After asking a few Atlantians nearby, Villin made his way to the area depicting the most recent history. Looking at the engravings things quickly became clearer.

Villin started reading starting from the ‘rebellion’ twenty-or-so years ago. This rebellion overthrew the then human leader of the city and the four men with a large amount of Fishmen DNA rose to the Atlantian throne. 

Under their leadership, art, something that had gotten less popular in the last hundred years, rose up again as new sculptures rose all over the city. 

The leaders treated their citizens well. They even personally went out to hunt for food for their people. They worked hard and the people loved them. Then, a catastrophe struck. Amen, one of the four leaders, was killed when he went out for food. It was said that the lord of the sea, a powerful creature, killed him.

Fifteen years ago, the three other Atlantian leaders took an army and went out for revenge, and so they killed the sea lord’s child. Victorious in their purpose, the Atlantians retreated to the city.

One month later, Atlantis got attacked by an army of sea-creatures. They assaulted Atlantis unexpectedly and so the casualties were heavy.

Ever since then, the lord of the sea came with his armies every five years. They fought against the humans, when most of the sea army was destroyed, they would return to the depths of the sea. 

In thirty-two days it would be time again and Atlantis would once more be under siege of the sea creatures. This was two days after the three runemasters would have left.

Seeing the events depicted on the murals, Villin nodded contently. One odd thing was the fact that the sea lord would never be properly depicted, he was always behind something else. But this would make sense if the people that made these murals simply didn’t know what it looked like.

After learning of the enemies they would face, Villin fell into deep thought. Even though he knew some of the beasts depicted, he was unfamiliar with most. To the outside world, the sea is a mystery. Nearly no magus would willingly go deep underwater to fight beasts, where their strength would be severely restricted.

After thinking for a few moments, Villin figured that it didn’t really matter that much. The fact of the matter was that there were dozens upon dozens of different beasts depicted in these murals and each and every one of them would have different abilities. All in all, they would have to be prepared to defend against a myriad of different kinds of enemies.

Deciding to start working on some things, Villin once more made his way outside, he wanted to have a look at the defenses Atlantis had. According to the murals he looked at earlier concerning the war, it seemed that Atlantis had three lines of defense. One on the very outer border of the city. One halfway through, and a final one around the palace.

Five years ago the beasts barely managed to breach the second line of defense. This was a problem as the citizens wouldn’t all be able to hide within the palace and it was clear that the defenses got worse every time.

Not to mention the Atlantians who died, devices of war got destroyed by every attack and they were too complicated for their enchanters to return, they had no runemasters at this point in time, the final Atlantian runemaster died eleven years ago due to old age.

After a short moment of thought, Villin decided to work on the outer defenses since they were the most important. Once the outer defenses were broken through the city would partially flood quite seriously restraining a section of the Atlantians’ combat forces. Even though the Atlantian magi had zero problems with fighting underwater, seventy percent of Atlantians were still mortal, half of these couldn’t even breathe underwater.

Every second the outer defenses held, the Atlantians had a serious advantage against the beasts, once this wall was breached, the war would become a mostly even playing field, this wasn’t ideal for the defenders.

With this in mind, Villin quickly began walking towards the border and two hours later, he arrived. Seeing the water move around the barrier was beautiful, but Villin didn’t spend much time looking at it before properly taking in his surroundings.

The outer section of the dome was full of buildings much sharper than those inland. It seemed that here, aesthetics weren’t all that important. This was shown the clearest by the tall square towers that were built every fifty meters. Other than this there were also shorter towers all around.

After noting these facts, Villin decided to have a look at the ward that kept the water away from this magnificent city. He approached the invisible barrier and when he was just half a meter away from the water, he sent strings of magic power forwards, trying to sense the ward.

Yet, his magic power reached the edge between the water and air and it met no resistance. No matter how much Villin looked for it, he simply couldn’t sense a ward at all, something that seemed impossible considering the size and effect of the ward.

After a bit of hesitation, Villin had his magic power probe further, actually reaching into the water around the city. As soon as he did this he sensed the magical power of a different person within the water. Not wanting this person to notice his disturbance, Villin’s magic power retracted sneakily until it got back to his body.

“Why the hell is someone’s magic power within this water?” Villin wondered as he thought about the situation. He simply couldn’t understand how there didn’t seem to be a ward keeping the water out, he checked in multiple other locations but didn’t find even the faintest trace of a ward.

After deciding to figure out this mystery later in his working period, Villin decided to finally check out the defenses they had here. He approached one of the numerous short towers and entered it, once inside, he saw a massive circular staircase heading up and so he quickly used it to get to the top of the tower.

Below the rooftop, there were two other small floors. One had a couple of beds and some other basic utilities while the other one seemed to be a breakroom, Villin found a bunch of empty canvasses and paint in the room.

After this came the rooftop. As soon as he got to the rooftop he noticed two people looking at him.

Both of them had their entire armor set on save for the helmet and they had been talking until they heard him coming up to the roof.

One of them had blonde hair and gills while the other one had brown hair and lacked gills.

“Greetings, I am one of the runemasters invited  by your leaders to repair and improve the defenses here, I assume this is a defensive tower?” Villin asked as he looked at the blonde soldier who seemed to be the leader.

After a few moments of paused this individual replied, “Ah yes, I heard of that. And yes, we could very much use your help here. Each of these towers should have a massive speargun capable of piercing through any creature but many of the weapons have been broken. Even though we repaired those that broke, we aren’t able to do the same with the runes that were broken. Please, feel free to have a look.” The blonde man was polite as he explained the situation before taking a step to the side, revealing the weapon in the middle of the tower.

It was a very interesting device, it was a mix between a medieval ballista and a modern speargun. It was over two meters tall and the spears to the side were around two meters tall as well, “Is the machine intact?” 

“Yes, other than the runes it’s fully functional.” after hesitating for a moment the blond Atlantian continued, “Even though I do not claim to know much about runes. If you have to prioritize I suggest you focus on properly getting all the spears enchanted across the towers. Even without enchantments, the spearguns are still quite powerful, with enchanted spears they should be able to pierce the skin of the vast majority of attackers.”

Hearing the man’s advice Villin nodded, “Thank you. I don’t know the enemy all that well so your feedback is quite valuable.” yet then as he thought of something he continued speaking, “However, it is best if I know how to repair both properly. In order to do so, the quickest way would be to inspect a fully intact spear and speargun, are there any that are still fully intact?” Villin asked the man.

“Ah yes, of course. We still have two fully enchanted spears here, they’re in the pile over there. As for an intact speargun, even though there aren’t many left, I believe squad seventy-two have one. They’re seven towers diagonally to the left.” the man spoke as he pointed in the direction.

“Thank you,” Villin responded simply before turning to the still-enchanted spears the Atlantian had pointed out. It was time to see just how good the Atlantian runemasters were.