“So here’s the plan…” Wu said, snapping his finger and pointing to the corner of the diagram as Uncle Zhad and his advisors seated themselves across the room, “We are going to turn ocean water into drinkable and usable water, and we are going to try to minimize how much Wave and other resources that we need to keep the system going.”

“What of the salt?” One advisor when Ver rolled her one exposed eye.

“That’s the main part of the puzzle.” Wu said without a moment of pause, “The flow of water governed by a process named osmosis, where the concentration of salts or minerals draws water towards it with the intent to balance out concentrations. THat's how plant roots draw water from the surrounding soil.”

“Right…”

“However! Another part of the process is evaporation.” Wu said, snapping his finger, “compared to dealing with manmade osmosis,it would be far easier to rely on the natural heat of Necrovia and capture the water vapor. It’s going to be a slower process, but something that we should be able to scale up fairly easily.”

“So…what exactly do you suggest, Wu?” Uncle Zhad asked, "We just...wait until the sun does its job?”

“And we will catch the evaporated water…how?” Another advisor asked, when Wu pointed to the glass windows and smirked.

The plan was exceedingly simple. They will gather all of the glass makers and workers before they head out towards the sea, where they will create sets of medium-sized glass covers about three meters in length and width.

At the same time that the workers went all out on glass making, the rest were digging out pairs of small water reservoirs by the beach that connects to the ocean and are separated by gauges.

The pairs of water reservoirs were each 9 meters in area, and they were separated into a salty side and a non-salty side, with the salt side connecting to the ocean through said gauges. When the sun light that was concentrated by the sets of mirrors Wu gathered from homes heats up the water, the evaporated water droplets will rise up through the air and become condensed on the surface of the glass. The glass was also angled at an incline with the salty side higher up, promoting the droplets to flow down the slope towards the non-salt side.

The glass was then connected to wooden planks that cover the non-salty side, which have dimples and divits carved into its bottom side to encourage water droplets to detach from the cover and fall down into tightly packed rows of square containers.

Then, it’s only a matter of scaling up in numbers and waiting for the droplets of water to be collected. Every so often, the group will open the gauge and flush out the salty side before the process repeats once again.

As the sun did its job, Wu then went ahead to figure out the supply chain. Right now, they were limited by the rate of glass making, and Lera were figuring out if she could replace the glass covers with self-sufficient shield Casts that also allow light to pass through. However, even the level of Wave in the ocean water were lower than Lera expected, so it may not be that feasible to power massive shield Casts with the naturally occurring Wave.

So for now, they simply have to buckle down and get to work.

“What have you been working on?” Wu asked as the chimes of glass shaping and the sounds of busy chimneys became the ambiance on the beach as the third day of work was well under way. Some of the civilians from the Dune's Diamond had come here to pick up the dozens of containers from the previous day.

“I…almost got it.” Lera said as she stood in the water with the white water waves crashing over her ankles, “It’s just that the Wave was so scarce in the Ocean, and I cannot store it anywhere…Like, I can absorb it when I am standing here, but I can’t use it to maintain Casts…”

Wu squatted down and felt the cool of the ocean before he smirked and splashed it straight at Lera who yelled at him with annoyance, “Just like waste heat, always there, yet impossible to utilize.”

“Could we do something with collecting Wave slowly like you did with the evaporation thing, and use it power shield Casts?” Lera asked when Wu raised his eyebrows and reached into his pocket to take out the few well-wrapped fuel rocks that he had brought with him all this way.

“Compared to the entirety of the ocean, the Wave within the fuel rocks is nothing, yet its concentration was high enough to blow up a whole forest…” Wu said, looking down at the piece of paper with the Void Domain cast written into it, “How about one-way filters, Wu? A…Wave diode? Hm...that should work...”

“What’s that now?” Lera twisted her eyebrows and looked at Wu.

“Remember that in our Cast making classes back at the Academy, we had segments of Casts that allow only one-way flow of the Wave?” Wu reached his hand towards Lera before his finger curled up and gestured for the Cast making materials. Then, he splashed down sets of Cast lines with her supply of ink and scribbled out the ugliest Cast that Lera had ever seen.

“That was only limited to an extremely small flow of the Wave…” Lera pinched her jaw and thought, “But that was to maintain the integrity of the Cast, not for storage of the Wave itself!”

