“Come over here, my dear Lera.” Wu threw his hands up and drew Lera’s attention who’s been poking away at one of her own Casts since early morning. She flipped her hair back, a single strand of her white hair staying in place as she rubbed her eyes and stood up.

“What?” She asked when Wu pushed over a rolling wooden board with a long list written all over it.

“I had been thinking about what I could bring to this world, uniquely, ever since I got here.” Wu said, turning around, “Beyond you know…playing with Casts and reusing and innovating previously established Wave usage items and abilities.”

“You told me it’s principles of the scientific method.” Lera placed her hand over his shoulders and said.

“Not just that, but also knowledge of what was possible.” Wu said, his fingers hovering over the board as Lera’s eyes followed his finger from one bullet point to another, “The vast arrays of Casts in this world are truly amazing, but each of them, be it compartmentalized into segments to make up Casts, or Casts written specifically for a singular purpose…”

“But…?” Lera prodded on, and Wu spun in a circle with satisfaction before pointing to a bullet point written at the top of the board.

“Specificity VS generality?” Lera read though the big words didn’t make much sense in her head.

“When you want to make yourself lighter and run faster, what do you use?” Wu asked.

“A lightening Cast.” Lera said.

“And what about if you want to make something heavy and slam down?”

“A Bouldering Cast.” Lera replied just as quickly. In fact, those were some of the earlier admissions questions she had to answer in order to go to the next round of selection for the Pinnacle Research Institute.

“But they are both the same in terms of using the Wave to manipulate basic physics.” Wu added, “Rather, using Wave to interact with acceleration due to gravity. So, they are really the same spell.”

“But they aren’t!” Lera quickly flipped over the pages in her book of Casts, “Look! The organization, the effector, and logical compartments are all…Wait…”

“Ok, that’s just one example.” Wu said, his knuckles knocking on the first word on the whiteboard, “A computer. Imagine a book of Cast that can fit into the palm of your hand, and the controls can be done through a series of buttons, or whatever you like. Then, the device simply reorganizes all of the Cast compartments automatically to form whatever you need.”

“A…computer…” Lera murmured.

“One device to govern everything.” Wu continued, his hands shaping into a rectangle the size of his palm, “That’s what we were able to accomplish with our phone. But now, the phone will be able to interact with magic. Except…”

“We don’t use the m-word here.”

“Right. Anyway, but before we are able to get to that, there are quite a lot more things that needs to be done.” Wu said, his hands shifting down the whiteboard. However, before he could continue, Lera grabbed onto her wrist.

“We really should tell the King and the atlas twins about it.” Lera continued, “Then, we can delegate some of this work to the Varous Academy.”

“So…that’s it.” Wu said, rounding up his discussions with the King of Varous, the Atlas Twins, and the new headmaster of the Varous Academy, a institution created to replace the fallen Pinnacle Research Institute, “Through this interdisciplinary research institution, we need to foster these ‘sciences’: materials, imaging and scanning, theories on computers and logic using Wave compartments, and lastly, medical technology.

“I have some basic ideas of how and where each of this can go, and how it may be done, but at the end of the day, the responsibilities will fall on your shoulders. Some sort of a monthly meet-up to discuss research progress may be helpful.” Wu concluded, “But trust me…when all of this is complete, Varous will truly be the most advanced and developed kingdom in this world.”

“That was something else...but considering all that you have done for us, I must hold back my skepticism.” The new headmaster said, his glasses sliding off his tall nose, “A lot of these ideas… was a few steps beyond what we have. It should be doable…”

“Skepticism based on knowledge and logic is good. Those based on feelings and stigma not so much." Wu said, "The main thing would be to get out of the old way of thinking. For too long, Casters have built specific Casts for specific purposes, and that prevents the kind of horizontal creative thinking that will truly push things forward. Try to start from a general and fundamental template of basic logic and slowly add on compartments that can be easily switched around based on the need.”

“Right…” The headmaster seemed to have struggled with that concept a little, though he was rapidly making notes in his book, “I…need to sleep on this.”

“Do so.” The King said, gesturing as the headmaster slowly stood up and exited the room, leaving behind those on Wu’s inner circle, “Now…let’s talk about Void Domain.”

“I had suggested it to our king.” Joseph first added, “A Cast like that would vastly bolster the fighting strengths of our army greately, but I do not wish to overstep on…”

“That’s no worry.” Wu said, placing his hand on the table, “I had already prepared myself for this day to come. Lera?”

Lera nodded before placing down a package of texts onto the table, “Here’s all that you need to replicate the Cast.”

Joseph and Jolyne shared a surprised look, and they turned back to face Wu, “That’s…it? You are just giving away you trump card that easily?”

“Well, I have much more in the docket~” Wu smirked, “It’s not about this individual Cast, or anything I could have made for that matter. So long as I have my decently smart brain, I can make whatever I need. Well, with her support.”

“So what you are saying is that we should expect something crazier from you?” Jolyne laughed, “Something even crazier than dropping the Academy? Hahaha…”

“Maybe something that can revolutionize it all…” Wu rubbed his chin as his mind had already traveled towards the next version of his Void Suit.

