Fortunately for Antasma, or unfortunately, his objective also wanted him to go to the Laboratory, so whether or not Dreambert had video chatted with him, he would've gone to the Laboratory anyways.
However, despite Dreambert's request, huge groups of soldiers and Futuristic Pi'illodiums were still being spawned in all the previous rooms he went through, which was strange considering he had no reason to put in any reinforcements. The only thing Antasma could think of was that the combatants were just brought in to be used as glorified health and Castaphrose packs for him. Which was even more concerning since Dreambert would..typically never do that, he won't do that, he won't let honorable soldiers die for little to no gain, he even calls them "elite" himself.
The implication of what it could mean irritated Antasma, when he saw Dreambert's eyes, he was hoping that he was mistaking that glint for his own, but it had become more and more apparent that the old, righteous-like Pi'illo was not there anymore.
If the blood-shed was anything to indicate, it was certainly that.
As he floated through the now empty, yet stained hallways, he decided to open his upgrade menu and check out what else he could improve on, he had already seen the module options during his little panic scrolling journey, so he selected the systems options and inspected the miscellaneous improvements.
As he pondered over the three remaining choices, he began to question what he really valued, and a part of his subconscious was tugging at him to select "increase defenses''. After all, he was constantly getting into fights and the amount of damage that the Futuristic Pi'illodiums did to him was absurd, wasn't he supposed to be like a war machine? Why was he so fragile?
But despite the questionable weak defenses that he was rebuilt with, his decision still hovered over the now first option: "Enemy Evaluation".
Truthfully, he had no idea what he was up against, his automatic scanner only informed him the most basic information about the enemy, and nothing more detailed than that. It would be nice if he could know how they functioned, or why they were made in the first place.
So with another torn decision, he picked "Enemy Evaluation".
Immediately, another section below the upgrades menu appeared. It was simply labeled as "Evaluation", which was quite a peculiar wording considering that he only picked this to gain information, implying that his systems already have access to the entiredatabase of…whatever machinery or weapons was on this ship.
Such information was invaluable, and it was all within the palm of his hand…or mind, wherever the information was stored.
He excitedly opened the menu…only to find the entries of the enemies that he had already encountered available to him, the would-be-entries were simply boxes with "?" labeled on it. He twitched his eye in annoyance, he was already irritated by his lack of knowledge of the new world and now his own head was restricting his access too? What was this? A shitty game of hangman? He had to guess the enemy now?
He sighed, he supposed he'd have to explore and find out.
And speaking of exploring…he had now arrived at the Laboratory. He felt extremely wary of this area, especially on how…giddy…Dreambert sounded when he wanted him to come here, that alone made him more nervous.
He approached the door and hesitantly reached towards the pad, part of him was afraid of what could be behind the door and a part of him just wanted to get it over with.
With another deep breath, he opened the door and went in.
The laboratory was currently empty like the rest of the places in which he had been, the room was incredibly large with a high end ceiling that could rival with the gym, there were large tube-like-capsules on either side of the room that held strange looking plants and various human-sized alien creatures, there were typical lab equipments and strange vials, as well as multiple industry leveled robot arms that hang from the ceiling and rested above various operating tables.
Antasma cracked his neck as he examined the room, the emptiness of the place along with his general discomfort to the additional weight of his neck was irritating him to no end. He sensed no danger yet and just as his objective had marked it, the final component was right there at the end of the room, it was highlighted so that he could differentiate it from the rest of the pieces that laid on top of the work bench. He couldn't quite make out the appearance of the item but it looked like a messy tangle of wires strapped to some random circuit board that didn't make any sense, but he simply shrugged to himself and glided towards the final component.
As he reached out to grab it, he paused and glanced behind him, he was heavily suspicious on how peaceful it was. Dreambert had insisted on him coming here so he assumed that he prepared something that would absolutely wreck his shit, but there was virtually nothing here.
Maybe he said that to lead him on, perhaps he found it funny to watch him go into an anxiety fit only for him to be exacerbated at the deception. He growled quietly at all the humiliating possibilities. When he reached him, he was going to feed him his own heart.
Once he grabbed the last component, he quickly slipped it into his stomach storage and hurried back towards the entrance, maybe if he was fast enough he could-
The doors locked immediately and he promptly face planted into the panel, he wanted to scream. The lights flickered as he could hear giant booming sounds coming from above, he cracked his neck and readied his claws. This time, he was going to be prepared for whatever was coming to him.
