The Final Odyssey, the fantastical journey of a cat boy

I highly recommend "The Last Odyssey: The Cat Boy's Fantastic Journey"! Go straight to the exciting parts.

"No? Why?!" Fish asked in surprise after his proposal was rejected by Huang Yan.

"It's simple. We can hide here for a while, but we can't hide forever," Huang Yan said. "Besides, time isn't on our side either."

"Uh, this..."

"Given that the enemy is now very certain that we are right here, they can't just leave because they 'found nothing.' They will definitely continue their search here," Huang Yan continued to explain. "If the enemy starts routinely patrolling all the tunnels, we will be trapped in these 'safe houses' and unable to get out."

"That's true."

"And that's not all," Huang Yan continued. "After getting down here, I managed to connect to the facility's internal network and update the 'Akasha Encyclopedia' database. Guess what I found?"

"It's probably not a good situation?" Fish guessed.

"Almost. Data from the 'Akasha Compendium' shows that the central part of this facility, where the 'Gravemaster' is imprisoned in stasis, is not far from being breached. Previous excavations destroyed a series of airtight doors and sealing devices. Now, the excavation area has advanced to within 100 meters of there. We only need to destroy one more sealed door to reach it. Although there are some A-level autonomous weapons defending behind the door, I don't think they can stop the advance of the Imperial Guard's First Brigade for long."

"In other words..."

"If they can't find us, Iskandar Lomonosov will almost certainly order the excavation to be accelerated to avoid any unforeseen complications—if things go smoothly, they could reach their final destination in about two or three days," Huang Yan's tone became very serious. "At that time, we will still be utterly defeated."

"So, now we can only... rush into the stasis equipment before them?" Ange asked.

"That's difficult too. We don't have heavy engineering equipment, so it's impossible to quickly break through that last heavy-duty sealed door—that requires specialized equipment for blasting and cutting," Huang Yan quickly projected a structural diagram of the underground facility onto their helmet displays. "Of course, if we have the appropriate permissions, we can open that door directly. But even with my abilities, it would probably take at least several dozen hours to hack into the system here and find the necessary permissions."

"So, this approach has to be ruled out," Fish said. "Are there any other alternatives?"

“Yes, my lord,” Ange said, “if we don’t have to go through that heavy-duty sealed door, we can choose to go to… here.” She used her pupil movements to control the cursor on the flat-panel display, pointing to a path not far from the final stasis cell.

"This is... the communications center?" Fish looked at the room at the end of the alley and the sign next to it.

"Exactly," Huang Yan said. "I don't know if the communication equipment inside is still operational. However, considering that the defense system, access control system, and even the 'Virtual Paradise' system are still functioning normally, the answer is most likely yes. If that's the case, we should be able to easily broadcast radio messages to the surrounding area on various channels through the communication equipment inside."

"Great!" Ange nodded. "Any other functions?"

"Yes. Based on the data obtained from the 'Akasha Compendium,' theoretically, the communication center can also record and directly broadcast images," Huang Yan added. "The principle behind this image playback is exactly the same as that of 'Virtual Paradise,' which can be achieved by directly interfering with the specially edited and designed brain-visual neural system of the New Humans. Theoretically, it can allow everyone within the sphere of influence to see it. Most importantly, the entrance to the communication center has not been specially reinforced, and I am confident that we can forcibly open it using our current methods."

"This is exactly what I want," Ange clapped her hands vigorously. "We'll take over the communications center first, then broadcast 'The Grandmaster's' recordings and related information to everyone in the 'Secret Realm.' Tell them the truth that the technological archaeologist has been trying to cover up. We can also play the conversations we recorded with our smart combat armor."

"That sounds good, but... will people believe it?" Fish asked.

“At least some people will—that’s enough,” Ange said. “We don’t need to convince everyone of our message. As long as some people refuse to act, or even oppose continuing the excavation, the entire excavation will fall into chaos and cannot continue. In that case, we have achieved our goal.”

"That's settled then." Fish made the decision as a series of footsteps began to approach their location. Using the map at hand, Huang Yan quickly planned out a theoretically optimal route, and Fish and Ange began to move along this route as fast as they could.

As before, they used the sound-absorbing material of their smart combat armor to minimize their footsteps, while shutting down almost all non-essential functions to reduce energy signature and thus the chance of being detected. Soon, they arrived at a very heavy door painted with yellow and black warning patterns.

Of course, Fish and Ange didn't intend to confront the door head-on. Instead, they chose a small door on the wall to the side. With a flash of white light from the muzzle of the ion gun on their arm armor, the mechanical lock on the door was instantly melted into a semi-liquid mess, which Fish then kicked open.

"That's really... crude," Huang Yan commented. "If I could, I could actually use a lock-picking device to open this kind of mechanical lock directly and leave the entire door intact—that way, we could even lock the door again after we get in, so the guys chasing us wouldn't know we'd been here..."

"Yes, yes, but that takes time," Fish muttered impatiently. "That's exactly what we need right now."

After passing through the door, Fish and Ange had only taken a few steps when the surrounding corridor was suddenly filled with blinding white light, as if someone had stuffed a sun behind the walls, ceiling, and floor. Fortunately, upon encountering the intense light, the visors of their intelligent combat armor reacted immediately, automatically adjusting the color tone to dark, thus preventing them from losing their vision due to the glare.

"Why is it so bright here?" Fish muttered after things suddenly went dark.

