I have Nine Lives

Felix slowly made his way to the podium as he overlooked the mass of people that were now below him. They were all looking at him with admiration and were waiting for Felix's speech with bated breath. The relatives of the dead people wanted to know what he thought about the people he fought with on the battlefield.

Their expressions were full of eagerness, but also sadness, as they looked at Felix. They were both mourning for their lost ones and happy they were still alive.

Felix cleared his throat as he decided to speak as formally as possible:

"I think it's very hard- for those that lost family members and close ones. My condolences go to every person that lost someone in this war. And I can say that I had fought with some mighty allies that I could entrust my back to."

"They were all hardened warriors that fought bravely in the war to protect the things they cared about, people that I can call my friends. And I'm really pained because those friends passed away..."

Suddenly a voice from the crowd was heard posing a question to Felix:

"If you are really so pained, why didn't you try to save them??"

It was obvious the question came from someone who lost their closed one and became irrational due to the pain. How could Felix save someone when he was being pushed around to fight the upper echelons of the enemy?

Felix identified the owner of the voice rather quickly. It was a short woman with wavy blue curly hair that had a dark dress and a funerary cap on her head, she was clutching the hand of her young son as she was glaring at him from the midst of the crowd. She was thinking that Felix couldn't identify her through the whole crowd.

Felix waved his hand, making her levitate towards him, along with her son.

She immediately panicked as she screamed:

"HELP!!"

Felix shook his head as she dropped on the podium near him. Her whole body was shaking as she hugged her son, and tried to put him behind her. She glared at Felix and said:

"Are you going to kill me? Because you weren't capable to save my husband?"

"Don't you have any shame? Hero?"

Felix shook his head as he gave her another look before looking back towards the crowd and saying:

"I have done my best, and I know the higher authorities had told you what had happened during the invasion I could barely fight to the end myself, it's not that I didn't want to save those warriors, but that I couldn't, and I'm actually quite ashamed of that."

Felix wasn't actually ashamed of that at all. He was only paying lip service for the president, and he couldn't have cared less about all of the fodder that died in the war.

But Felix became a rather good actor with time so he could fake quite a lot of emotions:

"I'm really sorry for what happened to your husband."

He turned back to the woman, who was still holding her son near her. Felix gave her a small bow and then looked towards the president.

The president coughed. And two bodyguards went to the podium to escort the woman down to the president.

The woman's eyes widened as she was so near the president, and her figure almost dropped due to emotion. The president was the perfect man in many women's and even men's eyes.

He was both charismatic and powerful along with having a great sense of humor. His public persona was practically the macho man that everyone dreamed about, that one guy who would swoop you off your feet and take you to dinner before making you his dinner.

Felix ignored the shenanigans that were now going below the podium. Felix looked towards the president because he wanted him to give her compensation so she could leave. Some people wouldn't understand things even if explained countless times, and they were a pain in the butt to deal with. So it was better just to give them something, and let them be on their merry way.

"Now that this is finished, I would like to continue."

"The men and women that I fought on the battlefield were people of great moral stature, people that I admired until their last moments, and I can hopefully say that they will rest easy to know that the crisis had been averted. I hope that you will all pray for their souls and wellbeing in the afterlife, as so will I."

Felix bowed once again to the crowd as he was ready to get down the podium, only for his body to freeze for half a second. He looked towards a nearby building as a red dot appeared on his forehead, and a supersonic bullet was launched from a sniper's rifle, ready to pierce through his forehead and kill him.

Felix frowned as the bullet didn't even scrape his forehead's skin before he appeared at the top of the building, clutching the head of a faceless man who was trying to escape from Felix's grasp, only to realize that he couldn't and explode!

A shower of blood started to rain from the top of the building on the gathered crowd below, making them panic and try to run away.

However, the president immediately stabilized the situation as he created a good route of escape, and told them to go through there.

The president's lone eye narrowed as he looked around then at the top of the nearby building. Seeing Felix's annoyed look on his face as he flicked his palm away to clear himself of the blood mist.

Felix dropped from the building and appeared near the president as he threw him a rifle before saying:

"The person self-destructed after I caught him. I wonder who's so dumb to think that such weaponry would work on me."

The president frowned as he caught the weapon and analyzed it for a few seconds= before he threw it to one of his bodyguards.

"I... I don't actually know. This is one of the most common rifles in production, and it could be sold by any of the weapon manufacturers we have in the federation... the shooter had already suicided, so we don't actually have any leads..."

Felix didn't really care about any leads. Even if the humans had him in their crosshairs, there wasn't much they could do. If he wanted to, he could straight up destroy their civilization with his current strength and subordinates.

He was rather annoyed that he got targeted, right now. But he was sure it didn't come from the ruling party, so there was no reason to cut ties with the humans yet.

Felix had finished what he wanted to say, and the events were done, so he was ready to go back to the lion tribe.

He wanted to take one step forward and disappear, but suddenly his body faltered as he fell to his knees, the president tried to support him up, but the moment he touched Felix's body, he flinched as he looked at his burned hand.

Felix's body was burning brightly as flames started to grow out of him. On his forehead, where the bullet touched him, a fire lotus emblem appeared as Felix clutched his head in pain.

The bullet didn't contain any energy, nor did it feel dangerous at all to Felix. So why was this happening?

Suddenly, memories started to come back to Felix... when he had short-circuited Sindora's brain through his soul attacks, something happened...

He wasn't entirely sure what happened even when he went through those memories. But he was sure that the fire lotus tattoo on his forehead had to do something with her death.

He tried to erase it forcefully through his superior hex energy techniques, but he failed... it was like a brand that he couldn't get rid of.

A brand... a brand...

Felix suddenly got up and ignored the worried president as he disappeared, he was still in pain, but he was already accustomed to it.

He didn't go to the lion tribe as he went towards, arguably, the most intelligent race on the planet besides the humans. They were also experts on souls. The raven tribe.

The Haron continent was in the middle of the planet and the easiest to find, combined with Vangar's memories, Felix had easily found the location of the raven tribe.

The moment he arrived at the raven tribe. The people thought that a calamity arrived as a flaming meteor struck the place in front of their village.

However, when they took a better look, they realized that it was a stranger that was engulfed in flames, with a vivid fire lotus tattoo on his forehead.

The shaman of the raven tribe. The old man that had taken Manitola's superior as a slave appeared at the top of the tree which was the home of the raven's tribe village.

The tree was fairly tall, standing at around 5 kilometers in length and 1 kilometer in length. People with raven attributes were flying around before Felix's fiery figure appeared.

However, everything became deserted as the shaman appeared and questioned Felix:

"Outsider, who are you, and what are you doing near our village?"

Felix didn't beat around the bush as he transformed into his cat form, making the old man's eyes narrow as he realized who he was. He wasn't disconnected from the human tribe by much, so even though he didn't know Felix's human form, he did know that Felix had saved the planet.

Felix morphed back into his human form as he pointed towards his forehead and asked:

"Do you know anything about this tattoo?"

The old man squinted as he took a better glance at the lotus in question, then his eyes widened, and he stuttered:

"Go... Go... GOD-SLAYER?"

The last part of the stutter turned into a shout as the old man almost dropped down from the tree branch he was on.

The old man used his wings to regain his balance mid-air and took a bigger distance from Felix as if he was the plague.

Felix frowned as he looked at the scared old man. He needed answers, not a shivering grandpa!