By the time Wu and Lera woke up the next day, Augen had already departed with Tonya to the town known as the Dune's Hive, and Ver had also gone out after leaving a Kraken’s shell pinned to the surface of her bedside table.

“Shit…” Wu cursed before shaking Lera awake in the bed that they brought together, “We got too comfortable…”

“Ah…yawn!” Lera stretched her arms and pushed aside the thin blanket before she tried to rolled over when Wu placed both hands aroudn her face and pressed her cheeks together gently as she moaned in annoyance. Then, he leaned in and whispered into her ear.

“It’s~time~to~get~up~”

“Fine fine…” Lera opened her eyes and growled before sitting up with her hair puffing up like a cotton ball over her head. Wu tried pressing it down, but it sprung back up the moment he let it go, “Where are we again?”

“That was honestly the best sleep I've had in a long time!” Lera yawned once again as they walked along the streets of the Dune’s Diamond with Ver rolling her eyes every so often.

“I only waited for you for…a few hours.” Ver rolled her eyes, “So much so that I had gone around this tiny city a few times.”

"Was that a comment on the size of the city or how well we slept?" Wu asked, and Ver shrugged.

"A bit of both."

As they walked towards the city's main gate, Ver slowed down and headed towards the well before Wu and Lera continue on.

“Here, let me help,” Ver said, placing a hand on the walls before opening up two sets of Whirlpool red as water started swooshing behind it. Then, she gave Wu and Lera a wave of goodbye before starting to fill up the buckets of each of the citizens.

“We should get started on our jobs too.” Wu slammed his fists together, “Let’s go for a walk and talk.”

And so they did, as streams of people slowly moved past them with Wu and Lera's continued progress. Wu stopped by at random intervals and asked the same questions about what each of the citizens knew about the drought, when it all started, and what they thought the reason was.

However, most of them gave him a blank stare, while the others shook their head.

“Ver…?” Wu lowered his voice while talking into his communication Cast, “Could we get a bucket and some water here? Information gathering requires some persuasion.”

“What do you think I am, a hose or something?” Ver said.

“You are someone that needs a lower leg massage tonight,” Wu smiled, “One with even greater muscle stimulation and supposed recovery benefits. I can guarantee that.”

A purple whirlpool formed right over Wu’s hand before a bucket plopped out. Lera was about to ask for the water when she noticed a red whirlpool purple at the bottom of it. She looked towards Wu with a shrug before raising her voice, “We also have limited water here! Tell us what you know about the drought, and we will give you water in exchange!”

From then on, the information gathering was swift if not a little overwhelming as they were instantly swarmed. With Lera writing things down and Wu filling up the buckets, the general timeline of the drought finally started to come into the view for the two of them.

For as bad as the soil looked, the drought only started towards the end of the last year, and no citizen seemed to be able to tell the exact starting point, which isn't exactly surprising as something this severe usually stems from a cascade of bad things happening.

“The lands were great, the business was booming, and we have had one of the best harvests in recent times…” One of the farmers recalled before he put a cover on his bucket and sat down next to Wu, “The traders from the Hive, and the other towns were lining up from the center of the city all the way into the wild!”

“Kind of like how we have to line up for water now. Hah!” Another shook his head and lightly punched into the earth, “They keep saying that, eventually, rain will come back to us, but we haven’t seen any rain in months!”

Wu looked toward Lera and asked, “Any Casts that you know can affect weather?”

“Only if they are at the levels of a Sky Guardian Corp…” Lera said.

“Are you saying it’s an attack?” Another curious townswoman gasped, “Who could have done such a thing?”

“I am not suggesting that.” Wu said, standing up and grabbing everyone’s attention with a raised finger, “How much of an outlier was last year's harvest? Were the weather, especially the rain, always like this before?”

“Only the town’s scribe can tell you those, but no! Last year was the best year!” The farmer said, “Perhaps it is only fair that this year would be the worse.”

Further information was close to what they had heard already, and Wu and Lera knew that their time here was up. They stayed around for another hour helping others before moving deeper into the lands with the cracked soil as every footstep threatened to take away their ankles.

“So…you have any ideas so far?” Lera asked as Wu squatted down and stuffed his finger in between one of the cracks in the ground. A scorpion crawled out as he squealed and yank the thing out.

“Droughts can develop when rainfall within certain periods of time is less than what it usually is…” Wu said, placing both hands at the same level, “When the demand for water matched the supply from rainfall and streams, we are in a good spot. When we have too much supply compared to demand, we get flooding. When we have too little…”

“Drought.” Lera nodded.

