For a day and a half, the situation remained largely the same. Small creatures kept attacking while the larger and stronger ones didn’t appear quite yet. Villin spent most of his time in the various field hospitals as he healed soldiers and increased his magic network allowing him to more easily sense the situation at the front.
It was at that point that Villin felt a tremor, the earth was shaking underneath his feet making it difficult to remain standing, especially with his injuries.
As Villin held onto a pole to remain standing, a bunch of the people in the field hospital he was at fell from the tables they were resting on.
“What the hell is going on?!” Villin exclaimed, hoping one of the Atlantians would respond, but none did, they were all as surprised as he was.
After five full minutes the earthquake finally stopped, When Villin exited the hospital, he noticed the water which thus far only covered his feet, was rising at a speed visible to the naked eye.
“Shit!” Villin cursed as he half-sprinted towards the eastern front. Meanwhile, he used his transfiguration to try and figure out what was going on. But when he sent some magic power through his underground tunnels he noticed a bunch of them were suddenly cut off at a certain point.
It took a dozen minutes for Villin to get to the action, but he was still quite far away from the border itself, at this point there were just soldiers around, fighting various small critters that could swim through the water here, Villin recognized one of the more common species to be the same as the one that killed him in his dream.
This wasn’t what grasped his attention though, what did was the massive crack that had appeared, splitting apart a section of the eastern front. The crack was several meters wide and nearly a hundred meters long, reaching all the way past the barrier. Villin could see the water gushing out of the massive crack, it was the reason behind the sudden increase.
As for how this thing appeared, Villin didn’t have time to ask as the water was reaching higher and higher, it wasn’t that far away from reaching the knees and it was already hampering the soldiers quite a bit.
He talked to a soldier as he moved towards the edge of the crack “Go get two of the benders on standby! We need them to help contain the water coming out of the crack while I fix it!”
Even though Villin wasn’t an officer or anything of the like, the soldier seemed to realize the gravity of the situation as he nodded and then quickly sprinted towards one of the tall towers.
Villin didn’t stand by idle either, he put one of his hands next to the edge of the newly-made canyon and focused his magic power.
Some of the surrounding soldiers were taken by surprise when the dirt on both sides of the canyon began growing together, at least around Villin, until it seemed that there never had been a canyon at that location at all.
Villin knew it wasn’t quite as effective as it seemed though, he had only moved the upper layers of dirt, even if he did this to the entire length of the canyon, the pressure of the water would cause holes to appear regularly. If people stood on the areas he had transfigurated, there was also a chance it wouldn’t be able to hold their weight and they risked falling into the canyon that was full of currents, while also making a massive hole in the process.
Yet, despite these massive drawbacks, Villin still went through with it and began closing the crack starting from the furthest away from the front while slowly making his way to the barrier.
After a bit two benders also appeared, they seemed a little tired so it looked like they had probably switched out with another bender recently. When Villin asked them to try and stop water from coming in while he patched the crack, they had complicated looks on their faces. They said they’d help but they couldn’t keep everything from coming in, certainly not with the risk of being attacked by creatures.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
With Villin and the benders’ efforts, the amount of water flowing in decreased drastically, Villin was also working faster than he had previously expected but he knew it was impossible to patch the entire crack at once, he simply didn’t have enough magic power and even with magic power being generated by his nodes, he was spending a lot more than he was earning.
After spending the vast majority of his magic power, Villin managed to patch up half of the crack, the water level wasn’t rising nearly as fast anymore and Villin wagered that in a handful of hours he’d be able to close the crack entirely, even though it would need sub-hourly maintenance to make sure no holes would appear due to water pressure.
It was only now that he had a short pause that he grabbed the shoulder of a soldier that just killed a water sprite, “Soldier, what happened? How did this crack appear?”
The soldier focused his bloodshot eyes before standing at salute, Villin recognized him as one of the enchanters that worked with him. “Runemaster Villin sir!” after saying this he thought back to the cause of the massive crack as he got a little paler.
“This, I’m not sure sir but, looking at the size, the attack, and the damage. I think it may be the legendary Ottoia! We could see it in the far distance, like a massive shadow overlooking the battle. Then, out of nowhere, ginormous tentacles with teeth shot towards us, the tentacles were meters thick and insanely fast. They swatted away dozens of our men without the slightest problem, then the tentacles closed their mounts and pierced the ground in a straight line from here to outside of the barrier, and then the earthquake happened.
The beast singlehandedly created a canyon in just a few minutes, and when the explosive spears hit them, they barely left a mark on them, if just a dozen tentacles are so powerful, how are we supposed to beat that thing?” the soldier’s words quickly changed between explaining the situation to desperation but Villin grabbed his shoulder.
“What’s an Ottoia and how many of these tentacles does one have?” Villin said sternly while trying to keep the soldier from shaking.
“The Ottoia is the father of all Kraken. As the legends go there’s only one. It goes to those who are doomed and helps them in their struggle for survival. It’s supposed to be a kind creature but, it attacks its enemies mercilessly. It has been over a thousand years since the Ottoia was spotted but as far as the scriptures read the beast should have somewhere between twenty and a hundred teethed tentacles. Each and every one of them capable of biting through metal.”
Seeing as how talking about the Ottoia was making the solder/enchanter even more nervous, Villin stopped asking questions as he knew what had to be known anyways, “Alright soldier. Go to the northern front and find your leader, tell him about the appearance of the Ottoia.” after saying this, Villin let him go on his way.
On the eastern side, they had one big weakness compared to the other fronts. The three leaders were at the northern, western, and southern front. The head general, the only other person with strength close to the leaders was also sent to the north since they expected the main attack to come from there. This left Villin as the only significant force on this side of the front. And even then, Villin didn’t think he was quite so useful since he didn’t have many spells that worked well in water, once the water rose further, he would be getting seriously weakened if he didn’t get a vantage point.
When Villin looked around to see the condition of the soldiers, he noticed the situation was very chaotically organized. Soldiers all-over were getting in fights with various swimming creatures everywhere but Villin noticed the squads were properly spaced out making it a strong defensive line.
Yet despite this, the line wasn’t straight as this would be obvious, it was a squiggly line giving it a messy feel while retaining functionality.
Occasionally a beast would make it through but the second line of defense was supposed to take care of those.
A handful of hours later, the canyon had been completely blocked off, until the barrier at least. Villin knew he would have to do regular maintenance on it though if he wanted it to remain functional, this would probably cost him a fourth of his magic power overall, significantly lowering the amount of magic power he would be able to spend on killing sea critters.
Every now and then, Villin looked outside of the barrier, making sure the Ottoia wouldn’t come back. These checks were all good until two hours later, as Villin took a short rest, he noticed a shadow coming from a massive creature far into the sea.
It seemed that the Ottoia had returned.