Beaten back for the first time (part 1)

Felix took out his communication stone from his special bag and started to talk into it:

"Hello, hello? Felix here, I have a report for Shaman Siracha."

"Siracha here, how are things at the elephant tribe, Felix?"

"Things aren't good Shaman, all of our troops were annihilated, I think the general overseeing was either capture or he fled, the captains who were assigned here are also dead... I sensed some corpses who had a higher composition of hex energy inside of them among the normal ones around."

Siracha calm voice could be heard coming from the stone that he kept clenched into his paw:

"Anything else special that you have to tell me?"

Felix frowned, did he already know about this? Why was there no reaction? Or did he realize that this would happen the moment he sent the troops to the elephant tribe?

Felix decided to not question him at the moment and said:

"I have made contact with another God chosen."

A brief silence descended upon Felix's surroundings as no words came out of the communication stone before an equally calm voice came out:

"Have you fought with him? What are his abilities? How old is he? What's his gender? How strong is he compared to you?"

Felix felt a little bit baffled by the quick fired questions but responded accordingly:

"Yes I have, his abilities were quite strange, he had a barrier and could exert pressure using his trunk which was colored green, he could also revive just like me but it seems he only has 2 lives, I'm not sure how old is he but he is around my age I guess? He is male for sure, as for how strong... I guess he could be my equal but he doesn't have much experience in fighting."

Siracha's voice came out as soon as Felix finished his report:

"I will make sure to get there as quickly as I can with the main army, you make sure you keep yourself safe along with Lindo, I'm sure you made him retreat before you engaged the God's chosen of the elephant tribe, right?"

Felix responded affirmatively then asked a question:

"How fast do you think you would arrive at the tribe?"

A chuckle could be heard coming from the other side of the communication stone as Siracha's voice came out:

"We should arrive by tomorrow at dawn, just wait there and keep yourself at full stamina because our next fight will be the hardest that we will have ever experienced since we have arrived on the Tarot continent!"

Felix closed the communication stone link after he finished the conversation and started to slip away from the fringes of the city and ran through the battlefield full of bodies to meet with Lindo.

Lindo was quite far away from the battlefield but he still came forward as quickly as he could as he saw Felix appear, he came towards him with a worried expression on his face as he asked:

"What happened?"

After Felix explained everything to him Lindo frowned as he told him:

"I already explained the former situation to the shaman, that could be why he didn't sound surprised by what happened, as for the other things, everything will turn ugly at the moment Siracha arrives!"

Felix nodded, Lindo seemed a bit worried as he asked:

"Did you scout out anyone else besides the God chosen?"

Felix frowned, he didn't have time to do anything else after he fought that elephant, he couldn't scout out for more dangers, if he went now he would surely be ambushed and he would lose a life for nothing, there was a chance he could also be trapped and get all his lives exhausted!

Who knew what other aces up their sleeves the elephant tribe had? After all, they had killed a lot of people, the bodies on the battlefield numbered up to 2,000 or so and they were could all be called elites in any other tribe!

There was also a general overseeing the battle on this part, his body couldn't be found among the dead so that meant his body was either taken or he was captured alive, after all, elephants didn't like to eat meat so he couldn't have been eaten, maybe his body was taken to be experimented on if he wasn't alive...

But one thing was certain, they had a person with shaman-like strength in their village!

Time passed by very quickly as Felix waited for the reinforcements, he couldn't train nor waste his stamina so he meditated, it was something that calmed his mind and body at the same time while keeping his focus sharp, he wasn't a fan of meditation as entering the trance-like state would take al to of time that he could use to train his body, but considering he was forbidden from training his body at this point, and he couldn't enter his mindscape as he would use too much time sleeping, he had to go with meditation. He learned how to meditate briefly after he finished refining his soul and it helped a little bit, it was a stance between being in his mindscape and being in his body, it felt quite nice.