“But usually, there’s some sort of a give from within the system.” Wu said, bringing one of his hands up and down slightly, “a range of values on both sides that may cause some subtle changes, but it will still keep things going. But for something to this degree to happen…”

“So this year, the rainfall's just way less?” Lera asked, pressing down Wu’s left hand that represented the supply.

“Possibly.” Wu said, raising his right up slightly, “Matching that with increased demand, and we may be in trouble. Could you create your Cast array here and take soil samples at once every half a meter in depth and as deep as you can? Just would like to figure out how things could change with depth…or rather, how much more water we might need to bring things back to normal levels.”

As far as Casts go, that was one of the easiest ones. And much as Wu would expect, the deeper layers still maintained a level of moisture that contrasted greatly with what was displayed at the surface. From his cilvil engineering lectures, he learnt that moisture is not only greater at greater depths, but there’s also a lagging effect when it comes to loss of moisture in droughts.

“So…what does this even tell us?” Lera asked, and Wu stood up before giving her a hand.

“I’ve got some ideas.” Wu said, “But it does seem like we need to talk to this scribe person. What a side quest this turned out to be~”

“Ah…Master Zhad had instructed me to assist you in whatever ways possible…” The scribe bowed his head as he gingerly turned and guided Wu and Lera into the small underground library, “Do be wary, it gets hot with more than one person here at any one time…”

“We are used to getting hot together,” Wu replied when Lera slapped him on the back and the scribe raised his eyebrows but didn’t say a word.

“The trade records, the weather records, and the spending records…” The scribe said, “None of this is to be taken out of the library, as you’d understand…”

“Of course.” Wu nodded, and the scribe turned and walked out. As he exited the door, Wu started moving right away, walking alongside each of the shelves before taking the weather records for the past quarter out and tossing it towards Lera. Then, he continued around, noticing the streak of dust along select parts of the shelves.

“What should I look for?” Lera asked when Wu took out another weather record further back from last year and joined her at the table.

“Contrasts. Differences. Things that don’t make mathematical sense…” Wu said before he opened both books at the same time, if we have had computers by now, this would all be so easy…but for now, we’ve only got this.”

It wasn’t long to find out that there have been fewer rain days this year compared to past years. And that was matched with a corresponding increase in trade. Once again, nothing too unexpected considering what they’ve heard so far.

However, once Wu went back a year back and plotted out the number of rain days and trade revenue against one another, it became clear that last year’s trade was not only good but exceptionally good.

So good, in fact, that it turned a steady linear increase into an exponential jump, and with that came a steep increase in spending.

However, the spending record did not match the whole revenue. It was off by at least double, and in previous years, there were similar gaps in the maths, albeit the hidden spendings were more along the 10% mark.

“Maths don’t lie.” Wu said, looking back at Ver, “Something’s changed in the past quarter, and…with that, came with a lot of money unaccounted for… The Infinite Academy incidence was about nine months ago, and the majority of the missing spending occurred just after…”

“But this plant cycle started way earlier too.” Lera pointed out, “So if we are to tie the two together…”

“Then the good uncle would have known that something was going to happen during the summer selections and...somehow prepared for what happened after?” Wu rubbed his chin, “Did you set up the audio barriers?”

“Of course I did.” Lera crossed her arms, “So…we can’t share this with him, or really anybody for this matter. How deep does this really go...how much does he really know...”

“There’s no way to know now, but I have some crazy guesses.” Wu pressed his fingers into his temples, “Maybe he paid PORA to get rid of the Necrovian royal family so he can get the crown?”

“PORA replaced them.”

“Right, and perhaps he had always wanted to work with Mila to remove the king in power before possibly betraying her later. However, when he actually wanted to take over the capital, the drought had hit at the most unfortunate of times, and…he was stuck here.” Wu continued and sat back, “If that’s true, what a ridiculous series of events this would be…”

“That remained to be seen, doesn’t it?” Lera asked, “What comes of our investigation then?”

“I know a few tricks we can do to at least kick start the planting cycle again.” Wu said, “give the soil more time to recover, take the losses for this year, and maybe…try something else to get more water from around here…”

As Wu and Lera glanced towards the map on the wall which showed the Dune’s Diamond tens of kilometers away from the closest beach.

“Perhaps...an ocean desalination project.”

“A…what?”