"What in the world was that..." Wu swallowed hard with his heart going a hundred miles an hour. If not for Lera's Rapid Layering and a new embedded Cast of Sweeping Darkness, they wouldn't have even made it out from the battle unscathed. Or rather, it seemed like that crimson-eye girl just isn't interest in them at all after a single exchange. "The last time it felt like that..." Lera said, her hands still shaking at how ridiculously strong the girl felt to her entire being. She was moving through her Cast array with such speed that her feet flimsily stomped through all of her Trapping Casts, yet none was activated in time before she got close enough. "...it was when Kaire Jin was there...when..." Lera lowered her head and bit onto her lips. Has she truly gotten stronger? With her newfound skills at the deployment of her Rapid Layering and sets of newly developed Casts, she was still nearly overwhelmed by the strength of those damned Channelers. If not for Wu temporarily drawing her attention with the output from the legendary weapon... "Lera." Wu said, waving a hand in front of her as she looked up slowly with frustration written all over her face, "You are thinking negatively again, aren't you?" How could she not? Through their time training with the Twin Generals of the Kingdom of Varous in preparation for this day, the comment that she consistently received is how the floor of her combat level is incredibly low, though she is likely to have an extremely high ceiling. Worse yet, when things don't go in her way initially, she is likely to resort to more...reckless ways of fighting instead of staying calm and thinking things through. "I..." Lera sighed and as WU reached out with his finger and gently squeezed her cheeks playfully, "Muah muah buah?!" Wu giggled at her adorable response before finally letting her go, "There you go. There's your mental reset. We are here to get stronger, not to beat everyone up right away. So long as we get in, it doesn't really matter what happened during." "You are right." Lera smiled, feeling for her face and the spots that Wu touched before calming down just slightly. When it comes to the progression of strength, that's literally been Wu's journey all along. Starting from below zero, the only way for him to go is up. "Oh~ Did I hear that right?!" A high-pitched girly voice came from beside them before a large group of Wave users approached and slowly surrounded the two. Wu and Lera both turned as a white-haired loli with a stereotypical twin tail surrounded by a crowd of men of varying sizes stood in front of them. That was when Wu realized that the little girl's actually sitting on top of the body of another man with others carrying it like a stretcher. Her thin slender legs dangled off the edge covered by her small white dress with black linings near the bottom. A bizarre sight to be sure, but not the strangest thing Wu has ever seen. From the first words uttered about the Infinite Academy by Jolyne, the little sister of the Twin Generals, he already knew that this is essentially the analogous Oxford University of this world. He had seen enough weird shit over the past four years that none of this really faze him anymore. "Did you two Basics think you can get into the Infinite Academy with your own strength?" The white-haired little girl said as her twin tails wobbled back and forth in the wind, "Without my help, you won't even survive on this island!" "Shit man. So people like this really exist..." Wu sighed as Lera laughed dryly, "Little girl, what do you want?" "I AM NOT A LITTLE GIRL!!!" The loli screamed, jumping onto the back of the human stretcher and stomping through his spine as he moaned with...pleasure, "You insolent Basics! Take them down and their points are yours!" "Yes, my dear princess!" The crowd of what Wu now termed 'Simps' rushed forward and straight into Lera's Rapid Layering Cast array as the traps were immediately triggered. However, faint lights glowed around the bodies of the crowds, shielding them from the Vines and sinking grounds before lights flashed from their bodies, revealing the fact that all of them are Channelers. "Lera." Wu whispered into Lera's ear with a low yet strangely seductive tone, and the air brushing against her ear sent a shiver down her body, "Shut the lights." Lera's face turned red right away, and her mind traveled back to that night. However, as Wu ran past her to face the crowd of Channelers head-on, she instead stared at his dashing figure, reaching a hand up into the air before slicing down. Yeah...that's right. The Savior and his guardian fight together. With that single movement, a pitch-black curtain arose from within her array of Casts and filled the air, draining out all of the light from around the environment and turning everything dark. At that moment, the attacking Channelers all immediately stopped dead in their tracks and looked around in confusion as the blackness obscured absolutely everything. Through their inherent wave-sensing abilities, they were able to pick up on each other's location like dim lights in the night. However, one after another, those dimmed lights are sniffed out. Silently and smoothly, Wu, black to the wave detection of his opponents, moved through the literal black of the battlefield and took down those Channelers with quick point-blank blasts from his One-Shotter Gauntlet. At the moment of his attack, those Channelers were able to sense the rapid increase in the local wave, but it all happened way too quickly for them to physically do anything. As the bodies dropped one after another, the pitch-black was dispelled by a