The Final Odyssey, the fantastical journey of a cat boy

After reuniting with Fish and the others, Luca and the others fought for more than half an hour before joining up with Frostleaf, Sachi, and the others who had gone to the workers' shed to rescue the laborers. Then, they fought their way out and re-established contact with the guard team led by Mint and others who remained on the outskirts of the "Secret Realm".

Along the way, in addition to the laborers who were originally the rescue targets, many Imperial Guard soldiers who had survived and were not infected by the "Tai Sui" also joined them and escaped from the ominous Black Glass Field with these rescue forces of unknown origin.

Finally, this chaotic group temporarily settled in the town where the Sartres lived. Ange, with the help of Mint and others, took the opportunity to take stock of this group of stragglers: there were more than 4,000 people who were responsible for guarding the capital of the Pan-Pacific Empire and protecting the emperor himself. In the end, only 340 officers and soldiers escaped by chance. The rest were either transformed into flesh and blood puppets of "Tai Sui" or killed by them.

Even worse, the headquarters of this elite Imperial Guard brigade suffered almost complete annihilation, with mid- to high-ranking officers and technicians almost entirely wiped out. Those who managed to escape were either rank-and-file infantrymen or personnel from logistics units. The highest-ranking surviving commander was merely a lieutenant deputy company commander in the logistics company. This meant that, technically speaking, the Imperial Guard's 1st Brigade could be considered annihilated.

Although in history, probably no army has ever been "annihilated" in such a terrible way.

In contrast, the situation of the laborers who were forcibly conscripted and the civilians accompanying the scientific archaeology team was much better—except for some scientific archaeology team members who were on duty in the underground facilities and unfortunately died, the vast majority of civilians were lucky enough to escape.

However, they did not show much joy at escaping death after leaving the "secret realm." On the contrary, the fear on many people's faces did not disappear even after they retreated to the town and settled down temporarily.

"Everyone was terrified," Shuangye said to the others gathered there after returning to Mary's house, which had been used as a temporary command post. "The horrific scenes created by 'Tai Sui,' especially the appearance of those who 'transformed' into living weapons, were truly terrifying. I'm afraid many people will be traumatized for the rest of their lives."

"However, we can't say we're completely safe right now," Ange said. "With the entire brigade's forces swallowed up by 'Tai Sui,' we can assume that 'Zhongzai' now possesses a sufficiently powerful initial force and has the capability to fight us."

"Tsk..." Fish's tail hairs stood on end, indicating that he was very unhappy.

"But during our raid, we destroyed a lot of heavy weapons and detonated an ammunition depot," Alicia said. "That should have effectively reduced their firepower."

"Yes, but I'm afraid the effect won't be as good as you imagine," Fish sighed. "These guys can directly transform their hosts into 'weapons and ammunition' to fight us... Of course, causing this kind of destruction is better than nothing."

"Oh, is that so...?"

"In fact, the situation is probably worse than you think," Huang Yan said, "timely" as he poured cold water on the situation. "After all, our opponent is the 'Tomb Overlord.' The 'Tai Sui' controlled by this guy can infect not only humans, but also animals... plants, fungi, as long as the macroscopic organisms are large enough, they can be transformed into usable living weapons."

"Really?" Fish asked instinctively. However, before Huang Yan could answer, he already knew the answer to the question.

As a series of memories from Singleton surfaced, he saw horrific scenes: an entire patrol of armed foot soldiers being entangled and dragged down by wildly proliferating, thorny roots in the misty lakeside woods; several light attack aircraft flying over a large tree with an umbrella-shaped canopy when the fruit on its branches suddenly burst open, splashing devastating acid onto their rotor surfaces and corroding their critical components…

"Damn, it really is..."

"In short, if I may be so bold, the situation is essentially out of control," Huang Yan said in a cold tone. "After deducting casualties from previous battles, approximately 1,600 to 2,000 combat personnel from the Imperial Guard's First Brigade have become members of 'Tai Sui,' possibly including a dozen or so low-level armored warriors and a batch of remaining heavy equipment. With our current available forces, we are insufficient to defeat them. Fortunately, the ecosystem around the 'Secret Realm' has been completely destroyed, so it will obviously take them some time to infect enough plants and animals and spread on a large scale. This at least ensures that we can safely evacuate Timor Island in time."

