The Final Odyssey, the fantastical journey of a cat boy

Enjoy reading "The Last Odyssey: The Fantastic Adventures of a Cat Boy".

Although Fish and his group were outnumbered, they were no longer afraid after Huang Yan explained their opponents' weaknesses.

After all, under favorable conditions, even a bottom-tier armored warrior equipped with the most common and lowest-quality "Jade" level smart combat armor and completely lacking in combat experience can at least fight against four or five ordinary infantrymen armed with standard light weapons. And the higher the level, the more overwhelming the armored warrior's advantage in combat ability against ordinary people becomes.

Of course, these unfortunate beings parasitized by the "Tai Sui" are no ordinary people: they not only grow weapon-like extra limbs, but their speed, strength, and vitality are also astonishingly enhanced. Unless the critical areas around their spine are severed, they can still stagger forward even after being hit by a dozen small-caliber bullets. An army of ordinary people of equal numbers would likely be easily routed in a single attack.

Fortunately, the armored warriors were no ordinary people. Since not everyone was as adept as Xiaoxing at accurately targeting vital points from concealment, Ange and Shuangye opted for close combat. Just as they had demonstrated in previous battles, Shuangye's close-quarters tactics focused on avoiding prolonged engagements, using her agility to quickly close the distance before delivering a precise and swift strike. With each flash of the gleaming blade, a new victim fell.

In contrast, Ange was not adept at this fighting style. She relied entirely on the advantages of "Golden Soup's" enhanced defense and high power output, wielding a beam saber like a dismounted knight from the late Middle Ages, hacking at her opponents like harvesting wheat. "Moon Shadow's" energy blades evenly ionized any hair, flesh, and clothing they touched, leaving only charred wounds.

Despite their different tactics, the two combatants were remarkably similar in effectiveness, maintaining a decisive advantage over the enemy. While large groups of enemies were being cut down, the two suffered almost no harm, aside from being splattered with blood and strange slime.

Of course, this result is not surprising. Although these "Tai Sui" hosts have maintained a certain level of cooperation and tool-using ability, they are, after all, human, and are inferior to beasts such as black bears and brown bears in terms of strength and reaction speed. They are completely unable to compete with experienced armored warriors.

More importantly, because they maintained a certain level of intelligence, the "Tai Sui" hosts who used shooting weapons also retained the concept of "not harming friendly forces"—as a result, when Ange and Shuangye rushed into the enemy ranks and started their Musou attack, these guys could only choose to engage in a shooting duel with Fish and others who did not engage in melee combat... and their accuracy was also very poor.

After all, it's already quite difficult for a firearm designed for ordinary people to perform actions like pulling the trigger and reloading, given that it uses severely mutated and deformed weaponized limbs.

In this way, after several minutes of fighting, Shuangye and Anjie cut down more than twenty opponents, while the others effectively suppressed the enemies carrying shooting weapons. Although only hitting key positions can achieve a fatal effect, blowing off the limbs holding the gun and destroying the guns in their hands can also prevent the opponents from firing.

On two occasions, Fish's plasma beams even hit the grenades and magazines in the ammunition pouches hanging on the opponent's body, successfully triggering a chain reaction of explosions. Although the host of the "Tai Sui" was completely unable to move or fight after being blown apart, he still rolled on the ground with his rotting internal organs, looking like a scene from a horror comic book.

In addition, aircraft 05 and 06, which remained circling in the air, also participated in the battle. Although their armament was negligible compared to the dedicated attack aircraft of the old civilization era, the two 50-kilogram bombs under their wings still sent many severed limbs and pieces of flesh flying into the air after they crashed into the enemy ranks. Meanwhile, the radio operator in the rear seat also fired continuously and fiercely with the self-defense machine gun.

However, the hosts of "Tai Sui" showed no fear, nor did they exhibit the morale-damaged and chaotic state often seen in ragtag armies after an air raid—they seemed to have no concept of "morale" whatsoever. After a round of bombing and strafing, these guys immediately regrouped and returned fire with rifles and general-purpose machine guns with longer ranges.

