I have Nine Lives

Chapter 44: Massacring for harvest

The journey towards the black bear's cave didn't take as much as it did previously when he escorted the tigers back to their new settlement, one because he didn't have to lower his speed to match the hungry tigers, two because of his newly improved stamina and relatively stronger physique, and three because he was excited to get more black bear meat to improve his strength and endurance.

Also with wars he would be able to increase his lives count, he was still stuck at 5 as he didn't know many souls he needed to absorb to gain more lives, maybe he would be able to talk with god next time, right now there should be around 5 or so month left before the intercontinental battle would start.

Felix's speed reached immense amounts as he traveled through forests, plains, and other locations to reach the dead woods that were the home of the black bear's tribe cave, there he met with some lions and stronger cats from the lion tribe, they were all crouching around the trees as they were concentrating on looking at the open cave ahead of them, they were all tense seemingly waiting for something.

The moment Felix appeared, the leader of the group almost ran and attacked him, but the moment he saw it was an ally he went back and assigned someone to talk with Felix.

A female cat made her way towards Felix and briefed him about the current situation, it seemed that the black bear tribe opened the cave a long while after their first loss in a head-on confrontation, the fights were close as they couldn't send too many people to the black bear tribe due to the simultaneous rioting of the other tribes, even the relatively peaceful tribes like the Elephant tribe started to riot the moment they got the news of the lion's shaman successful scheme.

It seemed they all felt threatened by what happened and realized that they would be the next ones that would be attacked sooner or later, so they started by counterattacking first!

Felix looked at the open cave and asked:

"Any strange thing happened since the cave opened?

The woman shook her head as she looked at Felix's average-sized body, she knew who Felix was but she didn't find him to be special, even though his chosen by god status hadn't been revealed yet, he could be considered a lieutenant level figure by now, she was actually quite happy that they got such strong reinforcements, they already lost a few comrades due to the intense fighting spirit of the bears, even though it was winter by now, the warriors who didn't have to hibernate were still going on strong!

They also couldn't enter the cave or they risked to be trapped in there so all they could do was wait and fight it out with the bears that couldn't resist staying in the cave anymore, after all, black bears were bears with bad temperament even among the other bear tribes, the brown bears could be considered a little bit tamer while the white bears were considered to be the coolest ones in most situations, both mentally and with their actions.

Felix knew the layout of the early parts of the cave but he didn't know how to control the cave entrance, how could he stop the giant boulder from smashing the entrance closed?

Felix couldn't actually see any boulder at the entrance of the cave so where would it come from when they activated the mechanism?

He asked the woman in front of him as she was outside when they opened and closed the cave:

"The location of the boulder that blocked the entrance of the cave? Hmmm... I think it goes above the cave's entrance but as you can see the mountain the cave is in could be considered quite tall, we don't have any flying units with us so we can't reach the top of the mountain where the boulder is located, and even if we did what could we do?"

"I'm not really sure how their mechanism works but I'm sure that it has two states, one is when the cave is closed and the boulder is in front, and the other is when the boulder is up there, if there are people up there who get notified when they should lower the boulder or not, it would be a good plan to go there and kill them, but if they control the boulder from the inside we could lose men and time this way..."

Felix listened to her explanation before he disappeared as he was already starting to climb the mountain, his speed was so big that he could now run along the walls of the mountain from time to time while climbing, the mountain was rather tall but in twenty minutes Felix was already half-way to the top.

The woman and the other's eyes widened as they watched Felix escalate the mountain as if it was normal ground.

While Felix's claws weren't supposed to reach deep into the mountain his stamina training helped him inhale small bursts of Hex energy to strengthen his body when he needed to, so every time his claws entered the mountain they would be strengthened by Hex energy so they wouldn't get damaged, this would also help him in fights quite a little.

Felix finally reached the top as he looked around and spotted the boulder not far away from where he climbed, he tried to spot anyone that could be controlling the boulder and making it appear at the bottom of the mountain but unfortunately found no one up here.

He frowned, that meant the second option was the real one, meaning that the controls were inside the cave, he looked up at the gigantic boulder and remembered the big hole that he created back at Catro's training spot when he fought the lieutenant and then hardened his gaze as he started to breathe in and out.

Some vapor started to come out of his nostrils as his breathing heated up due to the high amount of Hex energy that was currently cruising in his body, his muscles started to clench in anticipation as he ran towards the boulder and a thunderous crack could be heard as he pushed the boulder down from the mountain!

The boulder fell to the bottom of the mountain like a high-speed projectile and left a deep hole near the cave's entrance, the ground was very hard but the boulder was harder and so it didn't break, but the connection between it and whatever it was controlling it to appear at the bottom of the mountain broke!