"Now I understand why my ancestors would burn this land to glass right from planetary orbit," Ange muttered. "Besides completely sealing off the underground facility that imprisoned the 'Grave Lord,' another reason was probably to ensure that even if the 'Grand Duke' escaped the underground facility, it wouldn't be able to acquire too many plants and animals to infect immediately, right?"

“That’s right, I think so too,” Huang Yan replied. “However, your ancestors obviously did not expect that someone would bring an entire army to the ‘Secret Realm’ and carefully put them in a state where they were already basically infected and could be released immediately as soon as the ‘Grandmaster’ was released. In fact, if it weren’t for your and Fish’s actions disrupting Iskandar Lomonosov’s original plan and causing the ‘Grandmaster’ to be released ahead of schedule, perhaps the entire Imperial Guard First Brigade would have fallen completely into the control of the ‘Grandmaster’.”

"In short, Your Highnesses need not blame yourselves," said Mint, who had served tea to everyone. "Regardless of whether your intentions were entirely righteous and reasonable, even in the end, you did a good deed."

"Is that so?" Fish bit his lip. "However, I still don't understand what Iskandar Lomonosov's real purpose was in going to such lengths to do this. Was he planning to destroy the new humans through 'Tai Sui' and avenge the people of the old civilization?"

"That possibility can be ruled out," Shana waved her hand. "Don't forget, even putting aside those colony fleets heading to the outer solar system, before the end of the old civilization era, a large number of old humans chose to hibernate—for example, the residents of the reservation area where I live. If we destroy the new humans in this way, the old humans on Earth will inevitably face the threat of the powerful 'Tai Sui' force when they walk into this world again. This is an extremely foolish approach."

"So, maybe that guy is a pure antisocial individual who doesn't care about the lives of the old and new humans at all. He fell in love with reading, and from the beginning... just wanted to turn Earth into a paradise where 'Tai Sui' runs rampant?" Shuangye asked. "I remember that several deserters I arrested before who had become fugitives had this kind of behavioral tendency."

“That… is also unlikely.” Ange shook her head. “Although there is no evidence, my intuition tells me that Dr. Iskandar Lomonosov doesn’t seem like the kind of person who is completely insane or antisocial. Although we may not understand his motives, I’m afraid he doesn’t just enjoy destruction.”

"Just intuition?" Luca asked, raising her teacup. "When did our resourceful and meticulous princess start relying on intuition to make judgments?"

"I'm sorry, Lady Iluviska. I have no intention of making judgments based on intuition," Angela replied immediately. "Because, whatever Dr. Iskandar Lomonosov's purpose in releasing the 'Tai Sui,' we currently have only one way to deal with it."

"Oh?"

"Those dangerous beings that seriously threaten humanity... no, I should say all living beings on Earth, can only be defeated and resealed."

"Indeed," Fish said.

"I think so too." Shuangye clenched her fist. "No matter what difficulties or goals that guy may have, it is necessary to deal with 'Tai Sui' first."

"Yeah...that's true," said Xiaoxing from the corner. Then, the others chimed in.

"But the only problem is, how do we defeat and reseal 'Tai Sui'?" Luca put down his teacup, pouring cold water on everyone's hopes.

"Just now, I conducted approximately 30 calculations based on mathematical models," Huang Yan replied immediately. "I simulated the best to worst possible responses we might take under the current circumstances. In the theoretically best-case scenario, if all the vassal states, autonomous city-states, and other countries of the Pan-Pacific Empire could complete mobilization and preparation for war in a short period of time, they should be able to organize a combat force of 240 to 300 million people, equipped with more than 850 warships, over 3500 military aircraft and 400 armed airships, 5000 armored vehicles and 1.1 artillery pieces..."

