Reincarnated As A Lion In Another World

"I’ve never in my life felt so hurt before," Noel stated as he looked up at the dying figure of the blazing tiger.

At some point, two curved horns had grown out of the two sides of his head, giving off a green glow.

Currently, a mass of vines had sprouted out from the ground in a spiral form upward. At the end of the vines was the blazing tiger, struggling to breathe.

Vines tightened around his neck and body, squeezing the life out of him, literally.

"You of all people know that I must eliminate anything that is considered an obstacle, whether that thing is a friend or foe.

Did you really think your relationship with me would exempt you from the results? If so, then you thought wrong."

Noel’s gaze was cold, it would be hard to imagine that he was looking at a friend with these same pair of eyes.

"KAEL!"

A female voice rang out across the shattered plains, earning a puzzled gaze from Noel.

That name sounded familiar to him, he just couldn’t put his ’finger’ on where he had heard it from.

A shadowy figure slowly blurred into existence a few meters away from him.

"How did a tier 2 lioness come here?" Noel asked out loud. As the shadowy figure became clearer, he was able to instantly identify something about her.

She was a bit on the small side when compared to other lionesses who had awakened their lionheart, but she seemed to still be in her growing phase.

"Kael, it’s me!" A familiar voice entered Noel’s head. The lioness didn’t open her mouth to talk, rather, her words came in the form of soul frequencies.

Noel naturally understood everything she said, "Kael?" He frowned harder, he could feel a headache coming up.

"Kael, please stop, you’re hurting Katari," The lionesses said quickly, sounding like she was on the verge of crying.

"Katari?" Only now did Noel’s head clear up a bit. He looked at the blazing tiger he was trying to kill, only for him to see that his position was being overlapped by another figure.

Slowly, like a video glitch, the scene changed over and over again. He could see that he was holding Katari up in the air with his vines, and she was dying.

"What is this?" Noel asked himself, his voice shaking as he felt his sense of self slipping away.

"What is happening?" He asked again as the scene before his eyes continued glitching. He felt like he was waking up from a divine hangover, nothing was making sense.

He could see the reality he had known for so long fade away in front of him, being replaced by something else.

"Who am I?" He asked in a low shout. He had forgotten about the tiger completely, busy trying to grasp onto the broken pieces of his mind.

"You are Kael?" Priya said as she got closer to him. Seeing the vines wither away and Katari drop to the ground, she felt relieved.

Only now did Kael notice the things that had been holding his body down. Green vines had fastened themselves around his limbs and Diane along with Olivia were on his back.

Olivia seemed to be crying badly as tear marks had formed under her eyes. Diane just seemed to be trying to do her best to hold Kael down.

Despite all this, Kael had remained standing like it was nothing. But not for long.

Now that he was conscious of what he was doing again, the stress hit him like a freight train. He had used his powers beyond his limits.

His limbs gave way as he collapsed to the ground, "Who am I?" He kept asking himself.

Priya came closer to him until her nose was touching his nose. A small grey glimmer flashed before sipping into Kael’s mind.

Kael’s eyelids slowly came over as he became drowsy. He fought to stay awake but he didn’t know why he even wanted to stay awake.

Alas, he was tired, there was no atom of energy left to allow him to remain awake, and he couldn’t resist. He closed his eyes, falling into a deep sleep.

"His mind is strong, but not impenetrable. Hopefully, he’ll be stable once he wakes up." Priya said as she looked at the peaceful face of Kael.

Katari walked over with a limp, her fur was scattered and shabby, but she seemed fine mostly. "And what if he’s not?" She asked.

Her question sank the entire group into a period of silence, "We’ll be prepared," Diane said as she sprawled her body on the ground, exhausted.

Olivia hugged Kael’s neck with her chubby front paws, not willing to let go.

Katari sighed as she sat down not too far away from Kael, her eyes trained on his calm face.

