The Final Odyssey, the fantastical journey of a cat boy

"Something? You mean that thing?!"

As the mechanism in the floor activated, Alicia saw a statue rise into the dim light. It had bluish skin, a cobra-like head, and sharp fangs and a forked tongue protruded from its massive mouth as it was propelled by an electric motor. Although she knew it was just a scare tactic in a haunted house, Alicia bit her lip, managing to resist the urge to fire a 12-gauge shotgun shell at it.

"No, of course not." Fish shook his head. "It's this!"

As he spoke, Fish fired several three-round bursts at the menacing statue with his "wand." Then, a girl in shark pajamas rolled out from behind the statue, dying before she hit the ground, a sharpened scythe falling from her hand.

"What did you do just now...?"

"Smell," Fish twitched his nose, "Among the Newhumans, canine and fox-type Newhumans have relatively poor vision, but their sense of smell is extremely sensitive. And Ange is a fox-type Newhuman. In places where vision and hearing are limited, but space is confined, the scent of an enemy simply cannot escape her nose."

"No wonder!" Alicia said, "Because the space is small and the airflow is in a fixed direction, it's easier to smell the enemy! That's the reason!"

“That’s right.” Fish nodded and replaced the last 20-round magazine in the M16A2 wand. After taking a few more steps, he fired half a magazine at a coffin placed against the wall not far away, and a girl dressed as a zombie immediately rolled out of it.

Seeing that they could no longer hide, the lid of the other coffin was immediately pushed open—but the one hiding inside was too late. Before the person could even leave the coffin where they were hiding, Alicia's shotgun shell had already given her a wake-up call.

Soon, the ground was littered with the wreckage of a spherical projection robot and the body of a "mummy" with seven or eight holes in its body.

"Three are gone!"

"That's not important. Remember, our mission is to crack the game, not to beat it." Fish continued forward. The fourth room was a strange place filled with soap bubbles of all sizes and floating colorful balloons. There was some writing on the wall about something called "Yog Sothos," who knows what that is. Since he couldn't understand it, Fish didn't pay much attention to it.

The room that followed was filled with glass jars of all sizes, each containing a resin-made artificial human brain. Numerous strange instruments crammed into every corner, and the ceiling was painted with a bizarre creature resembling a strange winged fungus.

"What the hell is this?" Alicia asked.

"Let me see... uh, this seems to be a Mi-Go brain jar," Fish said, looking at the writing on one of the jars—of course, he didn't understand what the words meant. "Looks like a good thing."

"What did you say?"

"I roughly know how to exploit the bug that Huang Yan mentioned." Fish slowly twitched his nostrils, carefully analyzing the changes in the scent in the air. Then, he took a few steps back and came to the largest glass jar.

Perhaps to facilitate access for cleaning, the glass jar has a small door leading inside. Although from the outside, the jar appears to be filled with some kind of liquid and floating with dozens of brains, this is actually a deliberately created optical illusion; the "brains" are merely a holographic projection. The jar is spacious enough to accommodate at least five or six people, but contains nothing else.

"Should we hide in here?"

“Partly right,” Fish said. “Now, you just need to sit there and do nothing no matter what happens or what you feel.”

"Ah... is that all?"

“Yes, that’s it,” Fish said. “Stand still to the side and don’t move, understand?”

"I-I understand..." Alicia took a deep breath and followed Fish into the glass jar. Then, she noticed that Fish actually opened the small door and aimed his RPG-7 at the outside!

"Um... is this okay?" Alicia asked. "When I was choosing the 'wand,' I noticed in the instructions that something like the RPG-7 can't be fired in a confined space because..."

"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing," Fish said. "Trust me."

"Okay, okay..." Alicia licked her lips, quietly watching Fish remain crouched, rocket launcher slung over his shoulder, ready to fire. A few seconds later, she smelled an unsettling, unfamiliar odor. The smell grew stronger and stronger as the air circulated within the haunted house.

This proves one thing: the source of the smell is gradually getting closer to here.

This proves one thing: the source of the smell is gradually getting closer to here.

However, since Fish had already emphasized that "no matter what happens" next, she absolutely could not take any action, Alicia simply stayed quietly where she was and waited.

At the same time, the source of the smell began to shift—it moved from directly in front of them to behind them. Then, Alicia heard a slight creaking sound in surprise.

Whether by some intentional design or not, there is also a small door on the other side of this giant glass jar!

That's right, this invisible guy is planning to attack from behind! With Fish's sense of smell, Alicia quickly confirmed this. However, even now, Fish remained focused on what was in front of him, maintaining his posture with the rocket launcher on his shoulder, ready to fire at any moment, seemingly completely unaware of the danger approaching from behind.

For a fleeting moment, Alicia even had the urge to raise her gun and fire behind her. But in the end, she forcibly suppressed this impulse—because Fish had already emphasized that she should not make any moves. And her trust in Fish ultimately overwhelmed her unease.

As it turned out, she was right.

When a faint sound of footsteps came from behind her, Fish took action: he pulled the trigger of the rocket launcher, firing the warhead filled with a mixture of TNT and RDX towards the empty space ahead. However, the true effect of this attack was felt behind him: the propellant-filled tube burned, its exhaust plume shooting directly behind him, striking the approaching, invisible "Phantom."