The lion tribe's men and women were gawking seeing the big hole that the boulder made and then they saw Felix scaling down from the mountain and appearing in front of them while saying:

"There shouldn't be problems charging into the cave now right?"

The leader nodded quickly as he gave the order:

"Charge! They should be resting now, even though they should have gotten spooked by the sound of the boulder crashing into the ground they should be confused!"

The mountain was quite long and it went down into the ground as the cave became underground, as Felix walked further inside he helped the others kill the bear warriors and ate the meat of those he slew along the way, his body started to sway around as his size increased with the number of kills he did.

Felix didn't attack the sleeping civilians but the warriors from the tribe weren't as merciful as him, they killed all of them who resisted, and then the ones that woke up and gave themselves to the tribe were spared.

Felix didn't find the meat of those weak civilians appeasing at all, the concentration of Hex energy in it was very low thus it didn't trigger his appetite at all.

As death was unfolding around Felix constantly another head appeared up in the corner of his vision making him have around 6 heads now.

But there were no more warriors alive after the head remained and Felix's body already turned to become quite plump from the amount of meat he ate up till now, he became rather chonky as he grew to half the size he was when Lindo was rolling him around the road like a big barrel.

The warrior team didn't have many casualties as Felix was at the vanguard killing everyone regardless if he used the stealth technique or not, the strongest person of the early caves was already dead and there hadn't been any reinforcements coming from the lower caves, Felix wondered why would that happen?

Something strange was brewing on here, Felix could feel it, the stronger tribesmen that went further down inside the earth should know that their brethren were dying or getting capture but there were no reactions.

As Felix appeared at the end of the cave he realized that there was no boulder blocking the entrance further inside the cave, but a door!

The door was inscribed with Hex runes that glowed with deep silver energy and Felix couldn't understand a thing about them, he tried to slash the cave only for the energy that was covering the door to shoot at him and throw him away like he was a piece of paper in front of the wind, his heavy stature, and his big body was thrown just like that showcasing that the defensive ability of the door was something that Felix couldn't contend against with his current strength.

This meant that whoever was behind that door was certainly rather strong, Felix didn't use as much stamina as before when he threw the boulder from the mountain but he was still a little bit tired even though he ate a lot of meat.

He didn't want to go in there with the current team that he had, even though there weren't many casualties some of them still existed and this showed that the ones who were delegated to this mission weren't relatively strong, from what Felix saw they were rather young but not inexperienced, however, their bodies still needed tempering.

He needed reinforcements if he wanted to go further down the cave, he felt a little bit sated right now so he wasn't in a hurry as he went outside the cave and took out his communication stone from his special bag while reporting:

"Felix here, the first layer of the black bear cave was cleared and quite a few civilians were captured, I have found a door leading deeper in the cave but it's protected by a strange force field and the door is also inscribed with unknown runes, I request reinforcements!"

A deep voice came from the other side of the communication stone, surprisingly it was the shaman who responded!

"Good job Felix, you have taken care of the easier part, wait there as some strong reinforcements will be coming, I have got an oracle from the ancestors and they say that the bear tribe is currently doing something that would impede the future intercontinental battle as for the black bear civilians you can get rid of them, they are talentless and not even good as slaves!"

Unlike the tigers who had sturdy bodies and better potentials even at an old age, the civilians of the black bear tribe could be considered to have less worth in the eyes of the shaman, Felix gave the orders to the team and they immediately started to decapitate the civilians in batches.

A river of blood started to flow in front of the mountain as Felix looked at the headless bodies of the black bear tribe, there were old men and women along with injured or crippled ones here and there.

The children were now forcefully put through a talent test and those that didn't pass it would be decapitated as well.

Felix didn't feel much from watching everything unfold in front of his eyes, it was like he was emotionless as the Hex energy was cruising through his body and improving certain aspects of it, he just doesn't seem to care, even though he didn't attack the civilians on his own accord as he felt pity for them at the time when they got killed he didn't feel anything for them. Actually, he didn't know it but he didn't feel pity for them, his body just felt that they were useless to it so his brain sent out some signals that made it look like it was him pitying them.

Felix shook his head as he sat at the front of the cave and watched as the blood river started to run south... he felt very strange that the stronger people from deeper in the cave were doing nothing to prevent this... unless they actually needed the deaths of their clansmen to achieve something similar to what the lion shaman had done.

Felix's eyes widened as he shouted:

"GET THE HELL AWAY FROM THE MOUNTAIN!"

He could feel the ground shake as he ran away at his quickest speed while ignoring everything else, even his new teammates, after all, he had warned them.

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