The Final Odyssey, the fantastical journey of a cat boy

"That...that is..."

"Shh..." Fish put a finger to his lips and gestured for Alicia to be quiet, who was a little panicked. "Don't make a sound. There might be other monsters in this supermarket."

"No way?" Alicia muttered under her breath, but then shook her head and fell silent. After all, the guys who designed this kind of twisted game had already demonstrated their depravity. Although there had been one "surprise" after another, it wouldn't be surprising if they hid something else in a seemingly safe supermarket.

Lacking any decent weapons, Fish could only carefully maneuver around the shelves, carrying only a frying pan. Sure enough, Aqua and another girl, who had entered the supermarket before them, lay collapsed behind the shelves. The girl's body was curled up in a bizarre position, with a large patch of yellow liquid between her legs, clearly indicating that she had lost control of her bladder due to some factor.

Fish carefully bent down and felt her pulse, but couldn't feel anything.

"What... happened to her?"

"Dead, but there are no external injuries. It might be due to poisoning or something," Fish said. "Could you go get some disinfectant? I just handled the body, and I need to disinfect my hands as soon as possible, just to be safe."

"Disinfect? ​​But..." Alicia seemed confused—although her experiences and memories as a high school girl were crudely fabricated, her brain had indeed been crammed with at least basic high school knowledge. Therefore, she simply couldn't understand why she needed to disinfect her hands immediately after coming into contact with someone who had just died from poisoning, rather than from an infectious disease.

"Go quickly." Fish winked at Alicia, who hesitated for a moment before walking towards the container of disinfectant. After confirming that Alicia had left, Fish stood up from beside the girl and walked towards Aqua.

The blue-haired girl lay sprawled in the corner, seemingly in grave danger. Fish noticed a thin, stick-like object beneath her, which looked like a broom handle haphazardly wrapped in plastic.

"Sigh, what on earth happened here?" Fish muttered, then bent down to check on Aqua. But just as he did so, Aqua suddenly opened its eyes, pulled out the "broomstick" from under its body, and stabbed it forcefully towards Fish's chest!

"You—" Fish convulsed a few times as he was stabbed in the chest, then fell backward. Aqua put down the broomstick and let out a long breath.

"Phew...finally dealt with the most troublesome guy," she said, rolling up her sleeves to reveal a "watch" on her wrist. She pressed a button on it. "Hello, is this the game host? I'm 'Werewolf.' I've completed the target of killing twenty NPCs and also dealt with the player. Shouldn't we be able to end the game now?"

"Sorry, your application has been rejected," a monotonous, synthesized male voice replied. "Player detected to still be alive; game not over."

"Are you kidding me? I clearly already..."

"Sorry, your request has been rejected. Players are still alive; the game is not over. Repeat, players are still alive; the game is not over."

"Huh? Could it be..." Aqua shuddered and was about to turn around. But just then, someone suddenly snatched the "broomstick" from her hand and stabbed it directly into her chest!

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—" As a strange, burning stench emanated from Aqua's body, the blue-haired girl convulsed violently for a moment, then fell backward to the ground, motionless.

"Kaelin?! What is this...?" Alicia asked in surprise as she returned with disinfectant. Overwhelmed with shock, the bottle full of disinfectant fell directly from her hand to the floor.

"I just defeated the last 'monster,' which is also the real final boss in the entire game," Fish explained.

"What...what is this...?"

“Actually, I sensed something was wrong from the very beginning,” Fish said. “Remember the announcement we made when we woke up in the bathroom?”

"Ah...you mean that 'open your eyes when it gets dark' thing?"

"That's right. Although I didn't quite understand what it meant when I first heard it, I quickly remembered something: Huang Yan once mentioned that in the old civilization era, there was a game called Werewolf."

"Huh...? I've never heard of that." Alicia said—since she was positioned as a "cannon fodder NPC who can probably only survive for a few hours," her artificial memories naturally did not include "irrelevant" things like the Werewolf game.

"It's a game of strategy. When Huang Yan is criticizing me, he sometimes says that someone like me would definitely be the unlucky one to die in Werewolf," Fish shrugged. "So I roughly understand some of the rules. For example, after dark, the one who opens their eyes is the werewolf—the one who hides among the crowd and is responsible for attacking and murdering others. Therefore, the broadcast at the time was actually implying to us that there was a 'werewolf' in the mall."

"But……"

"Afterwards, when we arrived at the scented candle shop, my doubts became even more serious: the mall was huge, and only a dozen minutes had passed since we regained consciousness until we met Aqua—that was not enough time for Aqua to walk through the entire mall and bring more than a dozen NPCs back to the candle shop by himself. After all, all the players and NPCs should have regained consciousness at the same time."

"Ah, so that means..."

"In other words, Aqua is 'special'—she likely has another mission, which is why she woke up early," Fish said. "One of the wax figures in the candle shop, if I remember correctly, is Brutus, the one who assassinated Caesar—Huangyan and I mentioned this story. Considering the nature of this 'game,' this is clearly some kind of hint."

"No wonder... So, Aqua's initial mission wasn't to eliminate the monsters. Her condition for clearing the game was actually to betray and kill the others?"

"Yes. Finally, after the 'Spider's Nest' operation, I became very suspicious of Aqua—and after discovering a large number of battery packages, I further confirmed her suspicious nature: as a 'werewolf' lurking among the humans, she herself is the last 'monster' in this 'Black Beast Mall'."