Although the "Tai Sui" hosts had terrible shooting accuracy, their numerical advantage made up for these shortcomings: after a firefight, the wing of aircraft No. 06 was pierced with several holes and forced to return to base. Aircraft No. 05 was even more unlucky: its rudder and engine were hit at the same time, and it spun around and crashed on the makeshift airfield.

Several pieces of human remains, along with the burning wing skin, fell at Fish and the others' feet.

"Ugh..." Upon witnessing these horrific scenes, Yue Die, who was already trembling and pale-faced, immediately stopped shooting, curled up, and began to vomit.

Clearly, this marquis's daughter had never seen a real battlefield before. Coupled with the muscle memory and instinctive impulses she gained from the timid Xiaoxing after switching bodies, it's not surprising that she performed so poorly.

Fortunately, since this girl wasn't originally included in the combat power calculation, no one really cared what would happen to her.

"I've taken down eleven already!" Ange exclaimed after severing a whip-like limb of a "Tai Sui" host that was attempting to swing at her with another horizontal swing of her beam saber, only to be drenched in a sticky liquid spurting from the cut. "It's been so long since I've had this much fun fighting."

"I just took care of the fourteenth, and now..." Frostleaf said, kicking aside the corpse of her opponent whose neck she had severed, then leaping back to dodge a scythe-like limb that attacked from the side. "Ouch!"

"What's wrong?" Ange asked quickly upon hearing Shuangye's scream.

"It's nothing, just a minor injury... I didn't dodge it completely just now," Shuangye glanced at the scratch on her left arm—there, a small piece of her combat armor was torn open, and blood was flowing from the rolled-up flesh.

Although the intelligent combat armor immediately detected the problem and began injecting antibacterial and pain-relieving agents and initiating self-repair of the damaged area, she was temporarily unable to use her left arm for a short period of time.

Although her rich combat experience and combat intuition make her overall combat ability comparable to that of stronger armored warriors, Frostleaf's poor talent means that she can only use the lowest-grade "Jade" level intelligent combat armor, which still exposes problems in such intense battles.

What prevented her from dodging the attack was the viscous fluid sprayed from the body of the "Tai Sui" host that had been killed earlier.

"Damn it, this stuff is starting to harden!" Ange, whose armor was covered in slime like Frostleaf's, noticed that her movements were also becoming sluggish: the layers of slime plastered on her body were rapidly thickening and hardening, eventually forming a hard shell similar to solidified resin.

Although the artificial muscle tissue in their combat armor provides a boost in strength, allowing them to easily break free from and shatter the hard shell if they so choose, this process does lead to a continuous decrease in their speed and agility.

Even worse, the more opponents they kill, the more of this slime splatter, which means that the hard shell attached to the outer layer of their combat armor will become thicker, more resilient, and harder to get rid of, and will also continuously accumulate additional dead weight, eventually forming a vicious cycle.

Although the artificial intelligence inherent in their smart combat armor was far inferior to that of Huang Yan, it still issued warnings after calculating this dangerous trend. At the same time, Huang Yan contacted them via an encrypted communication channel.

"Gentlemen, the situation is dire," Huang Yan said. "At the current rate, your intelligent combat armor's agility will be halved within 90 to 180 seconds, making it difficult to sustain such high-intensity combat. Also, if Fish were still using his original body, I might be able to suggest he provide support. But currently, due to the burden of being forced to use a body with too much excess fat and low combat armor suitability, I don't recommend him do so."

"Who has excess fat?! How can you slander me out of thin air?!" Although she had been behaving terribly from the beginning, and had even vomited violently for two minutes before barely managing to control herself and start firing the ion gun that came with her smart combat armor, Moon Butterfly still responded to those words.

"Excuse my bluntness, but according to measurements, each of those two lumps of yours weighs a whopping 1.35 pounds! That significantly exceeds the average weight of non-pregnant female humans—including New Humans! What else can you call that but flabby flesh?!" Huang Yan retorted directly.

"You outdated AI tactics from ten centuries ago, do you even understand what human aesthetics are?!" Moon Butterfly yelled. "I don't even like this flat-chested loli body!"

"Oh, sorry, you know I'm a top-tier tactical AI, so of course my database doesn't contain useless aesthetic data! All I know is that Mr. Fish is currently suffering greatly from your physical limitations, and in order to strengthen the frontal defenses, I had to change the armor configuration, resulting in a potential 14% loss in combat effectiveness!"

