Flow of Existence

As Kes slowly awoke he felt the hard rock wall of the small cave he was resting in behind him. His head hurt from the uncomfortable sleeping position. It made sense, rock wasn't the most comfortable material to lay on.

It didn't help that he was covered in his own puke, blood and all kinds of other liquids either, but he hadn't had time to clean it up yesterday before exhaustedly passing out.

As his nose slowly started picking up the scent again he smelled how absolutely putrid the air was in the cave, he couldn't believe he had managed to sleep in this puddle of mixed liquids.

Reality slowly started setting in, yesterday had not been a dream. He really was here all alone in a cave, his village completely destroyed and wiped out. He wondered how many others had managed to escape but quickly came to the realization that the chance of others escaping was close to zero, Kes himself had gotten very lucky to get away in the first place.

If his mother hadn't sensed something, if he had taken a moment of hesitation or if he had not been there at his house for his mother to instantly warn him but instead had stayed together with Nash and Ade to train together for a longer while, he would have probably been a slave by now.

Thinking of his best friend and the girl he was interested in, his two training partners, made Kes' expression turn ugly. He hoped the two of them were still alive, but with their personality he found it very hard to imagine them safely letting themselves get captured to get sold as slaves.

Kes just hoped they met some incredibly strong opponent who subdued them without killing the two, but he didn't hold high hopes.

As for his parents, Kes held even less hope, he thought he had pretty much come to terms with their deaths already.

There was nothing he could do about it anymore. He had cried his eyes out yesterday, he had thrown up a couple times because of the sights he had seen, he had bled profusely while escaping from the village, but he couldn't even spend any more time grieving.

If he stayed in this mindset, he would die, without a doubt. He needed to move fast, tend to his wounds, explore the area and try to secure food and water. All in all Kes had a ton of things to do if he even wanted to survive within this forest. If he didn't survive here then what had he escaped for?

He decided his first priority was to explore the area and look for a new hideout or place to sleep if possible, he would really rather not spend another day within the cave filled with the most horrid, putrid and unfettered stench he had ever smelled.

And for Kes, a person who had lived in a village his whole life and spent a lot of time working on the land, not being able to endure a smell meant a whole lot.

'I need to have some level of standards, if I can't find anything I will definitely clean it here.' 

He wasn't exactly looking forward to cleaning it, and to clean the cave he needed to find water too, so water was his first priority.

Kes had never gone far into the forest, he had only been into the forest once actually, which was during the hunting exam, so he had no clue where to find a spring or river that ran through the forest.

The thing that currently concerned him most were the wild beasts he could run into, Kes knew that deep within terrifying beasts lurked. It was made especially clear when his friend had run into an elemental beast when he went into the forest, if Kes encountered anything like that he would definitely die.

He had already gotten lucky when he had sprinted into the forest in the first place, he didn't run into any beasts yesterday during his desperate escape, but he couldn't assume the same thing would happen again today.

So he would proceed with caution while exploring today, he would definitely not take any risks. He had to remember now, he was all alone, there was no one to look out for him, any mistake could be fatal and there was no place to go back home to.

Having sort of formed a plan Kes finally pushed himself off the rock hard cave floor and stood up.

Puke and blood stuck to the brown academy robes he was wearing, there were holes within them from his earlier escape, they would never be the same again. But since they were all the clothes he currently possessed Kes decided it would be fine for now, he definitely had to wash them, though.

Stepping out of the small cave Kes finally breathed in the fresh forest air.

'Much better.'

Taking in the sight of the green and lush forest Kes had to admit, it was beautiful. The green leaves waved in the wind as the sturdy and brown trees stood all throughout. 

But he was probably going to grow tired of this beautiful sight real soon, this was his new home after all. He would much rather be spending his time within the village sparring with Nash right now.

'But right now Nash is probably…"

Kes felt himself turning melancholic with that thought pattern and quickly slapped himself on the cheeks.

"Come on Kes, you have to focus, no time for thoughts like this."

After he said that out loud Kes quickly started scanning the vicinity, maybe it hadn't been the smartest idea to say something out loud when a terrifying beast could be lurking anywhere, but he needed it right now.

Luckily nothing seemed to be nearby, his Flow didn't pick up any foreign presence.

Even though humans could conceal and suppress their own Flow very well, beasts were less likely to be proficient at this. Kes decided it was unlikely that any beast of that caliber was this far within the forest, but still never relaxed his guard.

He didn't exactly know how far he was within the forest, he had desperately ran away yesterday and this wasn't something he had time to pay attention to, but he could make a decent guess.

Now he entered the forest once again, but this time he was here to explore, not to hunt and not desperately flee.

With calm steps he walked through the forest, he was constantly on guard and trying to pick up on presences with his Flow.

He wasn't going to venture out far today, all he wanted to find today was some water, a river preferably but a spring would work just fine too.

Kes couldn't venture out too far either because he still had to be able to return to his cave if he couldn't find another place to sleep in at night, he really wasn't going to spend a day sleeping outside in a dangerous forest like this.

He kept his ears wide open trying to pick up on the smallest sounds, the sound he wanted to hear the most being the flowing of a river stream, but he hadn't gotten any luck so far.

So, after what felt like a long time of searching, he decided to change tactics, he was actively going to search for beasts and follow them, they needed to drink too. This way the beasts would lead Kes straight towards the closest water source.

This seemed like a sound plan, but somehow he couldn't find a single beast nearby, and Kes really, really did not want to stray too far from his cave.

He knew it was bad news that there were no beasts nearby, disregarding the fact that he needed to hunt something for food, not having any beasts nearby was usually a bad sign within the forest.

'A dangerous beast might be lurking nearby.'

Kes couldn't help but feel a strange unease as his gaze swept over the surroundings, he really was not in the mood to be attacked by some huge and strong predator right now.

After a another long while of very careful searching he had still not found a singular sign of life in the area. This was Kes' limit distance wise, he decided to try and return to his cave.

This left him quite dejected, it meant he had to spend another night within the terrible stench. But that wasn't all he was worried about currently, he was a lot more worried about there not being a single sign of life within the area.

'I wonder what this means, is there really a terrifying beast lurking somewhere close.'

His best course of action would be to take it slow and explore a little further and further every single day and try to get a little more familiar with the terrain before encountering whatever was lurking nearby, he didn't want to fight something awfully strong unprepared. 

He didn't have a knife or any tools with him either, all he had were his bare hands, they wouldn't serve him very well in killing something.

After a while Kes finally returned to the Stinky Cave, as he had decided to call it for now. He got back inside and holed up for another night.

He decided to just meditate for the rest of the day before sleeping again. Today's exploration hadn't been a complete failure but it was far from the results he would have liked to see.

'I'll do my best again tomorrow, I have to make it out of this Stinky Cave somehow.' Kes joked internally.

As Kes meditated and the stinky stench entered his nose again he got reminded of yesterday's tragedy, the death, the destruction, his fleeing, him leaving everything behind.

He remembered now, it had only been a day.

Tears started flowing from his eyes again.