Flow

Ten minutes after Nora stepped out of the classroom a new person entered the classroom.

The whole class was shocked to see who the person entering was. 

His short hair was gray but not the type of ash gray color all the villagers had, it was the natural gray color that came with age. His eyes were brown and sharp, he looked like he had seen many things in his years. His face was a little wrinkled but he didn't look like he had one foot inside the grave appearing lively enough to still survive ten more years at least, it was the village chief.

This old man was the last person the children in the class expected to be teaching their class about Flow.

"Grandpa, what are you doing here?" Ade exclaimed audibly surprised.

The village chief looked at the children's confused faces, laughed and started explaining. "I know a lot of you had expected someone like Cantor here. That makes sense of course, he is known as the strongest person in the village after all. But you young children shouldn't look down on the experience that comes with age. I can guarantee I am the best person to teach you all about how to become more proficient at using your Flow."

The class calmed down a bit after hearing his points, thinking they made sense.

"Things like going on hunts for experience will still be overseen by Cantor and the rest of the hunting team. I am just here to explain the ins and outs of how your Flow exactly works and how you can improve to become stronger." 

As he finished explaining he took his place at the head of the classroom and looked the class up and down.

"Today I will just be going over the basics of Flow since it is an introduction day after all. But keep in mind that these basics are by far the most important, without the basics you can get nowhere, you will never be able to improve without knowing them."

The class was dead silent and nodded seemingly understanding how important this first lesson would be.

The village chief had a satisfied look on his face and nodded. "As you guys know you possess two different types of Flow, your innate element and your life force or so called Flow. We will be getting into your innate element at a later date since it will still take ages for you children to form it so we will start today by focusing on your regular Flow."

"As you might know there are three main different ways to gain this form of Flow. Nash please tell me the ones you know of." The village chief pointed at Nash while he asked him the question.

Nash thought for a moment before he answered. "You have working out, meditating and killing beasts as far as I know."

The village chief nodded. "Very good, but this is simplifying it a lot. The reality is a little more complicated." 

"First is simple muscle training, this is probably the slowest way to increase your Flow pool, but without enough muscles and stamina all that Flow is going to be pretty much useless. As I like to put it, your Flow needs a good container to be used well."

"Second is meditation, this is the simplest way to just increase your Flow pool, just sit down and meditate, try to focus on your Flow and try to feel it expanding. But even if you spend your whole life meditating you will not be within the top 10% of people with the most Flow. For your average person this is fine but if you want to pursue becoming stronger you can't simply rely on this method."

"Third and most importantly is killing, not just the killing of beasts but the killing of any life form. Every life form contains Flow and when you kill that life form you will inherit about one fourth of their Flow. This means the stronger the target you kill the more Flow you gain and the more profits you reap. This goes for beasts, insects and humans too. Killing is also the only way to increase your innate elements but as I have stated earlier I will get into this at a later date."

All the children in the class looked quite shocked at the third point, no one had ever imagined killing another human being before.

Although life was cheaper in the villages than it was in big cities, because hunters had the chance to die while on a hunt, no one ever killed each other.

The crime rate in Ashen village was near zero, sometimes someone would steal some food but that was usually as far as it would go.

After becoming older death became more common. They commonly murdered beasts inside the forest for food, which resulted in the villagers being more used to death and killing than the average person living in the cities.

But the kids in this class were still young and were not that used to the concept of death, so this last method made them quite shocked.

The village chief looked at the shocked children and eased their worries. "Don't worry so much, if you decide to stay in the village you will most likely only ever need to kill beasts. Almost all people go their life without killing anyone, even the strongest person in this village Cantor has never killed a human being before. He got stronger just by killing more and stronger wild beasts every time. But if you decide you want to be one of the strongest people of all time, if you decide you want to pursue the path of strength, you will most likely have to kill humans too."

Almost the whole class seemed to calm down after hearing this, none of them had this type of desire after all.

But Kes still had some worry in his heart.

Kes sighed as he thought inwardly. 'I am planning on heading to the big cities when I get older, and when I do this I do plan on getting a whole lot stronger. But I really don't see myself taking a human life yet. Unless they are after my life or have done something unforgivable to me, I don't know if I can kill someone just for some benefits.'

While Kes was still pondering, the village chief continued his lesson. "For kids your age I recommend just meditating and working out right now. Most of you are probably already doing this and that's good. It is also allowed for parents to take their children with them on hunts if they want to but that is completely up to the parents. I don't know if I would recommend this because most of you are not strong enough to do anything yet"

"Alright, now that we know how to increase our Flow pool, how do we use it proficiently? Ade, would you happen to have an idea" The village chief pointed at his granddaughter.

Ade straightened her back and answered. "Flow can be used to increase our strength."

The village chief shook his head. "You are partially correct, but this is only one of the ways to use Flow. You children might see this as the most important one right now but it has lots of other important uses."

"To understand the uses of Flow we first need to understand what Flow exactly is, life force. It is possible to become immortal if you possess enough Flow even though this is really hard. Possessing a lot of Flow will usually only lead to a couple extra years of added life span, the average human dies after about eighty years, but if one were to spend their entire life meditating they could live up to forty years longer."

"Even though every time you use your Flow you expend it, you don't expend your life force just like how your Flow will slowly regenerate over time. The reason why this is important is because a person's Flow can tell us everything about them. If we try sensing it hard enough it can tell us their emotional state or even if they are lying."

The class seemed shocked at this.

This meant that if someone was skilled enough at sensing other people's Flow they would know exactly if they were telling the truth or not.

Some kids even thought back to moments when they had lied before to their parents thinking about if they had detected it back then.

The village chief laughed. "Don't worry actually fully detecting a lie requires insanely skilled detection methods. Unless someone has been hiding their capabilities I don't believe anyone in this village would be perfectly able to tell when someone is lying, but they might have felt a change in your emotions giving you away."

Some kids in the class turned red and embarrassed after hearing this, like some of their greatest secrets had gotten out.

The village chief ignored the embarrassed kids and continued explaining. "Now onto what you said earlier Ade, using your Flow to strengthen yourself." 

"When you are using Flow to strengthen yourself, proficiency is very important. Because when you do this Flow will continually be expended, the more Flow you expend the stronger you get. If you have a large Flow pool but are not very proficient in strengthening yourself you will only be able to make yourself a little stronger. But you will of course be able to maintain this for a very long time since you have a lot of Flow."

"The opposite is also important to consider, when you are very proficient but have little to no Flow. You would be able to strengthen yourself by a whole lot but you would not be able to maintain this for very long. And always remember the stronger you make yourself the more Flow you expend."

"So it is always very important to both increase your total amount of Flow and raise your proficiency in using it."

The chief looked around the class to see most of the children focussed on his words.

The children certainly had not expected the old village chief to be so knowledgeable about how to use Flow.

He was mostly known as an old guy who pursued innovation for the village and loved to hear about the big cities, not as some scholar or proficient Flow user.

But the village chief had proven them wrong, he was in fact very knowledgeable about this topic.

"Like I have explained earlier this class will focus purely on increasing your proficiency, increasing your Flow pool should be done outside of the academy." The village chief said as he pulled multiple stacks of cards from the inside of his robes.

"This will be your first lesson, becoming more proficient at reading each other's emotions."

The class looked both excited and scared at the same time.