I have Nine Lives

Chapter 7: Memories

Felix's eyelids moved from time to time and Sahee wondered what he was dreaming for there to be such a visible reaction coming from him, Lucian looked on wondering the same thing, maybe the adulthood ceremony gave him something else?

Felix didn't sleep soundly anymore as he started seeing images that he couldn't remember in front of him, there were memories but no his own, they were forcefully injected into his soul by an unknown entity.

The memories showed cats similar to him in a great horde, most of them remained the same while a few started to morph, they either gained a human arm or leg, however they were treated as outcasts by the horde and either beaten to death or eaten.

Very few that mutated would be able to leave and continue their lives, just like all living beings they continued to mate and pass off generations, in the end, their descendants still resembled those from the main tribe.

Eras passed as the same happened with a myriad of races, they evolved and after a certain, while some talented people started to switch to a fully humanoid form, they were the ancestors of the current animal tribes scattered across the Tarot continent.

With the humanoid form came the elevation of intelligence, even though they were pretty smart before as they were sentient, they now started to develop deeper, they started to create civilizations, buildings, and languages.

The cat tribe strength wasn't very high but they were extremely stealthy and deadly in the night, along with their innate talent of concocting poisons or being able to emanate poison from their bodies, they became a power to be feared, after all, you couldn't keep your guard up forever and the moment your guard slipped you could be assassinated by a cat tribesman.

The cat tribesman was unique to a few points, they were one of the only tribes that based their techniques on breathing, breathing affected their killing techniques, stealth techniques as well as how much power they would use when they would slash someone's neck with their innate claws.

The other clans put less focus on breathing and more on their physical bodies strength, breathing affected the Hex energy in the air that would go through one's body, but it could also be ignored if one's body was strong enough and could handle a lot of Hex energy.

In this regard, the cat tribe would use skills to counter brute force and they kept their breathing technique a secret from everyone if the stronger races knew their breath technique their tribes would be crippled or even destroyed, after all, this was what put them on equal grounds with the others.

Felix watched as the ancestors of the cat tribe breath in and out rhythmically while hunting or assassinating their enemies, he was entranced by their powerful but steady breathing.

He unconsciously tried to mimic their breathing and he realized that he immediately started to run out of air!

Even though the cat tribe had a relatively weaker body compared to the other races, their body was still considered way stronger than Felix's current body. The current cat tribe was way below their ancestors in all aspects, body, and technique-wise, Felix could understand it from a single glance, his instincts were telling him that if he fought any of those people he would certainly die!

He stopped trying the breathing techniques that he saw but he memorized them, even though his body was too weak to practice them now he just had to get stronger! The breathing techniques weren't an innate ability, those innate abilities were completely different and they were like passives in video games.

Felix couldn't gain an innate ability due to him not being a native from this world, the ancestors who were called upon by the pipe that Lucian used saw this and decided to give him the breathing techniques through a soul linkage, even though none of them appeared in front of Felix's face he realized that this must have happened due to the adulthood ceremony.

Felix wasn't sure if he should share the breathing techniques with the cat tribe, if their ancestors wanted them to know the techniques wouldn't they have already sent them down via the same method?

More images appeared in front of Felix... the cat tribe was betrayed by one of their cousin tribes after rumors appeared about their breathing techniques, it was impossible to keep a technique that they used everyday hidden from everyone.

The breathing technique disappeared with time, from the whole continent, something happened that Felix couldn't truly understand as the Tarot continent was ripped away from the other continents, the other continents also ripped away from each other creating four continents in total.

They weren't named as Felix watched on the memories started fading, but one voice told him what he needed to know:

"You have the closest body to the ancestors, you can try to teach the breathing technique to the others, however, there is a very high chance they won't be able to grasp it due to the changes that happened to their bodies with time."

The breathing technique was created with the primeval ancestor's bodies in mind, since the technique was discontinued it couldn't evolve along with the bodies of the cat tribe so it was a broken technique for those of today's age, however since the cat tribe was so nice to him he decided to teach Lucian and Sahee the technique at the least, if they couldn't learn it he wouldn't teach it to anyone else.

The images faded completely along with the voice as Felix woke up, he looked around and both Lucian and Sahee were looking him with a worried expression as Sahee walked a little bit closer to him and asked with trembling eyes:

"Are you ok? You almost suffocated in your sleep, you suddenly started breathing weirdly and you almost went limp due to oxygen deprivation, both I and Lucian were almost scared to death."

Felix's tail was swinging aggressively for some reason, he felt the sensation of death and it's cold fingers splayed around his neck as soon as he opened his eyes, it seemed that after he breathed in that pattern in his dream it also made him breathe in his real body, at the corner of his eye he could see that there were 5 heads of his instead of 6, what did that mean?

As he gained intelligence he wanted to know what those heads meant, seeing him spacing out but Lucian and Sahee didn't know what to tell him, but after a short, while Felix looked at the both of them and told them what he experienced, Lucian was in ecstasy as he asked:

"Might you be able to teach us the breathing technique?"

Felix didn't mind teaching them, however, both of them failed as their faces turned purple and froth started to come out of their mouths if Felix didn't help them both by pressing on their chest with all of their strength they would have both died at the same time.