"It's obvious that this level of light intensity far exceeds the limits of ordinary lighting needs," Huang Yan said calmly. "This means it's some kind of non-lethal defense mechanism—similar to an unavoidable flashbang, which can be used to temporarily repel or trap unauthorized intruders."

"But it's useless against armored warriors," Fish commented. "If this is all the defenses here, then the rest shouldn't be too difficult... Wow!"

Watch out behind you!

This time, because Fish was completely unaware of the approaching danger, Huang Yan had to take a last resort – she forcibly took control of part of the intelligent combat armor and then directly controlled Fish to bend backward, avoiding a slash that came from the side and rear.

"Who is this... Ouch... My back hurts so much..."

Unlike Fish operating the armor himself, Huang Yan forcibly taking over control of the armor often meant an extremely uncomfortable process—after all, she couldn't fully simulate a range of movements that were "friendly" enough to the human body, and could only operate it with relatively stiff movements. "Just" causing pain all over her body was already considered a relatively mild consequence.

However, Fish had no time to worry about the physical pain right now—what truly captured his attention was the attacker: a girl who looked to be only about ten years old, with long, silver hair exceeding her height, wearing a tight-fitting swimsuit-like garment with only minimal extra protection in her vital areas. A heavy mask completely obscured her eyes and nose, and behind her temples were a cluster of antenna-like structures resembling horns.

"Who are you?!" Fish and Ange simultaneously assumed a defensive stance, but the girl didn't answer. Instead, she silently began to deform one arm from the elbow upwards. While altering parts of their intelligent combat armor, especially the gauntlets on both sides, to generate temporary melee weapons was commonplace for armored warriors, they had never seen anything like this—a direct change to the body's structure!

"Watch out, you two," Huang Yan hurriedly warned just as the two sides began their standoff, "I... I just found out about this guy's information. This is bad..."

"Hmm...that's definitely not good," Fish muttered as he cautiously circled around.

"Hey, aren't you going to ask what's wrong?" Huang Yan asked, somewhat puzzled.

“Since you think it’s bad, then it definitely, absolutely, and certainly is bad,” Fish replied. “After all, do you think I don’t know how arrogant you are? Any opponent that isn’t completely unbeatable is just ‘small fish’ in your eyes.”

"We can skip the second half of the sentence, but the first half is definitely correct," Huang Yan muttered. "According to the update records of the 'Akasha Encyclopedia' after I connected to the internal network of this facility, this guy is a 'murderer' type bio-assassin—the kind of opponent I least want to encounter. To be precise, he's a customized 'murderer' type model, 'Cain'."

"Assassins? Aren't those just petty thieves who stab people in the back?" Fish scoffed dismissively. "Don't worry. I won't give this guy any chance to touch my back—meow?!"

Fish was only halfway through his confident speech when something beyond his comprehension suddenly happened before his eyes: the girl in the bodysuit suddenly burst into a flash of light, and then…

...And then, she—just—disappeared—right—in front of them!

"What...what...what's going on?!" Fish was immediately taken aback.

"Is it optical camouflage? No, that's not right!" Ange had just voiced this possibility when she immediately dismissed it—after all, she had seen Xiaoxing use the optical camouflage system quite often in combat and training, and she was very familiar with how it worked. "Could it be...?"

"behind!"

Compared to the previous time, this time, Huang Yan didn't do much more. As soon as she reminded him, Fish immediately took evasive action and no longer needed Huang Yan to force him to bend over. After all, although he was not a "Saint Seiya" from the legends of the old civilization era, he wouldn't make the same mistake twice.

The girl, who appeared behind Fish without warning, missed her target with her sword and vanished once more in a blinding flash, causing Ange's ion shoulder cannon to miss its mark. A breath later, the figure reappeared to Ange's left, launching a deadly assassination attempt. Fortunately, the highly alert Ange used the sturdy shoulder armor of her "Golden Soup" to barely deflect the attack, simultaneously countering with a wrist blade strike that forced her opponent to retreat to the side.

"Hmm...what a pity," Ange said softly after forcing her opponent back, "If my 'Moon Shadow' were still here, I would have finished it off just now."

"How did this guy even do that?" Fish exclaimed. "It's blatant cheating!"

"Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as 'cheating' in battle—after all, the only rule now is 'victory and survival'," Huang Yan said. "As for her method just now... it was definitely not a technique within the realm of optical camouflage."

"That is..."

"Short-distance space jumps are very similar to the technological products found in the ruins of many ancient civilizations," Huang Yan explained. "Don't forget, you've experienced it firsthand before."

"Ah...right..." Fish nodded. Just as Huang Yan said, back in the "maze" of Twilight City, he was inexplicably put into it by a short-distance space jump device set up there—Huang Yan also mentioned at the time that this technology was a byproduct of past human space technology research in order to achieve faster-than-light travel.

"However, Cain's equipment is rather special—normally, short-distance space jump devices consume a lot of energy and have an urgent need for heat dissipation, so they can only be installed in specialized facilities. However, as an experimental combat weapon, Cain effectively reuses almost all of its waste heat through a special energy harvesting network. Therefore, it can be directly mounted on its own body. Of course, the cost of Cain is that it is extremely expensive and has never been mass-produced."

"I don't care how much this stuff costs per pound!" Fish muttered. After all, the drawback of "high cost" was only relevant before it was produced; it was meaningless in combat. "Tell me how to deal with it!"

"Um... well..." Huang Yan paused for a moment, "I'm sorry, I don't have the data."