The Final Odyssey, the fantastical journey of a cat boy

"Damn, no wonder," Fish muttered after hearing Huang Yan's little secrets. "But there must be quite a few 'special agents' like me all over the world, right? After all, it should be more convenient to deal with troublesome problems when there are more people."

"I'm sorry, that's not the case," Huang Yan replied. "While the Joint Operations Headquarters did initially produce and deploy hundreds of specially made intelligent combat armors like mine, equipped with the highest level of auxiliary artificial intelligence, they have lost the ability to continue production. As a result, many intelligent combat armors have been lost, damaged, or accidentally left behind in unknown ruins... like me. In short, when you activated me, I was no longer able to obtain any information about other similar armors."

"After all, it's been a thousand years..." Fish said with some emotion.

"Yes. But very fortunately, being accidentally forgotten deep in the ruins of Twilight City in the past was actually a good thing for me," Huang Yan said. "At least, it saved me from being destroyed in the turmoil and disasters, and I was lucky enough to survive to this era... and then I just happened to encounter the worst situation in history."

"Yes." Fish nodded—he simply couldn't imagine how the people of Earth would have stopped Iskandar Lomonosov's madness without the Phoenix Flame...

...However, if he hadn't met Huang Yan, he would likely have died in Twilight City, like other young people who were used as bait and abandoned, at the hands of chimeras and autonomous weapons. He wouldn't have had a chance to even consider this question.

"In short, the support that the Joint Operations Headquarters can provide us at the moment is quite limited, mainly in terms of information and intelligence. But if we can make good use of it, we still have a chance to turn the current situation around—and on the bright side, 'Tai Sui' is the most dangerous of the known 'legacy' so far. As long as we can deal with it, the New Humans will no longer face a crisis of the same level."

"That's great...provided we can handle it." Fish clenched his fists. Meanwhile, the air currents in the dense clouds around them continued to pound the airship violently. A little over a year ago, either the lightning flashing past the portholes or the violent shaking of the airship itself would have filled Fish with panic. But now, he felt incredibly at ease.

After all, compared to the "Grand Duke Jupiter," even these gales and thunder are far too gentle.

Before departure, the transport advisors of the Duchy of Fayun had pessimistically predicted that the risky plan to use the storm to secretly advance might result in a maximum of 30% airborne losses. Fortunately, by the time they reached the Drifting Continent, only one of the fifteen large airships, carrying two Imperial Guard assault platoons, had to descend and retreat due to mechanical failure caused by rocking. The vast majority of the other airships arrived at their destination safely.

"Begin descent." After a final positioning using Phoenix Flame, Fish gave the order. Then, each airship descended below the clouds. Following the previously established battle plan, small biplanes suspended by mechanical hooks from two of the airships were released first and began circling over the island to scout the situation below.

"This is the aerial reconnaissance squadron. Landing area is safe," Kokoro, assigned as the squadron commander, quickly sent back her first message. Previously, this young pilot had left a deep impression on Ange during the battle in the North End. Therefore, shortly after taking command of the Duchy of Fayun's army, she was transferred to the Duchy's Royal Guard Air Force and promoted to lieutenant. "No enemy fire, no signs of enemy activity, only... an empty field."

"Aerial reconnaissance team, please continue to confirm whether the target area is indeed open ground?"

"It's confirmed; there's nothing there except soil and rocks. But the surrounding area is dense jungle."

"Very good," Fish said. "Hand of Victory, Courage Forever, bombard the jungle surrounding the landing zone."

One minute later, two specially modified airships, each with half of its pod replaced by a giant bomb rack, dropped eight one-ton fuel-air explosives. These heavy bombs fell directly into the lush woodland surrounding the landing zone and were detonated by time-delay fuses nearly 100 meters above the canopy.

Then, an astonishing scene unfolded as the massive fireball from the explosion ignited the woodland.

Instead of quietly catching fire and falling, the trees that made up the "jungle" began to tremble and struggle violently like a herd of animals, unleashing terrifying howls. These piercing cries were so loud that they could be heard by everyone on the airship high in the sky.

"Mr. Fish... oh no, my lord, what happened?" Shortly after the wailing, Xiaoxing contacted Fish using the armored warriors' dedicated communication system. "We just heard some very terrifying noises coming from down below..."

"Don't worry, everything is going according to plan," Fish said. "In short, the enemy had laid an ambush around the landing zone, but they have now suffered a fatal blow."

"Huh? The enemy has already set up an ambush? Does that mean the operation plan has been leaked? Should we...?"

"Don't worry, I don't think things have gotten that bad," Ange continued. At that moment, as a large amount of hot air mixed with ash and smoke from the burning aircraft rose with astonishing force, the airship carrier-based aircraft circling in the air began to sway left and right like dragonflies caught in a storm. Some aircraft even had to quickly climb and move to the sides to avoid accidents. "This is probably just standard practice by the enemy."

"I agree," Huang Yan said. "Ultimately, 'Tai Sui's' behavior is purely instrumental. On this island, only the area we chose as our landing site has large, flat areas suitable for airdrops. Therefore, regardless of whether we are likely to launch an airdrop, it will set up an ambush nearby—after all, with the massive 'snowballing' of infected plants and animals, 'Tai Sui's' army has reached an astonishing size. It has no shortage of troops."

"Even on a small island that has no value to it..." Fish muttered.

"In short, the enemy's resistance will not be too weak," Huang Yan continued. "Everyone must be mentally prepared."

"Okay, okay," Xiaoxing quickly replied, "I understand."

