As Villin continued trying to permanently get one of the tentacles tied down, he felt an ominous presence behind him, or two rather.

He immediately turned around and spotted two massive teethed tentacles coming right for him.

The first was to reach within a couple of seconds, just enough time for Villin to transfigure the ground underneath him, letting him fall down a couple of meters before it closed off again.

This wouldn’t do much though, as the two tentacles refocused and then stabbed down at the area where Villin had disappeared into.

Knowing the tentacles had enough power within them to create canyons and cause earthquakes, Villin wasn’t confident in escaping while moving underground, rather it would be the swiftest way to get killed.

He moved a couple of meters to the side underground, causing the stabbing tentacles to miss before rising up again and appearing on the surface.

Beads of sweat rolled down Villin’s face as he saw the two massive tentacles that stabbed within the ground just next to him. A quick glance onto the battlefield showed how badly things were going, half a dozen of the towers with spearguns had been destroyed and even one of the towers holding benders had been taken down. Because of this, the water had risen up to the waist and it was rising quickly.

Amongst the attacking forces, some mermaids and other medium-sized creatures could be seen as they could move around more freely at this point.

Because of the chaos the Ottoia was bringing, the eastern front looked like it was on the edge of collapsing.

When Villin managed to catch a glance at the tentacle he had been tying down earlier, he noticed it seemed that he had succeeded as the ground above it had hardened sufficiently and the vines were holding strong, it seemed the tentacle exhausted itself before it managed to break free.

Just as Villin noticed this minor victory, the two tentacles that had been looking for him underground retracted to the surface and they quickly noticed him. It was clear the tentacles had their own sensory organs, most likely they had their own brains as well.

When the two were ‘looking’ at Villin, he tried to find some sort of weakness of these tentacles, he considered throwing a fireball but he doubted it’d be all that effective. The only spells he had that had continuously improved over the period of time he learned them were ‘Reverto’, ‘Voccocito’, ‘Vinea Tenura’, ‘Syrtim Celer’, and ‘Mentallage’, he hadn’t been able to spend a lot of time improving other spells.

It was then that Villin figured something out, the reason the Ottoia had backed off the first time when it created the canyon. Looking at the tentacles that were focusing on destroying towers and killing soldiers, they had become noticeably slower compared to when they first arrived.

Just as Villin was considering going underground again to force the tentacles focused on him to spend a ton of power, they made an unexpected move.

The two tentacles that had been focused on him turned around and charged at the tentacle Villin had subdued. The dirt and vines around it broke allowing the trapped tentacle to escape, then all the attacking tentacles backed away from the battlefield and the Ottoia also began moving back, one tentacle weaker.

The damage the Ottoia had done was substantial, the biggest loss was the destruction of a bending tower as well as the loss of morale it caused. The lost spearguns were also valuable but Villin figured they still had enough of those to mount a proper defense.

About thirty minutes after the Ottoia left, the situation stabilized. Villin used mental attacks on mermaids since they were quite powerful while soldiers teamed up in groups to take care of Gorgons.

The breach in the dome had also been mostly repaired as backup benders arrived but it became much harder to defend them since they didn’t have a tower.

Villin cursed as he looked around at the dispirited soldiers, when the Ottoia attacked again, they were done for. It probably wouldn’t be so stupid to send out two tentacles first again and would most likely attack with its full capabilities again when it returned.

He looked to the right towards his puppet that he had retrieved, it occasionally did a fire breath that managed to take out a gorgon in one shot as they didn’t expect the small thing that looked like a bad sculpture to attack them.

Villin thought at the damage the puppet could do when self-destructing to the tentacles and the Ottoia in general but then he shook his head.

“I would need a hundred puppets to self-destruct if I wanted to use them to take out the Ottoia.” he lamented as he looked at the thing.

“Wait… I would need a hundred puppets to self-destruct if I wanted to take the Ottoia out!” his tone changed as he came to a realization.

A dumb smile came onto his face as his previous helplessness with a hint of despair turned to pure excitedness.

‘What do you think Ashera?’ he asked the Kitsune within his mind.

Ashera stayed quiet for a few moments before responding, ‘I’m not sure if you’re mad or if you’re a damn genius.’

