Flow of Existence

Nash had lost himself to murderous rage. He truly was like a wild animal driven by instinct solely to kill right now.

After having grieved his father he had made his way around the village when he had suddenly ran into some raiders, but what he heard from them shocked him to his very core.

Nash had hid himself while listening to the raiders describing their special capture target. And from their description it could only be one person.

Why were they after his friend now? What did Kes do to deserve any of that? And why were they seeking out him specifically?

Those thoughts churned through his head, while, before he knew it, he had already pounced on one of the attackers and ripped out his throat.

It was the one that seemed like the leader and also the one that had talked about his friend, it only felt natural for Nash to kill him first.

The two men following behind him showed immense looks of shock on their faces. 

One of two, the one who had been silent the whole time so far, hurled at the sight of their leader being brutally murdered.

The other one was seemingly more experienced as he reacted almost instantly and took out a blade from his robes.

This usually would have been the right decision against a child like Nash as children had vulnerable bodies that could easily be sliced apart by blades. But in this case it was a mistake.

Nash had inherited a gigantic Flow pool from his father and was putting his all into strengthening his body.

Even though your Flow pool didn't affect your proficiency Nash could pretty much strengthen his body at his full proficiency at all times right now. 

And because Nash was one of the, if not the most proficient kid of his generation, his Flow proficiency was nothing to scoff at.

Nash pressed off of the floor with his hands and feet, truly like a wild animal, and jumped towards the man that had drawn his blade.

He decided the biggest threat took the most priority, or maybe his mind just simply attacked whoever was closest right now.

The man began wildly slashing his blade trying to kill the beastly child that had attacked them and killed their leader.

Nash took the slash but it was shallow, he was upon the man before he could deal any real damage to him. The wound still hurt a whole lot but Nash simply ignored it and suppressed the pain.

Bashing into the man with his full body weight made him stumble and both of them fell to the ground.

Nash was on top of the man now and unleashed a flurry of immensely powerful punches on the man's skull.

He kept bashing his face in until there was not nothing but a bloody pulp left. 

Nash sighed and looked up, seemingly having calmed down by taking all his anger out on the man's face.

He realized the third man had made a run for it or was hiding somewhere. Nash could no longer detect his presence or see him anywhere anymore.

When he looked down again he felt disgusted. Disgusted with what he saw and disgusted with himself. But all of that wasn't important right now, he decided to make his way towards Kes' house as quickly as possible.

He needed to rescue his friend no matter what it took, he desperately wished for his friend to be safe.

He dashed off in the direction of Kes' house with nothing but pleading thoughts in his mind.

…

Flakes of ash flew through the air as they collided with lumps of magma.

The magma was being drowned out by the sheer amount of ash flying throughout the air in a wild storm.

The gray hurricane swept up the entire terrain as it ravaged the already desolate land. 

Within the hurricane two figures could be spotted; they were Frax and Romun.

The old village chief was, needless to say, the cause for most of this destruction; it was clear to see why they had decided to move away from the village.

If they had stayed within the village it would have been destroyed in a matter of seconds. Both of the fighters simply possessed the power to do so.

The village chief's hands were tensed up to the limit as he kept forming and controlling the gigantic mass of ash. He was desperately sweeping away every piece of magma Romun had formed.

Magma was definitely a very strong innate element, it could cause almost limitless destruction. And Romun was great at using it too, he didn't shoot it out at random but only when gaps showed within the old village chief's defenses.

The village chief almost left no gaps, though, and every gap that was formed would be patched up just as quickly.

Romun moved strategically over the battlefield trying to get into good position to burn the village chief. He clearly had a lot of experience on the battlefield, but he couldn't compare to the old village chief.

The old man, who seemed to have no business fighting any battles, was outmaneuvering him at almost every turn. He blocked him with waves of ash or positioned himself perfectly to counter whatever plan Romun had begun forming before he even put it into action.

The hurricane of ash kept sweeping against Romun's body but it didn't seem to phase him at all. His Flow proficiency was easily good enough to resist this amount of damage. 

This was another disadvantage the ash innate element had, Romun shuddered at the idea of having to face a hurricane of magma instead.

But, because Romun had to constantly keep up his body strengthening at a high level of proficiency to block the incredible amount of attacks coming from every direction, the battle had turned into a battle of attrition. Both of them seemed to be fine with this fact.

Romun's Flow pool just needed to be larger than the amount of innate element the old village chief possessed. Romun needed to quickly get rid of as much of the ash flakes as possible so he could bury the old man in magma afterwards.

Meanwhile the village chief just needed Romun's Flow pool to run dry so he could kill him with the immense amount of wounds the incoming ashen hurricane would deal him.

The biggest uncertainty within this plan was Romun's innate element: if he possessed enough he could still overwhelm the ashen hurricane with his magma, after which it would become a simple fight against each other.

The village chief felt confident in this aspect too, so he decided a battle of attrition was the best plan against this overwhelmingly strong opponent.

Romun laughed wildly as he formed a gigantic stream of magma.

"Interesting, very interesting. Show me what you got, old man, don't let the old generation disappoint me."

…

When Nash arrived at Kes' house he found pretty much what he had expected but yet not hoped to see, simple burning ruins. There was nothing left of the house he had often visited to hang out with his best friend. 

He had talked with Yosen and Nora, Kes' parents, often here too. They were nice people who had taught him a lot, especially Nora. Nora, the kind teacher that taught them all about the world, languages and all types of interesting stuff in the classrooms of the academy. The classrooms of the academy which, no doubt, would be burned down to a crisp now too.

So why was it, why, why, why. Why did he see Nora's head there resting in the hand of a one armed man.

There was nothing of her body left, just a simple skull presumably ripped off the corpse of his kind teacher.

The muscular brown haired man had an angry expression on his face. He was incredibly pissed.

Nash could guess why, the man's stump was still bleeding profusely. Nora must have ripped his arm out before he defeated her.

Nash knew Nora wasn't weak, she was a teacher at the academy after all. She had also traveled far across the world and fought against many beasts. So the brown haired man holding her skull must be incredibly strong himself too.

"The sand brown haired kid isn't here you say?" The brown haired man grumbled to one of the other raiders.

Nash suddenly realized why they had been here, they too wanted to claim the bounty on Kes' head.

He heaved a sigh of relief that his friend wasn't here, he hoped he had gotten away earlier.

There was also the option that he had already been captured, but Nash decided to stay optimistic for now.

He glared at the one armed brown haired man. He needed to fall here so that Kes would be able to get away safely. Nash also had not forgiven him for murdering his kind teacher. 

He was also looking for some revenge on some more of the filthy raiders for both raiding the village and killing his father.

Murderous intent rose up within Nash.

This turned out to be a mistake. The brown haired one armed man twisted his neck in the direction where Nash was hiding.