The Final Odyssey, the fantastical journey of a cat boy

"My God... what a coincidence!" Alicia, whose face was also splattered with blood and spittle, whispered from a short distance away, "Is this even possible...?"

"I'm afraid this is no coincidence." After taking a few seconds to think about the cause and effect, Fish suddenly felt a chill of fear—clearly, with all the escalators above completely still, the fact that this escalator leading to the underground was still operating was definitely not right!

The only reasonable explanation is that it was a trap intentionally left by the game designers. The metal cover at the location of the transmission mechanism was unstable from the beginning.

However, unlike ordinary people, Frostleaf's body, with its exceptional jumping and running abilities, takes particularly long strides when running at full speed. As a result, when rushing up the escalator, she subconsciously jumped over the danger zone, which inadvertently caused the pursuing black giant bear to fall down.

The giant beast's dying screams lasted for more than ten seconds, and then, accompanied by the blaring of an alarm, the escalator finally stopped running.

Of course, neither Fish nor the others had the leisure to go back and check on the giant creature at this time. Before it could even get up, the group rushed towards the nearest entrance.

"It's a parking lot!" Aqua, who had rushed in first, was also the first to stop. Although after the encounter at Spider's Nest City, everyone had anticipated that there would probably be other "surprises" in the underground area, no one expected that the situation down there would be so outrageous!

"My God... what the hell is this place? Is it a spider cave?" Upon seeing the seemingly endless expanse of snow-white spider silk, Fish felt a strong sense of nausea from the bottom of his heart. Admittedly, he was not the kind of person who was born with a fear of spiders or similar arthropods, but faced with this sight, he still instinctively took a step back.

"Eek...Nooo ...

The giant black bear from before has caught up with us here after taking care of the unfortunate cover group on the third floor.

"ah--"

For the girl who encountered the giant bear at the escalator entrance, what happened next was perhaps fortunate: her fear lasted less than two seconds before most of her head, above her jaw, was knocked away by the bear's claws. A large amount of arterial blood gushed out like a fountain from between her remaining jaw fragments, resembling a fountain designed by some grotesque artist.

"Now I know how that girl in that clothing and shoe supermarket ended up like that," Fish muttered.

"If we don't think of a solution soon, we'll be next!" Aqua's face turned green with fright. She instinctively reached behind her—Fish noticed that she was wearing a small fluffy handbag at her lower back.

"Um... how about we just risk charging in?" suggested the blonde girl, who had almost been killed by the black bear but was saved at the last second by Fish's frying pan. "Maybe..."

"There's no guarantee," Aqua frowned. "If we just barge in like this, there'll definitely only be one way out."

"Indeed," Alicia whispered—by the light of the emergency lights, they could clearly see that between the giant spider silk curtains that filled the parking lot, some huge creatures with many, many legs were climbing.

Compared to the creatures they encountered in Spider's Nest City, these things were significantly larger and more numerous. Fish was quite certain that they were probably no weaker than the previous ones in terms of fighting skills, endurance, or special moves.

"What the hell..." A bead of sweat trickled down Fish's forehead... However, before a second drop of cold sweat could be expelled from his sweat glands, he noticed a possible way out.

On the ceiling of the underground parking garage, a series of interconnected ventilation ducts extend into every corner like blood vessels. And just a few meters away from the crowd, there is a grille-like vent that leads into the ventilation ducts.

"There's no other way, but let's give it a try!" Fish pointed to the vent. "I'll open this thing up in a bit, then you guys can go inside!"

"Um... but will we be able to get through?" the blonde girl asked. "These ventilation ducts look a bit narrow..."

"Indeed," Fish nodded, "it might be difficult for someone who is too overweight."

"Hey! Who are you calling fat?!" the girl exclaimed, suddenly becoming agitated. "Help me upstairs!"

"Don't rush, let me open this thing first." Fish licked his lips, then took two steps back, jumped up, and leaped to a height of nearly 2.8 meters. He then kicked away the aluminum alloy fence that was fixed to the vent.

A horse girl's body is so useful when she's jumping and running!

Under normal circumstances, Fish's feat of performing such a difficult maneuver with Frostleaf's body would undoubtedly have made him the center of attention. But at this moment, after witnessing the three-meter-long black killer bear, the colossal spider monster, and the death bat, no one was surprised by this small miracle. "Quick, get on!" Fish held out his hand to the blonde girl. "I'll help you up!"

"Huh? Ah, okay!" The girl paused for a moment, then stepped on Fish's outstretched hand and was lifted up by him. Then, stepping on his shoulder, she climbed into the ventilation duct. Next, Aqua and another brown-haired girl in a red sweater did the same, and then it was Alicia's turn.

Then, just as Alicia climbed into the ventilation duct, Fish heard two completely different, yet equally chilling, sounds: behind him came the murderous growl of a black giant bear; while in the "Spider Cave" ahead came the rhythmic "click" of exoskeletons hitting the ground.

"Sorry, I don't have time to play with you guys." After thanking Frostleaf once again for her exceptional physical abilities, Fish leaped up, dodging the giant bear's charge, and with a fluid movement that would make any acrobat from the old civilization era envious, flipped into the ventilation duct. After missing its target, the enraged giant bear stood upright, attempting to continue the pursuit... only to find that it couldn't even enter the ventilation duct.

