The Final Odyssey, the fantastical journey of a cat boy

Author Sohofu's "The Final Odyssey: The Fantastic Journey of a Cat Boy" awaits you at Cola Novels.

"Hey! Guess—guess—who—I am?!"

"No need to guess, you're Alicia, right?" Fish said.

"You guessed right, Karin!" Alicia smiled and released her grip. "How was it? Wasn't our school festival amazing?"

"Eh...excuse my bluntness, Alicia-san," perhaps influenced by the surrounding atmosphere, Fish actually started to slightly identify with the high school girl (JK). He glanced at his watch, then shrugged, "You just said the school festival would start in fifteen minutes. But twelve minutes have passed now, why isn't everyone ready yet?"

"This...uh...did I say something like that?" Alicia was completely bewildered—clearly, because the sentence was an instinctive remark based on a subconscious command, her memory was somewhat hazy.

"You definitely said that!" Fish insisted. "You definitely said that."

"Really? Hahaha... I must have remembered wrong." Alicia laughed. Then, her gaze fell on the baseball bat in Fish's hand. "Ah, so you like baseball."

“Of course not,” Fish shook his head. “I just… uh… took this stick out for someone.”

"In that case, let's go check out the archery club first? Their booth is almost set up," Alicia said with a smile, taking Fish's free hand. "This year's prize is a limited edition Kabubu plush toy."

"What should I do now?" As Alicia pulled him away, Fish whispered to Phoenix Flame for help.

"Just follow along, don't ask why!" Huang Yan replied. "My understanding of this kind of low-level death game is relatively limited, but I can say for sure that there's not much preparation the participants can do; they mainly need to be able to improvise."

"But then again, since this is a 'game,' there has to be a standard for winning and losing, right?" Fish asked, trying to remain as silent as possible. "What constitutes a win?"

"It's very simple, survival—usually there are two types. One is calculated as a percentage or absolute number, such as 'the last so many people' or 'the last few percent'; the other is calculated by time, such as 'survive for more than three hours' or 'reach the destination within the allotted time'. Of course, there will be clear prompts for both."

"Hint...hint...hint..." Fish turned his head around, trying to find something that looked like a hint, but without success. The stalls set up along the roadside for this "School Festival" were incredibly diverse. Some were preparing grilled squid, some were selling bundles of roses, some were making simple sugar paintings, and others were displaying rows of plastic toys and ceramic art pieces on the ground. People dressed in bizarre costumes posing for photos were also everywhere.

However, Fish couldn't see anything related to the "hint".

The archery club's booth was located under a few willow trees not far from the teaching building, next to a bronze statue of a young man carrying a pile of things and wearing straw sandals. Several club members had lined up a row of huge prototype targets ten meters away, and placed several prizes beside them. It seemed that as long as you hit a certain number of rings, you could exchange them for prizes.

"There's only one minute left," Huang Yan reminded him. "Stay alert and be careful."

Perhaps because preparations for the school festival were not yet complete, there was no one else at the archery club's booth, only two members adjusting their bows. They were not using the kind of sport bows with pulleys, or even composite bows, but rather single longbows made from a single piece of yew wood, which looked quite ancient—however, even with their simple structure, Fish could still sense a certain faint killing intent emanating from these massive bows.

"Come on, everyone," one of the archery club members, who was adjusting her longbow, approached as Fish and Alicia drew near. She wore a loose red and white dress and looked like one of the clergy members known as "shrine maidens" in the Kingdom of Penglai. "Want to try your luck? Three arrows each, and the person with the highest total score wins the prize!"

"What if both of you get the same score?" Fish asked, putting down his baseball bat and weighing the longbow in his hand, considering the possibility of using it as a weapon—though he quickly dismissed the idea. After all, accurate archery requires a great deal of experience, and Fish unfortunately had never received any such training, so his shooting accuracy was entirely a matter of luck.

"In that case... then... it's... impossible," the girl in the red and white shrine maiden's robes suddenly said with a strange expression—clearly, what she said wasn't a thoughtful answer, but rather some kind of "forced procedure," "There can only be one surviving victor... yes, if there are two, only one can survive..."

"Huh? Did I just say something like that?" the girl, her expression returning to normal, asked, looking confused. "Did you hear me correctly?"

"Definitely not! I... huh?!"

Alicia stopped mid-sentence in shock—not far away, another girl in shrine maiden attire, who should have been adjusting her longbow, suddenly began to tremble violently! Then, as her eyes rolled back and white foam spurted from the corner of her mouth, a thin, whip-like tentacle suddenly tore through her shrine maiden attire and emerged from her shoulder!

Then, the suddenly mutated girl used trembling hands to nock an arrow and aim at Alicia.

"Hey, what are you doing? That's dangerous!" Alicia was clearly unaware of what was happening. Since the school festival was filled with people wearing all sorts of strange accessories, she even used the tentacle as a prop, just as she ignored Fish's animal ears and tail. Therefore, Alicia simply waved at the other person, "Miyu-san! Don't draw your bow on other people!"

"Get out of the way!" Having already experienced the power of "Tai Sui" before, Fish immediately understood what was happening and, without hesitation, pushed Alicia to the ground. A heartbeat later, a sharp arrow grazed their backs, accurately piercing through another member of the archery club.

