Chapter 45: A bloody harvest for the purpose of defense

Felix slowly got nauseous as a strident sound appeared from the inner depths of the earth.

Even though he was getting farther from the mountain that housed the cave of the bears the sound was still easily traveling towards his brain and attacking it multiple times at a high speed.

He didn't know where the sound came from besides that it came from the earth, but it was slowly getting on his nerves as he couldn't concentrate very well, he looked behind and saw the lion's team falling to their knees as blood dripped from their ears.

The situation already looked pretty bad and things were starting to get worse as a few shadows appeared from inside the cave and started to kill the downed lions!

Felix could still move relatively well but seeing that the shadows immediately started to converge towards him at high speeds, they were the black bear warriors from below the door. Each one of them was as strong as the strongest warrior that Felix had to kill along with Lindo and their numbers were in the tens. They were around 35 of them.

Felix tried to use his stealth technique to disappear from their vision and run away but the strident sound from before intensified and attacked his brain even harder now!

Felix almost staggered and fell to the ground as he was surrounded by those 35 black bears, they were all licking their lips in anticipation as they glanced at each other before returning their eyes to Felix's body which was shaking due to the internal damage.

Felix frowned as he felt that his brain wasn't the only thing that got affected, as he trained his soul he could perceive it's existence and he felt that the sound was also shaking his soul but it didn't do much damage, it just made him unable to use the stealth technique and broke his balance.

Unlike the dead lions, his soul was strong enough to resist the innate damage the sound was making but not strong enough for it to have no effects on him.

Felix frowned as he started breathing in and out to activate the stealth enhancing technique finally making him disappear from their vision.

The bears frowned as they looked around, the cat could use his stealth technique even when his soul was effected?

The bears know that the weakness of the cat tribe was their reliance on stealth, so their shaman created an attack that would disrupt their souls and damage them at the same time if their souls were weak enough, this way they wouldn't be able to use their stealth technique and they would become fishes on a chopping board for the bears!

The bears were surprised by Felix's ability to still use stealth in this situation but they immediately tightened the encirclement while making sure Felix wouldn't jump above them by using their auras to lock the space above them tight.

The hex energy in the air was slowly turning red due to the murderous auras of the bears.

Suddenly one of the bear's heads flew into the air as he died instantly!

Unlike before Felix's improvement was major, his body was currently getting strengthened in both endurance and strength aspects due to him eating so many black bears so he wasn't scared that much of them, he just found them to be troublesome and he would rather fight them with someone who had his back instead of alone, he was just cautious as he didn't know who else would come from the cave.

He could kill them but it would take a while and in that while who knew what would happen?

Felix needed to break the encirclement and run away before things got complicated as his figure started to flicker in and out of existence, the moment one bear made a move his windpipe would be slashed and a big chunk of his meat would disappear as Felix would take a big mouthful out of him.

5 bears died this way and their formation broke making Felix able to run away, however, before he could do it a strange pressure enveloped his body and made him unable to run away! It was as if he hit an invisible boundary that didn't let him get further away from the mountain, if he squinted in front of him he could see a transparent barrier of some kind that he hit his head-on.

Felix frowned as he looked at the bears that were no encircling him again, it seemed they thought that they could still kill him using superior numbers as they didn't care about the death of their 5 comrades.

Felix knew that he couldn't continue like this, 2 minutes already passed and he could feel his lungs getting tired from the technique and at this point, he would exhaust all of his stamina!

Down below the door that Felix stopped at, a lot of bears were chanting and beating drums as an especially tall bear who wore a skull over his head and was tattooed with red and purple designs of bird wings along his arms was keeping his hands overhead as he said:

"I offer to the ancestors the blood of the weak so we can become strong, the blood of the weak bears shall ignite and led us on to defend against the invaders that want to take over our ancestral land and enslave us, kill the weak strengthen the strong!"

The crowd that beat the drums started to shout along with the shaman:

"KILL THE WEAK, STRENGTHEN THE STRONG! KILL THE WEAK, STRENGTHEN THE STRONG!"

The shaman then started doing a strange dance as he took a big totem from the ground below him and smashed it in the ground below him, then he ignited a fire on his palms and put them on the totem burning it to cinders!

The blood river above the ground started to boil as the headless bodies of the dead black bear civilians started to sizzle and pop just like popcorn in a microwave.

