I have Nine Lives

Chapter 27: War continues

The army of the lions was around 45,000 in total and the army of the tigers was around half that staying around 22,000 give or take. However, the difference between the armies was that the lion tribe's had quite a few different races in it, while the tiger tribe was fully made of only elite tigers.

Each side had almost around 1,000 archers and Felix had to deal with 100 of them, while there were plenty of cats in the army, there were very few which reached a high enough level to deal with the archers while being able to fend off their defenders.

Felix was actually considered unlucky as he met Sumba in battle, Sumba was a veteran who was comparable with a captain level individual while Felix was indeed strong he wasn't even at the lieutenant level yet.

The fight between tribes was both bloody and slow at the same time, technically speaking the lion tribe army should have been at a huge advantage due to their numerical advantage but the tiger's prowess wasn't something that could be ignored.

Every Tiger could take on 2 lions at once and even more, if they weren't from the lion tribe, the tigers were the epicenter of strength and techniques on the Tarot Continent with the lions being just a little bit shy behind them, the only thing that deterred the tigers from attacking the lion tribe was the prowess of their shamanic skills which were above theirs due to the lion tribe being older, they got to advance their shamanic skills further.

The tiger shaman which was fighting the lion shaman frowned as he looked at his army, things were going too slow for his liking, after all, he thought of them as meat-eaters being superior against the herbivores and omnivores, he wasn't even sure why the lion tribe created the alliance instead of just subjugating the other tribes, he felt that the lion tribe was up to something but he didn't know what.

The lion shaman kept his eyes closed as if he was resting on the spot, he had both of his hands on his walking stick as he stood there hunched, his body was moving slowly side to side, he seemed as if he was ready to fall at any time. The tiger shaman stood his ground and looked on never taking a step forward.

Felix frowned as he tried to make a feint, throwing an aerial claw attack towards the head of an archer before trying to slash at Sumba's legs to lower his mobility.

However Sumba easily saw through his intentions and caught the claw in his hand making his hand bleed for a little bit, he also dodged the slash meant to sever some of his tendons and counterattacked pushing Felix back but not doing any damage, due to the training with Carto his reflexes improved by a lot and his counterattacking and dodging took a turn for the better, it was a quick improvement which helped him to fight against Sumba properly, unlike before.

Sumba frowned as he felt that Felix's reflexes were better than before, so he decided to not fight him head-on and just defend the archers, but this quickly became a problem as he got injured by Felix's long-range attacks and his stamina got sapped.

He realized that defending archers would mean that he would die!

But fighting Felix head-on was also impossible due to his stealth and new reflexes which meant unless he canceled his stealth it was impossible to catch him normally. The archers also couldn't help him as they had to focus on shooting the infantry of the lion tribe or else they would lose a huge advantage and their troops would be pushed back and maybe even slaughtered.

If Sumba failed to protect the archers and ran away he would be heavily punished and he couldn't go anywhere else as he was wanted by most other tribes for crimes against them, the elephants would especially love to get their trunks on him then just sit on him. He did eat a few infant elephants in his brasher days.

So Sumba gritted his teeth and put on his A+ game as his muscles started to inflate, the armor that he was wearing expanded along with them and his face turned malevolent as he started to attack around indiscriminately!

Felix frowned, even though he would lose stamina quickly this way, he was practically blocking all attacks from every angle, if he wanted to kill more archers he needed to incapacitate Sumba first as they were all running around while shooting to disorientate him.

Felix decided to take a gamble as he threw his killing intent filled attack at an empty spot near Sumba, because Sumba was concentrated his body innately went to the spot thinking that it was an attack that he needed to defend only to hit nothing, he looked around only to see an archer's head go up in the air and a spray of blood following after!

Sumba bellowed angrily as the hex energy around him started to crackle, he was disrupting the surrounding hex energy!

Normally doing such a thing wouldn't break a cat's stealth as it was an innate ability but Felix was using special footwork to use the surrounding Hex energy mask him, so he immediately became visible afterward!

Felix's eyes widened in surprise as he started to run away! Since his stealth had been compromised his advantage was gone and fighting Sumba head-on was pretty much suicide!

However, Sumba followed him as he left the archers behind, since every unit of archers had one assassin each appointed to them that meant Sumba could leave without the problem!

