I have Nine Lives

Chapter 35: Hatred generated by others

Felix quickly dove inside the storage room and looked around to see if there were any fishes that he could take.

The storage room wasn't that big but it had quite a few items in it, there were even some weapons here and there along with spices and other foodstuffs that Felix didn't really know what their uses were.

Felix decided to grab the nearest fish and stuff it into his special bag, It didn't him that much to get enough fish for the tribe, but that meant he also emptied the whole storage room of fish, all storage rooms had plenty of fish enough to let 10% of the black bear tribe to live through the winter hibernation, however, this amount is only used for 1 strong able armed warrior that stays wake through the whole winter.

Felix decided to slip away from the storage room only to see the room's door slowly open, he cursed under his breath as he jumped on the ceiling and kept his claws lodged in the hard rock hoping that they wouldn't look up.

Felix frowned as he felt his claws starting to hurt, blood was certainly going to drop from them sooner or later, his claws weren't meant for hanging to rocks, he was also quite heavy and the resistance from the rocks meant that his claws were slowly getting pulled out, this was different compared to when he shot claws by his own volition if he used the same method that he would use when he shot his claws he would drop from the ceiling.

The black bear cursed loudly as he entered the storage room and saw the lack of fish:

"GODDAMIT, THAT CAT HAS BEEN INSIDE THE STORAGE ROOM NUMBER 4, HOW THE HELL DID HE GET IN?"

The bear was currently using the disturbing technique and Felix was visible on the ceiling, if he looked up he would be surely seen!

The bear continued to look through the storage room and seeing that no fishes were spared made him rage as he punched the wall behind him, the storage room started to slowly shake as Felix could feel his pain intensifying, small drops of blood dripped from his claws to the ground.

The drops of blood fell to the ground but the bear was raging too hard to hear them, Felix sighed only for the bear's nose to twitch as he looked at the ground and muttered:

"Blood? Why would blood be here? Very strange, did the cat injure himself when he stole the fish?"

The bear scratched his head for some time before he left the storage room, he needed to find the cat!

Felix dropped from the ceiling and successfully left the room as the door slowly closed behind him, the bear was rushing so he didn't look behind him as Felix disappeared again, fortunately, there was no one around who saw him.

That was if you didn't count the small bear child who wandered towards the storage rooms, his tummy was growling and he saw Felix's silhouette disappearing, he was ready to shout and alarm the others when Felix suddenly saw him and ran to him and jumped on his head knocking him out with his body weight.

Felix didn't know what to do with this bear child, he felt bad for knocking him out, he looked pretty innocent and cute at the same time as he was currently 'sleeping' killing him was out of the question considering that the scent of blood would attract the others here, all he could do was leave him there hoping he would attract enough attention, he still needed to find a way to remove the big boulder that was blocking the entrance.

Felix ran away from the bear child leaving him knocked out cold on the stone floor of the cave.

It didn't take much time for him to be found by a patrol, he was woken up by some shaking and questioned:

"Uh, I was hit on the head so hard... I think I saw an orange cat tribesman coming out of the storage room, I think it was number 4... but he disappeared and I got hit on the head afterward... I don't know where he is."

The patrol let him go and decided to intensify their search, but do as they may they wouldn't be able to find Felix at all.

Then they decided to do another approach, they silently removed the boulder from the entrance and decided to wait, the strongest bear had a pondering look on his face as he looked at the entrance.

Felix seeing that the entrance finally opened, immediately ran ahead and left the cave, only for his stealth to break and him to become visible to everyone!

The strongest bear started to run at speeds that rivaled Felix's, even though he was rather big and heavy, it seemed he was also rather fast.

Felix frowned as he ran away, doing his best to keep his distance from the strongest bear, the others also started following Felix whose scent was now not hidden anymore.

Felix couldn't shake off the strongest bear from his tail and even though he couldn't catch up to him normally he couldn't leave his sights either, it was rather annoying as his surroundings were full of dead trees that couldn't conceal him at all.

After the trees there was a plain so he was even easier to find them, he decided to run towards Lindo and hoped that he could help him fight the bear warriors off.

Felix knew the route they took so he quickly followed it hoping that he could reach them quickly!

It took Felix around 17 hours to finish everything and considering the speed they used to escort the tigers it would take Felix around 2-3 hours to catch up to them.

Felix thanked the gods he got the special bag now, how could he have taken so much fish and also move at normal speeds with a bag full of fish?

The strongest bear tribesman shouted:

"GIVE US OUR FISH BACK YOU DAMN THIEF!"

Felix ignored him, the other bear tribesmen were also slowly getting closer to the strongest bear tribesman, they started to pick up speed but they were also getting tired, Felix could run more than them and also faster, the black bear tribe had immense strength and weight, their speed was moderate and some of their tribesmen even had great speed, but due to their sizes, they didn't have that great of stamina if they didn't specifically train in this regard.

