The Final Odyssey, the fantastical journey of a cat boy

"Received, everything is proceeding according to plan."

Upon hearing Fish's call, Huang Yan answered calmly. Then, the "Loli Reapers," who were on alert, witnessed an unusual scene: a cat-like boy in a red bodysuit casually walked through piles of wrecked cars, old tires, and test tracks, smiling as he passed by them. Just a few meters behind him, a can-like container containing two girls floated on the water.

If any ordinary person—even a genuinely ordinary six-year-old girl—were to witness this scene, they would certainly find it strange. Moreover, among the girls floating in the canned containers, there was one who was their former adversary, with whom they had fought to the death.

However, despite their undeniably cute disguises, these "Loli Death Gods" are essentially just a group of weapons. Unlike Phoenix Flame, they lack any real intelligence and can only execute pre-programmed instructions. According to the program, the cat-eared boy in front of them is not on the "attackable" list. Therefore, to them, this person is as worthless as plastic turf on the ground and cannot arouse their interest.

But this situation only lasted for a very short time.

A few seconds later, a horse-eared girl suddenly moved inside the floating container behind the cat-eared boy. Then, with a brief flash of light, she left the translucent liquid in the container and appeared in the very center of the ring-shaped defense system formed by the "Loli Death Gods." At the same time, another petite fox-eared girl reappeared inside the container.

The moment this change occurred, the friend-or-foe identification system implanted in the brains of these girl-shaped bio-weapons immediately began to operate: the Maltese girls who left the levitation container were immediately identified as "enemies" and their tactical systems were activated.

Then, the people closest to the Maltese girl raised their monomolecular blades, which could easily cut through even heavy bulletproof armor, and attacked in coordination. However, just as the "Loli Death" at the forefront swung her blade at the Maltese girl, she suddenly jumped more than three meters into the air, causing her monomolecular blade to only cut off half a hair of her tail.

"Hey-yo!"

While a famous old-world manga starting with the word "dragon" once suggested the seemingly reasonable idea that "jumping into the air hinders movement," the situation is quite different for Frostleaf. Due to limited talent, her intelligent combat armor, "Azure Frost," is only at the lowest level of "Jade," and its special ability is also quite weak, merely an "auxiliary propulsion system"—two pairs of small jet thrusters hidden in the waist and ankle areas of the armor provide a certain amount of thrust, slightly improving the user's mobility.

However, this system comes in very handy when jumping into the air—as long as they are activated, Frostleaf (or more accurately, Fish, who is temporarily "borrowing" Frostleaf's body) can maneuver without his feet touching the ground.

After briefly activating the system, Fish successfully maneuvered Frostleaf's body a short distance, leaping behind the "Loli Reaper" waiting below to intercept him, and simultaneously kicking her in the back of the head. As a horse-type Newtype, Frostleaf's kicks were incredibly powerful; even a weak strike easily rendered her opponent unconscious and unable to move.

"Hey, how much longer do I have to wait for the shortest cooldown?" Fish shouted after dodging another bunny-eared loli's thrust.

"Twenty seconds! You can definitely last that long, I believe in you!" Huang Yan said calmly, his tone just like cheering on a classmate competing in a school sports festival.

"Fine." Fish gritted his teeth, kicked away another bunny-eared loli's wrist that was swinging a knife, and then dodged left and right while rushing out of the encirclement of the bunny-eared lolis as fast as he could.

While in terms of pure combat strength, Frostleaf was at a significant disadvantage against the dozen or so "Loli Reapers," simply keeping them occupied was no problem for her if she didn't linger in combat and fully utilized her speed and agility. For the next twenty seconds, Fish didn't even activate Frostleaf's beam saber "Moonshadow," relying entirely on her speed and agility to evade their attacks while simultaneously leading the group of killer rabbits as far away as possible…

...Then, the dazzling beam of light enveloped him once again.

When the beam of light dissipated, the bunny-eared girls who had been chasing closely behind lost their target once again—then, they discovered that a new target had appeared next to the cat-eared boy who was considered a "non-target"... in less than a second.

"Phew... all done. Our bug-exploiting tactic seems to have worked." After activating Xiaoxing's body once again, Fish immediately activated the optical camouflage system, concealing his presence. He then calmly sat down, letting the bewildered bunny-eared lolis brandish various long and short swords, waving menacingly but futilely around him. "Now, let's just pray this trick works."

A few seconds later, a large group of flapping-winged shadows appeared in the air. After circling once, these pterosaur-like creatures swooped down towards the ground, thrusting their lance-like beaks at the "loli reapers." Due to the extremely swift attack, three rabbit-eared lolis didn't even have time to react before being pinned to the ground by these "lances."

Of course, the other bunny-eared girls retaliated. Two "pteranodons" were wounded by their blades before they could take flight again. One of them had a leg injured, making its flight posture quite awkward; the other had its wing membrane torn off, completely losing its ability to fly. After it crashed to the ground, several bunny-eared girls immediately jumped on it and hacked it to pieces with their blades.

The pterosaurs, having suffered losses, were attacked by the rabbit-eared lolis with pistols, submachine guns, and other firearms as they took flight. One of them was shot down, while the rest temporarily flew to higher altitudes.

However, before the bunny-eared girls could even celebrate their victory, new opponents appeared—this time, a group of seemingly harmless cow and orange cats, looking almost identical to ordinary cats. But upon approaching, they leaped up with astonishing agility, extending three-inch-long, curved, venomous claws from their paw pads. They launched their attack…

...and then within seconds it dropped by half.

