42. The Basics of Flow

The moment the potion reached his main body, Alistair’s attention narrowed to a single problem.

Should he actually drink it?

The question sounded ridiculous after everything he had done to obtain the potion. He had manipulated multiple groups, stolen the flower under a flowcaster’s nose, risked exposing his base, and paid half the reward as commission. Refusing to drink the potion now would make the entire operation meaningless, but caution was still needed.

His first reaction was the same one he had come to rely on whenever uncertainty became dangerous. He summoned another clone.

The class he chose was one of the stranger and more specialized options buried in his collection. It had seemed potentially useful when he first acquired it, but far too narrow to justify regular use. Even now, he doubted many people chose it willingly.

Once again, a forgotten class had found its use. The class was Taster.

Taster Risked Bite Allows you to sense whether a substance, when consumed or applied to the body, poses a direct threat to your health. Its effectiveness depends mainly on PER and WIS, while VIT helps judge harmful reactions and bodily strain.

The limitation was obvious from the description. It could not predict general danger, estimate the risk of an operation, or warn him about future disasters. It only worked on things physically present and directly examinable, and even then, the danger had to be connected to health.

Its origin was not difficult to understand. After years of spoiled food, tainted water, and poisoning incidents in the slave camps, enough survivors eventually learned to fear what entered their mouths. Alistair had once considered the class depressing. Now he considered it useful.

Holding the potion carefully, Taster activated Risked Bite. Alistair focused through the body, waiting for any sense of warning, rejection, or danger.

Nothing came. The potion carried no sense of harm.

That did not prove it was effective, but it eased his concern about damage. He was almost certain the effect could not be tested safely through a clone. His Clone skill had always treated permanent growth in specific ways. EXP, skills, and classes followed their own rules. A stat increase applied to a temporary body should not transfer back to the main body. Letting a clone drink the potion would only waste everything he had done to obtain it.

Blindly swallowing a powerful flow-touched substance with his main body still went against every survival instinct he had developed since Ascension. Fortunately, Taster solved the problem to some extent.

As the clone lowered the vial, another thought crossed Alistair’s mind. Should he start checking everything he consumed with the class?

The idea sounded reasonable for about three seconds before it began to feel like paranoia.

His main body did not wait for the debate to finish. Caution had done its work. Hesitation would only turn into fear. He took the potion from the clone’s hand and swallowed it in one quick gulp.

VIT 4

Alistair shifted most of his mind into the main body and felt the change fully.

Until now, his stat growth had happened slowly. He had never felt such a direct increase before. The effect was quiet, but unmistakable. The first sensation was difficult to name. It felt like reliability.

Reliability was the closest word he could find for the sensation. His body suddenly felt sturdier, more dependable, as if it could endure more before reaching its limit. The old fragility left behind by years of abuse did not vanish, but it loosened slightly.

After that, the subtler changes followed. Old pains he had grown used to ignoring started fading little by little. It was not healing exactly. The potion did not erase scars or restore damaged flesh in an instant. Instead, it felt as though his body had become better at repairing itself naturally. Recovery, resilience, and endurance—the meanings he had seen in the potion’s flow—now made physical sense.

Alistair could not help wondering whether the effect would continue strengthening with time. Perhaps one day the lingering marks left by the Company of Chains would disappear entirely.

The final noticeable effect resembled the comfort of a proper night of sleep. A serene sense of wellness settled into his body, subtle but clear. And that was all, which felt fair. One point in VIT should not behave like a Five-granted miracle.

The potion had done more than increase a number. It had shown him that stats were not abstract gifts from the Guide. At least in this case, VIT had a visible flow structure, a pattern that could be studied, copied, strengthened, and perhaps one day manipulated.

Once the effect stabilized, Alistair prepared to send his main body back toward Verevain. Another part of his attention, however, turned to something he had rarely had the luxury to do properly.

He began taking notes. He summoned Ledgerhand for the task. The clone retrieved several sheets of spare paper gathered from places where they would no longer be missed and began organizing observations about the brewing process.

As Ledgerhand organized the notes, the answer seemed to begin with flow. Not as a single substance, and not merely as the energy behind enchantments, voidships, and classes. Flow was movement, transformation, exchange, and progress. Voidflow carried islands along predictable routes through the dark and made long-distance travel possible, though many scholars argued that other flows influenced those movements as well. Starflow fed countless natural cycles under the stars. Lifeflow moved through living bodies and sustained them. Between those larger categories were countless variations, combinations, and specialized forms.

The most important thing Alistair wrote was simple: flow moved.

It traveled from one state to another, making change possible, but it was not passive. It followed rules, resisted interference, and behaved according to its own nature. Flow-enchanting might have been the most widespread use, while flowcasting was certainly the most visible, but Mirel’s brewing proved there were many other paths.

Stolen story; please report.

Potion craft depended on flow. Through Flowseer, Alistair had observed details he would never have noticed otherwise. The Vitalicious Flowbloom had overflowed with a flow close to lifeflow, but not identical to it. It did not share the exact bluish tone he saw inside living people, instead carrying a greener tint tied to vitality and growth.

The Acclamation likely played a role, though he could only guess at the exact mechanism. Perhaps the flower naturally converted excess starflow into that vitality-rich variant. The brewing process then transformed that vitality flow into something even closer to lifeflow while stabilizing it into a form the body could absorb safely. The final potion, however, carried a brighter color under Flow Sight.

Before the brewing began, Alistair had spent hours testing Flow Sight on anything he could observe. He wanted context for what he was seeing. Flow surrounded almost everything in faint traces and shifting layers, but some objects revealed clearer patterns than others. Flow-enchanted tools fascinated him, though he postponed studying them seriously for later.

The most useful discovery came from something much cheaper and more common: food.

Under Flow Sight, ordinary consumables carried layered traces of flow as well. Most leaned close to lifeflow, though altered by countless influences depending on what they were, how they were grown, and how they had been prepared. When clones ate the food, he could observe the changes directly.