When Wu eventually returned to the main house that they had just cleaned earlier in the day, Lera was already there, and they shared an awkward glance before both noticing the red eyes over each other's faces. Lera smiled at him briefly before approaching him, "Hungry?"

"Ye. Yeah." Wu said, swallowing hard and trying to act normal as Lera spun around and walked towards Ver and Augen, who handed Wu and Lera plates of food.

"So...what are the plans now?" Ver asked.

"We take three days." Wu said, "Three days, where we do rotations and round out what we wanted to train and experiment with on our own. Then, we bring it all together."

"That would not address the issues of our coordination though, would it?" Ver asked, and Wu acknowledged that point right away.

"True." Wu said as Ver raised her eyebrows, "Yet, that may still be the best path forward for us, as a group. In the short term, we may be able to patch something together with just the four of us but remember our true goal here. It's about the Summer Selections."

"So?" Ver asked, waiting for Wu to drop the hammer.

"We need Fatera to fight with us, and we need to fight with her." Wu said, "I have talked to both Lera and Fatera, and Fatera told me to give her three days to figure out whatever she's doing."

"Is she going to be okay on her own?" Augen asked, and Wu made a sound of hesitation before continuing.

"I...am not sure." Wu said, "She always seemed like the lone wolf, but this...might be different. Augen, if you would like, you could check in with her?"

Augen smiled and nodded. At this point, it might be worth bringing in a fresh perspective.

"As for the rest of us, we will work through whatever kinks in the armor we have in the next three days, and use this time to reset both physically and mentally. Then, we will come together as a team, and move forward." Wu said, dropping his fork down as Lily blew a loud whistle and cheered from the other group.

"Nice one, boss!" Lily said, as Wu rolled his eyes and shook his head.

The house was perfectly cleaned, and the squads set up individual sleeping mats and blankets in the two separate rooms. There was plenty of space on the wooden floor, and Lera set her mats right next to Wu's instinctively before she pulled them apart silently, hoping Ver won't notice.

"What's...uh...going on between you two?" Ver asked, sitting down next to Lera as the latter laid out her Book of Casts next to her mat. In the meanwhile, Wu’s enjoying her evening shower.

"Nothing." Lera said, her voice sounding cracked as her eyes shot open and she quickly cleared her throat before repeating, "Nothing really."

"Right..." Ver rolled over and sat onto the mat on the other side of Wu’s mat, "You two are the oldest pair out of all of us here. If there is teamwork in any of us, it's you two."

"He knows." Lera said, looking down hopefully before she looked towards Ver, "He knows."

The door swung open, and Wu, the evening shower enjoyer stepped through with his hair still wet. Augen followed after him like a little brother, and Wu yawned before dropping into a forward roll and landing in the space between Ver and Lera.

"Alrighty, I am sleepy." Wu said, stretching his arms out and yawning, "It's been a long day. See you all tomorrow."

Lera dimmed the light Cast in the room shortly before sniffing it out minutes later. Then, as Wu fell swiftly asleep, she laid on her side and watched his chest rise up and down slowly and steadily. Reaching out with her hand, Lera wanted to grab onto him.

Instead, she only touched the cool hard wooden floor, and she kept it there as the wave of sleepiness swallowed her whole too.

Wu woke up the next day with Ver's legs pressing over his stomach and her hands jabbing into his face. He blinked a few times before gently pressing Ver back onto her mattress as she rolled over and continued dozing off. Without the constraints of her sleeping bag or a fall risk that is the bed, Ver's true sleep nature had been unleashed upon Wu. Lera, on the other hand, had already gotten up and went to take her morning shower.

Wu stayed in bed and watched the spiraling patterns of the ceiling before mustering up the courage to step out into the sun. There were sounds of splashing water from the corner of the house where the outdoor showers are positioned, and Wu walked in the opposite direction to the kitchen area, enjoying the morning chill on the island before heading to a small opening where he planned to set up his workshop.

Today is the start of the three-day period where he will explore new move sets and abilities. So far, he has the ironman suit created from the core of the One-Shotter Bow he obtained from Aya the Great Archer. By expanding the circuits from which the gemstone is connected to, Wu is able to power miniaturized Casts that are written and embedded into the armor pieces themselves.