A giant figure crashed through the ceiling and landed right at the center of the room, Antasma squinted at the intruding machine as it slowly regained its stance.
The thing that now faced him was a mecha, and it was gigantic, at least a head taller than the Futuristic Pi'illodium, painted with muted green and red metallic undertones that highlighted its humanoid body structure, and interestingly, a huge smiling face with swirly eyes was embroidered on its chest. He recognized the face, it was Fawful's, the guy who offered him to join in their blunt smoking session with his friends down in the Underwhere. He did overhear that he was an inventor by some of his buddies, but he never really thought too much about it. However, the mecha had a variety of armor plating that covered parts of it, almost as if the makers of the mech were trying to hide the sigil while not ruining the weight distribution of the weapon. The mech straightened up and glared at Antasma, it seemed like a more advanced type of machine as it had a sturdy build along with a much larger machine gun hanging off by its shoulder.
It said nothing as it marched towards him with a menacing, yet robotic walk. The sound of its stomps were simply terrifying as this behemoth of a machine raised its fist and brought it down upon him.
He barely managed to parry it as he was too busy gawking at the construct. He had seen giant mechs in the Dreamworld before, whether it was the battle form of the Dreamstone Spirit or the colossal tower-made Earthwake, but he thought that such things were too complex or expensive to be built in the real world.
The mecha here was obviously nowhere near the size of the giants in the Dreamworld, but he suspected that it was built to accommodate for the size of the ship, not for the potential of the technology.
He gritted his teeth as he barely parried the second swing of its fist, it was already hard enough for him to time and parry the Futuristic Pi'illodium, and now he was dealing with the same stuff again but doubled in weight.
He backed up from it as it attempted to kick him with its huge leg and he didn't even try to parry it as his system alerted him that it was unparryable. He backed away stiffly as he scanned the battle mech.
This construct is called Laughtron,
Well the name was certainly deceiving, it had the word "laugh" in it but nothing about it was funny, it was scary if anything else. He didn't have time to look at its terminal entry so he would simply have to learn its attacks as he went along. He could see that it excelled at close distance fights, so maybe he could incorporate a simple hit-and-run strategy to try and wear the mech down, but before he could put that plan into action. The mech wind it's leg back and his system began beeping rapidly to warn him of a attack, but why? it looked like it was gonna kick yet he was nowhere near the range of it, so why would it-
Before he could finish that thought, the construct swung its leg and propelled itself towards him with a hidden rocket booster in it's legs at an incredible speed. He barely had time to realize what was happening before its feet struck him square in the chest and launched him across the room. The attack instantly took away a quarter of his health and knocked the wind out of him.
He slowly sat back up and glared at the offender, apparently it also had a really good distance coverage. He stood back up and switched to his intermediate stance. This thing also had a steel armor similar to the Futuristic Pi'illodium, blunt damage probably worked well against it too.
He cracked his neck once more and rushed in, the hit-and-run tactic was now absolutely unusable, he'll need to fight it legit.
Dreambert leaned back in his seat as he watched the fight, he was quite proud at the power of the mech that he designed but was a bit upset that the engineers didn't fully remove that damn face. They told him that they were short on time and had to cut corners to mass produce these powerhouses in good quality, and as such, they couldn't fully wipe the traces of the technology's origin.
He was not happy with the result but he'd have to live with it.
He turned back to the screen and watched Antasma getting chucked across the room once more from a failed dodge, he parried too late and was kicked again.
Dreambert sighed, at this rate he was going to die, it was a miracle that he even survived this long, especially without the extra defenses upgrade.
Well what a shame, it looked like he gotta activate the revival pod in that room and replace the mech so he could ensure that Antasma would beat the construction fair and square. When one defeats an enemy a first time, they can usually do it twice.
He chuckled as Antasma missed the parry of the double strike and promptly lost his chest plate, he watched in glee as he stumbled back in total shock with sparks flying out of his circuits as it partially revealed his lungs, one more strike from the mecha was going to seal the deal.
However what happened next completely surprised Dreambert,
Antasma straightened up and activated his thunder module, he used Static Whiplash and wrapped the electric whip around the construct's head and proceeded to launch himself above the mech, blasting it with a huge burst of flame that effectively melted a large portion of the head. Dreambert was impressed at his ability to keep calm and immediately spring into a different strategy, that move was executed by himself with little to no help from his system.
