The massive tide of blue liquid hit the ship like...well, a tidal wave. Our feet were planted on the deck firmly as the wall of water rushed at us, and I could easily see the dark forms of writhing fish riding the wave like some nightmarish parody of birds on the wing. I could vaguely make out the shapes of Callie and Abel at other points on the ship, the hunched forms of a heavy basket near each of them. Callie was especially close by since we were working together.

I could see the fish wriggling as they approached, and I knew that they were all G-ranked monsters of various levels. Still, there was no reason to freak out about it. I stopped, took a deep breath, and braced myself as the lake water slammed into me. My mask made it simple to breathe, though I suspected my Impact would have helped even if I hadn't been wearing it since Callie and Abel didn't have the same protection. Still, even without suffocating, getting hit with a wall of water was disorienting as hell.

Letting myself drift in my combat trance, I let my senses unfocus, taking in everything and nothing all at once, straining to pay attention to my instincts. I felt a slight twinge and stepped out to take up position at Callie's back, lashing out with a quick punch and immobilizing a fish headed for my girlfriend. I grabbed its tail in the same motion, turning to hurl it into my basket with a triumphant grin...until I realized the damn thing was red.

Sadly it was too late to intercept the fish, and it dropped into my basket, subtracting two points from my already negative value. I shook off the unhappiness, drifting back out of focus and started countering more of the fish attacking Callie, even as she did the same for me. I knocked out a flat dozen of the things, but they kept being swept away by the water before I could grab them because I was pausing to note what color they were.

I tried to sense some fundamental difference about them, but despite how much I focused I was completely unable to distinguish between one fish and another. Then I switch to knocking them out and grabbing them, then checking them before I threw them in, and had moderate success with that. I ended up using one of the fish as a bludgeon as I reached for the next, not being able to leave Callie undefended long enough to check each one.

That worked a bit, but not fast or practically enough. This was a test from Abel, and that lunatic wasn't one to give a task without some ulterior motive. There was a trick to this fucking exercise, there had to be. He'd said it was to sense the power of incoming attacks so we could react more efficiently, or something like that. I could see the logic. Blocking low level attacks would waste energy when they would be incapable of hurting Callie anyway. I needed some way to tell.

I closed my eyes, letting my senses fade, and focused on one that I rarely had a chance to use. The sense that stemmed from Fantasy. This was the sense that picked up on odd or interesting things and subconsciously steered Ascendants toward them. Despite not needing any more craziness, I was at a loss for how to do this, so I figured some mysterious sense I didn't understand might work better.

It didn't. I got slapped in the face by a fish I tried to catch. At the very least it didn't get to Callie. I was starting to get frustrated. I could use seek hidden, but there'd be no point. Abel didn't have that Skill which meant that it wasn't the answer I needed to find.

Suddenly I felt a slight twinge coming from a sense I hadn't really thought to use. The sense that let me measure Impact. I wasn't really sure what that sense actually WAS, but at the very least I knew how it worked. I could feel the weight of a person or artifact's soul. However, paying closer attention, I was able to pick up that despite all being G-ranked, not all these fish felt the same.

Maybe it was the increased soul strength from all the training, maybe it was the crazy environment, but I could feel DIFFERENCES in those fish. They all had 12 Impact, sure. But the weight of them varied infinitesimally. This one was heavier, that one was lighter. It seemed soul weight varied based on more factors than just Impact if you knew how to look for it. I was sure that this was the key to working out how to do this little exercise.

Keeping my eyes closed, I tried to reach out with that same, ineffable muscle I used to change a Skill. My soul, or at least the part of it I was able to use. I pushed my sense of Impact further, harder. I needed to go deeper into these impressions. I could feel the fish coming, just like before, but with my focus on sensing the variations, I could also feel the strength of each fish differed slightly.

I lashed out with a punch at a fish, ignoring a weaker on right next to it as it bounced off Callie's coat. The one I punched I grabbed the tail of and tossed it into the basket, and seeing a flash of green as it dropped in. I almost cheered. Green was good, much better than red. It meant I had been able to sense the difference. I tried another fish, then another, carefully picking each one based on my feeling of how heavy they seemed vs the ones around them.

Some were losers, oranges, yellows. Some were greens, and I even got a purple. But as I went on, I became consistently more skilled at picking them, getting better and better results as I fine tuned this new sense.

