robin took a closer look and saw that they were all academic papers, yet on further inspection, the writing made no sense.
"What a mess," King Robin scoffed disdainfully, "Who in their right mind would link Schopenhauer with behavioral science?"
Just then, King Robin heard a puzzled but very faint "Hmm?"