The notes from Ita came by the end of the day, and a series of potentially intriguing rooms within the college was laid out in front of Wu. The plan then is for Ita to draw away the attention of the entire college as Wu moved behind the scenes to search through each of the individual rooms. Leaving the room with nothing but his gauntlet, he snuck through the shadows after Ita headed back downstairs.
She did a tiny bit of make up to make her bruises look far worse than it actually was, and as the crowd of onlookers turned to her, she ran towards Olivia in tears and hugged her arms around her.
Charlie's currently away for the moment, and the cries of the little girl tugged on the heartstrings of all those nearby, including a few of Charlie's closest supporters which all voiced how he may have crossed the line this time.
With the people of her own group also stepping in and trying to comfort her, Wu snuck past the back of the common room before making a dash towards the corridor where a series of storage room was located. Tracing the rooms with specific symbols, Wu quickly realized that a few of the seeming more heavily guarded rooms tended to have more symbols written on it.
By that logic, that means the most heavily guarded room would have the most number of symbols, and if it were up to Wu, he would hide the secret room far out of the way of anyone potentially stumbling through it.
He scanned around the empty corridors before catching his eyes on a winding staircase at the end. A staggering symbol was written on both sides of walls around it and the staircase lead down to a lower level that Wu didn't know the floating building had. He made his way towards it, glancing around to make sure that he's the only one that's remotely nearby. Then, he arrived at the doorway and placed a hand over the door handle.
As expected, the door wouldn't budge, and the lines of Cast from the walls crossed right over it to keep everything nice and secured. If Wu tried to force his way down there, an alarm would have been tripped right away.
But what if he just goes around it...Wu wondered, glancing to the pair of rooms to his sides. Both of them appeared to be storage closets, and only a single symbol was also written over their doors. Not only do they seem a lot less guarded, neither were even locked in the first place.
A foul stench of mold came flooding in his face as Wu pushed open the door to his right, and sets of cleaning tools were left unattended on the ground. He swiftly closed the door behind as the Light Cast of the storage room became automatically turned on. The room was suffocatingly small, though as Wu gently knocked against the walls with his knuckles, it sounded thin. If he was careful, he could put a small enough hole in the wall and go through the Cast.
WIth a bit of lateral thinking, Wu could very easily make his way downstairs...but how about a bit of vertical thinking...
Wu looked down at the ground and thought back to the day of the orientation with the lack of mentions about a basement floor.
Could he just go straight down?
Stomping around briefly, Wu then squatted down and placed the knuckles of his gauntlet right up against the floor. As a surge of wave pulsed within the One-Shotter, cracks slowly formed on the ground right beneath him before the entire place shook briefly. Concentrating the radius of the blast and thinning it out by adjusting the settings on his gauntlet, Wu drilled a tiny hole through the flooring and looked down.
A warm gust of air came through the hole, and it smelled like fresh soil being...baked in an oven?
Wu made an intrigued sound and slowly moved his wrist around, cutting a hole in the ground that's just big enough for his body to fit through before the circular piece of the flooring fell off and shattered onto the ground. It made a loud snapping sound before it echoed in the massive opening below, though it wasn't loud enough to draw the attention of everybody in college, thankfully.
Wu slipped right through before pulling a wet grimy blanket over and covering the hole. The drop was about three meters, and he landed softly, his hands pressing onto the ground for impact absorption as he scanned the area. Instead of the Ville College being built as a floating building with materials gathered specifically for it, it was actually built upon a piece of floating rock, and within the deepest part of the rock were a massive Cast that is responsible for the rock's floatation.
As he traced the lines of the Wave around the walls around him, all of them fed into the levels above like blood vessels, and the complex network branched out to countless smaller divergences near the top.
If it were truly all for the purpose of floatation, why would all those individual lines of Casts go up? Would all that's needed something to combat gravity, and wouldn't a Cast that took care of the bottom side be sufficient?