Adding onto that, he was also able to reverse engineer the Cast of Containment around the gemstone, which was a Fuel Rock, and create Void Domain. Void Domain projects a domain that hinders all flow of the Wave locally within, thus acting as a perfect counter to most Wave users on this world.

Moreover, to prevent anyone from taking away his ability to apply Void Domain, Wu directly imprinted the Cast lines for Void Domain onto his body. This came with a tradeoff that the Void Domain also largely hinders all the Casts he had on his suit of armor, as he designed the Cast to project out unidirectionally, like a black body in the middle of a solar system.

That's where Void Domain special came in, where he inserted an additional control component right before the projection module on his Void Domain Cast, and this control module mapped the location of Void Domain output to locations based on spherical coordinates.

Using control modules to alter the effect of Casts was nothing new in the grand scheme of Cast design in this world, though the use of spherical coordinates was, and Wu was thankful to have been paying attention during his mathematics lectures back at university.

Void Domain Special allows him to use the Casts embedded into pieces of his suit of armor, namely the blasts in his arms and feet to allow for better maneuverability. So...where can he go from here? Wu wondered before he took off his shirt and looked down at the dark lines of tattoos over his body.

He was a goodie two shoes back on his world, but since coming here, he had run, fought, killed, and even got a whole-body tattoo...Wu chuckled and sighed. And then, Lera stepped out from the shower bunk with towels wrapped over her body.

Wu turned around, and Lera screamed lightly before she turned and ran back into the house. He was certain that she will feel bad about it later, so he paid it no heed.

Yesterday, even as Wu used his Void Domain special, Lily was still able to overpower him physically and slam a whole tree into his face while remaining outside of the range of the Domain. That's the key weakness of his Cast, it's limited range and decaying strength according to the inverse squared law, alongside its ineffectiveness against physical types.

That meant the intensity or strength of the Void Domain drops with the square of the distance. Again, just like the sun.

So...what if he could combine the range advantage of the One-Shotter and the close-quarter advantage of the Void Domain special...

As the gears turned in Wu's head, his evil chuckle started echoing through the camps as Lera came out wearing a loose shirt and ready to apologize.

"I got it!" Wu said, snapping his finger before pointing excitedly towards Lera, "Lera! Help me with this!"

"Oh?" Lera cocked her head back before nodding immediately, "What do you need?"

The prototype took hours to make with Lera's help, and they then headed out to the beach before Lera layered out a partial Cast Array and lit it up with light Casts.

"Ready?" Wu asked, as Lera nodded and watched in anticipation. Then, Wu reached over and tapped on another additional module over his wrist, a dark ring then forming around and projecting an ominous line onto Wu's intended target. As Wu swiped his hand sideways, the dark line swept through the ground, cutting through the Cast Array and severing the lines of Cast as the light Casts became sniffed out in an instant.

"HOLY SHIT." Wu jumped up in the air before he turned and blasted off away from Lera, the sands on the beach stirred up behind him as Lera tilted her head to the side and closed her eyes.

Now standing more than fifty meters away, Wu activated the Cast again, and the line once again cut through Lera's Cast array with ease and instantaneous effect.

This was far better than anything the One-Shotter could have done. It may not be a crater-making shot, but it can be argued to be far more devastating.

With a few simple Cast segments used in common light Casts, Wu was able to focus his Void Domain, turning it from a unidirectional area of effect Cast into a straight line Cast.

A laser, made of a Wave-stifling field. A Void Domain Laser, if you will.

Still, this wouldn't address the problem of Lily slamming a tree into his face, but it will certainly heavily disrupt the flow of the Wave within her as she did it.

"Lera! Lera!" Wu shouted, running to her with excitement until he tripped over a rock and fell onto his face. Lera rushed to him instinctively before he pulled his face up and smiled with sands still raining from his hair, "We did it. This is it..."

Lera nodded happily and reached her hand towards Wu, her black hair with silver strands flowing in the morning breeze and her grey eyes hidden behind the smile. At that moment, Wu felt his heart shook, and something within him shifted.

As he cherished the warmth of Lera's hand, the Cast Array she left behind started to sizzle before it blew up behind them.