I have Nine Lives

Chapter 3: First encounter with the cat tribe

Felix woke up then stretched his body as he lazily sunbathed at the top of the tree, while he sunbathed he also cleaned himself with his tongue.

Felix's stomach was requiring food again since Felix couldn't think about why he was hungry so often and only acted on instinct he just went with the flow and started to hop from tree to tree to find more prey.

Felix's speed increased again and it was even a little above a young horned rabbit now, but not by much, however, the increase would be a substantial improvement towards his fighting ability.

The horned rabbits were the weakest and most often found animals in the forest, they were the benchmark of the strength of the youths of some of the weaker tribes that lived around the forest area.

If a youth killed a horned rabbit by himself, then he would go through the adulthood ceremony and unlock his first special racial ability, most of these types of abilities would be tied to one's bloodline and race, so 90% of the tribe's people would have very similar abilities with common effects.

Felix dropped down from the trees after he found another horned rabbit, with his new speed and his overwhelmingly increasing hunger he dealt the rabbit a fast blow that immediately killed it considering that it wasn't an adult, as the stronger predator Felix won easily, the improvement of his body made it so that the younger rabbits wouldn't be able to kill him. He quickly got rid of the body by eating it.

Even though he wasn't killed by the rabbit he still was a little bit injured as small drops of blood dropped on the forest ground, Felix started licking his wound as he walked aimlessly in the forest.

Suddenly out of some nearby bushes some noises were heard as a wholly black cat jumped out, the black cat eyes widened in surprise and also puzzlement as it looked at Felix and it opened it's mouth and a feminine voice came out:

"Where are you from brother?"

Felix didn't know this type of speech so he only warily looked at the cat and smelled the air if it was a human he would have ran away by now but since it was a cat he decided to go forward and interact with it.

The black cat looked strangely at Felix as it didn't understand why would Felix not respond to her, the cat tribe being one of the weaker ones was tightly knit together with no internal struggle.

Felix went around her for a few times and the black cat said:

"Is there something wrong with you? Haven't you been sent to the forest to prove yourself?"

Felix was around 1 year old and 6 months, in human years he would be almost 18 to 19 years old.

The people of this world aged differently and Felix's body was accomodating to it, as long as he continued to eat beasts of this world he would adapt to the world and strengthen his body, so in theory, Felix was a youth comparable to the black cat in front of him, as long as his body fully adapted to this world he would start aging like a human and if he grew stronger he would even be able to live longer.

The black cat narrowed her eyes as she jumped backward, even though she never saw an orange furred clansman before, the body shape and looks couldn't be faked, she was 100% sure he was from the cat tribe, from what branch or where he was from it was a mystery, that's why she asked him, but he acted strangely to her, almost like he had no social etiquette or knew what personal space was.

Felix just walked closer to her but the black cat didn't know what he was up to so she ran away, Felix was puzzled as the black cat suddenly disappeared from his vision, he wondered where she would have run to but he ignored her afterward as his body needed food again.

Felix was started to get hungrier and hungrier as he ate more and more horned rabbits, at some point even after he ate one whole rabbit his belly was still rumbling!

However, there was a deep improvement to his speed and reaction time to the point that he could be able to easily fell an adult rabbit in one shot, he was still deadly to these type of rabbits as they had no defensive ability, his speed has increased by an extreme amount but that was the only thing that increased, the wounds that he sustained would also heal shortly after he finished eating a rabbit but he just ignored this type of thing, if he felt that he was hurt somewhere he would lick that place, if he didn't he would just laze around, but considering he was always hungry, he was now fully in predator mode constantly.

Felix started to realize with time that horned rabbits wouldn't fulfill his needs anymore so he wanted to eat something else, something that would make him feel full for a while, since he wasn't sure what else could he eat, he decided to use his instincts to fell the other weakest thing that was comparable to the rabbit but in a bigger size so he could eat more.

What he found was a yellow snake, it was almost 3 meters long and it slithered around the trees, this wasn't the first time that Felix was tree hopping but most of the time he would hide if he felt anything that would threaten him, but now he felt that the snake wasn't as threatening as before, he didn't know why but he believed in his instincts.

Felix stalked the snake for a while and suddenly attacked! His claws went directly for the head but the snake suddenly blew a fog of yellow towards the cat as it hissed and said:

"What's wrong with you cat trash?"

