"Rapid Layering!" Lera shouted, "ACTIVATE!" A massive array of Cast lines were deployed onto the environment all around her instantaneously, and as Ver charged towards her with enhanced physicality and fluid movement of the Kraken's Dance, Lera moved her fingers onto the individual blocks drawn on her book of Casts. As her fingers tapped along the surface of the page, each corresponding block of Casts within the massive array lit up and came into effect. First, sets of traps and bindings peeled up from the ground all around Ver and formed a cage. The latter leaped into the air when the entire array became a flashbang as she shielded her eyes immediately. Falling down to the ground, Ver anticipated the impact when the ground suddenly came towards her instead, knocking her timing off and collapsing her knees. She grunted, stilling her movement and ignoring the dulling pain from her knees. That was when orbs of the Wave were fired out towards her from all directions, and Ver teleported herself out from the array with her Whirlpool Purple. Emerging from right behind Lera, Ver tried to knock her down only to realize that she had also changed position when Ver disappeared into her Whirlpool Purple. Instead of controlling the array from a distance and from outside, she instead ran forward right into it, hopping and stepping in the safe areas while deactivating the Casts in those specific regions. "HA!" Ver laughed excitedly, her hands dangling out to the side as massive jets of high-pressure water shot out from the Whirlpool Red conjured around the center of her palm. Then, as she spun herself around, the jets of water cut like lasers, digging deep into the ground. Ver expected the entire array of Casts to be broken up easily like before, though she instead saw those lines sunk deeper into the ground as the jets of water instead cut into the soil and the rocks, turning everything to mud and obscuring the lines of Casts further. As she turned towards Lera with surprise, the latter pointed a finger upward, guiding countless tiny orbs into the air before all of them rapidly expanded, bathing Ver in an array of explosions. "I win!" Lera declared happily, when suddenly a monstrous roar rocked the entire battleground as a massive tendril emerged from a black whirlpool right behind Ver. As Ver meticulously the everything around her with the flaming tendril, the lines of Cast hidden deep underground was decimated and the array of Casts was broken. The destruction also caused Lera to fall back. "Not so fast~" Ver smiled before retracting the Whirlpool Black back into her body, "But well done! You have pushed me to use my Whirlpool Black! That's already very impressive!" Reaching out with a hand, Ver helped Lera up. Then, Wu finally stepped out of Lera's Bubble Bubble and walked towards the two. "First of all, Wave battles are awesomeeeee!" Wu said, jumping up and down and giggling excitedly, "Lera! That's crazy! How did you figure out the Cast array? What did you call it?! SO COOL!" "It's...my Rapid Layering." Lera said, still annoyed at her loss, "I embedded and rewritten all of my Casts into a single massive array. Like...it's a Cast for Casts. That allows me to freely and rapidly conjure up Casts in a certain area, even quicker than before without compromising the strength of the individual casts." "Oooh..." Ver seemed intrigued by the idea, "I don't think I have seen anything like that before." "That...was partly cause of Wu." Lera said, though she's avoiding Wu's eyes because of the loss, "The way Casts are linked together like individual blocks is a very helpful perspective..." "And you did so well!" Wu said cheerfully before turning to Ver, "You also looked like you are moving at a completely different level!" "I feel that too." Ver said, swinging her arms around, "I suppose being able to get nice nights of sleep do help me recover from the training sessions." "Bet." Wu said. Things are going far better than he would have thought, and he had been working on a secret project with the Fuel Rock Prime that had finished today too. That's why he had the time to come and watch Lera and Ver spar again, "Let's take a day off to celebrate!" "A day off?" Lera asked, and Ver stretched her arms and yawned. "Yeah, we have been working our balls off ever since getting here." Wu said, pointing to the sun that's right above their heads, "Let's go to the beach and relax! Rest and recreation is also important!" I mean, it's the first warm day in a long while, and Wu's just wondering if today might be the day of the long-awaited beach episode. "Fine..." Lera said, "Though the beach here is rather nasty..." Heading down past the collapsed cliffside near Wu's Fuel Rock Prime lab, the trio then set up a small picnic area after Lera and Ver worked together to flatten a few of the spiky rocks and created a small platform. "I...am gonna go for a swim. Or rather, the Kraken wanted to visit a few of its friends." Ver said, taking off her clothes as Lera reached over and covered Wu's eyes. However, underneath her shirt, Ver had wrappings of cloths over her breasts and shorts around her hips. Her body's muscular yet curvy, with clear definition around her