Logically, Iron man 3 came after iron man 2, and what happened in iron man 3? Things got remote.

“If you may, I would like to get to work right now.” Wu stood up, “For the impending battles, I am sure I need to upgrade things a little bit.”

“Wu?” Lera glanced at him, and she knew what the excited twitch on his face means, “Please excuse us, my King.”

“Of course! Go crazy…” The King stretched his arms before pulling out a stack of paper from under the table, “Now…some boring bureaucratic shit…”

“Lera! Lera! My dear Lera!”

From the moment the door slid close, Wu wrapped his arms around Lera and nearly pressed her down onto the ground, “I have got an idea.”

“A…floating suit?” Lera tilted her head, “But the whole point of the suit is to protect you?!”

“Yes. But unlike you guys, my physical body cannot be strengthened by the Wave to nearly the same extent.” Wu said, stripping completely as Lera stared straight at his body, and she quickly noticed the handful of bruises that still haven’t healed up since they returned from Talonia, “I am no idiot, and I know I can’t do this forever…Once the technology became mature enough, maybe we could do something about this body of mine, but before then, that’s what we got to work with.”

Wu said, spinning around as his dong flapped in the air, distracting Lera before he walked towards black board and spun it around, revealing the personal passion projects on the other back side. So far, Lera had only seen the front side of the board, being the ones Wu referred to as ‘Sociatal Improvement Projects’ or SIMP for short.

“Can’t you put something on? It’s really…distracting.” Lera plead at last, but Wu simply taunted her with a hip wiggle before continuing.

“The next version of my suit needs these functionalities: remote and direct control, full set of arsenals regarding conventional and Void domain Casts, a…sniper rifle thing instead of whatever wrist mound I had, full set of defensive abilities, and a toggle for remote and local modes for remote and in-person combat scenarios, and most importantly…it needs a Wave scanner.” Wu said, “It’s a long list, I know, but I believe each and every one of these is doable, as long as we work together with one at a time on it. And we fail together, a lot.”

“Well, we are used to that, if anything.” Lera shrugged, Casting a trap Cast before she made the vines wrap around Wu’s waist and covered everything up, “So…what do we start with?”

“Remote and direct control.” Wu said, his hands moving up to the side, “And I already had an idea for how that can be done.”

It was rather simple in principle. Carrying on from the once-abandoned motion tracking idea of anti-Void Domain, Wu will simply wear simple modified communication Casts at each and every one of his major body segments such as the upper and lower legs and arms and the trunk, and the locations of each of those Casts will inform the suit of Wu’s current body configuration.

Then, that enables the suit to copy Wu’s movements exactly, so long as there is a structure Cast within the suit that’s physically holding it up. The first prototype was done in a jiffy, but Wu quickly came to realize that the suit was only able to recreate simpler movements of his, rather than anything complex enough that will be needed in actual combat.

And all of that comes down to the level of information the communication Casts can convey. Essentially, the communication Casts need to both convey information regarding their position, but also orientation at each and every time point.

Then, the biggest issue became the items powering the communication Casts on Wu’s body.

“Shit.” Wu slouched back, “I didn’t think it through…unless I wear gemstones on my body, there is no way that they can be powered in thier current state.”

“Nope.” Lera shook her head, “I will not allow you to wear bombs.”

“Yeah. Even I don’t trust it enough…” Wu sighed, “Let’s just…focus on the other aspects, I suppose. Before we can figure out a way to contain a ridiculous amount of Wave in a compartment far smaller than the Cast of Containment, then we can restart the conversation of a remotely-controlled suit…”

One day, baby. One day.

Wu thought of him slinging his Void suit across the battlefield like a musical conductor and thought of how cool that would be. However, right now, all that he can do is adding more padding into his suit and upgrade what he already has.

And so the two got to work. The rifle design was semi-based on the One-Shotter pistol that Wu had, but this time, Wu used another Fuel rock to power the rifle while connecting it to duplicates of Casts on his suit, which allows him to fire not only regular blasts of Wave but also Void Domain Laser, anti-Void Domain and Void Domain homing missiles, all at a ridiculously long-range.

Joseph took Wu on a hunting trip to test the suit out in reality, and it worked decently well, with the major drawback being the time it takes to switch between each of the firing modes. But honestly, that’s just the reality of the situation for him right now. So long as he planned ahead, the lag time is manageable.

In addition, Wu also created sets of melee weapons, each infused with his custom Casts, partly as a prototype for the Varous kingdom army, and partly for him to deal with the pesky Channelers he will eventually come to face. Though he also packed in a surprise within the sniper rifle to ensure it can be used as a club too.

Once the weapons were in good shape, then the two went on to building the Wave scanner. It turned out to be far more difficult than it had to be, as they needed either a specific material, or a Cast that will respond to the strength of the Wave, and the best that they could come up with was based on amplification Casts.

However, that simply provided Wu with a very spotty image that looked like early infrared image he had seen during his research. The results were either way too intense and noisy, or too insensitive, and Wu made a mental note that it will be the one technology that needs the most amount of work in the future.

Though, as much as he would like to keep on working on his technology, a new mission eventually found its way to them, and it came with a particularly oceanic flavor.