"Well……"

"Of course, to ensure the game's difficulty isn't too high, Aqua, like us, has no weapons. She can only rely on pretending to organize everyone so that they perish in encounters with monsters. However, worried that the monsters might not be able to do the job cleanly, she also collected a large number of dry cell batteries, strung them together to make a weapon, intending to use it to eliminate any survivors who slipped through the net."

"Yes, even 1.5-volt dry cell batteries, if connected in series enough, can accumulate to hundreds of volts, enough to cause serious harm to a person," Alicia said, glancing at the fallen Aqua and then at the blue stick made of dry cell batteries that Fish was holding. "Moreover, most people don't usually think of dry cell batteries as weapons. So even if they discover Aqua collecting them, they won't care... How insidious."

"Yes. The game designer must be incredibly twisted: having a hidden enemy assassinate those who think they're about to win at the last minute... That's why I deliberately sent you away, making her think she had a chance," Fish touched the smart combat armor that Frostleaf was wearing, which had turned into a bulletproof vest. "Luckily, she doesn't know that even though it has lost most of its functions, this armor can still withstand ordinary damage and electric shocks."

"really."

"Phew... Anyway, let's deal with the rest of the trouble outside first." Fish tossed aside the battery rod and resumed collecting alcohol with Alicia. A few minutes later, they successfully poured the alcohol through different vents into the spider webs in the underground garage, and threw in a large handful of burning matches.

Trapped in the enclosed space with nowhere to escape, the entire swarm of spiders in the underground parking garage perished in the flames within minutes.

"Congratulations everyone, you have successfully cleared 'Black Beast Mall'. You will..." Before the flames outside had completely died down, the supermarket's loudspeaker blared. But then, the mechanical voice on the tablet suddenly disappeared amidst a burst of white noise.

"...Hey, Feish? Can you hear me?!" After a brief, piercing noise, the voice on the radio switched back to Huang Yan's.

"able."

"Excellent, it seems I can take over as soon as the game ends," Huang Yan said. "You guys did a great job. There are three minutes until the next game starts. Once the timer runs out, you will be teleported into the bodies of the last two of our team members."

"That means Ange... and me?" Fish said.

"That's right."

"In other words, I can finally switch back to my own body?"

"I'm sorry, I just checked the matching list, and you... will be transported into Ange's body."

"Holy crap!" Fish was stunned—using Moon Butterfly or Frostleaf's body was one thing, but Ange was another. After all, she was, in any case, his legal fiancée. Transforming into his wife... that kind of thing was just too...exciting...

"Complaining to me is useless; it's all the system's fault here," Huang Yan said. "However, we probably can't completely let the system do as it pleases anymore."

"What does this mean?" Fish asked.

"According to the system rules, whether a player fails or succeeds in the challenge, they will eventually be teleported outside the facility—oh, by the way, after dealing with you all through the host for so long, the 'brain' here has become aware of your presence. Now, it is coordinating all the troops under its control to deploy outside the facility."

"Excellent... Although this guy can't do anything inside the facility and can only follow the rules set by those game designers from a thousand years ago. But if we were thrown outside by the teleportation system, that would be a different story, right?"

"Exactly. Therefore, the final 'game' cannot end normally—it cannot even be settled by cheating like the first 'game.' You must break through the facility itself during the 'game,' escape before it ends, and forcibly open a path to reach the area where the 'Central Brain' is located," Huang Yan said.

"And then solve it?"

"You're not planning to joke around with it, are you? At least I don't think that thing has any sense of humor." Huang Yan told a lame joke that no one could laugh at. "However, fortunately, the next 'game' area, the 'Pumpkin Secret Realm,' is... a place where you can relatively do that."

"You mean you're relatively well-positioned to do this?"

"I'm sorry, but I don't have time to explain now," Huang Yan said. "Once the next 'game' begins, I will try my best to control any interactive systems that can be affected to provide guidance. Please pay close attention to any details around you, understand?"

"Alright." Knowing that Huang Yan wouldn't have time to give him any further hints, Fish could only shrug. "I'll try my best—"

Before he could finish speaking, the whole world began to spin again.

Having learned from his previous experience, Fish wasn't too panicked this time, and calmly waited for the transfer to complete. Once the violent spinning and uncomfortable feeling of falling subsided, he quickly noticed a considerable weight had been added to his chest…

"Uh..." Fish subconsciously touched his chest and suddenly felt a little emotional: Of all the companions he had used before, Moon Butterfly was undoubtedly the biggest, with a chest weight that would be a hindrance in battle; while Frostleaf, although it can't be said that she had no breasts at all, had a relatively normal weight, almost imperceptible.

As for Ange, her breasts were somewhere between Moon Butterfly and Frostleaf, just the right size – "not too small, but not enough to hinder daily combat." After standing up, Fish moved his limbs a few times and was surprised to find that the body's strength and coordination were better than expected.

It seems that this princess did not neglect her daily training while in the White Lotus Palace of Fayun. This is quite different from some other nobles that Fish knew well.

"Uh... this is... a boy's body?" Less than a minute after Fish woke up, he heard another voice—his own. Not far behind him, his own body had also stood up, looking at him with a puzzled expression.

"Alicia?"

"Uh-huh."

"How does this feel?"

"Uh, I feel like my strength has increased quite a bit compared to before," Alicia said somewhat uneasily, fiddling with her clothes for a while. "But... why this outfit?"

"Uh..." Fish couldn't contain himself when he saw the clothes he was wearing—he and Ange were now wearing witch costumes decorated with bats and pumpkin heads, respectively!

Renowned author Sohofu has joined Cola Novels with his new work, "The Final Odyssey: The Fantastic Journey of a Cat Boy"!