It didn't take much time for Sumba to catch up to Felix and make him unable to run away, if he went back any further he would run into the camp of the tigers which still had a few sentries left there.

However because he left the area that Sumba disrupted meant that he could use his stealth skill again as he disappeared, Sumba's head veins started to appear as they were bulging, his face turned red as he howled to the sky:

"I HATE YOU, DAMN CAT COWARDS!"

Felix ran back to the archers and killed around 30 more before Sumba could calm himself and come back, his face was even redder than before and it looked like one of his veins may pop from anger.

Felix kept himself away from Sumba and the archers as he watched from a distance, from time to time he would go back and assassinate some of the people from the infantry, however, things moved extremely slowly for some reason.

He also felt that they were at an impasse, something wasn't right here...

With the generals fight, the shaman's son activated his special shaman bloodline ability to dominate 3 of his opponents around him, it didn't take him much time to kill one of them before he continued to fight with the other two, they were the relatively weaker generals as the other two which came with the tiger shaman at the talk before weren't to be seen anywhere.

It seemed things were going well for the general fight so what was stopping the army from advancing?

Felix looked around and realized that a lot of other tribesmen died, while the lions were still at full strength the pig tribesmen were almost extinct along with the flamingo tribesmen, the hyena tribesmen had the least damage in the foreign tribes.

The war was slowly but surely getting even, the eyes of the old lion shaman opened for a brief second as his face turned towards the sky.

The tiger shaman narrowed his eyes as his scarred face started to hurt, something wasn't right here!

The lion shaman tapped his walking stick to the ground a few times as the surrounding hex energy was channeled into his body immediately rejuvenating it, transforming himself into a middle-aged man with a straight back.

He looked towards the tiger shaman and said in a monotone voice:

"I should thank you for fueling my ambitions with so many sacrifices, if it wasn't for you I wouldn't have been able to throw away so many of our 'allies' lives."

Before the tiger shaman could say anything he looked down only to see a big hole in his stomach and blood slowly dripping out from it, however, the blood quickly disappeared as if it was sucked away by something.

He couldn't say anything in death as he fell face forward.

The now middle-aged lion shaman looked at the sky, it was around noon and there were no clouds in the sky but suddenly the sky turned fully red as if it was afternoon and some clouds blocked the sunlight.

The lion tribesman pupils turned into triangles as he started to chant:

"Oh great ancestors, please bless this old fool with your grace and come down to strike the heathens that decided to attack your descendants!"

A lightning strike hit the lion shaman directly in the forehead as he finished his chant, he fell to the ground on his back but got up slowly as a lightning-shaped scar appeared on his forehead, his whole hair and mane turned fully silver as he looked around at the war in front of him and smiled:

"It was worth it to use the lives of these people in trade for more years to walk this earth!"

His walking stick broke down to reveal a totemic staff with the head of the lion, it was colored fully black with red lines that looked like blood running vertically on it, the lion head seemed to be crying tears of blood.

He tapped the ground three more times with the totemic staff before he threw himself in the middle of the army with a savage smile on his face.

His totemic staff would hit everyone regardless of what side they were on, the captains from both tribes looked on at the changed lion Shaman with wide eyes, while the generals of the lion tribe attacked the puzzled tiger generals continuously without giving them any pause, they knew about the shaman's plan!

Sumba was trembling as he returned to his normal form, as he looked at the new form of the shaman he could feel his bloodline crying at him to run away!

Felix's fur stood on end as he watched the shaman killing indiscriminately, the numbers of the army were quickly going down and Felix knew that it was time to dip out!

Who knew if he would be attacked when he was found? It seemed only the generals knew about the shaman's plan as they continued fighting, even the captains were now wondering what they should do in this situation.

Felix didn't have many friends in the army but he was a little bit connected with Landers and Carto so he decided to move towards the captains fighting place and make a run away with them, he just hoped he still had enough time, as the total of infantry remaining was around 10,000 total!

He wasn't sure how the man was killing them and absorbing them so quickly but if he wasn't quick enough he would move to the archers that didn't escape and then to the captains!

Sumba already ran away and he didn't dare to remain on the battlefield any longer.

Felix reached the captains fighting grounds after a short while of running and tried to locate both Carto and Landers...