I have Nine Lives

Chapter 109: Moral Dilemma versus promises of strength

Felix's moral dilemma stopped him from taking another step into the pool in front of him, the wisp was quite confused as he looked at Felix struggling to make a decision.

Why wouldn't he go in?

The two medicinal pills that Felix gave him were already hovering above the wisp and it was ready to throw them into the pool to start the chain-reaction needed to create the contract between them.

"Come on... actually, I forgot to ask your name, but come on just jump into the pool and we will be able to make the contract, you looked really happy about being able to sense and control natural energy, why would you hesitate now?"

The wisp was trying to talk Felix into doing it as he wanted to become a fleshly being really badly, he wanted to experience things that he had never felt before and he could only observe those things from a distance.

The wisp nudged Felix from behind as it said:

"Come on go in, you won't feel anything bad when the contract takes part, you just have to sign it."

"I..."

Felix decided to be truthful with the little bundle of energy:

"I don't know if I can do it."

The wisp's high-pitched voice sounded lost:

"Why? There is no one around, I could have felt their life energy and warned you, come on I'm not trying to fool you here, you will truly get the ability as long as you make that contract with me!"

The wisp was trying its best to convince him everything was genuine.

However, Felix told him:

"It's not that I don't believe you but... where has this blood come from?"

"Hmm, so that's what you fleshly beings call the physical part of natural energy? Blood?"

"Well I could guess it came from the rabbit tribesmen who were sacrificed here, I could hear their shouts of pain with the help of the tree's roots."

Felix cringed a bit as he looked at the wisp and asked:

"And you didn't do anything to help them?"

"Well, why should I? They were all weaklings not worth my contract, they had a low amount of natural energy in their body."

Felix sighed and realized that something was wrong with him, why was he caring about people that he didn't even know? Regardless if they were innocent or not, they were already dead, could the trauma that Shima had inflicted on him be deeper than he thought, besides the fact that he couldn't torture other people?

Maybe he triggered some type of empathy in him?

Up till now, he had very few bouts of empathetic feelings and they were mostly quite weak due to his inhibited feelings but Shima's actions made him think about others and put them through the same thing he went through thus realizing that they wouldn't like it.

He put himself in others' shoes and vice versa and realized things a little better. But after he realized this thing he also felt that it was a mistake to kick away such a golden opportunity for the sake of some dead strangers.

While he would empathize with them that didn't mean that he liked it.

He actually quite disliked the feeling especially since it was towards people he never even seen once in his life!

He wanted to get rid of this hidden trauma as quickly as he could, however, he wasn't really sure how but the first step was always getting stronger!

He slowly started to dip into the blood pool as the wisp became happy while following him inside.

He threw the two pills that hovered above him into the pool as it started to bubble, the blood heating up slowly but surely...

Felix felt strange as the wisp deepened the connection between them while absorbing the surrounding blood into its gaseous form.

He felt something fully connecting with his soul the more he stood in that blood... it was some information, the wisp was sending him information on how to control the natural energy, along with an explanation of what natural energy truly was.

To put it bluntly, natural energy was the combination of body and mind combined with the surrounding hex energy the elements could be controlled based on the user's bodily talent.

Actually the stronger the wisp the better ability wasn't the truth, even the wisp itself didn't know about this but the only thing that mattered was the body of the user, Felix could understand it as he had a physical body and the wisp didn't so he didn't understand that part.

But even though the stronger wisp the stronger the ability wasn't entirely true there was something to it as it wasn't entirely false either.

He could feel his body quickly getting stronger under the connection between him and the wisp as he was filtering the blood and giving him 50% of the medicinal power that was useful to him while the other half went to the wisp.

His body started to crack as his muscles slowly inflated then deflated like a balloon until they were of normal sizes, his height and weight were also slowly getting reduced before he was the size of an average dog but now he was slowly getting compressed back to his normal cat height.

His immense weight was also slowly being reduced reaching normal levels for a human but still very heavy for a cat.

However, even though these aspects of him were reduced he could feel his body bursting with strength!

He tightened the pearl necklace around his smaller neck as the special bag on his back slowly adjusted itself as well.

He closed his eyes as he felt the contract between him and the wisp appearing in his mind. After he read carefully through it he signed it with his soul binding them together, him as the master and the wisp as the friend/servant.

The wisp sent out happy vibes from its soul as it quickened the absorption of the surrounding blood.

Felix slowly felt his body reaching a plateau however he realized something as he started breathing in and out, this was the best situation to fully master the strength breathing technique! He had already mastered the stamina breathing technique improving his stamina by a whooping 1.30x in total, he still didn't know how that was calculated but Catro sounded really sure when he explained it to him.

The strength breathing technique required him to temper his whole body using the hex energy but he could substitute the hex energy to create the formation on his muscles using the blood!

Normally his body couldn't get strengthened anymore and the blood would be wasted on him but with the breathing strengthening technique he would be able to break through his bodily limits!

He started to breathe according to the instructions in the strength breathing technique as the blood that was given to him by the wisp was being focused towards all of his body's muscles, slowly but surely a white formation started to appear over them, the formation looked like spiked chains that surrounded his muscles.

He could feel the stages of the white breathing technique being completed quickly as he ran through the 1st, 2nd,3rd.... until he reached the peak 9th stage, he was even ready to break into the green aura state!

However he didn't do it, he already completed the stamina breathing technique and now he was done with the strength breathing technique, he only had the soul, intelligence, and endurance left. He had already started on the intelligence one and he was at the first stage, however, the surroundings weren't good for the training of this breathing technique.

His notion of time was slowly cut off as he trained and unknowingly to him the others had already passed the bridge!

****************

"This is strange, Felix hasn't reported in a very long time and the connection to his communication stone had been cut..."

Landers muttered to himself as he kept a hand under his chin and waited.

"Felix isn't a tardy person, did he get caught up in something? Could he have been found out?"

It was a very low chance of it happening but Landers thought that Felix had been captured after he made a mistake, it couldn't be helped, it took them around half a month to cross the bridge with the whole 150,000 troops and there hadn't been even a word coming from Felix in all of this time!

He sighed as he waited for a few more hours before shaking his head, he didn't want to lower their morale so he didn't tell the troops about what happened to Felix but he couldn't fool Manitola and Lindo as they insisted on asking what happened:

"Well it's just my conjecture but I think he might have been captured while he tried to scout the villages we have targeted."

"It's impossible... the snail tribe is extremely slow, there was no chance he would have been caught by them and the woodpecker tribe while very territorial they aren't very strong, even if they found Felix they would have just chased him away, but there are also chances new technological traps had been put up around their tribes..."

Landers asked:

"So it's more likely that the woodpecker tribe caught him?"

"Yeah, while the snail tribe has one deadly ability it would be useless against Felix with their slow speed."

Landers cracked his knuckles as he said:

"Then we shall start with the woodpecker tribe first."