"What caused him to behave like that?" Zabita asked. She had not bothered attacking Kael mostly because she was afraid of hurting him. His skin might be tough but it was questionable whether her metal claws would not seriously injure him. Kael got his own incredibly sharp claws from her after all.

"I’m not entirely sure," Priya shook her head, "He seemed lost for a moment, he was lost and didn’t know who he was for that period of time. It was almost as if he was reliving a past memory."

Priya’s observation confused the lot but they acted like they understood her. One after the other, they lay down next to Kael or near him.

Neither of them seemed particularly upset about what had happened, just confused and wary. Each of them had different thoughts about what happened.

#######

A few hours later.

Kael woke up to find something heavy resting on his neck. He turned his head to look at Olivia’s face right next to his.

Her puffy and fluffy cheeks were right by his side. He could feel half of her weight on his back but he didn’t move.

His eyes moved around, observing the sleeping lionesses around him. He remembered everything that happened, the memories came like water from a broken dam.

’Why would something like this happen?’ He wondered. It felt so unreal that he would lose his sense of self and identity all of a sudden.

’Noel is the one whose memories I usually sleep on. Could it be that my memories are overlapping with his?’

After some logical reasoning, he understood why what happened had happened in the first place.

Kael was only three years old with an added month as a lion. As a human, he was in his forties.

But his age as a human and a lion combined was not up to Noel’s age before he died, it wasn’t even up to a quarter.

Kael casually browsed through Noel’s vast amount of memories because of their mundane moments when he was asleep. The amount of memories he had gone through was worth more than a hundred years. Even if he couldn’t recall everything in detail, it was still so.

It was inevitable that he would at some point start behaving more like Noel and less like himself. Eventually, his memories would overlap with Noel’s memories, making him think he was Noel.

’I will have to hold up on brushing through those memories for some time. Or better still, hold off from Noel’s memories.’ He thought to himself.

He reminisced about that period of time he thought he was Noel, he truly was seeing the world from another perspective.

He remembered just before he was out to sleep, Priya had appeared and he addressed her as ’a tier 2 lioness’.

Kael naturally knew what this meant. The lion race had a power scaling system unique to them. He didn’t know what tier Noel had reached but he knew it was very high and also not at the peak.

The Highest Will said that Alan and Noel had been the strongest Lions ever, with Alan almost reaching the level of the Highest Will. That particular level of power was never specified.

What Kael knew however was that he and the Ol-mytee lionesses were currently at tier 2 and they weren’t even at the peak of tier 2.

Only after going through another evolution like they had after awakening their lionheart would they evolve into a tier 3 lion.

’There is a path to power, all that’s left is for us to follow it,’

Kael suddenly stood up, causing Olivia to roll to the ground. The sudden movement alerted all the lionesses as they looked at Kael warily.

"Kael?" Katari spoke into the telepathic channel.

"It’s me," Kael said, he looked at all of them with a sorry gaze, "I’m sorry about what happened," He said, even though he wasn’t feeling sorry.

As the leader of this small group, he had to learn how to apologize for his wrongs. Ego could get to his head and end up spoiling everything he was building. It was one of the things he learned from Noel.

The eight lionesses had a look of relief on their face after they heard Kael’s apology. For a second, they had been worried that Kael was becoming something that they wouldn’t be comfortable living close to.

Kael stayed there, conversing with the lionesses. Olivia was the most emotional of them all even though she had spent the least amount of time with him.

Kael told them that he was merely suffering from an identity misplacement and assured them that it would probably never happen again. He had to emphasize the ’probably’ in his words as even he wasn’t so sure about the future.

As they conversed, the tension between them gradually melted away. The next thing Kael knew was them opening up about many things all over again.

Their intelligence was still developing so it would be hard for them to react to anything that happened before like a normal person. Kael was thankful for this as it would allow him to build the image he wanted within their subconscious before their intelligence fully matured.

Even Nalii and Priya, who should be making more mature moves, still talked like teenagers most of the time. They easily believed everything that came out of Kael’s mouth, it was just for the time being.