The Final Odyssey, the fantastical journey of a cat boy

"What's that? A child?"

As the entrance to the tent, made of tattered cloth, was rustled open, Frostleaf whispered behind Fish—out emerged a boy who looked no more than ten years old. He had ears and a tail similar to those of a Pomeranian, his face and body were filthy, and a large bald patch was missing from the tip of his tail.

The down-on-his-luck little boy wore an ill-fitting cotton coat with strange dark stains. One of his legs seemed to be weak, and he walked with a limp. One of his hands was inexplicably hidden behind his back, but other than that, there was nothing strange about him.

"Attention everyone, do not use weapons indiscriminately!" Ange activated "Golden Soup" to its full extent, transforming it from the close-fitting armor hidden under her uniform into a full-body suit of armor resembling the plate armor of a Renaissance knight. She walked towards the little boy. "Little friend, are you... alright? Do you need any help?"

The little boy didn't speak, but slowly shook his head as he approached Anjie, it was unclear whether he was nodding or shaking his head. Then, through Phoenix Flame's high-performance thermal imaging system, Fish discovered that in some other tents and semi-subterranean huts, the previously motionless humanoid figures had also begun to move.

"Uh, what non-lethal weapon options do you have?" Fish swallowed and asked Huang Yan.

"Currently, we only have standard stun guns with an effective range of thirty meters. If you find the other party too suspicious or even making dangerous moves, we recommend using this method to subdue the target first and then investigate," Huang Yan replied. "After all, even I can't determine what's going on with these people right now."

"Alright, then prepare the stun gun for me first." As Huang Yan's arm armor began to quietly reassemble and transform, Fish walked towards the pitiful boy with a vacant look in his eyes, who seemed to be sleepwalking. However, just when the two were less than twenty meters apart, he suddenly heard a crisp gunshot.

Then, the little boy's body jolted, and he fell backward to the ground, where a large pool of blood quickly flowed out: a bullet that had entered from the side of his shoulder blade had pierced his chest.

"Damn it! Didn't I tell you not to use weapons indiscriminately?" Ange roared in shock, "Who fired the shot?!"

"It wasn't me, I really didn't fire a shot!" Behind her, Yue Die reflexively began to defend herself... clearly a "good habit" formed from doing too many bad things in the past.

Of course, Fish knew that the guy was telling the truth; it wasn't her who fired the shot just now—because Phoenix Flame's tactical early warning radar system had determined the trajectory of the bullet that hit the little boy in less than a hundred milliseconds and further calculated all its relevant information.

This was a common 6.5mm small-caliber full-power rifle cartridge with a lead-coated copper bullet. It was a common ammunition for old bolt-action rifles that had been phased out by the Imperial Army and were frequently used as hunting rifles and self-defense weapons in the northernmost regions. The cartridge was fired from a birch tree fifty meters away.

"Found you!"

Just as the cloaked figure hiding in the treetop nimbly darted towards another tree like a squirrel, Fish rushed towards the figure's location. Although Moon Butterfly's body was not well-suited to Phoenix Flame, causing his reactions to be slower than before, his advantage over ordinary people was still overwhelming.

Just as the gunman leaped onto the branch of another tree not far away, Fish, who was within firing range, pressed the crosshairs on his helmet display against the outline of the gunman's body and then fired with his stun gun.

The electrified dart, fired by compressed air, struck the squirrel-like humanoid figure precisely. The figure shuddered violently and then fell straight down from the nearly ten-meter-tall birch tree like a wild duck shot by a hunting rifle.

For an ordinary person, falling from such a height would most likely result in death from internal bleeding caused by ruptured organs, or a broken spine. However, Fish certainly wouldn't stand idly by and watch that happen. In the next second, with Phoenix Flame's assistance, he precisely rushed to the girl's landing point and caught her.

Her bolt-action rifle fell to the side, its handguard and stock, made of cheap particleboard, shattering into pieces.

