A sonar pulse hit something that hadn't been there a moment ago. [Combat Simulations] tracked it, tearing through the water straight toward us. I reversed thrust hard, flipping the flow of Mana around the hull. The sudden pressure shift made the boat jolt hard enough that I would have broken teeth had I been human. Waves broke over the bow as we skidded backward, scraping across the surface like a skipped stone.

With a pulse of Mana through the circuits, the front deck of the ship unfolded, revealing a 25mm autocannon I had installed in case we ran into a sea serpent. Belt-fed, of course.

The ocean erupted where the boat had been a moment ago, a column of water exploding upward like an artillery shell fired from below. It arrived faster than the simulation estimated. Was it speeding up as it travelled, or was my System still trying to figure out how it worked?

The flash of scales triggered the autocannon instantly. It tracked the target as the creature breached, climbing higher and higher until it was nothing but a glint in the sky. I kept backing up, realizing too late that the column of water below wasn't collapsing. It was still rising, dragging more of the sea upward in a perfect arc that followed the creature as it fell directly towards us.

Not that there was anything I could do about it.

As the fish fell, I could finally make it out. It was glistening in that silvery iridescent way that tuna did. In fact, it looked quite a lot like a tuna fish.

The rounds from the autocannon were coated in Rimeshrouded Cambium, causing the plume of water following the fish down to freeze, but the ice quickly dissolved from the rush of Water Mana flowing through it.

I couldn't get out of the way fast enough, and the massive plume of water slammed into the bow of the boat. I was coated in sea spray and could taste the salt in the air. The fish, on the other hand, just went straight through the cannon and out the bottom of the hull. This turned out to be a good thing, as the hole in the hull allowed water to drain out without flooding the deck and knocking Novi and me overboard.

The boat didn't so much as dip into the water, given that I grew the hull in a honeycomb structure. There was more air than wood under my feet, and to truly sink this ship, you'd probably have to split it in half or something. Maybe I'd get to test that now.

Sending out another sonar pulse, I saw that the fish was right where I wanted it to be. I sent a pulse of Mana through the circuit system, then, quickly reaching over my shoulder, I grabbed a seatbelt and buckled myself in. The moment the buckle clicked, I felt the arming signal pulse through the air.

"Why did you install a seatbelt?" Novi asked from inside my hood. "You wouldn't have installed a seatbelt without a really good reason."

"Shhh, it'll be okay," I replied. "It'll be over soon."

"Ellie, why did you install a seatbelt!?" Novi hissed, her claws digging into my collar hard enough to crease the fabric. Her voice crackled as she sent too much Mana to the Sound-powered speaker.

She didn't get her answer before the sea mine I had just deployed went off.

I had spent most of the night and a ton of Mana building the boat. But most of that Mana didn't go into the ship's structure itself. Instead, it went into my method of catching fish really quickly. I didn't actually bring any fishing rods or nets. Instead, I brought with us a mine loaded to the brim with Argent Bastion Mana, set to unload that Mana through a ritual on a hair trigger, after being armed. This ritual would flash-freeze the surrounding water, saving us a ton of time.

The unfortunate side effect of flash-freezing a massive amount of water was that, when ice formed, it expanded by roughly 9% in volume compared to liquid water. When this happens instantly… well.

The explosion of ice caused a wave of inertia that hit the bottom of the boat like a hammer. My body was thrown downwards only to be caught on the Whisperash belt as the boat was launched into the air. There was a crunching sound that I wasn't the biggest fan of, but there was little I could do about it right now.

For a moment, we crested through the air, then started tumbling. The hole in the boat didn't help with the aerodynamics, so when we slammed into a hard surface, I wasn't surprised when the bow just fell off.

"I hate you sometimes," Novi said, shivering underneath my hood.

"Same!" I replied while unbuckling my seatbelt.

I could feel a twinge of something bleeding over from Novi's half of our mind, but didn't take the time to examine what it was.

From there, I walked across the wreck of the boat down onto the newly created iceberg. Digging my aura into the ice, I found the fish somewhere in the centre. Completely frozen in place but clinging to life because of its Life Energy.

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Alright, we've got a soul! Just gotta get it out before the fish dies.

I'd been poring over the data from [Basic Soul Manipulation], and I was fairly certain I could rig a ritual to dump the fish's soul into my [Budding Souls] Skill. From there, I just needed to shove it into Novi's body.

I wasn't skilled enough to handle a living soul yet, but that was fine. According to the [Basic Soul Manipulation] module, a "dead" soul, which was a soul that had been stripped of sentience, was what I needed anyway.

