I have Nine Lives

Chapter 39: What can a cat do?

Felix's body slowly started to turn transparent as he disappeared from the spot he was in, Lindo remained on the spot his eyes were moving from side to side as he tried to see where Felix could come from, he kept his senses attuned to the surroundings, he needed to fully concentrate to keep his killing intent detection up.

Felix slowly circled Lindo trying to see through his defenses, he wanted to end the spar in one shot and become the winner!

Since he already learned killing intent detection, he now only had to learn how to mask killing intent and polish his current skills to the maximum and wait for the intercontinental battle.

Lindo suddenly lunged to the side in an attempt to scare Felix away, which succeeded, Felix didn't have much experience with killing intent detection so he ran to the side the moment he felt the killing intent.

Lindo laughed as he felt the vibrations of Felix's movements, due to how flustered he was he couldn't conceal his steps fully leaving a few small ones on the ground, Lindo attacked the spot where Felix was only to hit the dirt, Felix dodged his attack easily!

Lindo frowned, Felix's ability to dodge attacks increased by a bit too much!

He could feel blood dripping from his chest but he easily sealed the injury with his enhanced muscle technique, the injury wasn't deep enough to hit bone and if Felix didn't attack the same spot again he would be able to endure.

Felix appeared behind him, but as if he had eyes behind his back Lindo jumped to the side to dodge Felix's attack before it could give him a deep cut on the back.

Lindo knew that having a protracted fight wouldn't help him at all in this situation. He needed to end things fast if he wanted to win the spar!

He wouldn't normally care, but his lion blood had been ignited the more he fought with Felix, he wanted to win! Not because he wanted to prove anything or because his pride didn't let him lose the fight, he just want to have the feeling of winning!

Felix appeared again here and there, he disappeared and appeared to confuse Lindo's senses, he would also do fake attacks filled to the brim with killing intent making Lindo having to decide if he had to defend or not, this way Lindo let one attack slip that gave a deep gash across his chest.

He put both hands up in a motion of surrender as he said exasperated:

"You have grown way too strong after you learned killing intent detection... I'm not even your opponent anymore!"

Felix gave out a small laugh as he appeared and patted Lindo's leg with his paw comforting him.

Lindo shook his head as he took out a pill from his bag and crushed it into a powder that he snorted, it was a highly-effective medicine that would seal his wound quickly, the gash across his chest was rather deep and it would open quite easily in a fight or because of sudden movements, he needed this type of medicine to seal it or else he might become light-headed due to blood-loss.

Lindo scratched his mane awkwardly as he said:

"My old man will rip me a new one when he will hear I lost... and he will triple the training as well..."

Felix cocked his head to the side and asked:

"Isn't more training good?"

Lindo didn't know to laugh or cry at Felix's inquiry, in this situation where they would be chosen for the intercontinental battle, more training would be better indeed, but that didn't mean he enjoyed it!

Thinking that he was making fun of him, Lindo decided to leave the training field, he had to go home and rest a bit as his father would come home later and he had to fully seal his injury before then, or else it might open up again during training, which meant he would be punished with even more training!

Felix didn't know what he said wrong as he watched Lindo leave with a sullen expression on his face, he shrugged as he decided to leave as well, it wasn't time to get back to the mindscape yet, they ended the sparring quite early today so he decided to visit Landers, now that he learned how to detect killing intent, maybe Landers could teach him something new?

Finding Landers was easier said than done, he tried to go to the division building where he should occasionally be, but he couldn't find him there. Then he went to the mission plaza to inquire about him, only to find out that he was on a mission away for a few days, since he couldn't train with his own captain, maybe he had to do some stuff to consolidate his marshall rank now? Felix then decided to find Catro for more cat techniques training.

Catro was swamped with work now as he was the logistics captain, but he could always make some time for his favorite protege, he would just let his lieutenant deal with some of the paperwork while he was out.

"So what's the big news? Learned how to detect killing intent already?"

Felix nodded, Catro hit the nail right on the head, after all, he wouldn't disturb him if it wasn't anything important.