"This girl...wait, wait, wait? I've seen her before!" Frostleaf, who arrived shortly after, glanced at the girl in Fish's arms and let out a scream, "This...this is the one we met in the refugee camp...that one..."

"That's right, it seems this is indeed Miss Meru," Ange, who had followed, nodded as she looked at the girl's fluffy tail. "Since she's here, Miss Shana, her companion, is likely here as well."

"Phew... This woman actually killed someone! You see! My decision to execute her was definitely the right one, wasn't it?!" Yue Die quickly tried to justify her actions, "The first time I saw her stealing, I knew she wasn't a good person! Sure enough..."

"But I don't think Miss Melu is the kind of person who would kill someone indiscriminately..." Ange shook her head. "She must have had some compelling reason for doing this."

"Indeed." Fish nodded. At this moment, half a minute had passed since Melu shot and killed the little boy, but not a single soldier had come to check the situation! Considering that less than two days ago, there were hundreds or even thousands of regular troops and militiamen stationed here, the situation could no longer be described as bizarre.

Something very serious has definitely happened here!

"Huang Yan, can you help Miss Melu recover as soon as possible?" Ange asked.

"Easy. I can intervene in her nerves and muscle connective tissue as needed to relieve the paralysis caused by the electric shock," Huang Yan said. "However, I suggest we consider this area a war zone, because... Princess Anjie, watch out behind you!"

"What?!"

At Huang Yan's prompting, An Jie quickly turned around, only to witness a shocking scene: the boy who had been shot near his shoulder blade and whose chest cavity had been pierced, and who should have died on the spot, was actually staggering towards them again!

Moreover, he even quickened his pace! It seemed as if he was in a hurry to reach everyone.

"Oh? That's great! He's alright!" Fish breathed a sigh of relief.

"Please do not let your guard down, Your Highness!" Shuangye said. "I just had a rather bad feeling."

"Me too." Ange nodded, and "Golden Soup's" plasma shoulder cannon immediately fired—at its lowest output power, of course. The emitted ion beam burned through the boy's calf, rendering him unable to move, and he collapsed to the ground.

After becoming immobilized, the first thing the boy did was to pick up the detonator he had been hiding behind his back and press the button on it directly.

"My lord, be careful!"

Upon realizing what it was, Ange immediately stood in front of Fish, using her own armor to block the shockwave that would have hit Fish. As a combat armor originally designed as an "armored turret," "Golden Soup" was even more powerful than Phoenix Flame in terms of protection.

As for the others... they weren't seriously injured. Thanks to Ange's timely intervention in stopping the bomb boy, the explosion was too isolated; even Frostleaf, whose combat armor had the weakest performance, only suffered minor burns. Even so, Ange's actions were still necessary: ​​after all, Melu, who had been knocked down by Fish, had no protection whatsoever.

"Goodness, this kid is carrying at least forty kilograms of TNT, or other explosives of comparable power," Huang Yan said, carefully calculating the explosive power of the boy's explosion as a mini mushroom cloud rose from the spot where he had been. "Although there were quite a few people who played with self-destruction in the old civilization era, it's quite generous to carry such a large quantity."

"Can this really be called 'conscience'?!" Fish scoffed.

"But why did that child…?" Shuangye shook her head. "Why would they do such a thing?"

"Most of the people in the camp... have already... fallen into... their hands," Meru said haltingly in Fish's arms. "We... we can no longer... treat them as human beings..."

"What do you mean by that?" Yuedie asked.

"That means we're in a more dangerous environment than we anticipated," Ange said. Like Fish, her "Golden Fortress" also had a highly sensitive thermal imaging system, so it naturally saw those people in the tent who had "awakened" from their static state. "Everyone around us should be considered an enemy, just like that boy from before."

"But... but I still can't understand!" Shuangye shook her head frantically. "Why would they do this? That boy had no grudge against me—"

"Thump!"

