The Final Odyssey, the fantastical journey of a cat boy

"Meow wah wah wah aa ...

When the gate opened and Fish, along with hundreds of tons of groundwater, fell through, the first thing that came to his mind was a story he had heard in a bar in Oasis City.

At that time, a scholar named Iskandar Lomonosov, who possessed a beauty far surpassing that of most young women, arrived in Oasis City and, by chance, began chatting with Fish in a bar. This historian told Fish that in the distant ancient times known as the "Middle Ages," people practiced many rather barbaric and cruel customs, some of which involved cats.

According to Iskandar, in many places, cats were considered associated with demons and thus became objects of venting frustration and sacrificial offerings. Among these practices, throwing cats to their deaths from heights in various ways was a particularly popular form of "entertainment," second only to roasting them alive.

However, Fish never expected that one day he would become the object of such a vile "entertainment".

As the descent gradually stabilized, the initially dense water, due to air resistance, gradually transformed into a mist that diffused through the air, and then into a brief downpour. However, Fish had no time to worry about any of this: the ranging system integrated into the Phoenix Flame Helmet told him that the distance from the gate to the ground below was over 200 meters!

Although Phoenix Flame's impact-resistant structure allows it to mitigate some of the impact effects, even without performing any calculations involving height, gravitational acceleration, and Fish's own mass, predicting the consequences of this fall is... not difficult.

Fortunately, Fish found a solution to this seemingly unsolvable problem in just five seconds: after a brief moment of panic, he instinctively touched something tied to his back.

It was inside the fourth level of the cave, after he killed the first chimera that tried to ambush him, that he peeled off the huge wing membrane from its forelimb. To deceive the other chimeras in the cave who were using their sense of smell to detect enemies and to slow down their movements, he had been wearing this wing membrane on his back like Batman's cape.

Now, this wing membrane has finally been restored to its original purpose.

"Damn, watch this!" After gripping both ends of the wing membrane tightly with both hands, Fish began to spread his arms as wide as possible to increase the area of ​​the wing membrane that could provide lift. Of course, compared to his mass, this amount of wing membrane area was far too meager even for gliding. But it was enough for him to descend safely and smoothly like a flying squirrel or other dermal-winged animal.

"Phew... Luckily, I was lucky..." As the descent speed reached the safe threshold, Fish finally let out a long breath and began to take in the new arena.

As its name "Killing Factory" suggests, this arena is a massive industrial facility—Fish has seen all sorts of shipyards, sawmills, sugar mills, and other factories throughout the Pan-Pacific Empire, but none can compare to the building below.

After all, this factory is just too... huge.

The shipyard where Fish previously worked in Oasis City was the largest industrial enterprise in the entire city-state, capable of repairing three 8,000-ton ships simultaneously, which was quite astonishing for that era. However, compared to the factories below, all the facilities of the Oasis Harbor Shipyard, even if packed together, could only fill the area of ​​a single factory complex at most.

The main building complex that makes up the factory below consists of more than eight buildings!

Of course, Fish knew perfectly well that this "factory" was merely an arena used by people in the past for bloody "entertainment," and it most likely never actually produced anything. But this fact surprised him even more: those living in the old civilization could build such a magnificent facility underground simply to satisfy their cruel and perverse desires. The technology and wealth they possessed were truly unimaginable.

Although Fish wasn't entirely sure what the prototypes of these "factories" were, each of the building complexes below featured massive condensing towers, chimneys, and towering mixing equipment and material conveying pipelines, forming a very complex "concrete jungle."

As he approached a particularly tall condenser, Fish slightly pulled the flaps and adjusted his direction, landing on the outside of the concrete tower.

Since humans are not flying squirrels or gibbons, their body structure is not optimized for wingsuit gliding. Even with the deceleration of the wingsuit, a normal person would break at least a few bones from such a blow. Fortunately, Phoenix Flame's inherent protective abilities, coupled with the superior physical strength of the new humans compared to the old humans, meant that Fish only felt dizzy from the pain, but was not seriously injured.

Next, Fish struggled to cling to the surface of the cooling tower, inching his way to a metal ladder. He then dropped the membrane and slowly climbed down the ladder. However, just when he thought he was safe, a clanging sound of metal colliding suddenly rang out from just centimeters away from his head.

On the edge of the metal escalator, there was a dent caused by a bullet hitting a target.

"Sniping?!"

Seeing this, Fish quickly changed his approach to descending: he braced his palms and the edges of his arches against the edge of the escalator and began to slide down using gravity.

This did significantly increase his descent speed, allowing the sniper's next bullet to land far above him. However, the cost was obvious: the heat generated by friction with the metal ladder quickly penetrated Phoenix Flame's organic armor and reached Fish's hands and feet, scalding him badly.

"Damn it! It's so hot!" The moment he landed on the ground and entered the blind spot of the sniper's vision, which was obscured by the factory buildings, Fish frantically ran to a concrete tank filled with water and put his hands and feet into the water to cool them down. But what he didn't expect was that just as he pulled his feet out of the tank, a shockwave suddenly came from beneath his feet.

It was a "butterfly mine" that had landed in the grass, a non-lethal explosive that was used in the past to injure the feet of enemy foot soldiers and weaken their combat capabilities.

Of course, thanks to the extra defensive power granted by the Phoenix Flame, Fish's foot was still in place. But the impact of the explosion not only knocked him to the ground but also twisted his ankle. To get his joint back in place, Fish had to endure considerable pain, tears and snot streaming down his face.