The effect... is quite good.

The invisible "ghost" didn't even have time to react before being hit head-on by the blazing tail flames. Because her lungs and respiratory tract were filled with high-temperature gas, she didn't even have time to scream before being thrown away by the scorching gas while her skin was charred and her hair was on fire.

The RPG-7's warhead pierced the plywood and plaster walls of the "haunted house," flew out through the hole, and exploded at an unknown location hundreds of meters away. Judging from the screams that followed, this blindly fired bullet seemed to have affected at least one or two unfortunate individuals. However, neither Fish nor Alicia cared about that.

After dropping the rocket launcher, Fish's first action was to quickly close both doors on the front and back of the giant glass jar.

In the still-warm air, a series of intermittent thumping sounds rang out, as if something was struggling to escape from the jar but failing. A moment later, Alicia was astonished to find that Fish had vanished from her sight!

"Huh? What's this...?"

"Come here quickly!" Fish, now "invisible," grabbed Alicia and pulled her to his side. "It worked."

"Have we... become invisible?" Alicia looked at the wall of the glass jar, only to find that her figure could no longer be reflected on it.

"I guess so. To be precise, I successfully got this holographic drone to work for us."

"what?"

"It's actually not that difficult," Fish explained. "That guy, Huang Yan, mentioned many bugs in the game and programming design of the old civilization era, and he also mentioned that spatial design flaws are a major cause of bugs. For example, these invisible 'ghosts.' Did you notice where the drones that provided the projections went after they were killed?"

"This..." Alicia scratched her head, "It fell off too?"

"Some are. But these small drones have a much smaller hit area than a person, and when subjected to fire,..." The chances of them crashing are even smaller. Most drones will obviously be recycled,” Fish said. “That is, they will initiate a standard navigation procedure, fly back to the storage facility, and wait to be put back into use when this damn ‘game’ starts again.”

"so……"

"This is also a key point we can exploit: to make the game look less unnatural, these drones would definitely have holographic projection enabled when they return. Moreover, the designers back then wouldn't have had the time to write complex programs into them; they would most likely have simply programmed them to 'fly back to their destination and keep the projection enabled until then.' Even when trapped or unable to leave a specific area, they would still maintain this state, while simultaneously making things within their sphere of influence invisible."

"Wow, I never thought so!" Alicia said with admiration. "As expected of Mr. Fish."

"It's nothing. I just happened to learn about these things because I enjoy listening to Huang Yan tell stories about the old civilization era," Fish said. "This method might be more effective than hiding in the artificial river and holding your breath—if the system's methods for detecting players and NPCs are really just simple optical detection, we might already be considered dead by now."

"Game over." Just as Fish said this, a monotonous voice rang out, "All players are eliminated. We are now calculating the final score. We will proceed with the cleanup."

"Just as I thought!" Fish swallowed hard. "Cheer up! This is our chance."

As the announcement of "clearing operations" was made, a large swarm of massive engineering robots appeared and began their work: the walls of the "haunted house" were dismantled one after another, and objects inside were removed. At the same time, other robots began repairing the damaged roller coasters, carousels, and other facilities—it seems that for more complex and heavy assets, the system here chooses to repair them on-site. As for various facilities pieced together from plywood and other materials, they are simply dismantled and reused.

Working alongside these engineering robots were several surviving "ghosts"—Fish noticed that most of these cannon fodder rapid clones looked similar, and some even had faces exactly like Alicia's original body, undoubtedly using the same cheap genetic template.

At this very moment, these girls, dressed as cheongsam-clad zombie girls, mummy girls, vampire beauties, and werewolf girls, were working methodically with the robots, moving equipment and disassembling gear, just like a group of experienced construction workers. Unlike most "Tai Sui" hosts, their bodies did not show obvious mutations, but Fish knew very well that these people's physical functions were far superior to those of ordinary people—whether old humans or new humans.

"What... what do we do now?" Alicia asked as a heavy-duty walking robot with eight legs extended its mechanical arm and slowly lifted the large decorative glass jar where the two were hiding.

"It's simple, just don't do anything," Fish said. "Most of the equipment here, while destructible and disposable, will definitely be recycled if it's not damaged after the game. We just need to wait now."

Just as he had predicted, the walking robot quickly carried the large glass jar to a hidden exit. Then, the glass jar, along with a whole bunch of other decorations from the "haunted house," was loaded onto a small flatbed truck driven by a girl dressed as a vampire, and drove out of the "game" area into a huge warehouse.

"We're out of the game area!" Alicia exclaimed excitedly. "We're out!"

"That's right, but we're probably not safe yet." Fish loaded the last 20-round magazine into his M16A2, checked the location of the Colt pistol hanging on his waist and the Desert Eagle he'd picked up from the other "little witches," and then loaded the last bullet into the RPG-7. "If I'm not mistaken, at this point, what will happen is..."

"Warning! Warning! A serious system error related to the player has been detected in this area!" Before Fish could finish speaking, a shrill siren blared, and red warning lights began flashing inside the warehouse. "Please remain where you are and do not take any action. The system will begin emergency remedial measures."

"Um, we need to..."

"Do as it says, and don't move anything," Fish said calmly. "No matter what happens later, don't panic."