Hearing her response Villin smiled as he looked at the soldiers on the battlefield, soon after, he began using Mentallage to start contacting them. He didn’t care about wasting magic power as, as soon as he had enough magic power he would contact the next group to make sure all the soldiers would get contacted as soon as possible.

Because he spent his magic power on this, some of the areas where the Ottoia created a canyon had collapsed under water pressure causing more water to flow in but Villin didn’t have time to bother with that right now as he continued working on the plan he had just created within his head.

Soon, the movements of the soldiers changed. They began getting more aggressive as they pushed the sea creatures back to behind the dome, in the process, they had some casualties but they succeeded in mostly clearing the battlefield temporarily.

When this happened, a number of people began moving to and from the towers holding the spearguns holding certain items. Then, they all placed it into a large pit Villin was creating using transfiguration.

Since they were so close to the dome soldiers were dying more than usual but they stayed in position, they seemed to be extremely well-trained and they knew how important their job was right now.

The soldiers that weren’t there kept on moving certain items like crazy. When one tower ran out, they ran to one that was further, gathering all they could in the time they had.

The soldiers managed to hold on for one long hour before enemies managed to reach the Atlantian battlefield again. As soon as they did, the soldiers stopped fetching items and Villin began closing the massive nearly-filled hole using transfiguration, not before he let his puppet jump into it though. They really didn’t want the enemies to catch wind of what they were doing or it would be hopeless, if an intelligent creature like a Mermaid noticed and warned the beast king of the plan, it would be doomed to fail.

Soon after the first creatures made their way through, the entire line of soldiers backed off again. They were exhausted, moving closer to the dome made it easier for creatures like Kappas to hit them with ranged attacks. They got battered badly but since this time, Villin hadn’t kept them in the dark with the plan, they all knew how vital they had been.

When the Ottoia appeared again two hours later, its enemies were clearly on their last legs. The Atlantians had been forced back a fair bit, they were exhausted and losing ground badly.

Despite its limited intelligence, the Ottoia also noticed that the towers holding spearguns were unmanned, this had been the reason it lost one of its tentacles the previous time.

When the soldiers noticed the Ottoia approaching they all seemed panicked and a number of them began routing. Amongst the people routing were the majority of the benders. They were backing off alongside the Atlantian army while keeping a smaller dome around them, the previous eastern front of the city was flooding quickly though and soon it was over two meters high.

If the Ottoia could grin it would’ve. This was it, the battle was about to be over. Since the humans kept moving back, it had to keep moving forward with its main body as well if he wanted them to be within range of his tentacles.

The large octopus-like creature didn’t notice anything wrong even when it got to the point where it stood in the middle of the previous battlefield, right atop of the location where a massive hole was hidden slightly underground.

Seeing the Ottoia move onto the exact right location, Villin grinned as he prepared to pull the trigger. The trigger was a small line of magic power that connected from Villin all the way to the puppet hidden within the hole underneath the Ottoia.

The puppet that was underground promptly self-destructed. This explosion shouldn’t have done much to the Ottoia, maybe just a slight burn to hid behind and that would be it, but the puppet wasn’t the only thing that exploded.

Within the hole were hundreds upon hundreds of identical objects. They were the enchanted spears. They had all been gathered up and put together, they were many times more numerous compared to the ones that blew up the warehouse (and nearly Villin) some time ago.

Then, because of the puppet, they all exploded at once.

“BOOM!!!”

A massive shockwave reached the exhausted, Atlantian army within a moment, throwing them all back even though they were nearly four-hundred meters away from the center of the explosion.

The water all around evaporated due to the ginormous explosion, even the Ottoia’s main body didn’t escape this fate as it melted within a second.

A massive crater appeared where the Ottoia once stood as a dustcloud shaped like a mushroom could be seen far away, even piercing through the upper dome of Atlantis.

Just a few kilometers away an army was marching towards the eastern battlefront when they were all suddenly forced to cover their ears due to the sound. When they looked up they saw a ball of fire followed by a mushroom cloud and finally, a mass of water falling down onto the eastern part of the city.

Despite the confusion, the reinforcements, including the main general that had been sent here, quickly moved forwards and the benders within their ranks quickly focused on trying to restore the dome, attempting to ignore the carnage the explosion had created.

If someone was above the water, they would first be met by a massive wave caused by the explosion, if they got through that, they would notice hundreds of sea creatures floating to the surface, dead.

Project mini-nuke was a success.