Down below the shaman was crushing skulls of different creatures as he threw them into the fire to fuel it.

Above the ground, the bodies transformed into skin puddles that were absorbed into the blood river that started to heat up, blood mist started to slowly go up into the skies as a phenomenon similar to when the lion shaman sacrificed the people to regain his youth appeared!

Felix frowned as he felt the sky open in front of him and saw some strange silhouettes inhaling the red vapor that was appearing from the blood river being slowly burned.

What could the black bears ask from their ancestors?

Felix frowned as he looked at the remaining 15 black bears in front of him, he could see the bodies of the dead ones starting to sizzle and pop just like the ones of the civilians and he frowned, so much meat was going to waste!

He didn't have time to eat them as he had to defend and fight the other ten at the same time but as their numbers decreased the pressure that was on him slowly lifted and he could now eat defend and attack at the same time, as they died the soul technique that they employed also started to weaken.

Felix didn't need to use his stealth enhancing breath technique anymore as he easily flickered through existence around his alive enemies while taking bites out of the downed ones.

Felix's chubby cheeks twitched as he swallowed one rather big piece of meat and looked at the last remaining black bear in front of him fall to the ground while holding his neck.

He frowned as he felt his stomach hurt, did he eat too much? This never happened before.

He looked down at his paws as the world around him started to shake and darken, what happened to him?

Felix fell to the ground along with the bodies of the other dead bears who were sizzling and popping out of existence right now as they transformed into a blood mist that was absorbed by the silhouettes in the sky.

The bear shaman looked above the ground seemingly seeing Felix's figure and said:

"It seems that cat got what he deserved, the poison finally got into his bloodstream!"

It seemed that the shaman poisoned his own men and sent them to be slaughtered so Felix could eat them and die due to the poisoning!

Felix's body started to move around as he felt pain gripping his heart, while he wasn't conscious anymore his body was acting instinctively, his plump paws were slowly grasping his chest where his heart was supposed to be, the poison reached his heart already!

The poison was rather strong and hidden inside the bodies of the black bears, after Felix took a bite that contained the poison once it activated slowly as it seeped into his body and reached his bloodstream immediately taking effect!

Felix's body vomited a mouthful of green blood that started to sizzle on the ground leaving a small hole, the blood river was also slowly getting closer to him ready to engulf him along with the remaining patches of skin left behind from the dead black bear warriors.

Felix's heart stopped but before he fell unconscious he saw a 7th head appearing in the corner of his vision!

The blood river engulfed him as soon as his heart stopped and the location of his revival had been swapped.

Felix popped in existence near his old body inside the blood river as he quickly went towards his old body and took off the uniform and bag and tied them to his new body, he could feel that there were no changes to his stamina training and he could actually feel that all of his exhaustion disappeared and he was back into his prime form!

All the improvements towards his body weren't reset!

Felix didn't know what kind of trickery that God played on the universe for him to be able to do this but he felt strangely grateful for him at this moment, even though his mind was scared by the images he saw every time he died the ability was rather convenient, it was a decent trade-off but Felix would like to not use it if it was possible, he was still shivering inside from the images of what he saw, next time he would surely have to ask the God about what was all that about.

Felix's body disappeared from the blood river as he used his stealth and jumped out of it.

He looked around to see no one left alive, the entrance to the black bear's cave was still open but the hole from the boulder was seemingly filled with dirt now...

The blood river was slowly thinning as the mist from it was quickly absorbed by the silhouette in the sky.

After more time passed the blood river disappeared as the silhouette absorbed it all.

The silhouette then looked at the mountain that housed the bears and took something out of his body, it looked like a spear as he grasped it properly with his hand he threw it down from the skies!

A black spear made from unknown metal flew from the sky directly to the entrance of the black bear tribe's cave, it stopped on the spot where the hole Felix made was supposed to be and remained in the earth there.

Felix looked towards the spear and realized that their sacrifice gave them this spear, was it a strong weapon?

Felix decided to see for himself, he was rather close to the entrance anyway and it would help the efforts of the lion tribe if he stole the weapon that the enemy got by sacrificing so many of their civilians!

He suppressed his fear from seeing those images of death again and then his body disappeared as he used his stealth enhancing technique and quickly approached the spear!