Right now, the objectives for Wu and Lera are twofold. First, they need to handle the matter of the defensive structure Casts all over the Kingdom that sprouted like flowers in the spring. To prevent anyone with ulterior motives from tearing up the kingdom completely, they would have to figure out a way to systematically disable those Casts.

Preliminary reports from the rest of the King’s agents surveyed at least a couple hundred defensive Casts scattered at semi-regular intervals of one every square mile or so. From a tactical standpoint, it does make sense to spread out the defenses throughout the areas of interest, though it makes Wu and Lera’s jobs a lot more labor-intensive than he expected it to be.

Second, they will need to deal with the communication Cast of the agent, which feeds back to the PORA's regional leader at regular intervals in time. Right now, the Kingdom of Varous isn’t ready to face off against even the regional forces of PORA, let alone the armada that’s being rapidly being assembled in the Western continent by Mus Ongaku himself.

“You may conduct whatever research you need within the palace,” Joseph said, guiding Wu and Lera into the backside of the grand palace before he pulled aside the heavy curtain singlehandedly. Lera’s eyes show up when she focused on the contents obscured within the darkness.

“No way…” Lera glanced briefly at Wu before she smiled and rushed forward, a light Cast spontaneously forming over her palm. The gentle glow illuminated the room as Wu chased after her.

“After what had happened…this was all we were able to salvage.” Joseph said, scratching his head as Lera knelt down and picked up one of the books with a charred cover, “This was no Infinite Academy, but…”

“But this is certainly better than the current state of the academy~” Lera joked, “Way better…even if this was the last hints of the Pinnacle Research Institute’s existence…"

“Then…I will let you get to work.” Joseph nodded, exiting the scene as Wu sat down next to Lera, allowing her the time to take in everything. Memories of the past came rushing back into Lera's head, and she stood still like a statue while Wu waited patiently.

“You…okay?” After a little while, Wu finally opened up, and Lera nodded while holding the book close to her chest.

“Let’s start.”

Ordinarily, if they wanted to disable specific Casts, they would just have to throw their Void Domain over it, but this specific scenario is not that simple upon further inspection.

In order to control such a large scale Cast cohesively, all of the individual defensive Casts had to be connected in a vast network of Casts that spanned the entirety of the Kingdom, and if one was to go down completely, it would theoretically alert the rest of the defensive Casts, similar to the functionality of nervous systems, or Lera's own Cast array. So long as the Void Domain wasn't large enough to cover the entirety of her Cast Array, and she would know if part of her Casts were taken out.

Then, the equivalent of immune responses will be those giant Wave cannons focusing their fire onto the origin of the issues, blasting those areas into complete and absolute smithereens. This wouldn't bring back the defensive Casts that were taken down, but it will certainly make those responsible pay.

The brute force approach of Void Domain won’t be enough anymore. In fact, even the concentrated efforts of Void Domain Laser would have been too crude for this specific task too.

“So…we needed some different approach here…” Wu murmured, staring at a brand new whiteboard that he and Lera had quickly set up, “I am thinking something…small. Something microscopic even…What is the smallest a cast can be, Lera?”

“For your Void suit, we compressed several Casts into much smaller versions of itself.” Lera pointed straight back at Wu who nodded with agreement.

“Yes, through the Cast printing press thing.” Wu nodded, “What about…something even smaller than the armor pieces?”

“Legends has it that Principal Khan was someone who carved his Casts into grains of sand.” Lera said, her eyes unfocused as she drew on her memory.

“Yes, something like that.” Wu snapped his fingers, “Any ideas for how?”

“Through imposing his will into the Wave, Khan simply conjures all that he needed into existence.” Jolyne’s voice came from outside, and she walked in with Joseph beside him who’s carrying a basket-full of foods and sweet buns. Though it was mostly sweet buns, and Wu guessed that it had to be taro flavored.

“All ten of the Heavenly Pillars have legends that weere associated with them, and that’s why Khan was known as the endless. With countless Casts engrained into granuels of sand, you practically have access to an endless arsenal.” Jolyne tossed a sweet bun Wu’s way before he caught it with one hand, “That’s besides our purpose here, though.”

“Except for the fact that…maybe we shouldn’t approach it from the point of view of any existing Casts…” Wu squatted down as Lera placed the dull-looking communication Cast secured from the agent prior.