rivaling Caster which sent forth a gust of wind and cleared away the space. That was when the bodies of the knocked-out Channelers were once again revealed, and Wu was nowhere to be found. "Tsk! Useless pigs!" The loli shouted angrily, jumping off the back of the human stretcher and leaping towards Lera with surprising speed. Then, Lera felt a surge of power welling within the little girl as her twin tails glowed brightly before growing massively in length and holding her up off the ground. Then, with her hair elongated and perfectly controlled like long animalistic whips, the loli slammed one of the tails down on the ground where Lera's standing as she sprinted out of the way of the attack with her body lightened and strengthened. The now slightly muddy hair tips then rolled and wound off the ground like a waking serpent before it shot up towards Lera, attempting to pierce through her body with a sharp sound of air-breaking. As the tips dashed through the air, Lera formed bubble bubble around her body, parrying the majority of the incoming spikes before a handful of the tips even broke through the exterior of her shield. "Tsk! That's tough!" Lera grunted, instantly casting more layers of bubble bubble to make up for the single damaged outer layer, "Knockup! Bouldering!" In response to her command, the ground underneath where the loli was standing suddenly rose up, the change in height of the earth surigng into the little girl's body and sending her flying high up into the air before her Cast was bound around her thin frame, making it immediately twice as heavy as it was before and slamming her down onto the ground. Her elongated white hair collapsed upon impact, but she landed firmly on her feet instead. For someone with such small stature, she does have incredible strength. "Your casts are five years too early to take on me, old lady!" The little girl taunted, resisting against her increased weight as lines of the Wave surged out from her body and flowed through her waving hair, "You know why I chose to become a Channeler?! It's so I can beat you up myself!" "Heh." Lera laughed, dropping the book slightly to the side, "Those casts are not just for you." "One-Shotter SLAM DUNK!" Wu's body reappeared and he landed from the air like an asteroid, his right arm held out as his One-Shotter Gauntlet conjured a massive orb over its tip. Then, he slammed his arm straight down onto the ground, compounding the speed of his fall and his slam dunk and sending a massive attack that flattened a small part of the forest and sent the rest of the girl's simp forces flying in all directions. Then, as the bodies of the simps floated through the air, Wu rose up from the attack and looked through the gaps between the flying bodies right at the little girl. As the broken smile of an unconscious simp moved in between the line of sight between Wu and the girl, he disappeared from her line of sight. "TSK! YOU ARE SO ANNOYING!" The girl stomped her feet and sending waves of shock right through the ground as Wu vanished from both her visual field and wave-sending abilities again. However, before she could pay any attention to Wu, Lera sent forth countless heavy vines to weigh down on her body further more. As she tried to wrestle herself away from the annoyance, Wu silently reemerged from behind her and sent a small warning blast right into her back. A bright light briefly flashed and lit up this part of the forest, and the body of the little girl fell forward after she moaned lightly before being knocked out. Wu looked down, and her collection of stamps are worth exactly twenty points. "Wu. You are a bit of an enigma, you know that?" Jolyne, the little sister of the Twin Generals said as she stood in front of her in a set of casual clothes, the curvature of her body poking through her thin white layers and making Wu slightly nervous about Lera's reaction. However, Joseph had been the one testing Lera's Casts, while Jolyne tried to help him figure out the way he can fight. "Is it cause of my powerlessness?" Wu asked. "Perhaps." Jolyne shrugged, "Use it to your advantage. You cannot be detected through the wave, and if you concealed yourself even further, then you will straight up become a ghost. I am sure you and Lera can figure something out together in your future team fights." Wu looked down at his One-Shotter Pistol, and he slowly nodded. "That's not it, is it?" Wu smiled, "I can also make this into something else." Jolyne simply looked at Wu as countless ideas whirled around in his head. Then, she saw Wu pick up the One-Shotter Pistol and placed it over his right wrist, where the One-Shotter Gauntlet now is. "If I am to move like an assassin and a ghost...then I need to fight like one too." Wu said with a lightbulb floating over his head, "JOLYNE! YOU ARE AWESOME!" And with that, the ghostly assassin that is Wu is born, with his One-Shotter Gauntlet that offered him both close quarter and ranged attack possibilities. That was when Wu also realized the energy absorption capabilities of the pistol's system when he reverses the direction of Wave flow, and by landing into an orb of the Wave and allowing it to shrink upon impact and send energy back into the gemstone, he is able to break his falls when jumping off heights. All of this functions a bit like regenerative breaking seen in modern cars. If Jolyne hadn't suggested the new fighting style that caters to Wu's unique strength, this feature would never have been found. Combining that with Lera's new Casts, they successfully made it into the Infinite Academy with their newfound strength and a bit of loli and simp bullying.