I could see why I hadn't improved this before too. This environment was perfect for this kind of training. Lots of hostile monsters that weren't too strong but were still variable levels of our own rank to compare to each other. In the past even when we'd been in fights with G-ranked people or monsters there hadn't been this many coming this quickly.

Feeling my pulse pounding I lashed out faster and faster, losing myself in the process as I slowly honed this new sense. Sadly, while I appeared to be doing well, Callie wasn't picking this up. Possibly because of her lack of experience with exercising her soul. In fact this detection method acted like a very mild form of soul strengthening exercise itself from what I could tell. I was feeling that telltale strain in my head, though it was MUCH more mild than when using a Skill.

That made this even more valuable for her to learn because it would give her a way to work her soul without devolving into a gibbering pain blind mess or passing out like sometimes happened when I went too far. In order for that to happen though I had to actually let her know what to do.

While Abel's whole 'learn by doing' teaching method did work most of the time, Abel wasn't perfect. I didn't think telling her how it worked would sabotage anything, plus he hadn't told me not to mention it. Hoping we were close enough for her to hear me through the waterfall-esque blast of liquid force I waited until there was an opening and bellowed. "CALLIE!" There was no response so I waited a minute before trying again, screaming her name at the top of my lungs.

When she finally noticed, she was smart enough not to turn to me completely and ignore the fish, she just stepped back to be nearer to me and cocked her head to the side so her ear was facing me. Knowing she would be straining all that Perception to hear me, and all her Focus to filter out the water sounds, I scaled back my screaming to a dull roar. "Try sensing their Impact! You can kind of feel a difference in their weight even without any of them being higher than twelve!"

I tried to think of a better way to describe it, but I came up short. I trusted that she would be able to detect what I meant once she had an idea where to look. With that done I went back to fighting. I got hit a bunch more by the fish, but my armor tanked pretty much all of it, and after a few minutes Callie got a better feel for at least the extremes of the weight scale, mostly letting reds and oranges through to tag me.

My own basket had been slowly filling with greens and blues since I started detecting everything, and even the odd purple. They WERE rare, but over the course of the next few hours we got attacked by THOUSANDS of fish, and I managed to identify and catch six purples. When the water finally receded it took me a second to process. We'd been in there for so long I couldn't keep track of time.

Being soaking wet and sore didn't help. While my armor was F-rank and more than up to protecting me from random fish, as I'd noted before blunt force tended to transfer through a bit. With G-rank fish that wasn't much, but tens of thousands of hits over hours started to add up, even with my Vitality offsetting it a bit. I groaned, slumping back onto the deck with a thump. "Ow. Why is it that every single time we train with you we end the day in pain and nearly unable to move?"

The comment was aimed at Abel, though I couldn't turn my head to look at him. My Vitality would repair the injuries eventually, but they were made by G-rank opponents, so the conceptual weight of the attacks impeded the process somewhat. I heard Callie groan weakly from off to the side. "Yeah, and you couldn't have given us a hint or something? I'm starting to think you're just a sadistic asshole."

Abel stepped into view, standing between us so I could see him without turning my neck, he had a hand to his chest and was looking mortified. "JUST a sadistic asshole? I'll have you know my sadism and assholishness are merely two of my many endearing qualities. But seriously, stop whining. That was a nice workout, but nothing too bad. I'll let you both recover back at the inn though. You certainly earned it."

I groaned at the excitement and cheer in his voice. "How much money did you just make off our suffering? Also you know you're sharing that right? Because no way in hell did we go through that for nothing." Come to think of it, Abel looked like he was in much better shape than we were. "How many fish did you even catch? Or did you just hide behind something and let us do all the work?" I doubted it, that wasn't his style, but I was annoyed and venting a bit.

Abel just snickered. "Hide? Kid I was rerouting about half of your incoming tide with spatial lubrication. Between that and my increased skill, I caught easily three times as many fish as you did, and most of them were higher end ones too. I actually got fifteen purples this time. It was a pretty good day." Ignoring my shocked silence, he reached down and picked me up easily, throwing an arm over his shoulder before heading to grab Callie.

He carried us over to the mast to let us lean against the post. "Now. While I WILL be letting you take home a portion of the money, it won't be more than a quarter each." He said casually. "So sit back and enjoy the ride. I'll be handling the ship as we head back. Think of it as payment." If I could have moved I'd have attacked him as he turned around and walked away laughing. Since I couldn't, I just glared at him really hard. What a bastard.