"Oh—hohohohohohoho—congratulations, Mr. Fish!" Lulu arrived just in time this time, and as soon as she appeared, she let out a piercing laugh. "2 minutes and 58 seconds! You are the fastest person in history to have reached the fifth floor alive after all the challengers who chose the 'fast pass' on the fourth floor."

"Hmm... how many people survived in total?" Fish asked directly, having run out of ideas to complain about the schadenfreude of this damn program.

"According to the arena's records, a total of 687 people chose to pass through the fourth level quickly in the way you just described, of whom 681 died in the incidental dangers during the process," Lulu Meng replied. "As for the other five challengers, their smart combat armor had built-in landing aids, so it took them 6 to 7 minutes to reach the ground."

"Tsk... This is clearly a malicious death trap."

"That's right! But this kind of choice was one of the top five most popular plot points back then," Lulu continued, her bright smile seemingly delighted with the current situation. "In fact, everyone who entered the next level of the underwater cave but couldn't continue the challenge would get a chance to choose... There's more than one fork in the road like this."

"People who can't bear the pressure of the confined underwater space will choose this path... and then those damn spectators just watch them fall in and die?"

"Oh, right, the expressions on these people's faces when they make their decisions, and their performance in the last moments of their freefall, are what the audience loves most."

A slight pain shot through Fish's lower lip. A moment later, he realized it was the sensation of his prominent canines instinctively biting into his lip in anger.

"Enough with the nonsense, where are my companions?"

"Well, I'm sorry I can't provide their exact coordinates—my program prevents me from doing so," Lulu replied. "However, I can tell you that the three people who were teleported in at the same time and place as you are all in the fifth and sixth complex layers."

"Comprehensive layer? What does that mean?" After the pain in his foot subsided temporarily and no longer hindered his movement, Fish poked the ground with a rusty metal pipe and cautiously walked towards a door not far away—the explosion of the butterfly mine, though not very lethal, had made quite a noise. Therefore, he had to move quickly to avoid any troublesome guys chasing after him by the sound of the explosion.

"In short, the fifth and sixth floors of this arena are actually one entity. The former is the above-ground part of the 'Killing Factory,' and the latter is the underground part," Lulu Meng said. "By the way, these two floors are not calculated according to the standards of the other floors."

"That means..." Fish swallowed nervously—although Xiaoxing's overall strength wasn't particularly strong, the combined threat level of Ange, who was equipped with "Golden Soup" and was clearly no pushover, and her female officer, who was obviously no pushover, was enough to raise the challenge to the highest level.

However, if the difficulty is not calculated according to the original standard...

"In short, what makes this level special is that it offers the most popular interactive services in the arena! Spectators can pay to buy their favorite equipment and cheats, use custom skins, and personally participate in the heated hunting... oh wait, I mean, the battle."

"What does this mean? Are those freaks going to get involved themselves?!" Fish asked, pushing open the metal door on the wall of the huge factory. With a soft creak, the rusty door slowly opened inward.

Although these factory buildings look dilapidated and riddled with bullet holes, Fish knows very well that they have been maintained over the long years: the "rust" on the metal doors is just very simple paint, and the bullet holes and burn marks can be seen up close as just small black dots and black patches painted on the walls.

Of course, while Fish thought these marks were a bit too fake, he knew very well that others who came to this floor probably didn't see this scene at all: thanks to the "Virtual Paradise" system, these rough details would be made to look even more real than the real thing. Just like in the previous tower, the "Virtual Paradise" system made Xiaoxing and the others mistake the broken plastic decorative tree for a real tree.

It is precisely because the rough truth beneath the "images" is visible that Fish feels not only tension but also a strong sense of absurdity—a feeling of "falseness" strong enough to trigger the uncanny valley effect. A lingering, unpleasant feeling.

"Heh, looks like we've come to the worst place." Just as Fish was looking around, Phoenix Flame also "woke up." Then, Fish felt that the power enhancements, sensor enhancements, and even the medical assistance systems of this advanced intelligent combat armor had all come back online.

Most importantly, as large amounts of sedatives were administered into his body through a micro-injector, Fish's suffering gradually subsided.

"The worst place? What do you mean?"

"Yes, at the end of the old civilization era, many people who still retained normal human morality condemned the mass production of new humans and the construction of arenas. However, some arenas were condemned more than others."

"Like...here?"

"Yes. This kind of arena with 'interactive levels' is arguably the worst." After all the subsystems were online, Huang Yan said—because unlike other levels, the difficulty here is not determined by the challenger's strength, so her previous practice of deliberately lowering her own strength in exchange for a lower challenge difficulty naturally lost its meaning.

"I still don't understand, did those guys from the past really fight in person?" Fish asked, puzzled. "This isn't just a game down there, people really die here."

"Yes, so those perverted bastards' 'personal involvement' wasn't really 'personal' in the true sense. They wanted to experience the thrill of killing and destruction, but they didn't want to lose their lives," Huang Yan explained. "Back then, there was a specific term—'skin'—to describe 'that thing' they used."

"Uh, the program in the arena mentioned that word to me too." Fish nodded and continued forward.

From the interior, the factory does not resemble a traditional workshop, but rather a material distribution and transfer facility. Large metal containers are piled up like mountains inside, like building blocks for giants to play with. Giant cranes with electromagnets are installed on the roof, while many small and medium-sized forklifts and trailers are parked in the corners of the factory.

After turning a corner, Fish suddenly stopped.

Because Xiaoxing is right in front of us.