When it comes to close-quarters combat, these "Loli Reapers," highly specialized assassins, are certainly no match for a mere group of cats—but the problem is, when they sliced ​​them all to pieces with lightning-fast sword strikes, they discovered something: these cats didn't seem to be trying to dodge their attacks at all. The instant their bodies were ripped apart, a large amount of corrosive venom suddenly erupted from the cats' bodies, along with numerous fragments of their ribs.

This is the real key to the killing move of these bio-weapons.

Despite their incredible speed and reflexes, the "Loli Reapers" couldn't avoid this all-encompassing, AOE attack. The closest individuals were instantly caught in a double whammy of bone-splitting "shrapnel" and corrosive liquid, their black, scale-like armor failing to provide adequate protection. As for Fish, he naturally maintained his invisibility thanks to his optical camouflage, lying prone on the ground in the standard shrapnel-avoiding posture to minimize his chances of being hit, while waiting for the explosion to pass.

Immediately afterwards, the group of "pteranodons" circling in the air launched another swooping attack on the ground. At the same time, a group of ferocious creatures, half amphibian and half human, leaped into the arena, brandishing their sharp claws and joining the melee.

In his invisible state, Fish observed everything quietly, much like a Roman citizen watching a performance in the Colosseum during the Augustan era. This entire tactic was devised by Huang Yan based on his analysis of the situation and the concept of "exploiting bugs"—although converted from an arena, it was ultimately a weapons testing ground, not a place for public performances and entertainment. Therefore, the designers here not only failed to diligently search for and eliminate potential bugs, but, like game developers of the past, deliberately prepared numerous backdoors and passwords for testing purposes.

One of them comes from the "Equipment Replacement System".

To facilitate rapid replacement of specially made androids, considered "equipment," within the vast testing grounds, the system was equipped with a miniature spatial teleportation device—a rarity and precious resource even by the standards of the old civilization era. Within the testing grounds, this device could track the location of the "equipment" and instantly retrieve/deploy it… aside from a half-minute cooldown between activations, there were no other limitations.

Therefore, utilizing another rule—"testers are not targets"—Huang Yan first had Fish deliberately shoot the "Loli Reaper" standing on the concrete bridge in a highly conspicuous position, attracting her companions to form a circular defensive formation nearby. Then, she directly carried the storage device to the center of the defensive formation. Next, by executing the operation of "replacing" Xiao Xing with Shuang Ye, Fish directly stored Xiao Xing's body back into the storage device, and after the cooldown period, switched it back, thus safely entering the center of the opponent's circular defensive formation.

If this were in a gladiatorial arena, such blatant exploitation of bugs would severely damage the entertainment value of the death game, greatly disappointing the bloodthirsty audience of yesteryear. Therefore, it would have been prohibited from the very beginning. However, this testing ground had no spectators, and the current situation was not anticipated during its design, which is why Fish and Phoenix Flame were able to play like this.

Of course, this is only the first step in the whole plan.

The core of the entire "bug exploit" tactic is to specifically exploit the enemy-friend identification problem within this testing ground. In the arenas of those old civilizations, unless special "performance" effects are required, all sorts of monsters and demons are usually assumed to be allies, working together in a spirit of unity and cooperation to make things difficult for the unfortunate souls thrown in. However, in this testing ground, the situation is quite different.

Back when the group of bunny-eared lolis defeated the "Allosaurus," Huang Yan had already noticed that these things in the test field were in a hostile relationship with each other—and the reason was not too hard to guess.

After all, this testing ground likely allowed experimental products to engage in numerous battles for further testing, with very little need for them to cooperate. For convenience, this setup is therefore quite reasonable.

Therefore, upon discovering that there were five test items in the queue, Huang Yanqian swiftly applied to begin all of them simultaneously. The timing was perfect: the instant all the test subjects entered, Fish promptly switched back to Xiaoxing's body and activated the optical camouflage.

According to the experimental data obtained by Huang Yan beforehand, none of these new participants had the ability to detect optically camouflaged targets. Therefore, although they would move towards the location of the test subject, they could not detect the "equipment" used for testing—that is, Xiao Xing's body, which was controlled by Fish and was in optical camouflage.

In this situation, without any further instructions, they will only do one thing: kill each other.

For the next half hour, the chaotic melee surrounding Fish was far more spectacular than any performance in the Roman Colosseum: the self-destruction of the fallen cats was merely an appetizer, and the "pteranodons'" antics were nothing compared to what followed. Soon, a swarm of giant mole-like creatures dug through the driving school floor, launching a surprise attack from below on the various "contestants" locked in combat. These tiny, bouncing bead-like creatures floated into the arena using threads from their rear ends, spewing green venom and engaging the bouncing amphibious monsters in a chaotic melee.

Finally, after an extremely bloody "performance," standing amidst a pile of limbs and flesh were two bunny-eared lolis—though battered and on the verge of death, they ultimately triumphed thanks to their more flexible adaptability than other tactically simple biological weapons.

So, as a reward for the victors, Fish stood up and shot each of the two women in the neck with a poisoned crossbow dart, granting them eternal rest.

"Phew... Is this... alright?"

"It's confirmed, the test is over," Huang Yan said. "But please remember, if you hadn't wandered around aimlessly, I could have found a way to get in without this stupid test. That way, we could have saved at least an hour."

"Um... I'll definitely be more careful next time..." Fish said somewhat guiltily, and then, the flashes of light and the feeling of weightlessness as he plummeted enveloped him once again. When he regained consciousness, he was already in a huge control room.

His intuition told him that this was the heart of the Dark Isle.