“Good, now feel the energy coming from your heart, the center of your being, and guide it towards the mind. Let the two be connected for all of eternity.”

GASP

When Villin woke up, he felt confused at first. It took a bit for his breathing to calm down and for him to properly take note of his surroundings.

He was within an Atlantian building, there was some medical equipment around him and a doctor standing beside him, looking at him with his mouth agape.

“Argh”

It was then that Villin felt the pain coming from his body and the tears that had gathered on his cheeks. It seemed that he had been crying shortly before he woke up and because of that the doctor approached, then he suddenly came and woke up.

His body felt quite weak as well. He turned towards the doctor while sitting as he took in his own condition. After the dizziness receded somewhat, Villin got off of the bed.

“Wait, no, you should keep lying down!” the doctor quickly said as he got out of his stupor.

But, instead, Villin stretched, he didn’t fall to the ground as the doctor as his legs were still capable of holding him up and the boy seemed to ignore the pain.

As he stretched his limbs and got a better idea of what he could and couldn’t do, Villin turned to the doctor, “How much time has passed? When will the attack on Atlantis occur?”

Noticing, Villin acted entirely different compared to how the doctor expected, he stopped trying to dissuade him and simply replied, “Eh, the beast king’s attack will occur two days from now.” he said confusedly.

Hearing this, Villin let out a sigh of relief, he had expected to wake up in the middle of, or an hour-or-so before the attack, at a point in time where he couldn’t leave the city before the attack anymore.

“Okay then, I’ve done my job, now it’s time for me to leave, I’ll come back later to learn how to bend.” he quickly said as he intended to leave. He wasn’t in his best condition at all right now and never intended to fight alongside Atlantis. He had done his work and it was time to leave before things got too hot.

“Please, wait! I’ll go inform our leaders about your recovery!” the doctor quickly said before Villin could leave.

Villin replied with a simple nod as he continued doing simple exercises. He noticed that if he were to get into a fight right now, dodging would be out of the question, he also wouldn’t be able to sprint too well or lift his own weight. But at least he rapidly being cured mentally, within a few minutes he felt on top of his game, he wouldn’t have any problems casting spells.

After this period of time had passed, a man in golden armor entered the room, it was the same leader he met when he got here.

“You are lucky to have survived, runemaster Villin,” he said in a neutral voice.

“I did and now it’s time for me to leave, I’ll take the bending lesson after the attack,” Villin noted in a serious voice.

When Villin saw the leader’s equally serious expression, he got a bad feeling.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. Even if you are physically better than expected, you still have internal wounds. If you would go through a teleportation array at this point in time, I’m afraid you’ll die.”

As Villin’s bad feeling was confirmed, he silently cursed.

After a bit, his stern gaze landed on the leader, “So let me guess, I have no choice to help you repel the invaders or we’ll all be doomed? No thanks, I’ll stay within the palace where I’ll be safe.” Villin said, somewhat pissed off, he knew where this was going.

The Academy had done this a multitude of times, sending him on dangerous missions and acting as if he was disposable. Even though he always kept his displeasure deeply hidden, since The Academy was also the best place for him to gain strength, he just nearly died again and was getting tired of being taken advantage of. He was the youngest runemaster ever for f*cks sake, he had plenty of value not to always have to fight another man’s battles.

The leader clearly hadn’t expected Villin to act this way as it took him a couple of seconds to respond, “I understand.” and with that cryptic response, he turned around and left the building leaving behind Villin and the doctor.

Thinking back to what had happened Villin cursed some more inwardly. He had been attacked by a fellow runemaster, and they had attacked with the intent to kill. He was rather furious for himself for letting his guard down while conversing with someone that clearly disliked him. He had simply thought that Cornelius was a coward that wouldn’t dare make a move and he had paid the price, he wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Villin did some basic breathing exercises to calm himself down while ignoring the doctor who seemed to be continuously talking to him.

A few minutes later, Villin stepped out of the building. The city of Atlantis was extremely busy right now. Atlantians were moving around rapidly as most of them were in the middle of carrying things be they weapons, armor, or food.

As soon as he oriented himself, Villin began walking back towards the place where the enchanting workshop used to stand. There was still crater where it had been since, at this point, landscaping was the least of the Atlantians’ worries.

Villin approached the center and looked around, there were bits of metal and wood everywhere, some of the pieces went flying extremely far but Villin didn’t care about that. He looked through the rubble looking for a specific something.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” a guard shouted out as they noticed Villin walking through the rubble. Once they got closer though, they recognized Villin, this guard was one of the ones who had been working under him.

“Oh, I’m sorry sir, I was told to guard this area.” the guard said as he straightened up after recognizing Villin.

Villin tore his gaze away from the rubble and looked at the guard, “There should’ve been a corpse here, where did you all move it too?” he asked straight-up.

Taken aback, the guard soon replied, “Sir, I can assure you that no corpse was here. The only person hurt by the explosion is yourself, I’m sure since I was one of the first people that got here!”

Turning away from the guard again, Villin shook his head, “No, that’s not possible, nobody could survive that kind of explosion.” he noted as he continued inspecting the ground.

When the spears blew up, Cornelius had been in the center of the workshop while Villin was already blown against one of the walls, additionally, Villin had strengthened organs and Blue-Mythril armor on. Even without underestimating Cornelius, it would be completely impossible for him to survive such a thing.

After searching for a while and indeed finding nothing, Villin’s frown became deeper, “Enchanter Cornelius, did he leave Atlantis already?” he questioned the guard again.

The guard was quick to respond this time, “Ah, no, he’s been missing for a while. The only one that left was enchanter Ruby this morning. I heard the leaders were somewhat nervous that The Academy would attack them if they thought Atlantis simply stole two of their runemasters.” after saying this, the guard understood something, “Wait, since you asked about a corpse, were you working with runemaster Cornelius at the time of the accident?” the guard quickly asked.

In response, Villin simply nodded, “Yes, and now I truly do wonder where he went.”

No matter how Villin thought about it, Cornelius’ survival seemed impossible, but then, since it was, who took away his body?

As Villin thought this, thin strands of magic came from him and began moving through the city, after a while, they moved through the earth revealing a very small hidden room underneath the city. Once there, the magic stands connected to the puppets he kept there, just in case.

He ignored the proper puppet and after a while, two large spider-like puppets came out of the ground, the runes on them camouflaged them as they moved through the city, always remaining in the shadows.

Villin lamented that the puppets weren’t nearly small enough, if they were actually the size of spiders, they would be able to fit between pieces of wood or beneath a door, but due to their size, they had to be extremely careful not to be discovered.

After using the spiders to look for Cornelius for a couple of hours, Villin found something else instead. It was in a warehouse half a dozen kilometers away. There were nearly a hundred enchanters gathered together, most of them were working on enchanting spearguns, but some others were working on some spears.

“Alright, this section has to be right, right? It allows magical energy to be gathered, so we just have to connect it with this flame enchantment, and boom, it’ll explode when it hits.” Keith said as he pointed at certain points on one of the spears.

“Hmm, it won’t be as explosive as runemaster Villin’s but it’ll still be better than the old ones, let’s do it,” Hazel responded and many of the surrounding enchanters seemed to agree.