Flow of Existence

Seeing the twelve attackers draped in red and the village burning down before him Cantor realized what had happened. He had been had. Tamp had clearly let his presence out on purpose to lure Cantor, who was the strongest fighter in the village, out to fight him. In the meantime the actual raid on the village would start, more or less unnoticed because the person with the strongest senses was occupied with the battlefield.

If Tamp won then everything would have gone exactly to plan, but as a backup plan he would shoot out a stream of smoke into the air if he was on the verge of dying so people could come to support him. 

Cantor suspected from the looks of the twelve people in front of him that everything had not gone to plan, they had not expected Tamp to lose. And even if he lost they probably had expected to be able to support him before he could die, but Cantor had twisted his head off without a second thought because of urgency.

Despite the distraught looks of fear on his enemies faces Cantor was mad, very mad. And he made no attempt to hide the fact. His heavy presence swept over his enemies like a tidal wave, they could feel his anger as if it was hanging in the air.

Cantor saw one of them freeze up, that was a mistake he shouldn't have made. Cantor dashed over with all his speed and cleanly beheaded him with a wave of ash he quickly formed.

The remaining eleven shuddered but didn't take long to react, the two closest people to the beheaded man jumped towards Cantor while the rest got into position to support them.

The unit had clearly worked together before, their coordination was very good.

Cantor's mind quickly moved to how he could exploit this fact, but the group of attackers didn't give him a chance to think. A punch was coming straight for his gut and another was coming for his side. Meanwhile others had circled behind him effectively cutting off dodging backwards.

Cantor decided his side took priority, after the devastating blow he had taken from Tamp it couldn't be hit again. He twisted his body, the punch that had first been about to hit his gut now hitting his other, still undamaged side, and blocked and dislocated the upper arm of the person attacking his side.

The attacker screamed in pain and jumped backwards. His disfigured arm waved in the wind.

Cantor still took a heavy hit to his side making him step back. The attackers did not miss this chance, he got attacked from three sides this time.

One attacker was trying to sweep him off his feet with a devastating kick, the other two just tried attacking both of his sides.

Cantor tensed his hands and formed a wall of ash, blocking off one of the attacks aiming at him. He jumped up avoiding the sweep, but instead of avoiding the last attack he calmly took it.

His side screamed in pain from being hit twice in short succession but he formed another stream of ash, making it as sharp as he possibly could. He shot it downwards towards the now flailing leg, cutting clean through it.

The attacker screamed and stumbled, a stumble that would cost him his life.

Cantor shifted his body and rapidly descended upon the stumbling attacker unleashing a devastating punch on his head, shattering his skull.

The air of the battlefield suddenly changed, the ten remaining attackers looking horrified at how their comrade's head had exploded into gruesome pieces.

Cantor had done this on purpose of course, he expected the twelve, now ten, to be good friends of each other. Killing his opponents as gruesomely as possible would make them lose reason to either fear or rage. 

Fear would make them unable to properly engage while rage would make them throw away their lives in a meaningless attack to avenge their horribly murdered friend.

And it definitely had an effect, Cantor could feel the fear, rage and sense of loss and losing their friend coming from his attackers. He even saw one of them, he seemed to be the youngest, gagging in the back. A little vomit came out before he dazedly got back on his feet.

But when he got back on his feet he was met by a sharp stream of ash, which cleanly decapitated him.

Cantor let out a bellowing laugh, letting it echo over the battlefield. The village still burning in the background.

He truly seemed like a madman now, but he wasn't the only one who was mad on this particular battlefield.

Two attackers dashed at him, their eyes burning madly with rage, the rage clouding their judgement. Cantor had no time to dodge these attacks, he took them on with their full force, these were suicide attacks.

One of the most scary enemies to face was one who was ready to throw his life away, but in this case Cantor was so overwhelmingly stronger than them it didn't matter. This is what he wanted.

He took the two heavy attacks, twisting his body to make them avoid his battered and bruised sides as much as possible and grabbed both of his attackers, holding them in an iron grip.