Wu stepped through the corridors of the cave that's dimly lit with the lines of the Casts and continued forward. The staircase that was sealed up was not too far away from where he is, and a poorly paved path guided it down into the very core of the beast.
This arc had felt extremely reminiscent of his encounter with the Remnant already, and as he ventured deeper, his One-Shotter gauntlet hummed lightly as the density of the Wave in the air slowly increases. Then, as the caves opened up in its cross-sectional area, Wu noticed all of those individual lines of Cast converge near a single flat surface that sat atop a waist-height stone column.
Wu approached the column, and that was the central node through which everything ran through. There, a piece of paper with detailed writing was nailed against the surface. He leaned over it, and the lines of writing looked exactly the same as the hand-written notes of threats done by Charlie.
Perhaps this is how he controls the entire building? No...there is no doubt.
Wu had already spent hours learning to read the flow of the Wave in Casts, as it's similar to circuit diagrams on his world. However, he is still nowhere near fully understanding the intricacies of the Casting world.
That wouldn't stop him though, as he reached into his pocket and took out his set of tiny tools used to test of specific junctions of the Casts that he has customized and edited. Going from the very outer edge of the page, Wu isolated out each of the individual segments in turn before memorizing its functions.
"One way diodes from the exterior...dampeners, filters...amplifiers...Here, here and here." Wu murmured, his fingers dancing over the page as he connected and disconnected the tips of his wires through a small light Cast given to her by Lera. If the potential of the Wave to flow is high enough, the light Cast will it up brightly, showing an analogous of voltage for the Wave. Then, by reversing the ends that fed into the light Cast, Wu can test to see if the connection was bi-directional.
After a short period of testing, Wu had finally gotten some ideas of how the piece of paper works. And it all came down to the central region where all of the processed Wave signals were fed into. It is the same spiraling pattern used by all communication Casts like a radar receiver of sorts.
Wu rubbed his chin and smiled before he reached forward and made a few edits with the Cast-writing pen. With a horizontal stroke linking the two regions that's not supposed to be together...That should prove a fascinating combination for Charlie.
Leaving behind the underground level back through the stinky storage closet, Wu then headed out of the room when he caught a couple headed into a single bedroom. They shared an awkward glance before the couple escaped back into their room with red all over their face.
Well, at least he won't be found out for the time being, if the guy can hang on for long enough. Crossing his fingers, Wu continued moving forward.
Trying to act casual, Wu strolled into the living area as Charlie sat right opposite from Ita as Olivia scolded him. He appeared surprisingly quiet today, and Ita looked at Wu before he gave her a subtle nod.
"Charlie...the reason I didn't want to get with you is because..." Ita said, standing up and walking towards Wu, "I already fancied Wu! He's just the bigger..man!"
Charlie raised his head sharply, a mix of confusion and rage forming in his face before he surged forward, "That loser?! Are you out of your mind?!"
Wu felt his body stiffen as Ita pressed her body into him, "Just play along..."
"That's right." Wu said, clearing his throat and bringing his best acting performance, "Where were you when Ita most needed help?! Do you care for anything besides her body? Do you even know what her favourite food is? Plus...how big are you really?"
"Yes, it's mud pie." Charlie said, standing up slowly, "And yes, I do want her body. And shit...I am at least average. What are you going to do about it?!"
"yeah...what I am going to do about it?" Wu murmured to Ita, and she gripped her arms around him even tighter, "If you want me, then you will challenge Wu through the Law of Combat!" Ita said, pointing a finger forward, "You get me if you win, and we get the college if you lose!"
"Is that how it's going to go?" Charlie said with a tensed expression on the verge of bursting, "Have you finally decided to stop running away at last?"
"That's right." Wu said, a cryptic smile on his face making Charlie more annoyed than he already is, "You have been maintaining your well-mannered image within the college, but within the Law of Combat, you can do whatever the fuck you want, right?"
Charlie stood up and cracked his knuckles as his eyes darkened, "That's right. Enough teasing, I will enjoy killing you myself."