Whatever it is they must do, it would be something that’s never been done before. And this time, a brute force approach may not work as well as before. They can't just shut things down willy nilly anymore. They needed something more precise, something more refined...a tool reserved for the modern age, a tool reserved for the most minute of actions.

Wu recalled when he was taking the Cast-making class back at the Academy, how his professor there instructed them to test the individual compartments of the Casts one step at a time, but what about trying to debug or fix a fully integrated one?

Wu held his chin as ideas ran through his head and the other three watched him think. He cannot risk accidentally triggering some sort of alarm mechanism from the Original Cast, but no innovation can happen without experimentation… In this case, it doesn't matter if he started with the defensive Casts or the communication Casts first, as it's far safer to assume that both functions with a security system within.

“Lera.” Wu looked up and turned towards her, “I need something, and it may be something only you can do.”

“What is it?” Lera glanced back at him with her big beautiful eyes, and deep down, she was glad that Wu trusted her implicitly without question.

“I want you to create a duplication of this Cast.” Wu said, “I will create a new Cast that’s far smaller than anything this world had seen, but for that to work, I need to be able to experiment on this Cast without any hesitation.”

“Got it.” Lera stood up with a firm nod before she picked up the communication Cast with one hand and a sweet bun in another.

“The timeline is three days for the communication Cast.” Joseph reminded, “I…will prep the Kingdom’s army just in case.”

“We trust you, but…” Jolyne added, but Wu put a hand up immediately.

“It’s okay.” He said, offering her a smile, “We understand. Only fools move ahead without backup.”

Lera, with her steady hand, remarkable patience, and deep understanding of Casting, should be able to fully duplicate the intricate structures of the seemingly normal communication Cast. Duplication requires no understanding, and Wu trusts her fully with this task. Though he, now sitting in his workshop with tools sourced from the mechanics and Cast makers all over Varous, was stuck.

There was nothing wrong with a brute force approach, per se. It worked just fine with them shadowing Void Domain over the King and the Atlas twins, but this time, they needed something far more specific. That’s the general trend of modern military on Earth too, shifting over from bombastic displays of power to precision strikes that accomplish the exact mission objectives with the minimum amount of destruction required.

Wu sighed before he unzipped his jacket and took off the Void suit. After all that transpired during the Infinite Academy Saga, Wu was able to source out some more Fuel rocks to connect in series with the One-Shotter gemstone so he would never encounter an outage again.

The damage sustained during the last battle was great enough that he needed to break apart the entire suit in order to put it together, but he also took the time the revise some of the key designs, adding automatic activation of shield-Casts and cycling it in and out with Void domain, meaning that there is always something up around them. This extra feature also benefited from the extra fuel rocks powering the suit.

Going back on topic, when Wu focused his Void Domain laser to its utmost extent, it became a sharp cylinder with a radius of a few inches, however, that’s still a hammer compared to the scalpel that Wu needed to break open the Cast without triggering any security measures.

“Let’s try this…” Wu murmured, putting together quickly the Cast militarization printing set. The first idea is simply to create a far smaller version of Void Domain laser, with the Cast itself and the extra compartment to concentrate the beams also shrunk down.

The entire piece wasn’t much effort to put together, but when Wu flicked the switch on and watched the blue glow of the Wave slowly travel through the series of Cast compartments, a smoke rose through the air as the Wave burned through the paper.

Leaning in closer, Wu felt for the heat on the paper as his finger ran from one block to the next. As expected, the original Void Domain cast did its job in suppressing the flow of Wave, as shown by a tiny grain of inert fuel rock sitting on the table next to him. However, it seemed like when miniaturizing the extra compartment used to concentrate the beam, the sheer output of the Wave exceeded the integrity of the Cast itself.

Instead of some inherent design flaw, this was really a matter of size. That Cast was never meant to be used at this size. Wu made a hum of intrigue before he reached for different materials to hold the Cast on.

It might also be the integrity of the Cast paper. Maybe running it on a piece of metal will help?

As the metal sizzled on the table and a char was burnt into the wooden table, Wu tossed the piece into the bucket of water reserved for fuel rocks.

“Damn.”

This is turning out to be far harder than Wu would have imagined. After all, it’s been a little while since Wu’s come back to doing proper science.