Breaking their arms with his grip alone he pulled them closer and plunged his elbows in both their backs pinning them to the ground.

Then he beheaded them swiftly with two streams of ash, turning the twelve into seven.

The remaining seven seemed to be the strongest out of the original twelve, even though they all were around the same strength. But these seven had managed to keep their wits about them and hadn't lost themselves to rage or fear.

The remaining seven seemed to quickly form a strategy; three people attacked from different directions while four cut off the escape routes. 

This strategy was surprisingly effective, Cantor had taken multiple dire hits earlier and he wasn't holding up well. Fighting against seven different coordinated people at the same time was getting to him.

Unable to dodge, he took a couple more punches to the body, when suddenly he felt something sharp twist at his side, it was a knife.

Usually knives would be unable to hurt him, he could strengthen his body proficiently enough with Flow to make the blade useless. But now because he was tired the sharp object stung inside his already aching side.

Cantor let out a deafening roar, he started shooting out ash uncontrollably, just hoping he would hit someone.

Against a much stronger opponent like Tamp this would have never been an option but his current attackers would be vulnerable against the streams of ash formed by Cantor.

Cantor didn't want to do this earlier, he was sure he was going to need his innate element to defend the village later. But there would be no point if he died in this fight before he could even start defending the village. He would run dry his innate element and maybe even Flow reserves here, putting all he had on the line to kill these remaining attackers.

Ash flakes flew through the air scraping across the attackers as they frantically tried to dodge or take cover.

Two attackers fell to the ground seemingly unable to withstand the flurry of ash being thrown at them. The other five were heavily wounded.

One of the five still standing attackers had a mad look on his face. "Shit, if we are going to go down here anyways we will at least take you down with us!"

The man was seemingly the leader of the team as all five still standing attackers swiftly dashed towards Cantor in what seemed to be a suicide attack.

Their movements were slow, if Cantor was in top condition he could've easily dealt with all five of them without receiving a single wound. But Cantor was not in top condition.

Cantor too, moved slowly. He could maybe avoid taking a hit from two or three of the five heavily wounded attackers rushing at him but he couldn't dodge them all. He had to compromise.

He shifted his body and let the last bits of Flow he still had left in him power it up as much as possible.

He took the first two attacks that were coming at him, a blade slash and a devastating punch to his gut. But he didn't let these attacks get the better of him.

He swiftly moved to intercept one of the two that had just attacked him, the one that had slashed him. When he caught up to him he crushed his throat and killed him permanently.

He swiftly took the knife out of the attacker's hand, taking it for himself.

Because of the kill he felt new Flow entering his body, with the quick burst of power he dashed over to the second person that attacked him and slashed his throat with the knife he had just picked up.

More Flow entered his body, but at the same time three people caught up to him.

A kill wouldn't instantly give you access to all the Flow the killed being had. It would probably only give about a quarter of what your attacker still had left. And since these attackers were pretty much dried up themselves they didn't yield Cantor a lot of Flow he instantly got access to.

But the power boost was enough to make it out of here alive it seemed, as he swerved in between two attacks making them miss. The third attack landed on his now purplish looking carved out side. 

Cantor pivoted and plunged his knife deep in the back of one of his attackers' heads. Now only two were left standing.

The two attackers wasted no time and pounced on him going all out in bashing his sides.

Cantor wailed, his sides hurt an insane amount, the torture was almost unbearable.

One of the attackers screamed. "Die you filthy beast, this is for my friends!"

Those were the last words that he ever spoke as Cantor finally managed to slit his throat with the knife.

He then felt multiple stings in his side, the last remaining attacker had plunged their knife into him multiple times.

The attacker screeched loudly. "Die you monster!"

Cantor screamed as he twisted his body and knocked out the last remaining attacker with a devastating punch.

Upon closer look it had been a girl. Probably desperately stabbing the, in her eyes, monster that had murdered all her friends in front of her eyes.

Cantor snorted as he finished off the girl without a sliver of hesitation. "You were the ones who attacked our village, damn it."