"There's no need to talk about these figures. This isn't a graduation defense at the Royal Academy," Ange said. "Please get straight to the conclusion, thank you."

"The conclusion is that, under optimal conditions, organized resistance can last approximately 2.5 to 3 years, and in the worst-case scenario, 170 to 200 days. But ultimately, all simulations invariably ended in our complete defeat."

"How could this be?!" Even Luca, who had just poured cold water on the idea, was dumbfounded. "Is there no chance of winning?"

"I'm very sorry, not at all. The main reason lies in the time difference between the two sides mobilizing their available combat forces," Huang Yan explained very bluntly. "In short, even if all countries believe and eventually confirm what actually happened, communication, mobilization, the organization and preparation of the army, and the wartime transformation of production all take time. Meanwhile, the enemy only needs to continuously spread the scale of infection within the biosphere."

"so……"

"In either case, when countries have amassed enough military power to deal with the previous stage of 'Tai Sui,' the other side will expand to an even larger scale in advance. Moreover, the increase in combat capability generated by the military mobilization of the human side is arithmetically increased, but 'Tai Sui' can achieve near exponential growth under ideal conditions. This means that the gap will eventually widen to a desperate level."

"And the 'Supreme Ruler' has far superior data processing capabilities compared to the previous 'Central Brain,' so the 'Grand Duke Jupiter' can currently easily control a massive number of infected creatures, and the spread will be much faster than what happened in the Northwest Lands," Fish said. "However, that event activated a large number of autonomous weapons from the old civilization era, perhaps..."

"It's unlikely that the same thing will happen again. After all, the last time 'Tai Sui' went out of control, it suffered a large-scale attack from autonomous weapons, mainly because of the special nature of the Zhongbei Land," Huang Yan said immediately. "In short, in the old civilization era, when the Zhongbei Land was still called 'Siberia,' it was once a concentrated area of ​​'reservations' for all sorts of people who disagreed with the social atmosphere and technological abuse of the late old civilization era and chose to live in seclusion."

"Yes, my parents and I lived in a reserve in Siberia at the time," Shana said immediately. "In fact, there are several such 'reservations' throughout Siberia. Many important facilities for scientific research and other purposes are located there."

"Oh, why?" Fish asked.

"Because the area was relatively cool—at that time, global warming had reached a very alarming level. Siberia, therefore, escaped its original image as a harsh, cold place. Of course, swamps and mosquitoes were a big problem, but in the old civilization era, these could be solved with technological means."

"It's not completely solved," Shana muttered. "I get bitten by mosquitoes many times every summer."

"In short, the characteristics of Siberia have led to a large number of facilities from the old civilization era being concentrated there. This has also directly resulted in a large number of autonomous weapons from the old civilization era used for security and defense. These will be activated when the 'Tai Sui' appears, delaying its initial expansion."

"However, this was also part of Dr. Iskandar Lomonosov's plan," Ange said. "That way, he could disguise the whole thing as 'the remnants of the old humanity intending to destroy the new humanity,' and then use that to convince the Emperor himself to support his excavation plan..."

"Indeed. But the key point is that Timor Island, a low-latitude region, is different from Siberia. Apart from this heavily fortified ancient facility, there are no similar facilities within a radius of one thousand kilometers outside the 'Secret Realm'—the reason is simple: at the end of the old civilization era, the equatorial region was already too hot, and no one wanted to live in such a place. And we'd better not expect to rely on autonomous weapons to hinder the expansion of 'Tai Sui' in the initial stages."

"In that case...doesn't that mean we're finished?" Luca kept shaking her head. "Isn't there any other way?"

"Judging from the level of conventional military power available in this era, no," Huang Yan said. "Unless 'Tai Sui' voluntarily gives up invading humanity for some reason."

"That...is unlikely, isn't it?" Ange asked.

"Indeed. But we cannot rule out 'unconventional' methods. If such methods were available, everything would naturally be a different story."

"Unconventional?"

"That's right. Have you all forgotten how the 'secret realm' containing the 'Gravemaster' was formed?"