‘THWANG!’

When the spear got shot out, Villin knew Keith hadn’t been lying when he said the spearguns were powerful even unenchanted.

Villin knew that if he stood where the rock was and he saw the speargun fire, he’d be unable to react in time.

Within just a few moments, the spear reached the black rock and cut into it. It went a few inches in, about the same distance compared to the old enchanted spears. But then, half a second later:

BANG!

An explosion erupted from the tip of the spear and a large section of the rock was blown to bits.

Villin grinned as he saw the spear falling down the pile of broken stone. At first, Villin indeed considered increasing the spear’s sharpness and speed further compared to the previous design, but he quickly understood that this wasn’t the way to go.

According to Keith, these spears were enough to pierce the skin of the vast majority of the enemies, the problem was that a bunch of them could take a dozen of these shots. 

Keith himself figured that making the spears sharper would help a bunch since They may be able to reach Vitals and kill them with fewer shots but Villin had a different idea.

According to the bits of information he had on the sea creatures that would attack and Keith’s occasional input, he thought of these creatures as a type of tank. Now, they weren’t quite so durable but thinking of them as such was easiest when thinking of what kind of enchantments to make.

Now, one of the better ways to deal with tanks was to use tanks yourself. When you then fire a shell at the opposing tank, you had to make sure of two things. The shell must first be able to penetrate the tank’s armor and it had to explode once it did.

The previously enchanted spears were already able to penetrate the armor so he simply had to condense this part of the enchantment, then, he added a second part that would cause it to explode after penetration to actually do damage.

The effect seemed good and after a bit, Keith went out, into the water, and retrieved the spear. Even though Keith swam extremely fast, much, much faster than Villin could, he wasn’t too surprised since they were in an underwater city.

After having a look at the spear used, Villin nodded before commenting, “It seems like one of these can be used four times without a problem, once more than I had estimated. After this, the metal will have dulled too much to penetrate and the enchantments would nearly run out of magic power. If the point was sharpened, a fifth time may be possible.”

Hearing Villin’s words, Keith seemed extremely happy with the result. Even though the previously enchanted spears were much, much more durable and could be used thirty times without a problem, the damage these new ones caused was so much more destructive it was most certainly worth the sacrifice.

After inspecting the used spear properly, Villin changed a few notes he had written down and tore out a page for Keith.

“Here you go Keith, this should keep you busy for a while,” Villin said as he gave Keith the page that contained his work. When it came to these spears, Keith was able to do nearly eighty percent of the work, so Villin told him to do so. The spears would be being enchanted while Villin focused on another job such as creating a different type of spear or enchanting the spearguns. Then, when he finished with that, he could finish the enchantments on all of the spears Keith prepared.

The main reason runemasters oftentimes had students was to do the gruntwork, Villin had been working in such a way with Rein for a long time and now Keith had to take over for a bit. He didn’t complain though as working on a runemasters project was not only considered honorable, but also extremely useful for your skills as an enchanter.

When Villin came out of the tower, he took in a deep breath. Thus far, he was right on schedule. He was planning to have Keith work on this for around ten days, making plenty of ammo. After this, he would come back and finish work on all of the spears and Atlantis should have a good supply again.

Villin first turned to the direction Keith told him had a properly enchanted speargun, but he ended up deciding to first have a look at the large towers, they were sparser as there was one every fifty meters, and there only seemed to be a single line of them.

Curious as to what it would hold, Villin walked to the bottom and entered, as soon as he came through the door, he noticed there were two guards at the bottom of a massive spiraling staircase that seemed to be looking at them.

“I’m one of the runemasters here to increase defenses, I’m just looking around to see where I’m most needed.” 

Saying this was enough for the guards to let him through and he quickly rose up. Villin had instantly noted that the inner walls of this tower were enchanted, it seemed like these were seen as very important.

There were three floors before Villin got to the top, each floor had two guards to whom he had to repeat his description to be let through, all in all, security was extremely strict here.

When he finally got to the roof he noticed there was one final person here, they didn’t seem to be a guard though as they were dressed differently. It was actually the first person Villin had seen in this city who didn’t wear any armor, they were only wearing a very loose blue robe.

In the middle of the tower’s roof, there seemed to be a small room but it had no windows, Villin noticed the enchantments on the walls there were the strongest and the door was made out of iron.

“Hey there, so, does that room hold a weapon to be used against the beasts?” Villin asked simply as he turned to the robed Atlantian.

The Atlantian seemed surprised but responded as he knew of Villin’s identity. “No, it holds a barrier wizard, even though we generally prefer to be called ‘Benders’. I’m on the next shift and have to start in about an hour.” The bender explained.

Villin looked at him with some surprise before continuing, “Alright, and what do benders do then?”

“What? Well, we keep the water from flooding us of course! We are the reason this city is able to hold human life inside!” The bender seemed slightly agitated because of Villin’s question but quickly calmed down since he knew there was no way for Villin to have known.

It was at this point though, he saw Villin’s expression. His eyes seemed to be sparkling as realization dawned on him, “You are the ones creating the dome! It’s not done by a ward at all, it’s all just magi!”

The bender once more had to take in a deep breath and remind himself of Villin’s ignorance before responding, “We are not ‘just magi’, we are benders. The most important magi in this city. We not only keep the water in but we are also the strongest weapons when the monsters attack. We bend the water to attack our opponents, we move them away from sensitive areas and keep the battlefield under control!”

Villin’s eyes widened further as he mumbled, “Transfiguration”

After realizing the implications here, he eagerly asked, “Would it be possible for me to learn this art? How do you do it?”

Hearing his question, the bender seemed confused, “I was told only one of you was to be taught the art of bending, do you think I would go against our leaders’ wishes?”

Villin facepalmed as he realized what art it was that the best performing runemaster would be taught. They would be taught how to ‘bend’ the water, or at least the basics of how to do so.

“Thank you for your time.” Villin simply said before leaving. There was nothing he could do here, the towers were already properly enchanted, if he wanted to improve them he may only be able to finish two before the timelimit.

Even though he tried to focus on where to go, Villin’s mind couldn’t help but wonder. Being able to transfigure water would be an extremely powerful art. He knew how bad magi generally were underwater, if he managed to learn this art properly, it wouldn’t be long before he was undefeatable underwater, when faced against other magi that was.

The longer he thought of this bit, the more he realized that that probably wasn’t true at all but the fact remained that it would be a lifesaver to be able to transfigure water if you were fighting in an ocean. At the very least, you’d be able to escape safely.

No matter what, he had to do the best amongst runemaster, he truly felt like he needed this reward.

Without any more hesitation, Villin began heading for the next short tower, the one Keith had said had an intact enchanted speargun.