He watched as Antasma spun back around and faced the mech with a strangely calm expression. He knew that he couldn't feel pain but the fact that he could come to terms with his problem so quickly, kind of…terrified him…
Dreambert shook away the thought, whatever, he knew what Antasma was made out of. This wasn't new, this type of tech was used on basically all the soldiers, he should expect this.
Yet…there was a sense of uneasiness burrowing into his skin, as he watched him fight, he couldn't help but imagine what it would feel like to be at the end of that fist…
With a final burst of flame, Antasma successfully burnt a clean hole through the tough chestpiece of the mech and effectively killed it.
The colossal construct was no more.
He exhaled a deep breath as he stared at its remains. More of these things were going to appear, he knew it, and it might come with more than one like the Futuristic Pi'illodium. He pinched the bridge of his would-be-nose and sighed, he was in for a lot of pain.
Unfortunately for him, the Castaphrose from the mech didn't fully heal him back, so he could still see a small part of his lungs sticking out from his chest.
He stared at it absentmindedly, he'd probably just patch himself up a bit more once he found more soldiers, but for now he'd just have to deal with it.
His objective had just updated as it informed him to return to the giant spider and signaled him to a nearby vent. Well whatever, this thing had better be good if it was worth having his chest torn apart for.
"Ah you're back! How did your little fetch quest go? he he~" the spider asked.
Antasma glared at it before promptly showing his exposed lung, he had healed a bit from the healing feature that was installed in his system but he was still not fully revitalized from the fight.
The spider however, understood his situation and fell quiet, she could sense that he was in an extremely non chatty mood, whatever he had been through was probably really rough.
"I've brought vhat you've asked," he answered simply,
He opened his stomach compartment and reached into his storage portal to pull out all of the components she had marked on his UI.
The spider tentatively reached out one of her limbs and took the three parts carefully, it brought out more of its additional limbs and began constructing a meticulous device.
Antasma cracked his neck and his back as he waited. At first, the irritating neck weight wasn't that bad, but as time went on. It became more and more uncomfortable, he didn't feel any pain at all but it was starting to get annoying.
However, one thought suddenly struck his mind, could his new upgrade reveal who this spider was other than their self-proclaimed title as the "First Subject."?
He squinted at the spider and initiated a scan once more,
It revealed that her name..was Subject Alpha: Mimi,
He blinked, and without a second thought he blurted out. "Your name is Mimi?"
The spider froze in the middle of its work as she slowly looked back at Antasma in shock.
"How did you…?" she asked.
"I had a database update vhile I was collecting your stuff," he replied curtly, "Vhy are you so secretive about your identity if you knew that this information was already recorded and stored?"
Mimi went silent, her legs already resumed working but she didn't say anything else.
"Vell?" he asked, he crossed his arms and glared at her.
Mimi stayed silent as she finished making the gadget, it was a small box that glowed with a faint blue light. She pinched it lightly with her legs as she held it out towards him, with her other legs on stand by.
She lowered in front of him while holding the item and gently tapped on his reconstructing chest plate,
"Please open up your chestplate," she requested.
Antasma squinted at her, part of him wanted to refuse and pressure her to give up information, but he knew that he wasn't in the place to bargain, especially when it comes to the only thing on this ship that even bothered to lift a single finger to help him.
He expelled inner pressure in his circuit boards and opened up his chest. He wasn't quite sure how he managed to do it, but he just did.
He watched as she reached into his chest along with the gadget and began installing the component. The entire process was quiet, save for various clicking and buzzing sounds while she was connecting it to his software.
Soon enough she was done and he closed back his chestplate, she didn't dare meet his gaze as he patted himself down and cracked his neck again.
He glanced back up at her, and grunted.
"I suppose it's only fair vhen I didn't bother to tell you about myself, did I?" he asked once more,
Mimi lowered her head,
"I've installed a physical signal jammer in your system, you can use it to vent off enemies if the fight gets too overwhelming for you, it recharges based on your Castaphorse level." She informed him curtly,
Antasma sighed quietly and turned towards the vent,
"Also…you're welcome to come back if you want more things installed or additional modifiers for your modules…and…please don't resent me for my past." she replied in a whispered tone,
Antasma paused, if she was a villain too, then she was definitely a very sentimental one
"I don't think I vill." he replied, "I'll admit, you're the only vone on this accursed ship that offered me any refuge."
The spider beamed at him, that seemed to improved her mood a bit,
"All right then! I'll be seeing you…whenever you decide to come back." she replied happily,
And with a strong push, Antasma entered the vent and followed his original objective once more.