"Fire has broken out with the enemy! Highly recommend 'Final Odyssey: The Cat Boy's Fantastic Journey'! Click to enter the story world." Just then, Kokkoro's report came through the radio again, "Flying objects observed on the outskirts of the bombing zone... determined to be enemy forces!"

"Tsk, they came pretty fast," Fish muttered. Then, the spherical self-defense machine gun turrets on top of the transport airship and below the pods opened fire. Strings of colored tracer rounds used to indicate trajectories whistled across the gloomy gray sky below the thick clouds, forming fleeting but deadly "rainbows" along with the machine gun fire from the reconnaissance planes and light fighters.

These weapons were aimed at a large swarm of flying creatures. Most of them appeared to be birds that once lived in tropical rainforests, but some were clearly mutated from large herbivorous flying foxes of the tropics. While the latter were not as fast as their larger counterparts, they possessed far superior maneuverability compared to the stainless steel contraption of a certain ancient civilization, especially their exceptional circling ability. This made them very difficult to hit.

Although these creatures seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with military weapons, Fish immediately dismissed any thoughts of underestimating them when one of the mutated flying foxes crashed into a biplane that couldn't avoid it.

The moment it made contact with the aircraft's wing, it exploded spectacularly. Although their size was negligible compared to the aircraft, in just a split second, the entire reconnaissance plane, along with its two crew members, was completely engulfed by the fireball and vanished.

"Descent quickly! It would be terrible if these guys crashed into the airship in the air!" Fish hurriedly gave the order—after all, since this era did not have the advanced natural gas industry of the old civilization era, helium was still a scarce commodity, so all the airships were filled with hydrogen.

Although the outer fabric of these airships' gasbags is made of a certain degree of toughness and protection to defend against attacks, and the airships are divided into multiple independent gasbags to prevent them from detonating simultaneously in the event of an attack, judging from the current situation, if one were to be hit, the consequences... well, they're not unimaginable. After all, even a fool could guess what it would look like.

"Temporarily cancel this order!" Just after Fish gave the command, Ange suddenly interjected, "All airships, cease all defensive weapons attacks on the enemy!"

"Huh?!"

"'Hand of Victory,' 'Eternal Courage,' continue firing with defensive weapons," Ange didn't even explain to Fish, but continued issuing orders via radio. The two airships she mentioned were the only two in the entire expedition that had been modified to carry bombs for clearing the way, rather than personnel, "awaiting my next order."

Although somewhat puzzled, Fish didn't ask why—after all, he knew Ange had a clear purpose in doing so. The "Hand of Victory" and the "Eternal Courage" also carried out the order. After unleashing full defensive fire, over a dozen dangerous flying creatures exploded and crashed in the fire. However, even more "Tai Sui" parasites were drawn to the firepower, like moths drawn to a light, frantically braving the machine gun fire to approach the two airships.

Fortunately, the escorting aircraft gradually approached the two airships and, risking being mistakenly shot down, engaged in defensive operations. Under Ange's command, the "Hand of Victory" and "Eternal Courage" fought and retreated, gradually distancing themselves from the other airships that were rapidly descending towards the drop zone.

The flying creatures sent out by "Tai Sui" immediately swarmed towards them.

"Good idea," Huang Yan said. "It seems that the enemy has prioritized suppressing the targets with the densest defensive firepower—probably because there are too many of these flying creatures, and they have enough 'reserve ammunition' to slowly destroy the remaining targets later."

"I think that's how it should be," Ange said. "Fortunately, they did what I thought."

After a brief exchange of fire, although the "Hand of Victory" and "Courage Forever" successfully thwarted several dangerous suicide ramming attempts, two escorting aircraft were destroyed in the process. Then, as the first transport airship successfully landed and began unloading its commandos, Ange issued new orders.

"Release ballast and take off."

Then, it started raining at the drop zone.

Although heavy downpours are common in such low-latitude regions, this rain was different: it was actually water stored in the ballast tanks of the HMS Hand of Victory and HMS Courage.

As an emergency measure, these large rigid airships all have large ballast water tanks with a volume of tens of cubic meters. In case of an emergency, they can open the valves to release water in a very short time, thereby obtaining a one-time extremely strong lift - enough to make them suddenly climb more than 1500 meters in less than a minute.

Needless to say, whether they were originally birds or bats, those parasitic "Tai Sui" creatures that fly by flapping their wings could not possibly have such speed. Therefore, just seconds before, they were confidently attacking the two airships and were astonished to find that their targets, who should have been cornered, had actually escaped, leaving them standing there helplessly.

More importantly, the "Hand of Victory" and "Courage Forever" had bought time for the other airships: soon, all the transport assault team's airships had reached the ground. The assault team members didn't even have time to wait for these behemoths to come to a complete stop before they opened the hatches and jumped down to the ground.

Then, the airship's commanders, helmsmen, mechanics, and self-defense gunners also jumped out—although they did gain time to land, under the current circumstances, with more and more dangerous figures appearing in the air, getting them back into the air safely was an impossible task. Therefore, these behemoths had to be left here temporarily.

However, although it is described as "temporary," no one can guarantee that they will be able to fly away again someday. In addition, a narrow strip of space has been left at the edge of the landing field so that any remaining small aircraft can make an emergency landing.

"Target location complete, 700 meters northeast." After leaving the airship, Fish immediately used data from the "Akasha Compendium" to complete the location and shared the target's position with every armored warrior—in this assault team, each ten-man squad was assigned at least one member with intelligent combat armor as the core combat force. This made command and communication much easier, reaching a level comparable to that of the old civilization era. "Everyone, hurry up! 'Tai Sui' won't wait for us."