"That's just your own incompetence! My original combat armor, 'Silver Wind,' was already very form-fitting!"

"Don't compare your mass-produced, third-tier 'Crystal' gear to mine. Do you even know what a meticulously crafted technological masterpiece is, or what mass-produced equipment is?!"

"Enough, you guys! This isn't the time to argue!" Fish shouted as he charged up the ion gun inside his gauntlet.

Although the number of enemies who initially emerged from the tents and huts had been reduced by nearly half after their previous battles and air raids by the two aircraft left to provide air support, their reinforcements continued to arrive, and even some heavily armed figures appeared!

While it's already terrifying enough that the "Tai Sui" host, who should have been completely devoid of intelligence, can use knives, guns, and clubs to manipulate firearms for aiming, firing, and reloading, what's even more alarming is that a "giant lizard" amphibious tank has now appeared in their ranks!

This eight-and-a-half-ton behemoth would have been nothing more than a toy in the old civilization, but in this era, it remains a formidable weapon. As it rumbled closer, it even fired a shot from its 57mm howitzer towards Fish and his group, and surprisingly, it hit quite accurately…

...However, this slow-moving grenade was destroyed by Xiaoxing, who was hiding in the shadows, with a crossbow bolt with an armor-piercing explosive projectile before it even passed the apex of its parabola.

"Hmm, typical military equipment for low-intensity conflicts," Huang Yan commented. "Using small- to medium-caliber howitzers as the main guns of tanks, primarily for suppressing infantry and attacking fortifications, with little consideration for armored vehicle countermeasures against enemy armored targets... Of course, in this era, it's sufficient. In the extremely muddy and river-filled Zhongbei region due to warming, the use of light amphibious tanks is indeed quite extensive."

"Yes." Fish nodded and launched the ball of scorching plasma. The plasma ball, overloaded with extreme energy, had more than three times the power of normal firing mode. It easily burned through the amphibious tank's 30mm steel frontal armor, incinerating everything inside and detonating as many as 48 reserve shells.

The explosion of this thing temporarily cleared out a large area of ​​"Tai Sui" hosts in the vicinity, which also greatly reduced the pressure on Fish's side.

"Unit 05, report the situation." Fish took the opportunity to switch Phoenix Flame's communication channel to military radio mode and said to the communications officer of the last seaplane still circling in the air, "What's the situation on the ground around here?"

"Sir, this is bad," the communications officer's voice was that of a young woman, and it was difficult to hear because of the intense machine gun fire. "I've seen at least... several hundred enemies here, most of them suddenly appearing from the jungle below the hill, and some that seemed to have been hiding in underground bunkers. There are people, animals, and heavy equipment..."

"It seems things are indeed not looking good."

"That's true," the communications officer said after another burst of fire. "There was nothing down there just ten minutes ago, but now such a large group has appeared! Also, sir, there are large numbers of enemies to your west, south, and northwest, and some enemies are flanking you from the southeast. You can't advance in those directions."

"And we can't get on the plane to retreat!" After unleashing a series of dense sword lights with "Moon Shadow" to force back the enemy in front of us, Ange said, "The enemy has already taken control of the airfield. Even if we manage to break through and get back to the vicinity of the plane, we won't be able to take off normally."

"Then it seems the only option is to retreat to the northeast, to the deepest part of the highlands," Fish quickly concluded.

"That's right, sir! And I just finished firing the last drum magazine," the radio operator of aircraft number 05 said. At the same time, the intermittent machine gun fire in the air stopped. "The aircraft's fuel is also running low, and we must return to base. Please forgive us for not being able to continue providing air cover."

"Alright, you're authorized to return!" Fish said. "Men, disengage and retreat northeast!"

"Understood," Ange said.

"I'm coming right now," Frostleaf said nimbly as she retreated after felling one of her opponents. Then, Xiao Xing, who had been hiding nearby, threw several pungent smoke grenades, temporarily disrupting the enemy's vision. Fish and the others began to retreat in the direction the communications officer had pointed out, a direction free of enemies. However, they hadn't gone far when a huge shadow crashed to the ground.

Then, towering flames blocked their path.