“Kind of.” Wu focused downward, “However, those Cast lines had nothing to that limits the scale of this Cast segment, no? So long as we manage the thickness of these Cast lines relative to the amount of Wave flowing through this segment, we can do it.”

"Hmm..." Lera crossed her arms as Wu smiled at her, "It doesn't sound that difficult..."

"You can do it." Wu said, slapping her on the shoulders before she realized that his hand was dripping wet.

So Lera got to work yet again. As expected, the first iteration of Lera’s project was a failure because they didn’t account for the moisture in the air messing up the actual integrity of the Cast paper. However, after wrapping it with the same water-proofing paint that was used on the wooden planks and the containers, the first iteration of the diode for the fuel rocks was finally created. It would be charged every night by plunging into the deep water, and when morning comes, it would be fished out and connected to a massive shield Cast that further aids in the production of fresh water.

The great thing about the shield Cast method was its scalability, as it is considerably easier to increase the size of the shield Cast compared to making more glass, however, this one was limited by the number of fuel rocks they were able to recharge and maintain nightly. However, after a few days, a standard routine was set up, the both methods appeared to be viable, and Wu picked out the largest piece of fuel rock that he brought along and designated it as the one to leave behind permanently.

“Consider this single piece of fuel rock…a gift from Tonya.” Wu said, pointing to the piece of semi-transparent rock that’s powering a massive dome of shield Cast as workers moved in and out to replace the filled up containers.

“I don’t know what I can do to thank you…” Uncle Zhad stood there, amazed by the set up as his eyes jumped from one side to the next.

“Have you heard back from Tonya and Augen yet?” Wu asked, when uncle Zhad focused back to them and shook his head.

“I have sent Ver to investigate now that the matter of water appeared to have been dealt with, but she told me not to initiative contact as not to raise any suspicion,” Uncle Zhad said before he looked at the old scribe behind him and swirled his finger as he was busy writing things down, “But this is incredible! A production line like this can fuel an entire economy!”

“Don’t over-rely on this.” Wu said, looking at uncle Zhad nodded formally, though he wondered how much of his words will be taken seriously, “A steady economy does not rely on a single line of products or industry, and is thus less affected by its peak and troughs. That’s one of the reasons your entire town’s like this after one drought ruined the agriculture.”

“Yes yes…” Uncle Zhad bowed, “I shall make water free and accessible to the citizens who are helping with this project, and charge all but a small fee or a favor for those who aren’t. We will then use those funds to rebuild our city.”

“Then…I suppose our businesses here are done…” Wu said before he pointed to the scribe standing behind uncle Zhad, “I shall share with you all I know about maintenance and standard operating procedures of such units…”

With the documentations made, and backups set up, Wu then rode back on one of the many camel trolleys that travel back and forth on a daily basis. The lines of the citizens lining up to get water from the wells were no more, replaced by workers who were setting up camps and traveling back and forth between the Dune’s diamond and the beach-side water farm.

Once the basic needs of drinking and sanitation were assured, then the spare water was used to water the crops. We had instructed the farmers to dig away the layers of cracked soil first before planting and watering the deeper layer that still had some moisture remaining within.

This was only a temporary measure, but as the new planting season was well on its way, they cannot afford to be delayed any further than they already have. Slowly, but surely, thanks to the work of the people, the city of Dune’s Diamond had sprung back to life once again.

As Wu and Lera sat along the top of the walls overlooking the small city and the houses far out in the distance after their early breakfast, their piece of the Kraken’s shell finally started to vibrate.

Ver had previously instructed Uncle Chad to tell Wu and Lera to wait for her to contact them, as there’s no knowing what’s the situation within the Dune’s Hive. Now, it seemed like it’s finally time for them to act.

As Wu injected a small surge of Wave into the Kraken’s shell, it glowed and Ver’s muffled voice came from within.

“Seemed like you have solved the matter of water…” Ver said, “So much so that the rebelling group is talking about an open heist.”

“A…heist?”

“Yes.” Ver replied quickly, “An attack on the water farm in an attempt to take it over…So…are you ready to fight?”

Wu gave Lera a look when she sighed and chuckled.

“Things are never going to be easy, are they?”