"I guess you want to learn more techniques from our tribe right?"

Felix nodded again. Catro chuckled seeing Felix's antics, from what he gathered, the younger cat wasn't really a talker, he showed emotions only in perilous situations or when he empathized with someone. Catro found him to be rather strange but he couldn't comment on it as he had seen and interacted with stranger people.

"To be honest with you, cats have very few techniques that they could employ besides the unique stealth, we have our fighting styles but I already showed you our highest order of fighting style, it isn't hard to learn and you should be able to learn it by yourself."

"However, cats still can improve in certain regards through training, I'm not sure if you know about this, but the growth of the body isn't the only thing that affects individuals fighting power."

"While growing older and reaching the peak of your life, truly unlocks one's battle power to the maximum, there is also a special type of training you can undergo to break through the limits imposed on your body by nature itself."

"You have to ask yourself, what can a cat do?"

"A cat can do many things, jump high, be fast, have very good reflexes and instincts even among other tribes, but there are certain limitations to the cat body as well, not enough strength, not enough endurance, stamina is average."

Catro shook his head as he listed the strength and weaknesses of the cat tribe.

"You are different from us though, it is strange but you don't actually need to do this type of training."

His analytical eyes could see through Felix's special body somewhat, he didn't understand how but it seemed like Felix's body was already strengthened multiple times in different ways.

"But the strange fact is that you also don't have the Hex aura of someone who trained, even though your body cannot hold Hex energy, you have a white Hex aura."

"I know you feel quite puzzled but let me explain a bit more."

"You can choose to train one of your attributes by washing your body in certain ways with the Hex energy that seeps from the void, at the maximum you can strengthen it up to 9 times, but that doesn't mean you will become 9 times stronger or faster or more enduring. At most the enchantment from the first 9 times of training would net you a 1.25x power increase in that attribute."

"To improve your Hex aura you have to increase your attributes up to 9 times each, then fuse them together to reach a 1.30x boost in all attributes and changing your Hex aura color while unlocking another batch of strengthening."

"Unfortunately our lion tribe is lacking the strengthening technique for speed and agility, so you can't really improve your Hex aura perfectly, you see let me show you a bit so you could understand better."

A pale blue aura started to appear around Catro, the aura was very pale, almost transparent, this showed that his aura wasn't pure at all, it was also rather muddled.

"This is the aura of someone who forced a breakthrough in attributes while not having strengthened all of them, auras start from white to green to blue to purple to orange to yellow and finally red."

"I'm not sure if there are even any orange aura people currently existing on the four continents, if they were the continents would have been united a long time ago..."

"Anyways I can teach you how to improve your strength, endurance, and stamina, I'm not allowed to teach the vitality training technique, for that you will have to go to the shaman to learn it, as for agility and speed, who knows where these techniques are?"

Catro immediately started to impart his knowledge on these techniques and Felix found them to be pretty familiar but also different at the same time. He realized that they were breathing techniques!

But unlike the techniques from the cat tribe they weren't meant for attacking or support, they were only for training, they couldn't be used for anything else.

Felix tried to use the breathing technique for stamina and could feel his blood flow quicken as his heart started beating faster while the surrounding Hex energy rushed into his body. It truly was an interesting technique!

Making sure that Felix learned all the techniques successfully, Catro then left as he had tons of paperwork to deal with and his lieutenant wouldn't be able to deal with them even if he grew ten more heads and ten pairs of arms.

He waved to Felix as he told him:

"Train safely, also don't rush strengthening your body or you can cripple yourself! Hex energy while mostly tame can also enter a different vein in your body if you don't breathe properly, it might even attack your heart and kill you!"

Felix nodded in understanding, he felt that Lindo wouldn't be able to spar with him anymore so this new training would be useful to fill his time with, he would strengthen his body by day and his soul by night, he would try to find some more sparring partners in the future so he wouldn't grow rusty.

He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do at the intercontinental battle, but strangely he was also looking forward to it! He was excited!