"Hehehe... Come on!" Seeing the other stuck at the entrance and helpless, Fish turned around and mocked the guy. The giant bear, unable to move forward or backward, angrily pounded on the ventilation duct entrance with its claws, trying in vain to tear it open, looking just like a claw druid with bloodlust cast, and continuously casting the "Roar" skill... Of course, none of it worked.

But before Fish could come up with any more ways to mock it, the giant bear suddenly rolled its eyes back, began to tremble violently, and collapsed to the ground with a thud a few seconds later. Immediately afterward, Fish heard a rustling sound of segmented exoskeleton limbs moving and colliding.

Undoubtedly, this guy's roar just now "successfully" attracted the most ominous creatures—the giant spiders hiding in their nests. And even more unfortunately, just like the chimeras in ruins, fields, and forests hunt each other, the giant bears, giant spiders, and giant bats in this "marketplace" do not consider each other to be their own kind.

"Strange," Alicia glanced back, "Didn't you say before that the opponents in these 'games' are all hosts controlled by 'Tai Sui'? Why are they attacking each other?"

"I suppose this was the original intention of the 'game' designers," Fish thought for a moment, then replied. "I suppose, from the very beginning, those guys planned for the participants in the 'game' to use the monsters' mutual restraint to eliminate them. That's why there are so few weapons here, even fewer than in your previous 'school'."

"I see," Alicia nodded in sudden realization. "No wonder there were no knives in the kitchenware store."

"Let's hurry up and leave," Fish urged. After all, unlike the giant black bear, the spiders here, though large in appearance, were mostly slender in their legs. In other words, once they finished their prey, they could easily chase it into the ventilation ducts, making it unsafe inside.

"Huh? That's strange, where did Aqua and the others go?"

As they began crawling forward again, Alicia suddenly shouted—because of the delay, Aqua and the other girl had crawled a long way and disappeared into the depths of the ventilation duct with its many branching passages.

"There's no time to look for them. Let's figure out how to get out of here first, then find a safe place to meet up with them!" Fish gave Alicia a push. "Anywhere is fine!"

"Understood!" Alicia randomly chose a side path and climbed over as quickly as possible. Each time they passed a ventilation shaft with aluminum grilles, the two peered behind them to observe what lay below. At first, all they saw through the ventilation shafts were layers of spiderwebs. However, upon reaching the sixth ventilation shaft, the spiderwebs disappeared, replaced by shelves filled with various goods.

"There really is a supermarket down here," Fish muttered to himself.

"And there don't seem to be any spiders in the supermarket," Alicia said. "Is this part of the game design?"

"Probably," Fish nodded. "The characteristic of this type of game is that it always provides players with solutions, including relatively safe areas and tools to solve problems, so that they are never truly left with no way out. I think 'successfully dodging all the obstacles and sneaking into the supermarket' should be the key to passing the game."

However, just to be on the safe side, he and Alicia did not leave the ventilation duct immediately, but crawled forward a little further, and then they found a ventilation opening where the metal grille had been moved.

"It seems that Aqua and the others came down from here," Fish said.

"So at least we didn't go the wrong way." Alicia grabbed the edge of the ventilation shaft and lightly jumped down. Unlike the small supermarkets and boutiques on the ground floor of the mall, crammed with useless luxury goods, this large supermarket located underground, adjacent to the parking lot, was clearly a so-called "lifestyle supermarket," filled with all sorts of practical daily necessities. From toiletries and daily chemicals to packaged foods and various tools, it had everything. The enormous shelves made it feel like a maze.

"Sigh...what a pity." Fish sighed suddenly as he passed a row of shelves filled with cleaning agents, detergents and other daily chemical products.

"What's wrong?"

"If I had known this day would come, I should have paid more attention in Huang Yan's basic chemistry class," Fish said, shrugging. "That guy Huang Yan always said that for those who study chemistry seriously, the supermarket is an arsenal. Unfortunately, I found those courses too troublesome, so I wanted to doze off as soon as I heard them."

"But in the outside world, there probably aren't any supermarkets with such a complete selection of goods, right?" Alicia said. "Who knew we'd run into something like this?"

"Indeed," Fish took two bottles of high-concentration disinfectant alcohol from the shelf—this was the only thing he dared to touch and knew exactly how to use.

Although Huang Yan had mentioned using ammonium nitrate fertilizer or organic dust like flour to cause big trouble, and that supermarket did indeed have those things, Fish was completely unsure if he could safely use those methods… If he accidentally caused permanent damage to Shuangye's body, even Ange probably wouldn't let him off easily after this was over!

Therefore, he decided to use the simplest method: collect as much alcohol as possible, then return to the parking garage through the ventilation ducts, pour the alcohol onto the spider webs, and set them on fire. Since all the monsters on the ground floors had been wiped out, they only needed to burn down those disgusting creatures outside to complete the mission.

The good news is that at least this job doesn't look difficult.

To make it easier to transport more alcohol at once and burn off those troublesome spiders completely, Fish found a shopping cart in a corner of the supermarket. Then, just as he was about to push the cart back to the general chemicals section, Alicia suddenly screamed.

"What's wrong? Are there monsters in the supermarket too?"

"No, no!" Alicia cried out, "Look over there!"

"Over there? Hmm..." Fish turned his head in the direction Alicia pointed, and immediately frowned: behind a shelf full of detergents and deodorants, a pair of legs wearing red slippers stretched out in a strange position... and Fish realized almost immediately that those legs belonged to the girl who had been with Aqua earlier!

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