"Oh no! Quick, find the school doctor!"

Alicia quickly ran to her fallen classmate, trying to check her pulse and press on her wound, leaving a bewildered Fish behind.

"Don't be so surprised," Huang Yan said to Fish. "That's what makes these kinds of death games so appealing to their audience: people's reactions when everyday life breaks down—all the NPCs here, when awakened, have been implanted with the memories of 'carefree high school girls in peacetime,' and their thinking is different from yours."

"Different?" When the archery club member, who had already been parasitized, drew his longbow again, Fish instinctively grabbed another bow placed to the side—although he didn't know anything about archery, he was at least quite skilled with a stick. The second arrow, flying only a few meters away from Alicia, was easily deflected by Fish.

"I'll have to thank Moon Butterfly properly later. Although she's utterly useless, this body has definitely been properly trained in swordsmanship," Fish muttered to himself as he stretched his limbs. "Otherwise, it wouldn't have been easy to knock this thing away."

"Huh... wait?" At the same time, Alicia, noticing what was happening behind her, finally realized that something was amiss: one arrow could be considered an unfortunate accident, but a second one could definitely not be an accident. "Miyu-san?! What are you doing?!"

"Don't ask! That's not your Miyu anymore!" Fish swung his yew longbow and struck "Miyu" on the forehead with the incredibly resilient stick, leaving her bleeding and lying on her back, motionless.

"Waaaaaahh ...

"Murder! Murder!"

"My God! That person actually killed someone!"

"Two members of the archery club are dead!"

"Call the police immediately!"

In a panic, some students pulled out something with a smooth surface, like a small board, and started gesturing on it. Fish had previously heard Xiaoxing mention that this thing was called a "smartphone," a popular communication device in the 21st century—though it was gradually phased out long before the end of the old civilization. But because of their sheer number, Xiaoxing's family's recycling plant often found these things in the old civilization's junkyards.

Needless to say, there was no "police" to report here; the recordings coming from these phones were just artificially synthesized audio. However, the students' actions were clearly very disadvantageous for Fish: at this moment, having "killed someone" in broad daylight, he couldn't leave the crowd!

"This is a huge problem," Huang Yan said. "A basic rule of zombie movies is that unless you have the strongest protagonist's halo, being trapped or stranded in a densely populated area at the beginning means certain death. Especially when you can't get heavy firepower or transportation."

"Then what should I do?" Although he had never watched a zombie movie, Fish could roughly guess what Huang Yan meant.

"The simplest way is to break through with bows and arrows and baseball bats—now's the time," Huang Yan suggested. "For a disorganized crowd in a state of panic and chaos, a sudden violent attack can at least make people instinctively avoid you rather than arrest you in a very short time. Once you take down a few people, the others will make way, and then..."

"I can't do that." Fish raised his baseball bat and assumed a defensive stance, but did not make a move.

"Why? These guys are just like pigs, mass-produced by this bastard facility to be tortured and killed in various ways. They weren't even considered human in the past," Huang Yan said. "Although I strongly disagree with the views of those immoral, trashy, bloodthirsty spectators, please act quickly. No one will condemn your actions."

"But in my eyes, they are people." Fish's wrist trembled—although these people looked like the old humans, and were somewhat different from the "people" he was familiar with. However, unlike the "clones" in pink camouflage he had encountered in the "Killing Factory," they had their own thoughts and consciousness, their own emotions, and were not just dolls that could only mechanically react to stimuli.

In short, Fish, who could effortlessly kill dozens of "Tai Sui" hosts or calmly shred a giant chimera into pieces, was completely unable to attack these people at this moment. After a moment of contemplation, Fish took a deep breath.

"Everyone! This area is under attack by a parasitic creature called 'Tai Sui'! Those infected may develop weaponized organs and extra limbs, and will cruelly attack others! Please be aware of those around you and remain vigilant! Avoid gathering in groups!"

"What...what is this person saying?"

"Is she crazy? She's definitely talking nonsense!"

"Ughhhhhh—that lunatic is disgusting!"

"Ayumi-san? Have you contacted the police station? Why haven't they arrived yet?"

The girl who said those last words had just turned her gaze to "Ayumi" beside her when she saw a tentacle with a sharp spike at the tip pierce her forehead—and her memory was frozen at the moment her skull was pierced.

Worse still, because of the surrounding noise and everyone's attention being drawn to the tragic state of the archery club, the killing was noticed by most people very late. Although a few people nearby noticed the killing the moment "Ayumi" made the move, their screams were drowned out by the louder arguments and noise.

After that, "Ayumi-san," foaming at the mouth and with tentacles growing from her body, began to attack others. The barbed tentacles first pierced the corner of a girl's eye, and then accurately pierced the mouth of another girl who was screaming.

Then, scattered throughout the crowd, more than a dozen "Tai Sui" hosts, as if preordained, began attacking those around them one after another. Only then did the other female students suddenly realize that they were not mere bystanders, but had been drawn into a genuine murder case!

A chorus of screams echoed through the campus, which had just been filled with laughter and chatter. The crowd began to move erratically, like molecules that had been heated up! After witnessing all this, Fish finally started sweating—he knew very well that what was about to happen was the worst thing ever.

That was a mass stampede!