Lucian was extremely disappointed while Sahee didn't know what to say because of her close encounter with death, Lucian already met with death a few times so he wasn't that affected but Sahee was silent, this was the first time she was this close to death, even though her fight with the bear duo made it close, she was still conscious and didn't lose much blood, she was only in a very big amount of pain at the time, now she almost died!

Both of them still felt weak as they took in big gulps of air and Lucian said:

"It seems the warning is true, well we can't say we didn't give it a try."

Lucian got over it fast as he looked at Felix and asked:

"Since the ancestors gave you the technique they think that your body can handle it? However, even by our current standards your body isn't very strong, I guess you could be categorized among the children around 8 years old, it's quite impressive you were able to kill so many things in the forest with such a weak body, I wonder why?"

The reason Felix was able to do such killings was extremely simple and it could be explained in one word, instinct!

While all of the other beings focused on their innate talents and different skills, they all forgot about the most basic killer ability of them all, instinct!

Lucian decided to not bother Felix anymore as he got a few answers to his question about history from his explanation, Sahee wanted to spar with him and Felix agreed, even though he couldn't use the breathing techniques, he could try and copy the movements of the ancestors.

Felix stood in front of Sahee as she transformed into her cat form, but she winced as her bandaged arm didn't heal, she forgot in all her excitement that she was injured and not lightly.

Sahee transformed back into her humanoid form and looked down with an embarrassed look on her face, her cheeks were pink as she said:

"Uh, maybe we can spar after my arm healed..."

Felix didn't mind as he could still practice the stealthy movements by himself, it would have been better to practice in live combat but he could try by himself.

Felix lowered his body to the ground without impeding his movements as he walked slowly in the training area of the tribe, the younger children of the tribe were looking at him with wide eyes as they talked with each other and some of them were tried to mimic him, they were all in their cat forms as it seemed there weren't any geniuses who unlocked their humanoid form early.

Suddenly Felix disappeared from their vision for a split second, they blinked their eyes and Felix appeared again, they had seen such a situation before when the other older tribesmen trained their stealth ability so they thought Felix was doing the same, even though they didn't recognize him because of his orange-colored fur, since he was also a cat they weren't wary of him.

Felix looked down at his paws as he thought:

"What was that sensation...?"

Felix wasn't sure what he did as he only followed the movements that he saw in the memories step by step, he copied them but he didn't learn anything, after he became invisible he became startled and broke his concentration thus his stealth was canceled.

Felix decided to continue his training as Sahee looked at him for afar, she was a few meters away from the children as she hid herself behind a house, she felt a bit too awkward to stay near him now after she told him that she wanted to rest, but she wanted to see what kind of stealth technique he was practicing, it looked like the normal stealth ability that most cat tribe people used, but she couldn't feel him using Hex to activate it.

She decided to come forward and watch him directly instead of making a fool of herself.

However, Felix didn't even see her as he concentrated on his training trying to simulate the same feeling from before.

Sahee wasn't sure if her eyes were deceiving her as Felix disappeared and appeared randomly around the training grounds, this was a high level of stealth that was comparable to her innate ability!

She didn't know what to say as she watched him continue, the only thing that she found comforting for her self esteem was that his stealth broke very often and it wouldn't be useable in a real fight, she could already use her ability as she tried it before when he was sleeping and as long as she had Hex powering it up she would remain invisible.

But it seemed Felix's technique must be linked to those breathing techniques that they couldn't learn, she found it quite interesting and she wondered if she could incorporate it in her arsenal as she watched trying to find any hints on how the technique was used.

However she found it very hard to understand what happened to him as he disappeared, Felix was disappearing because he was erasing his presence using certain steps that used the myriad Hex energy that was around him to cloak his whole body, but it took a high amount of concentration to do it.

The ancestors of the cat tribe created this technique to layer it over their innate ability and then strengthen it with their breathing technique to become the ultimate assassins, however, they still ended up losing to the others due to the limits of their weak bodies, if their bodies were stronger who knew if they wouldn't be the leaders of at least one of the four continents?

Felix started coughing as he made a wrong step and the Hex energy in the air rushed into his body instead of cloaking it and started to damage his skin and muscles, however, the energy quickly dispersed from him after a few seconds because he stopped using the steps from the technique if he continued the wrong way he would have been battered by the Hex energy to death.

Due to her awakened innate talents, Sahee could see very thin threads of Hex energy in the air and she was startled once they started attacking Felix, but then she relaxed as the threads quickly dispersed away from him, she wasn't sure why that happened, the realm of controlling the Hex energy in the air with bodily movement disappeared a long time ago from most of the tribes existing on the Tarot continent.

Felix knew that he made a wrong step so he had to start again until he got it right, he wasn't sure why he wanted to get stronger but it felt nice, it just felt better to have strength, maybe it was this dog eat dog world influencing his thinking but he felt that if he was strong he would be able to do anything he wanted, so he decided to continue training instead of lazing around, he was going against his innate personality.

Sahee got inspired by watching Felix train so hard so she decided to go and train with her new innate ability as she couldn't get anything from watching Felix train any further, she left with serious eyes under the children's admiring gazes.

Felix continued his training unknown to him that he was observed from a distance by a very angry bear tribesman who swore revenge against him and his new home.