The strongest bear was still looking alright as he wasn't sweating at all, but the others were certainly getting slower with time as their acceleration started to decrease and they would start to breathe roughly.

Felix chuckled as he increased his speed again, taking a burst of air into his lungs using a breathing technique to increase his speed, his muscles screamed a little but considering he did only one small burst they were still relatively ok and only damaged moderately to the point that he could keep his normal speed up.

Seeing that Felix was leaving him behind made the strongest bear grith his teeth and increase his speed, his stamina started to slowly disappear as well as the increases his speed beyond what he was really capable of, if before he was giving 100%, now he was giving 125% to keep up with Felix.

Felix started to return to his normal speed after the burst broke off, but now that the black bear was using 125% he wouldn't give up normally even though his stamina was dripping away from his body.

Felix frowned as the black bear was getting closer and closer to him, his mouth was even ready to catch his tail!

Felix's eyes started to glow as he looked at the convoy of tigers, time quickly passed while he was followed and 2 hours already went by, he finally reached Lindo and the others!

Lindo could feel that something was wrong as he looked backward and saw Felix being chased by the strongest warrior of the black bear tribe which he also recognized, He jumped behind the convoy and caught Felix in his arms as he started to display his aura to the black bear warrior in deterrence.

The black bear warrior glared at Lindo as he said between huffs:

"That... cat.. stolen... from... our... tribe!"

Lindo looked at Felix and realized what happened, considering he went ahead to find food for the tigers it wasn't surprising he just stole from the black bear tribe, normally most cat tribesmen would have been caught by the strongest warrior of the black bear tribe if he went with 125%, but Felix gained some cheetah characteristics after he ate that body in his first mission, his speed while it had yet to reveal a cheetah, he was still considerably faster compared to other races who didn't train in speed regardless of their characteristics.

Even though races had different body types, they could also train them to become stronger, faster, etc, combined with aging made these races have certain advantages over others, however, training was quite slow as most of the tribes didn't have proper training techniques for Hex, they were still fumbling in the dark in this regard, besides their innate knowledge they didn't know how to use the Hex energy specifically, only shamans grasped this knowledge and it was also only shared with the future shamans of the tribe.

So most of the time the knowledge remained in the family, however, the shamanic knowledge also required the shaman's bloodline to be used in most cases or to have some specific talents.

Felix sat on Lindo's shoulder as he looked towards the black bear, he felt quite smug right now as he waved his paw at the black bear, which made the person in question jump towards Lindo.

Lindo was quite strong for his age but the warrior was also exhausted because he ran after Felix while using his whole bodily strength, he could also feel that there were other Lions at the head of the convoy so he didn't know what to do, Fish was starting to disappear in this time of the year and he couldn't go and fish for more, that meant one of the warriors would have to eat less if they shared the fish and maybe even starve!

In this type of situation he truly didn't know what to do, he really wanted to get the fish back from Felix but he was also scared of dying and not recovering the fish at the same time, he was disappointed that the others already lost him and Felix if they were with him he would have had enough courage to attack!

The black bear gritted his teeth as he made a decision, he entered a fighting stance as he glared at Felix and Lindo and said:

"I have to get that fish back, I see that you must have taken the fish to feed these decrepit tigers, but it doesn't matter, my men need to eat too, and we are the ones who caught the fish as well!"

Felix was the one in the wrong here but he didn't care much, he still had prejudices against the black bear tribe and he wanted to feed the tigers, so he did what he wanted!

Now that he had Lindo with him he decided to return the favor as he disappeared, he wanted to fight the black bear and kill him, maybe he could even get to eat his corpse to improve his strength and endurance! Those were the two things his cat body was currently needing to achieve balance.

Lindo shook his head seeing Felix's stance on this matter, he wasn't sure if it would be better to get more tigers or if it mattered at all as long as they escorted a few, but he decided to act with Felix's wishes considering their friendship, the black bear was also alone and his stamina was sapped, the black bear tribe was also considered to be a rival tribe to the former lion tribe, but now that all of the strength was centralized it couldn't be said the same. So killing him won't attract many problems. While this man was the strongest warrior of the black bear tribe, that was for the beginning of the cave.

Felix didn't go inside the depths of the cave where the shaman and other bears were staying, the black bear tribe also had its experts, Felix didn't even explore 10% of the whole cave, he was actually quite lucky as he didn't meet someone who was at a lieutenant level, while this warrior in front of them was rather strong, he was only equal to Felix's or Lindo's battle power. Felix didn't want to fight him because of his ability to disrupt his stealth, and considering he didn't grasp killing intent detection and masking, fighting him would take time and he would be surrounded by the others.

But now that he was with Lindo, he was ready to rumble!