At first, when Villin heard the leaders had made their decision, he thought he had to head back into the throne room but the general stopped him.

“When the leaders said they made their decision, that is what has happened. Whether they accepted your plea or not will become clear soon enough.”

At first, Villin frowned when he heard this but then he understood the reasoning. It was most likely a security measure since certain people might do stupid things if they heard their wish being denied.

So, Villin went back to where he had been previously and he spent some time adjusting some of the runes he planned for the spearguns. There would most likely still be some kinks to figure out since it was the first time Villin was enchanting an object with so many moving parts.

Villin was reworking one of the enchantments along the inner mechanism when he heard Keith’s voice behind him, “Ehm, Sir, there are some people here looking for you.”

When Villin heard the voice he turned around immediately, it seemed that the leaders may have listened to him. Yet all he saw were three people standing next to Keith, looking at him with sparkling eyes.

One of them was a girl that seemed to be around nineteen years old, “Hello runemaster Villin, I look forward to working with you.” 

Her two male companions also followed suit and they all put a finger on their foreheads, an Atlantian custom that was a sign of respect.

Villin nodded as he looked at them, even though it seemed that the leaders hadn’t given him what he wanted, at least he had three more helpers and that counted for something.

“Alright then, welcome you three, let’s get started. To begin I think it’s best if we get some more ammunition done, that’s of the highest priority in the current situation. So go ahead and begin carrying some spears down to enchant, then I’ll show you what to do.”

After saying this, Villin intended to go back to his notes but the girl asked in a confused manner, “Sir runemaster, did you say you want us to carry the spears down?”

When Villin heard the tone she said it in, he felt somewhat confused. She didn’t sound condescending or offended at all despite her response, carefully, he tested out, “Who else should I ask to do it?”

A flash of realization came on the girl’s voice as she responded, “Oh, right! We were supposed to tell you that the personnel had gathered on the recruitment grounds. I’m sorry, I thought you were aware they were coming.”

Faced with Villin’s piercing gaze, Hazel began sweating. It wasn’t that Villin purposefully was trying to intimidate her but more that his regular face had grown quite a bit scarier over the last year.

“Alright then, bring me there.”

“Yes, sir runemaster.” the sweating Hazel said quickly before turning around, even though she felt his gaze was quite terrifying, now there was a blush creeping onto her cheeks.

Villin followed Hazel and the other two through the city. In the end, they appeared at a massive tiled clearing close to the palace. The clearing was rectangular and the tiles were well-maintained as no moss could be seen creeping through the space in between tiles.

The clearing didn’t have any objects on it but when looking at the end, there were a large number of people lined up with their hands behind their back.

As Hazel kept leading him closer, Villin couldn’t help but curse inwardly, there were about two hundred people here, more people than this place had enchanters.

Once they got to the group, Hazel and the other two stood in line next to the others. The only person out-of-line was Keith and he didn’t seem like he knew what was going on.

After taking in the sheer number, Villin turned to Hazel, “Girl, please state your name and the professions of the people sent to assist.”

Hazel took a step out of line and quickly responded, “My name is Hazel and I am an enchanter. In total, you have been assigned two-hundred and twenty troops. One-hundred and twelve are enchanters. Thirty-eight are mechanics, and seventy are guards. Most of the people here hold more professions but those are most likely unsuited for the tasks.

Hearing the proper response, Villin nodded gladly, he was pretty sure that these were all of the enchanters in the city, save a few. The mechanics were also extremely useful as they’d have to disassemble the spearguns to properly enchant them and the guards would be useful to carry items around.

Before he could properly digest the numbers and give orders, Hazel spoke again, “Runemaster Villin, you have also been granted access to the previous runemaster’s workshop and the items within, as far as you use this to help Atlantis, that is.”

Villin couldn’t help himself from smiling, it seemed that he was wrong about the leaders, they actually sent him so much help. It was most likely because they had gotten desperate and wanted to find some way to turn the situation around but Villin was happy to accept their assistance.

“In that case, let us head for the workshop, Hazel, lead the way.”

As Villin followed behind Hazel, the rest of the troops followed behind Villin. People in their path casually detoured around the small army as seeing such drills wasn’t anything special. On the other hand, Villin was extremely surprised by the people following him. They all stayed in a number of lines and nobody seemed to be out of step, this was a surprising achievement for a bunch of enchanters, Villin was sure that this kind of unity was near impossible to find in the outside world. At the very least it would be in the central and eastern continent.

After walking for half an hour, the group arrived at a massive oddly-shaped warehouse. This was apparently where the previous runemaster worked from. Going inside, Villin felt that it was mostly cleaned out. There was a bunch of equipment such as pens and chalks that could help with enchanting but there were no enchanted objects in the warehouse anymore.

In reality, it was a good thing that the warehouse was mostly empty, Villin lamented, before asking the ‘army to stand into their specific groups.

First, he pointed to the guards, “Alright, all of you go and get spearguns and their spears. Go from tower to tower so we have a decent mix of the two.” with that, the guards were on their way.

After this, he pointed towards the mechanics, “There are still some materials in this warehouse, use them to make a bunch of tables so that both the enchanters and yourselves have enough space to work.” only a portion of the mechanics could work on this but the others grabbed a blueprint of the spearguns to refamiliarize themselves with the work.

Seeing that they were also busy, Villin turned to the group of enchanters. For a bit, he was at a loss, how was he supposed to explain something to such a large number of people, the papers he wrote the enchantments on were quite small.

But then he got an idea and he put one of his hands on the wall while he was looking at the papers that depicted the new enchantments that would be on the spearguns.

Slowly, before the unbelieving eyes of the enchanters and some of the mechanics, the wall began to morph. Lines of texts and runes appeared on the wall as Villin transfigured it and make the text stick out properly. It was just about big enough so that everyone would be able to see it without a problem.

He started with putting the first enchantments and the notes he put with it and he quickly began explaining it vocally as well so that the enchanters understood the enchantment better. Then, this enchantment and the notes became smaller and moved to another place in the room where it was further away from the workstations, then a second line appeared big enough for everyone to read and Villin explained that one.

It was like this that Villin decided to explain the required portions to this group of enchanters. It took multiple hours, but eventually, Villin finished explaining the last enchantment that should be on the spearguns.

Looking around now, Villin noticed that half of the enchanters had notepads in their hands and continued writing things down while the other half looked completely stunned. After a bunch, the enchanters spread out again and began looking at certain enchantments they didn’t understand again. The enchanting notes had been spread all across the warehouse so people didn’t have too many problems looking at the notes and enchantments in detail.

Meanwhile, more and more spears and spearguns had been carried into the warehouse, a bunch of the spearguns had also been dismantled already while they made sure to properly organize the parts so that nothing got lost.

And then, finally, some of the enchanters were prepared to begin working.