Seeing Felix's meditative state made Lindo not know what to do, he didn't know how to meditate, he couldn't sleep because he was way too tense, and he couldn't train so he couldn't do anything, so he was really frustrated because of that.

Since he didn't know how to meditate he decided to mimic Felix's action and air as he tried to meditate as well.

Lindo failed to meditate even though 5 hours passed and he could only look at Felix's sage-like face as he meditated there as a monk.

Lindo's soul wasn't as stable as Felix's as he didn't do any soul training up till now, even though Felix's soul was injured during the transfer between dimensions, due to his fix, it became stronger and more stable than some of the spiritually weaker beings in this world.

Felix woke up to the sound of troops marching, he got up from the ground and looked towards the horizon as he saw a bigger army than the one used at the black bear tribe come running towards him and Lindo.

Felix frowned, did they have such a big reserve of people? They were almost equal to the army they used when they fought the tiger tribe!

But he realized that a lot of them were rather young after he did a scan on their faces and bodies, they were all recruits!

What was Siracha thinking? Recruits versus a tribe that could be considered one of the strongest on the continent?

They were all cannon fodder ready to die!

Felix wasn't a saint or anything, but he didn't like to see endless deaths, also their deaths wouldn't be useful for his ability at this point as he already had 9 lives, their souls couldn't be considered strong either so a lot of them would have to die for him to gain 1 life. It just wasn't worth it. They were needless deaths ready to happen!

Siracha appeared with the thunderclap as he looked Felix and Lindo up and down then nodded, Felix got closer to him and asked:

"What's with the big fanfare... there are a lot of recruits here and they wouldn't be useful in the battle."

Lindo looked over as he realized that what Felix said was the truth, he couldn't see as far as him but now that the army got closer he could see that they all had relatively young faces, they were most likely conscripted, there was no chance for them to have left their homes willingly while being so young.

Lindo didn't know what to say as he waited for Siracha's explanation.

Siracha looked over his army and said directly:

"Unfortunately they needed to come, however, they won't be put at the forefront of the battle as the older ones will charge first, the younger ones have been taken in, to mane our new weapons that have just come in from the special tribe that created our spatial bags, it cost us a fortuned but now that we have the source of Dark Hex Iron in our hands we could make the trade with the tribe!"

Siracha waved his hand as all of the younger tribesmen took out something from their backs, they were circular tubes made out of dark metal, Felix frowned, what could these things do?

He saw that they were heavily encrypted with Hex runes so that meant they would be using the surrounding hex energy to power themselves up and not the hex energy of the user.

Since they wouldn't fight at the forefront Felix became more relaxed as he waited for Siracha to announce his presence.

Unknowingly to Felix he was getting a little bit too attached to the lion tribe's wellbeing and this wasn't a good thing for him considering he was an outsider, cousin tribe or not, it was unknown why, maybe it was because he saw some of them as Lindo, friends or comrades, or he just took pity on them, one way or another his human emotions were taking the better of him even though his meditation was supposed to curb his emotions a bit.

Siracha arrived at the battlefield full of corpses as he looked down at all of his downed warriors and shook his head, even though he was a man who used his own race to fulfill his goals he wasn't truly evil, he had his mission and emotions as well, while he did use a lot of lions for the sacrifice, they were mostly the untalented ones that were below the captain level, he was practically weeding out the weak and untalented while also making use of them.

So in a businessman's view, what Siracha had done was completely good as long as he got a profit out of it!

Siracha decided to give them a proper burial as his foot struck the ground creating a big hole that absorbed all of the bodies of the dead tribesmen inside it, then with a wave of his hand the hole was filled up.

He looked towards the village of the elephants as he said:

"Don't you want to welcome me Mashi Musho?"

A guttural cough could be heard coming from the direction of the elephant tribe's village, the strange thing was that it resounded through the now empty battlefield, and into the ears of the current army at the same time, it was like the thunderclap before the storm!