Tales of the Legendary Magus

Chapter 188: Atlantian Runology

"Now let's have a look at this." Villin mused as he picked up one of the enchanted spears. The spear looked more like a massive arrow compared to anything else. The metal it was made off had a blue hue to it as well, making it look quite unique.

Just by looking at the broadhead point, it became clear how sharp this spear was. He supposed it would be able to pierce a layer of rock, and that was not even counting in the enchantments.

Below the long shaft of the spear was a hole where something could be inserted. Looking around Villin noticed a massive pile of long chains on one side of the tower.

There were about five of them and each of them had connected chains together to form a line of over a hundred meters long. The weight one of these piles of chains had was insane and Villin had no doubt that an unenchanted speargun would be unable to properly shoot it.

That being said, its use was also very clear. The chains could be connected to the sharp spears. Then, if the broadhead spear pierced the beast, the ballista would be restricting the beast's movements using the pull of the chain. A single one of these wouldn't do much to a beast so powerful they would aim to restrict it instead of aiming for the kill, but looking at the distance between the towers Villin guessed that if all the spearguns were enchanted, the beast would be within the range of six different spearguns using these chains.

Villin had to admit, he was impressed by the amount of metal these people 'wasted' in preparations like this that were unlikely to actually be useful in a normal scenario but he saw it as a good thing, it must mean that the Atlantians had plenty of metal to spear if they used it on such metal-expensive ammunition.

Putting his focus back onto the enchanted spear, Villin began inspecting the runes, many of which were unfamiliar.

After noticing the unfamiliarity of most of these runes, he turned back to the blonde-haired guard, "Could you please get me some metal and wooden plates of around a square meter?"

Due to Villin's position as a runemaster the guard nodded and left the tower after giving the other guard a couple of orders.

By the time the first guard came back, over an hour had passed. At this point, Villin had written down several pages in one of the notebooks he had with him and he had written down each of the individual runes and enchantments as he tried to find the division that was deeply hidden within the work of a runemaster.

The wooden and metal plates were lifted up to the tower using a pulley mounted to the side of the building. With Villin and the second guard working together, they managed to lift up the plates Villin required for his work. Villin also knew the guards were most likely told to let the city leaders know of everything the runemasters requested or did, but he ignored this point, for the most part, acting as he always would.

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Just to make sure though, he did tell the initial guard of the purpose he needed these plates, "The spears, or arrows rather, are rather complicated in nature. The runemaster that made this also used runes the majority of which are unknown to me. In order to properly create and improve the enchantments this person made I'll need to make sure of the use of each of these runes and enchantments first.

"The best way to do this is to try and create some of these enchantments on a more neutral shape. I'll also try creating them on wood to see if the materials affect the enchantment. Before enchanting, I generally prepare properly. This means I'm slower in the beginning but once I manage to properly understand what is going on I'll be able to enchant much, much faster compared to before."

Hearing Villin's explanation, the guard seemed extremely interested. "I see, so you're planning to improve some of the enchantments instead of just copying them?" the guard asked with unhidden curiosity.

"It depends. I don't have the time to continue spending days to come up with improvements for each enchantment. If I see areas that can be easily improved I'll improve them, but I can't give guarantees since I'm unsure of this runemaster's abilities."

The guard nodded contently as he heard Villin's thought-process before leaving him the space to work and focusing on other things. He still kept an eye on Villin but this might as well be because he was genuinely interested in runemasters.

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"Well, that doesn't seem right." Villin frowned as he looked at the massive arrow in front of him. A strong magical glow came from it, much stronger compared to the ones enchanted by the previous runemaster but there seemed to be a problem as the arrowhead seemed to be constantly on fire, wasting the magic power within the runes.

The flames were only supposed to appear after the arrow pierced a target, not when it was just lying there like that.

"Keith, are you sure the holding enchantment was made correctly?"

"Yes sir, I double-checked. It's a pretty simple enchantment here, there's no way I messed it up!" Keith defended himself nervously.

Villin had been here for four days already and he was nearly done creating the first newly enchanted arrow/spear. Even though this pace seemed horrendous, Keith knew that Villin redesigned the entire string of enchantments, rearranging a bunch of them and using a bunch of enchantments from the outside world as well.

Keith had blonde hair and gills. Four days ago, shortly after Villin arrived, he made his way towards the tower he guarded.

He soon began recreating the enchantments that were made on an iron plate, but when Keith noticed how long it would take for Villin to figure out what is the beginning and end of which enchantment and what they did, Keith jumped in to help.

He used to be one of the students of the runemaster that had passed away and he had just reached twenty-three years of age. He was pretty good at runology and knew a large number of the enchantments his master used back in the day. Thanks to this, Villin managed to figure out the use of each of the enchantments by the end of the second day.

Apparently, Villin had requested one of the leaders to allow Keith to follow him as it would speed up his work and sure enough, Keith's commanding officer soon told him that he was to help Villin for the following month.

Now, as the end of the fourth day was approaching, the prototype of the new spears was almost finished.

The spears enchanted by Keith's master weren't bad at all, it was quite impressive really. But that master severely lacked in his library of runes. The number of runes they knew here was extremely small and that was no less so for the runemaster, he only knew the Atlantian runes which were limited in number.

Compared to the runes and enchantments Villin knew already, Atlantian runes were about a fifth as expansive. Thanks to this, the number of improvements that could be made was massive. Previously, the enchantments simply increased the spear's sharpness and durability, but Villin could do much more.

"Oh right, I forgot to add an incentive to the Merlock rune chain, this should fix it," Villin noted as he facepalmed.

After tracing his finger over a part of the arrow, the flame at the tip disappeared and the arrow was finally complete.

"Now, how about a test run?" Villin asked.

Hearing the question, Keith quickly nodded and used a device to arm the speargun.

With the speargun ready to shoot, Keith quickly made his way down the tower and towards one of the taller ones that were spaced out. Villin still didn't know what was up those as he had been too busy working on the spears on the more numerous lower towers but he knew he still had plenty of time to have a look at the taller towers later.

A few minutes after he entered one of the taller towers, he came back out and headed back up the stairs towards the speargun, then, totally exhausted due to the staircase, he gave Villin a thumbs up. I let the barrier wizard know about the disturbance, we're clear to fire."

Not thinking too much about Keith's words, Villin nodded and put the newly enchanted spear into the armed speargun, then he stood to the side as he gestured Keith to take the shot.

"I've never fired one of these and it wouldn't be good to test accuracy if I shot," Villin explained, satisfying Keith's curiosity.

Keith nodded and pointed towards a large rock that could be seen behind the water barrier, "I'll aim for that one. The rock is made from black stone, an incredibly hard kind of rock that is about as hard as the scales of a warmens, generally, an enchanted spear would be able to penetrate a couple of inches in." Keith commented.

Then, with a loud 'THWANG' the speargun shot.