The yellow fog almost hit Felix but he felt that something wasn't right with it so he dropped down and avoided it, the combat instincts he got from fighting rabbits kicked in along with the newfound speed from eating them.

The snake's green pupils looked at Felix as it hissed and spat out more fog, Felix dodged it but the fog increased in quantity and some of it still touched his fur.

The yellow fog then started to spread on his fur quickly as it ate away at his skin and infiltrated into his body, it was highly corrosive poison.

Felix died shortly as he became a puddle of yellow not even leaving any bones behind.

The snake shook his head as he murmured to himself:

"This trash from the cat tribe, are you tired of living? Why don't you go and hunt horned rabbits?"

Suddenly he felt something was wrong as he looked behind him only to see a claw that went directly for his head, the claw went through as it blinded him taking both of his eyes out, Felix used his claws to slash more and more at the snake's head as it started trashing on the top of the tree, but after a while, it died.

Felix didn't know what the 5x heads that stood at the corner of his vision meant, ever since he came to this weird forest he could see x9 heads that resembled his but he looked at them for a while and then started to ignore them.

Felix looked at the snake's body and started to smell it, it looked at its head and then went to the tail and started to eat it from it, his stomach bulged as he ate the whole snake only leaving the head out, he smelled something wrong within the snake's open mouth.

Suddenly Felix became drowsy as he wanted to sleep, his body plopped down on the tree branch like a dead brick but he didn't die.

The snakehead with its open mouth and eyeless sockets was still looking in the same direction, it had rage and anger and bewilderment in its gaze, it remained in the same expression after it's death, it just continued to look to the horizon where more trees spanned.

Felix's body twitched and moved as it's elasticity and flexibility changed, his strength also increased by a little bit, but the biggest difference came to his brain, his small brain started to increase little by little as cognitive thoughts started coming to him, what he ate wasn't a simple forest snake, but a member of the snake tribe!

Felix didn't know nor did he care, he was hungry and he hunted, in the end, he killed him and got his prize of lunch.

The changes inside of Felix body came from some blue energy that sat inside the snake's body, every creature in the world had this type of energy inside of them, this was what lead them to evolve in their current forms that could be able to switch from their original animal forms to their hybrid humanoid forms.

This type of energy was now starting to gather and reconstruct Felix's body according to the bodies of the people that lived in this world, but the blue energy didn't stick inside his body like the natives, the energy was exhausted after it remodeled his insides and his stomach started to rumble again.

The stronger the body the more energy it needed to work, the more energy it needed the more Felix needed to eat, the more he ate the stronger he became, it was a continuous cycle of eating and sleeping that even if Felix knew about if he didn't want to die he would still need to continue it, who would know when this cycle would stop?

Felix woke up as some thoughts came to his brain:

"Where am I? Who am I?"

But then his brain went back to its primal instincts of self-preservation since he killed one snake he wanted to kill more!

The same snakehead from before sat there as it started rotting, Felix looked at it then he put his paw on it, the head fell from the branch into the forest.

Felix ignored the falling head as he started to search for more snakes, he was hungry and he needed to fulfill his stomach's needs!

50 Kilometers away from the forest a black cat returned to her tribe, the buildings were made from stone and it looked quite primitive, most of the people were in their humanoid form, some of them had white cat ears and tails, some black or brown, none of them had orange ears.

The black cat morphed into a young beauty around 18 years old, she wore a black skirt that neared her knees along with some black combat boots, under her skirt she wore combat pants, even though most of the buildings were primitive the cat tribe wore sophisticated clothes, unlike the bear tribe who wore crude clothes or from time to time no clothes at all.

The young woman entered the biggest building in the tribe and met with another cat man that looked be around 30 years old. She told him about this strange encounter with a clansman with orange-colored fur and how he acted extremely strange around her.

The cat man didn't know what to say as he started thinking about it but he came with a verdict very soon:

"You should go and take him to our tribe, who knows? Maybe he must have lost his memories, orange-colored fur is also extinct in our tribes, I heard a few legends about this type of fur but I will tell them to you later when you come back with him, maybe if he heard them as well some of his bloodline memories would be awakened. Go now and come back with him!"

The young woman nodded her head then bowed in a sign of respect of the cat man, afterward she left the building and turned back into her cat form as she started to run at quick speeds back into the forest.

The cat man sighed as he looked at her receding form from the door of his house and muttered:

"An orange furred tribesman huh?"