The Final Odyssey, the fantastical journey of a cat boy

"Well……"

"Well……"

After Luca finished speaking, a brief, unsettling silence fell over the small villa. After all, aside from Shana and Alicia, whose life experiences were largely confined to the idyllic, pastoral school life within the reserve, and whose even their school life experience was a crude fabrication, everyone else present was a seasoned veteran in some sense. Whether in the halls of power or in the streets, they had seen it all.

That's why they are so well aware of the horror of these seemingly random, "no reason whatsoever" serial murders and disappearances.

If it's just one or two cases, and no killer or possible motive can be found, it can be explained as an isolated accident. However, once such things happen frequently, there are only two possibilities: either someone is systematically "hunting" the people of the Oasis Harbor slum for some terrible purpose, or something that indiscriminately targets humanity has infiltrated the slum and is wreaking havoc.

"By the way, what exactly were the methods of the crime? Could you tell me?" Shuangye asked.

"Of the nearly two hundred cases that have occurred so far, more than eighty are murders, and the rest are missing persons. These murders are very strange. Most of the victims were found in their own homes or on the street when their bodies suddenly exploded and disintegrated, eventually turning into a bloody, mangled mess that was unrecognizable. At first, the people who found the bodies thought that the explosions were caused by the putrefying gases that had accumulated in the bodies of the deceased several days after their deaths. However, after examination by doctors, it was found that all of them had died very recently. Subsequently, several people exploded suddenly in public, which further proves this point."

"Well……"

"After that, people began to suspect that the victims had died from some kind of explosive attack. However, the investigation found absolutely no evidence of a killer. After investigating the victims' social relationships, the vast majority of them were determined to have 'no major conflicts with others' and 'no enemies,'" Luca said. "But it's very difficult to kill someone with an explosive device on a whim. If there are no conflicts or enemies, it's generally unlikely that a person would die like this."

"Then, what about those who are missing?"

"The missing persons are mostly women living alone who rarely interact with others, homeless children, and street vendors, etc., similar to the deceased, and they don't seem to have any enemies or grudges against each other. Of course, this includes my two friends. Incidentally, almost all of the cases occurred after the arrival of the delegation from the Duchy of Fayun."

"So, you suspect that the Fayun Mission is plotting against the locals?" Fish asked.

"At least they look very suspicious, don't they, little fish?" Luca said. "Since you landed at the East Wharf, you should have seen the boat those guys were on, right?"

"Yes, several dedicated envoy ships," Fish nodded. "They're quite impressive."

“It’s more than just grand,” Luca said. “This time, for negotiating the purchase of ‘Dark Deep Island’—well, according to the official line, it also included ‘enhancing friendship with the Oasis Port City-State’ and trivial matters like ‘mediating some long-standing trade disputes.’ Guess how many people the Regency Council of the Duchy of Fayun sent for all of this?”

"Our informant from the Principality of Penglai reported that the delegation from the Principality of Fayun consisted of about two hundred people, and that some of them might be armed. That's why we secretly transported a company-sized combat squad aboard the cruiser 'Inaba'..." Ange said.

"Wrong," Luca held up a finger and shook it vigorously, "In fact, they brought 1,500 people."

"Meow?!" Fish's tail bristled with disbelief. "One thousand...five hundred people? Luca, you can't be joking."

"Indeed, are you mistaken?" Shuangye said. "Fifteen hundred people, that's the size of a military police regiment or a coastal artillery regiment of the Penglai Kingdom. You should know how large that is, right?"

“That’s right. While the few envoy ships we saw at the dock could indeed hold around a thousand people if all were packed full, disregarding propriety and comfort,” Ange said, “I don’t think Miss Luca would joke about something like this. What exactly is going on?”

"In short, the envoy ship was a decoy—the mission members who disembarked were indeed only a little over two hundred," Luca said. "However, when we, the 'Red Cat' crew, were monitoring these guys, we unexpectedly discovered that they were always sending people sneaking out of the consulate area to do some strange things."

"Oh?"

"Felipe was the first to discover this, so let him tell us," Luca patted the boy who had previously pointed a gun at Fish and the others who broke into the villa. "Come on, tell these friends what you saw."

"This...uh..." The boy named Felipe, like Luca, was a typical canine-like Newtype. However, while Luca easily evoked images of a top-tier, expensive pedigree dog, this boy, dressed in rough shorts and a slightly dirty vest, with a rough green canvas tool belt slung over his body and an old straw hat, resembled a stray dog ​​on the street—fierce, insecure, and self-conscious. "Actually, I just happened to see it..."

"Where did you meet those Fayun people?" Fish asked.

"The fish market area is located on the northeast side of the city."

"Damn, I see." Fish nodded. The fish market area was built in Oasis Harbor, second only to the original fishing village slum. As the name suggests, it was originally a place near the sea breakwater for trading the day's catch. With the development of Oasis Harbor, the area quickly evolved from a pure fish market into a fish processing area. Some workshops producing salted and dried fish began to appear, and then evolved into small fish canneries.

About thirty years ago, as archaeologists successfully discovered and replicated practical air compressors from the legacy of an ancient civilization and revived the method of reverse-cycle refrigeration using Carnot's theorem, frozen fishing boats and frozen fish production technology reappeared in the world.

As a result of this technological innovation, people gradually became less reliant on preservation techniques such as salted fish and dried fish, which had poor taste. Even the market for canned fish was greatly reduced. This change had an unexpected consequence: factories in the fish market area gradually went bankrupt due to a lack of sales channels and declined along with the old local fish market.

