I have Nine Lives

Chapter 104: Going forth to capture a traitor

The moment Lindo and Manitola entered the village they met up with Landers and Felix who were still chatting, Felix found out that communicating with someone with a better grasp of the breathing training technique would give some insights that speed up his absorption of the surrounding hex energy but not by much.

It wasn't even 10% compared to the pearl that he had as a necklace but it was still an improvement so he was rather happy about that, it could be seen from the way he was bouncing up and down.

"Haha I understand you are excited by learning a few tricks about the breathing technique but the reinforcements are almost here so we will have to go soon."

Felix nodded and said:

"Then I'm going to practice for a while, call me when we are ready to go."

Landers smiled and shook his head as he watched him go to train, for a cold-blooded killer he acted really child-like.

Landers's attention was taken by Lindo and Manitola who walked into the village, Lindo looked a little bit more upbeat than usual so Landers understood what happened as he came towards them.

He elbowed him in the shoulder as he looked at Manitola and Lindo:

"So you two umh.. came back a little bit later compared to the others."

Lindo nodded and said with a smile on his face:

"Yeah, we are even closer right now."

Lindo then put his hand over Manitola's shoulder and took her closer to him.

"I understand you are young and have a lot of pent-up energy but we are in a war situation so I want you two to control yourselves ok?"

Manitola turned red while Lindo coughed a little bit as he said:

"We will make sure to control ourselves."

Landers smiled as he ruffled Lindo's hair and told him he could go.

Lindo and Manitola started to walk away trying to find a concealed place where they could rest before they would leave.

Felix was at the top of a house as he breathed in and out the hex energy in the air going directly into his body.

He looked down as he saw Manitola and Lindo rushing somewhere.

Felix wasn't sure what they were rushing about for, was there another enemy attack and they identified it before everyone else?

He got down from the top of the house and followed them slowly while in stealth, he wanted to take the attackers by surprise!

Felix followed them until they stopped around the southern part of the walls and they sat down under the shade of the walls talking to each other:

"You are lucky that my acting skills are so good, sigh I'm sorry that I have made you go through that."

Manitola shook her head as she sulked near him, she didn't like what he did to her but what else could she do besides accept it?

It was for her own good anyway.

If he knew about a better solution he wouldn't have been so extreme but how could he placate both sides? Manitola wanted to leave but if she left she would surely leak information that would be extremely detrimental to the army, even if she wanted to or not.

Lindo sighed as he started to meditate to calm his nerves, he had taken this hobby after seeing Felix doing it so many times.

Felix appeared at the top of another house as he looked at them, they were just relaxing but his sharp hearing had captured some of the conversation.

"Acting skill? Why would Lindo need to act?"

Felix thought for a short while before he dropped down from the house silently and approached them.

Manitola shook Lindo seeing that Felix was approaching.

Lindo woke up and smiled at Felix as he waved at him and asked:

"Yo, why are you looking for us? Are we ready to leave?"

Felix shook his head as he asked:

"I'm just curious about something... why did you have to act earlier?"

Lindo started to sweat as he laughed and said:

"Me acting? I'm just doing what I usually do, you must have misunderstood."

Felix shook his head as he said:

"I heard you with my own ears when you said that you were acting... now tell me what's this all about."

Lindo cursed under his breath, while he had his guard up to see if anyone was following them Felix's stealth was still too advanced for him to do anything about it, and considering Felix wasn't attacking him he couldn't use his killing intent detection to sense him, while his newly improved killing intent detection was better than before it still only worked on things that are meant to injure him.

"I can explain Felix... I..."

Lindo was under much pressure so he couldn't really make up his mind on what to say, what can he say to Felix to make him leave them alone? He didn't have enough time for this...

Felix found Lindo's behavior rather strange as he took a few steps forward which made him almost jump.

He looked towards Manitola as he asked her:

"What's wrong with him?"

Manitola fidgeted under Felix's gaze then decided to say the truth:

"I... I tried to leave to my family and Lindo stopped me."

Felix cocked his head to the side and asked:

"So what's wrong with that?"

"I uh..."

Lindo came forward and explained for Felix:

"While it wouldn't be a bad thing normally, you have to consider our current situation first, her family might be made from civilians but what about the elders of her tribe who are in the military force? The moment she arrives she would surely be made to spill all of our information and secrets thus making things harder for us from now on. We cannot let her go."

Now that things were explained properly Felix nodded, he understood the problem at its root so he said:

"Well I guess it can't be helped and if Landers heard about it you would be in trouble."

Lindo nodded, it seemed that Felix understood, while he was rather smart when it came to fighting, his social IQ was rather low and he took some things literally.

"Ok since you know what happened you can go back now, we don't need you to attract more attention to us."

Felix nodded, he didn't have bad blood with Manitola so there was no reason to tattle on her and Lindo was his friend so helping him was normal under these circumstances.

Felix decided to go back to training his breathing techniques leaving the duo alone.

As Felix went back he thought a bit about what happened, Manitola wanted to go back? Was she really the traitor?

It couldn't be, she was the easiest to frame and considering how loyal Lindo was to the army he wouldn't have protected her if she was the traitor, after all, they were together almost 95% of the time so there was no chance for her to send out a message without Lindo seeing it.

While on the surface everything was looking okay, both Landers and Felix had already talked about the concern of the traitor, both of them were brainstorming a way to make him reveal himself and then capture him before he could send any more messages.

But it was easier said than done, there were 100,000 troops and the moment the reinforcements came which totalled around 300,000 more troops it would be even harder to catch the culprit.

Felix frowned as he jumped from house to house until he reached a place with good enough Sun and sat down to concentrate on his breathing exercises.

But it didn't take much time before Landers came to find him and said:

"Felix I think I have a lead on the traitor, it's rather crazy but after some investigation, I realized that the traitor is in the logistics team!"

Felix moved his head to the side and put on a confused expression on his face, no traitor? Then how did the mole people know about the capture of this village?

Landers took a communication stone out of his special bag as he cracked it with his fist, inside there was nothing as Hex energy left the stone, the engravings used for the communication stone to work were outside, why did Landers waste the communication stone?

"Seeing that you are confused I shall explain to you."

"The hex energy that left the communication stone isn't from its original creator which meant that the stone was tampered with."

"The communication stones are given by the logistics team who are creating them using their own hex energy as a key between, so the person who created this stone is the culprit!"

Felix nodded and asked:

"So who is it?"

Landers scratched his mane as he whispered:

"There are around 1,000 people in the logistics team that were sent with us but I know all of them by name so we can interrogate all of them and find out who was the one that betrayed us."

"I already invited all of the logistics team in the house of the mayor and I need your help, you need to enforce what I have done on the mole people on the most suspect people, and you can't refuse, there are too many people and I can't do it all by myself, the mole people were rather small so it was easier to torture all of them at the same time."

Felix frowned, mental torture was different from physical torture but considering it was a direct order from Landers... he decided to abide by it, maybe he could get over his trauma and get stronger this way too!