For the first couple of minutes after the bells rang, nothing happened on the eastern front. Villin was remaining on guard as he looked out into the sea but he couldn’t spot anything yet.
A few more minutes passed and explosions could be heard coming from the front, this was due to Villin’s spears no doubt.
A full hour had passed since the first enemies were spotted and the bells rang when the explosions to the north became a lot more common and shadows could be seen on the east as well.
“They’re here.” Villin murmured as he tried looking through the veil of water.
Just as he said that, music came from the endless seas, he had been warned previously that when the attack began, sirens would begin their song and so he quickly used magic to shield his ears.
Looking into the ocean Villin occasionally saw a glimpse of a mermaid, they used tridents very similar to Atlantians and they could swim incredibly fast.
Villin waited patiently as the sirens sang their song, the Atlantin troops weren’t effected since they were all prepared for the song. After a couple of minutes the song stopped and the water got more chaotic as more creatures could be seen speeding through. Kappas seemed to be the most numerous. They were water spirits that looked a lot like ithinys. They had long noses and green-ish skin. They would be the first major threat as they were capable of using magic.
Yet, even now the spearguns didn’t make a shot. The creatures visible now were all the small, fast kind. Hitting them would be extremely difficult and they had a very large amount when it came to numbers. These kinds of enemies were for the regular soliders to take care of, not the magi.
Then, it only took a few minutes for everything to turn chaotic. Since the Kappas appeared, they soon began shooting balls of water and ice towards the various towers. This didn’t go unpunished though as soldier after soldier took out their bow and began shooting the Kappas. Even though the arrows would only go so far through the water, the Kappas also had to get close to cast their own magic towards the tower.
After a bit some Jengu also showed up, they looked extremely similar to Atlantians but were actually spirits just like the Kappas. They were gap-toothed and had long wooly hair, they used spiritual attacks on the soldiers, attacking their minds directly.
Even though there were few of them and the threat level wasn’t too high, Villin decided to step in. He simply connected his magical power to one of the Jengu’s minds and sent his magic power in in a destructive fashion. One-by-one they fell down. Even though their mental space was stronger than humans, it wasn’t well defended at all and Villin could easily take them out without wasting too much power.
Because of this, they soon backed out and the Kappas were the only ones attacking again.
Knowing that he just saved a few dozen lives, Villin backed off again and waited for the fight to heat up.
Even though this was just a skirmish and not many forces of either side were being taken out, this didn’t mean that there was no effect.
No matter what, the barrier had been pierced hundreds of times by magical attacks from the opposing creatures and the arrows of their own forces. This made it much harder to control and bits of water began to get through the barrier. Villin simply noted it but didn’t do anything about it, this was a normal event, it would be impossible not to have this kind of leakage in the fight.
The point wasn’t to keep the city water-free, it was to kill as many enemies as possible before a large layer of water was covering the ground in the city.
As Villin sat atop of one of the towers looking at the relatively tame battlefield, he was thinking of how to deal with the bigger kind when they arrived. Last time there was a Megalodon and the time before that a Leviathan, they were the ones that could destroy a tower in one hit.
Even though the Atlantians managed to kill them in the end, the amount of people they lost because of it was ginormous.
In reality, Villin wasn’t afraid of these two things, even though they were powerful, they were just beasts. What Villin was truly worried about was if a magical beast of such size and passive power would come to attack. Their skin would be even tougher and their abilities would certainly be extremely lethal, he still hadn’t figured out how to deal with an enemy like that.
As Villin was thinking of this, the battle slowly began to escelate. More and more different kinds of beasts and creatures began to appear, many of them magical. A few explosive spears were now also getting shot out and magi were also making their moves. Even though Atlantians used magic in tandem with their weapons, it didn’t mean they didn’t have any long-range spells that doesn’t use a weapon.
The appearance of the white prowlers caused the spearguns to fire much more often. White prowlers were extremely large sharks capable of elementary water magic. They were generally capable of shooting spikes made of ice out of their mouths but they lacked intelligence and so never attacked together.
Against these spears were used and they were found to be extremely effective. As soon as a white prowler was hit it would explode into pieces, its bones would act as shrapnel and nearby creatures would also get hurt because of it.
It didn’t take long for the small barrier Villin made within the circle to overflow and soon water began spreading inwards.
With how thin it was currently, the only creatures that could pass were vampiric leeches and explosive tadpoles but everyone remained extremely vigilant, making sure they didn’t let any of them pass.
After a few hours of this, the water slowly spreading but still not rising since the city was ginormous, Villin realized that this fight wouldn’t be over anytime soon.
He turned to a soldier overseeing the situation nearby before asking, “Any idea how long this fight will go on for?”
Hearing this the experienced soldier throught for a moment, “They seem to be getting longer and longer, this one should take about a week. The first two days should be like this, the basic forces causing water to spread through the city. Then, the following two days should be the time for the stronger small creatures to enter the city and try to kill as many soldiers as possible. The final three days are unpredictable but the true threats should be appearing then, destroying towers and killing us by the bunches. They’ll be tough to deal with.”
Hearing the soldier’s explanation, Villin felt like an absolute idiot. He thought this would be like a fight between two large groups, done within a day at most. He hadn’t thought of the fact that this was a siege more than anything and sieges could go on for a long while.
Now that he knew that large an powerful monsters weren’t expected yet, he asked the soldier about the locations of the eastern infirmaries and began going to those. In the current situation, he couldn’t help much with the defense, the soldiers had no real problems holding the enemies back and Villin would barely make a dent. As long as more creatures such as Jengu, who were low in numbers, didn’t show up, there wasn’t much he could do.
He would have to wait until the larger creatures showed up before he could make a real difference.
In the meantime though, he kept himself busy. He went to the infirmaries and healed soldiers using ‘Healium Paulatim’ while also extending his magic power underground. If he made more magical tunnels now it’d be easier to transfigure when he needed to and he could keep an eye on the situation on the front while he was elsewhere.
‘Halium Paulatim’ turned out to be quite a bit more effective than the spells they had here as the doctors looked at him in amazement as some soldiers that came in went back out just a few minutes later.
Seeing how well his spell worked, Villin actually figured he could just stay here and heal the people and he’d have contributed enough to get his two ‘assistants’ but in the end he decided not to take the risk. Two potential runemasters were more than enough to take a bit of a risk for.
Occasionally, one of the spearguns would get destroyed and then Villin would do some haphazard enchantments on the replacement so it would have a better chance at piercing the skin of large creatures when they appeared.
One of the towers holding a speargun also nearly collapsed but with some transfiguration it got fixed again.
All in all, it was looking like things couldn’t go better and he’d be able to defend without a problem. If only it were so…