Now, this area is even more dilapidated than the slums that have evolved from the fishing village. Only a small portion of the original fish market remains in use, mainly trading fishing gear and nets favored by anglers. Vast areas of old factories have been abandoned...

...And if you need to hide a large number of people, there is no place more reliable than these old factory buildings.

“At the time, I was actually planning to go to the fish market area to get a new fishing rod. Rita had been saying she wanted to go fishing, but my old rod was broken,” Felipe said. “However, while walking through the old factory area, I noticed a few cloaked men loitering suspiciously near a factory building.”

"And then you became suspicious?" Fish asked.

The dog-eared boy nodded: "Those fish canneries haven't been operating for many years. Apart from the concrete walls and the concrete shell of the processing workshop, everything valuable inside—even the window panes and nails—was picked clean years ago. Under normal circumstances, no one would go in."

"That's true. And then?"

"Because Lady Luca said that we 'Red Cats' have an obligation to pay attention to any unusual activity in the city, and those people looked a lot like the Fayun people from the mission, I quietly followed them and found that they went into an abandoned factory."

"This is it, the Kings Brothers Fish Processing Plant," Luca said, pulling out a map to help Felipe explain better. He pointed to an area circled in red ink. "It used to mainly produce salted cod and canned sardines in oil. There were two large workshops, but it was shut down eighteen years ago."

"It does look very remote..." Ange said. "Moreover, the residential and commercial areas near this factory have all been abandoned, making it easier to hide from people than other abandoned factories."

"Yeah. Those people had the key to the factory gate and just opened it and went in. After that, I saw an unmarked car go inside. Since that car had been parked at the gate for a while, I took advantage of the moment when no one was looking, climbed onto the chassis, and successfully sneaked into the factory," Felipe said smugly. Clearly, this was a "highlight" in his life.

"This kid's good; he's got the makings for special operations," Huang Yan whispered in Fish's ear. "Kid, you've struck gold."

“Luca has quite a few of these ‘little partners’ with special talents,” Fish explained. “That’s one of the reasons I approached her.”

"Anyway, after entering the factory, I... saw lights on in both workshops. The Fayun people went into one of the workshops, and when I followed them, I found it packed with people!"

"Completely packed?!" Anjie glanced at the map and quickly calculated the area and volume of the workshops according to the scale attached to it. "These two workshops are at least 1,400 square meters! At a standard of two square meters per person, that can fit 700 people!"

"Yes," Xiaoxing wagged her tail. "Mr. Felipe, you must be mistaken?"

"Of course he wasn't mistaken," Luca said, pulling out a sphere, "because I gave him this."

"ADK-37 Multifunctional Video/Imaging Device," Huang Yan recognized the antique immediately. "In the old civilization era, this... was generally sold as a children's toy. Its function was limited to limited image recording and projection. However, it's sufficient for this era."

Fish nodded. While advanced technological products from the old civilization, especially items like intelligent combat armor and "Gorlon" walking machines, were quite expensive in this era, mass-produced, inexpensive goods such as plastic tables and chairs, decorations, and toys were still within the reach of most people due to their vast quantity. Even relatively complex mechanical equipment was affordable for someone like Luca, so it wasn't surprising that he would entrust it to his subordinates.

"Hmm... that record... yes, it's here."

After fiddling around for a while, Luca finally found the video file she wanted and opened it. Immediately, a projection appeared before them: in an abandoned workshop where the original machinery had long since been dismantled, leaving only a concrete shell, hundreds of figures, completely shrouded in cloaks, sat cross-legged on the ground. Several people stood around, seemingly counting and taking notes in notebooks.

Next, after the car Felipe mentioned drove into the workshop entrance, several people unloaded some zinc-plated metal boxes from the truck and moved them to a corner of the workshop near what appeared to be a newly erected incinerator. They then took out the contents and began burning them. Although the image quality was somewhat blurry, Fish and the others could still make out that the contents included a considerable amount of bloodstained and torn clothing and shoes, as well as some items that appeared to be human remains!

Considering what Luca mentioned earlier

After throwing these items into the fire, someone walked into the seated crowd and set a dozen or so people on fire. Then, these people filed onto the vehicle and drove away silently.

"Our ancestors..." Ange murmured softly, gripping Fish's hand tightly.

"Although I didn't believe it at first, the authenticity of these images is beyond doubt. After Felipe discovered this, I sent other subordinates to conduct further investigations," the leader of "Red Cat" turned off the recording, took a deep breath, and "as a result, we discovered that in another facility deep inside the abandoned buildings of the Fish Market District, the 'Coconut Nightclub,' there was also a group of mysterious figures who were clearly related to the Fayun Mission. Their total number is estimated to be between 1,300 and 1,400."

"My God..." Fish gasped. "Can you check the entry records? Although Oasis Port's immigration control is very lax, with so many people entering Oasis Port, it's impossible that there are no records at all, right?"

"The fact is, there are no abnormalities in the entry and exit records, and there has been no abnormal increase. We suspect that perhaps some time ago, those Fayun people sent these people into Oasis Port in batches," Luca replied. "Of course, it is also possible that they recruited these people in the slums—because of the lack of administrative staff, there is a severe lack of complete birth records in the area, and a large number of citizens are undocumented."

"And then what?" Ange asked. "Where did those thousand-plus people go?"

"It's gone." Luca sighed.