abdomen. There were plenty of scars as a result of her years of bounty hunting work. However, none of this detracted from her beauty and attractiveness, only adding to it in Wu's obscured vision. "I want to look..." Wu struggled, grabbing onto Lera's hands as she groaned angrily. However, by the time he wrestled Lera's hands away, Ver had already disappeared under the water. "NOOOOO!" Sunbathing with stacks of dry grass underneath their bodies as cushions, Wu lied there and napped while Lera continued reading and making notes in her Book of Casts. "Fine! I am sorry, okay?!" At last, Lera was the first one to cave into the silent treatment, "If you wanted to look so bad...you can look at..." "I am still clinically a young adult, you know..." Wu sighed and sat up, "Also, a day off meant no working! Put the book away!" "Put it away?!" Lera hugged her arms around the book like a teddy bear, "NO!" "Come on~" Wu said, crawling over to her and started wrestling for the book as the two rolled around on the rock. Then, he tickled her as she started bursting with laughter. At last, the Book of Casts was released from her grasp, "We can talk about all the other stuff!" "Like what?" "Like...what's your favorite food, or something." Wu scratched his head, "Wait...you sounded like you don't really socialize...right?" Lera looked away and played with her black hair, giving him the silent treatment instead. And that's when Wu realized that they are actually far more similar in a few of the aspects, "...I study hard..." "Right...So what's your favorite food?" Wu asked, sitting crossed-legged from Lera. "I like the sweet buns from the bakery at the Sonne's city limits..." Lera said, her mouth slightly watering at the thoughts of those soft, fluffy, and steaming buns coming straight out of the steamer, "Mom's cooking too. She makes really great potato stews..." "Woo...I would love to try some of that..." Wu swallowed, "My favorite food is called pizza." "A pissa?" "Pizza. It's like bread with stuffings in it, but more like a pancake." Wu said, picking up a few strands of grass and making a circular pattern with it, "People put cheese, tomato sauce, vegetables, and meats over it. Then, they throw it in the oven and let everything get together...there are infinite possibilities with what you can put on it..." Now it's Lera's term to swallow hard. Then, their stomachs growled simultaneously, and they both realized that the topic of food is highly unsustainable. Wu chuckled and Lera smiled lightly before turning around and looking towards the ocean. Wu noticed her slight shift in expression, and he scooched over to be beside her. "What are you thinking?" He asked, his voice lower and gentler than before. "My mother..." Lera said, her face down and back slouched, "I miss her. I miss her potato stew..." "It will be okay..." Wu said, reaching out and placing his hands over Lera's shoulder, "Didn't Ver say she's back at the real home?" Lera nodded slowly and sniffed once, "Yeah. The real home. It's a beautiful little town about five days of travel down South from Sonne. It's a farming town with a river running through it, and it's sunny and warm almost all the time..." "Sounds beautiful." "It is." Lera said, turning her face and realizing how close Wu actually is to her, "I will take you there." Wu smiled and nodded. The two shared a slow gaze into one another when suddenly, the sounds of water splashing came from the rocks, and Ver emerged from underneath the waves, her entire body soaked and hair down by her shoulders. "Whoosh!" She said loudly as Wu suddenly let go of Lera out of embarrassment, "That. Was. COLD!" "So...is the Kraken you have just a massive squid...?" Wu asked as he's washing the vegetables while Ver's slicing off the scales from the fish she caught earlier in the day. "It hates being called a squid..." Ver chuckled and shook her head, "So yeah. A squid." "Damn..." Wu smiled as he dropped the vegetables into the pot of soup, "You know, on my world, Squid is one of the more self-conscious of animals out there. Is it similar here?" "I don't know much about squids." Ver said, turning to look at Wu, "But Kraken's hella self-conscious. That's for sure." "And do you think you are self-conscious?" Wu asked silently, "How do you know what you are doing is the right thing to do, or is what you need to do?" Ver didn't say anything immediately. Instead, she turned and started stirring the pot of soup. "Some people say if what you were doing makes you hesitate, then it's probably the right thing to do." At last, she spoke slowly, "I...don't believe that." Wu looked up at her, and she's still keeping her attention locked in at the pot of soup as the fish meat sunk down, "Then what do you believe?" "I believe that there is never an answer to that question." Ver said slowly, "We simply do what needs to be done, and we live with the consequences later. That's the one lesson that I have always carried with me through my bounty hunting days." "I see..." Wu murmured and turned his attention towards Lera who's practicing her Casts out in the other side of the camp. "Are you sure about this?" Ver asked, and Wu let out a sigh. "Like you said. It must be done."