Just as Shuangye was speaking, a thin village girl who had crawled out of a carefully camouflaged foxhole in her blind spot and was trying to sneak over suddenly collapsed to the ground. The young woman was wearing a dirty cotton-padded jacket, which was bulging with explosives and detonators, making her look like a pregnant woman about to give birth.

What killed the girl was a short arrow that seemed to fly straight out of thin air and precisely severed her spine—this was the weapon of Xiaoxing's intelligent combat armor, "Grape." Clearly, after witnessing the first boy's self-destruction, she already knew what to do.

"Woohoo ...

A chilling scream suddenly rose and fell around the makeshift airfield. Then, perhaps realizing that the suicide bombing plan had failed, the previously slow and methodical crowd suddenly sped up, rushing out of their tents, shacks, and burrows, and swarming toward Fish and his men.

A small number of these people were unarmed, but the weapon-like organs emerging from their bodies—whip-like tentacles, sharp claws replacing fingers and toes, blade-like horns, and even superfluous scythe-like deformed limbs—made them at least as threatening as Class D synthetic beasts. This was undoubtedly evidence of being parasitized by the "Tai Sui".

However, what truly shocked Fish and his colleagues were other people.

Those men carried all sorts of weapons: from rifles, pistols, submachine guns, grenade launchers to bayonets strapped to wooden sticks and logging axes, and they clearly knew how to use them! As the unarmed hosts charged with howls, a hail of bullets and even rifle grenades rained down on Fish and his men.

"Ancestors above!" Ange cried out, "Is this for real?!"

"I can assure you, it's true. This isn't a hallucination caused by chemical hallucinogens, nor is it a trick by the 'Virtual Paradise' system to deceive your nerves," Huang Yan explained through the encrypted communication channel. "It's all true: those people are hosts of 'Tai Sui,' and they are indeed using sophisticated weapons and tools."

"This is illogical!" Shuangye said. "I know a lot about 'Tai Sui'. Humans parasitized by this thing will regress to the level of intelligence of wild animals, completely lacking social skills or the ability to manipulate and attack! How is this possible—"

"Denying the facts won't make things better, Miss Frostleaf. Whatever your questions, take care of these guys first."

"Then what do we do?!" Ange asked. As the crowd surged forward, her maids immediately opened the crate that had been smuggled into the North as "photography equipment" and carried all the way here. They took out a complete set of weapons and equipment compatible with "Golden Soup": the "Clearer" 20mm six-barreled electromagnetic cannon, the "Moonshadow" beam saber, and the backpack mini-armor called "Pandora." They began to equip her with these items.

"In fact, I suggest you save your precious ammunition," Huang Yan said. "These guys are more troublesome than ordinary 'Tai Sui' hosts, but eliminating them isn't too difficult. You just need to—"

Before she could finish speaking, the three highly mutated "Tai Sui" hosts at the forefront collapsed to the ground: darts and crossbow bolts from unknown directions accurately severed their spines.

Although these guys can still move even after their shoulder blades are shattered and their chest cavities are pierced by bullets, they will immediately fall to the ground and stop moving once their spine—to be precise, between the third and eighth vertebrae—is severed.

“I remember now,” said Frostleaf, who had hunted many “Tai Sui” in the past. “The ‘Tai Sui’ parasitizes the core area of ​​the host’s body. The key is near the neck, severing the spine from the back and sides, as well as the muscles, connective tissue, and nerves around the spine.”

"Yeah, that's it. It's very similar to the Survey Corps' methods for dealing with Titans," Huang Yan muttered. "I have to admit, Miss Xiaoxing's observation skills are very sharp; she's already figured out the trick so quickly..."

"What did you just say about giants?" Fish asked.

"N-nothing." Huang Yan seemed a little embarrassed. "Please finish the current battle first. Oh, and by the way, try to conserve ammunition as much as possible."