I have Nine Lives

Chapter 26: Start of a bloody tribal war

Felix woke up quickly as he felt the air in the surrounding atmosphere physically heat up!

He got out of his tent and realized a captain of the lion tribe was using his Hex technique to wake up everyone, war was starting!

Out of the surrounding tents warriors started to quickly come out, some of them from the lion tribe, others from their subordinate tribes, the only thing they had in common was that they all wore the same type of armor. They wore a white armor made from a metal unknown to Felix, Felix knew very few metals so that didn't say a lot about it.

Landers appeared in Felix's face as he threw him a special leather armor that was more flexible than what he was wearing currently, his former tattered uniforms were already changed every time he went on a new mission but this new leather was quite special.

Felix wore it quickly with a little bit of help from Landers and realized that the leather armor was hugging his body and it was very compact, seemingly as the armor was made for him.

Seeing Felix analyzing the armor Landers chuckled as he told him:

"It was specially crafted for you, I paid almost 30 silver bones for it to protect you during this war, I just hope we will meet each other again after it."

He shook his head as he disappeared, it seemed he was needed somewhere already even though it was very early in the morning and some stars could still be seen in the sky.

Felix cleared his mind and decided to walk towards the battlefront where everything will unfold, he met with Carto on the way who gave him a brief nod before disappearing as well, it seemed all of the captains were summoned...

Felix reached the battlefront and saw tens of thousands of people preparing for war, there were already defensive structures constructed as the camp was created more than a week ago, there were archers on the top watch towers that looked through binoculars waiting for the army of the tigers to appear.

The infantry was situated below the watchtowers, all of them had a spear and shield each and they looked ready for war, every man was looking fierce and there were also quite a few women in the formation, which looked as fierce as the men.

Felix didn't have to wait for much time when his squad met up, minus the flamingo youth who was forbidden to come to the battlefield and fight anymore due to his missing arm.

Ricko nodded at him and Korro seemed worried about the upcoming war, Sandors was happy to be there, war meant meat to him!

The pig tribesman wasn't there, Felix wondered what happened to him? Maybe his teacher disowned him? He was rather angry back then at his performance.

Felix greeted all of them and they greeted him back, there weren't many words the squad could exchange as they felt the air around them getting heavier, the warriors started to bang their shields with their spears as they shouted to the skies:

"OUR SHAMAN IS COMING!"

Out of the biggest tent the Lion Shaman came along with the general duo, behind them tens of captains which included Landers and Carto were following them from behind with a respectful look on their faces, but their muscles were tense and the aura around them was quite intense. There weren't any other generals around, Felix found it strange, weren't there supposed to be more?

The lion Shaman waved his walking stick in the air and put his hands down indicating for everyone to stop their actions and listen:

"Today we fight for the continuation of our race and our allies races, once the tigers would get to them slaughters will start, our meat is harder to chew but our males will be enslaved and the females were taken, we cannot let this happen! Today I will use till my last drop of Hex to keep their shaman in check, my son and my trusty generals will all fight on the battlefront to keep theirs away from the fight between you, if you win the battle of the masses we will win the war!"

He sighed as he looked down at the ground, his eyes clouded with worry:

"Also... if any of the generals are to fall you are allowed to desert, a enemy general rampaging through your formation would be deadly, if any of our generals fall that means we lost, as long as our tribe lives it doesn't matter! However we have to live with pride and dignity, we can't let ourselves become slaves to the tiger tribe, so if we lose we will run, you might ask yourselves why am I saying such things right now instead of pushing through towards our victory?"

The lion Shaman shook his head as he continued:

"It's because I don't want anyone to blame each other if we will lose if we will lose, we lose, that's all, we were the weaker party, and the winner is always in the right!"

He started to walk at the forefront of the army as he waved his walking stick again making the army march accordingly towards the middle of the plains, the archers already sent information that the tiger army was slowly coming and the infantry would have to fight first.

In this type of direct war, the ones who were pushed back to their camp would lose, both sides would meet at the middle of the battlefield with their infantry and fight it out and the side which was pushed back to their camp would be the losing one as they would have lost soldiers and they would have to make use of their defensive structures to defend themselves, in this type of situation the war would be mostly lost.

The tiger shaman's eyes were clouded as well as he looked at the face of the lion shaman, he sighed as he put his hand up and then motioned for the war to start!

The archers of the tiger tribe started shooting arrows in the melee formation of the lion army, the archers need to be dealt with by the assassins of the army!

It was Felix's job, Landers already told him what he needed to do briefly after they met during the march towards the middle of the battlefield.

Felix used his footwork to disappear, he used his agile body to easily avoid the melee fighters who were already duking it out, both sides were losing soldiers slowly, one death here, one death there, but at this rate, all of their soldiers would die in days!

Fortunately, the archers weren't that useful as they had shields, but they were annoying and they made the melee experts split their attention to blocking their attacks, and in some situations, the arrows were even deadly, in such type of fights any split-second distraction would be deadly!

The lion and tiger shamans were eyeing each other but none of those below the general level could see what type of fight was going between them.

The generals were disappearing and appearing over the battlefield while making sure to not injure their own people.

Captains were fighting using deadly attacks that Felix could barely recognize, they were all a few hundreds of meters away from the main fight which was between the two main armies.

Felix finally reached the back of the tiger army only to fall into a carefully deployed hole!

Felix found himself face to face with an arrow that was ready to punch a hole through his neck!

However, using the training that he did with Carto he barely dodged the arrow and counterattacked the archer that was near him decapitating him easily with his claws.

He frowned as he now had to make sure the ground around him was solid enough to walk on or else he might lose a few lives this early in the war!

The death of one archer made the others be alerted so they scattered, however, this was what Felix needed, them scattering meant they had to keep their attention elsewhere and they wouldn't be able to shoot their arrows to the main formation, however, something similar was happening to the archers of their own army.

Felix couldn't be in two places at once so he decided to make quick work of the people in front of him and then go back to help if any archers were remaining in their formation, the main phase of the war was lead by the assassins!

The assassins which killed the archers faster would be the one that leads their side to victory!

This was only one part of the archers as there were more, Felix just got the southern flank while the northern and eastern flanks were taken by other cat tribesmen that Felix hadn't seen before.

In this situation, an assassin should be able to easily kill an archer right?

But it wasn't that simple, Felix could feel the eyes of the archers wander around and try to locate him, however, Felix's stealth technique improved by a bit, and unless the archers grasped killing intent detection they wouldn't be able to find him, but those people who could learn such techniques were rather rare.

Another head flew into the air as he killed another archer, but his location was thus finally revealed, a bunch of arrows was shot quickly where he last stood only to miss him, but Felix could feel something brush behind his back, it was a familiar fist!

Felix looked back only to see the scarred tiger from before, he had a feral grin on his face as he looked around and laughed:

"Kid didn't think you would see me again so soon did you?"

In this type of situation when the archers would be targeted by the assassins each squad would have a protector that had to deal with the assassin, it was pure coincidence Felix got to meet with the scared tiger again.

Felix frowned deeply as he looked at the scared tiger known as Sumba, things just got complicated with him here, he was a person who grasped the detection of killing intent!