Pulling an Ice staff from my Inventory, I reshaped the ice, dragging the fish out from the heart of the iceberg. Any Authority that made contact with the fish was ripped from my grasp and torn to shreds, but as long as I didn't touch it, it didn't actively resist my aura. You'd think a fish of this power would bat my manipulation away like a hand swatting at smoke, but non-mages seemed to always keep their Authority confined to their bodies for some reason.

Autumn mentioned Soul Refinement had something to do with how well you could manipulate your aura. So maybe non-magic users just didn't improve their souls in a way that would allow them to manipulate their own aura? I should probably ask them about that at some point.

Either way, I had a sphere of ice surrounding what was clearly a tuna if said tuna had spent a few years in a death metal band. The fish was entirely black, and its fins were more like blades than actual fins. It was also staring at me with one blood red eye.

I rotated the ice ball so it couldn't look at me, because it was kind of creepy.

Speeding up because I needed to finish this while it was still alive, I grew a dagger made of Rimeshrouded Cambium in my hand and began inscribing it with a ritual to pull the soul out of whatever it was stabbed into at the moment of its death. It was an odd mixture of Root symbols and pictographs detailing exactly what was supposed to happen and what the trigger conditions were.

My ritual comprehension Skill was telling me that if I used Root for the whole thing, it wouldn't work because there was nothing natural about ripping a soul from a living being's body. In fact, that kind of action was nearly the opposite of natural. It made sense that Eryx, a completely artificial being who had excised everything Natural from himself, would be a master of the craft.

Which meant everything relating to the soul had to be drawn in pictographs.

It took me a minute before I was satisfied with the result. First, there was a catching ritual for the soul, which would ensure the soul remained in a position where I could grab it with [Budding Souls] instead of being whisked away to whatever fish hell awaited the creature. From there, I would use the Skill to infuse the knife with the soul, since it was made of plant material.

Then there was a releasing mechanism, for when I wanted to transfer the soul to Novi's body. I could only figure out how to make it work when she had the knife stabbed into her, but I wasn't going to use this on a fleshy any time soon, so that wasn't a problem.

I could make the transfer instant, moving the soul from the dead creature to Novi, but she left her doll body back on shore, and I figured she'd want to use that one to install her veins.

With the Ice staff, I shifted the ice around the fish to allow myself access to its brain.

As I went to stab the fish with the ritual knife, I was suddenly hit with a blast of pressurized water manifested from the tuna's skin. The water splattered off the shield created by my [Shielding Veins of the Citadel], effectively doing nothing more than temporarily blinding me.

I ended that with the knife, holding down the 'suck soul' trigger as I did so. When it finally died, I could suddenly feel something squishy clinging to the ritual in the dagger. Using the instincts provided by [Budding Souls] I gripped onto that squishy thing using my Authority and shoved it inside the dagger.

Then I let go of the trigger and confirmed that I could still feel that there was a soul inside the dagger, even without the ritual running.

"Alright, got it. Now we just need to get home," I said, looking over at the pile of scrap that was the ship we had travelled on. I was kind of sad that it broke. I had spent a long time growing it, and I didn't even get to show off all its features to Novi.

Like the retractable cup holders, this would be useful for anyone who might need liquid to survive.

Turning around, I looked out over the ocean towards the massive white wall that seemed to go on forever up into the sky. At the very base of that wall was our island, way off in the distance.

I tapped my foot against the iceberg, then, after a moment, started walking forward.

"No, don't you dare," Novi hissed in my ear. Her insect legs dug into where my spine would be if I had one.

"Oh, don't be a baby. It's just a short walk back; we got what we needed. What do you expect me to do? Build us another boat out here? It took me hours to make the last one," I replied, picking up my pace as I ran across the ice. Pumping [Argent Bastion] through my body, I kicked off the edge of the iceberg.

I felt Novi's body go limp around my neck as she swapped to her other one. She didn't even bother telling this one to follow me. She just ejected herself from the situation. Whatever, exposure therapy to the ocean probably won't work for her anyway.

I let go of [Argent Bastion] as my foot touched the water to prevent the extra momentum it imparted upon me from ruining my ability to walk on water. Running my Authority through my feet, the seawater froze underneath my boot as I stepped down due to the Hoarfrost Aura from the Rimeshrouded Cambium. Then I just stepped on it normally. The Silver Whisperash boots I was wearing made the ice feel almost like solid ground.

Once I started treating waves like hurdles, it wasn't all that hard to traverse across the surface of the ocean. It helped that it rapidly froze as I ran across it, the Hoarfrost Aura growing in strength over time.

Frost whipped in the wind as sea spray turned to snow, each breath a cloud of white condensation. I cracked the heel of my boot against the ice and dove forward, the world tilting beneath me as I ran across a sea made of silver glass.

I allowed myself for just a moment to feel like things might turn out okay.

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