The situation has finally stabilized. This is enough that I do not need to worry about dying in the next few hours. The remaining two ships have slowed down, giving my propulsion formation a much needed rest. I don't even dare to look at the formation for fear of what I will find there. After all, there is a chance that the formation might be failing as we speak. If that is the case I don't want to know about it before. It is not like I can do anything at this point anyway.

Even now, the slowing of the ship has only lowered the chance of the ship failing. The lower the chance of that occurring the happier you shall find me.

Before introducing myself I want to be clear about what exactly is wrong with the thought logger. The head office tends to be quite liberal at blaming others, I have heard. As you already must know the process of the device works in two main steps. The first is the thought string generation and the other is the broadcast of this string.

In my case, the creation of thought strings works out pretty well. after all, pushing our will into strings of mana is a basic skill for a formation mage. Also, you would not be reading this if I were to mess up that particular part. Let's just say It would be particularly embarrassing if I failed at this step.

It is the broadcasting part of the device that never works out for me. My thought string just seems to dissolve when they go beyond a certain distance from me. I assumed it was some defect in the thought logger that caused my predicament. Even now I am not sure why exactly is this thing working all of a sudden. As I said at the beginning, do not look at a gift horse in the mouth. Also, if my device is defective well then I should not be punished for the delay in the broadcast. (I'm seriously hoping it is a defective piece. The head office can be a pain in the ass for issues like this.)

I certainly do not want this to be my first and last log, but it is looking like a certain possibility. We have already exhausted all of our hooks, so we honestly do not have any defenses left. the hooks were a surprise that even I did not expect. Good thing I spent the time to cook them up. It took quite a bit of time too. I cannot blame another for my situation as well. I desired to hurry as quickly as possible which has led to the present predicament.

Being on this airship is certainly not doing anything good to my peace of mind. Now airships are something of a fascination for me. It has always been my dream to own one of these, you know. Being responsible for this hunk of junk has been the single worst experience of my life. The black mountain is legendarily famous for our omniscient grasp on magic.

Sadly this omniscience does not seem to extend to the field of building stuff you know. We are capable of casting magic that is capable of crushing mountains, and evaporating rivers and lakes. We have conquered the largest mountain in the continent. We do not have any industry of our own. You can feel that in many things on the hexmountain. This also extends our ships. Now, if I were to say to people that this airship was only five years old, most people would begin by laughing at what I said. These are things meant to last centuries you know. Heck, even the pirate ships that are chasing us should be centuries old and they are competing with my ship.

The propulsion formation and the steering formation always seem to have some problems. It requires my constant presence to keep them in working order. The environment formation that is supposed to keep me alive breaks down every other day. It was my hurrying that led to this present mess. I kept pushing the ship and all its formations to hurry to our location. I had assumed that my ability to repair it would have kept it in working order. Now I am struggling to keep the ship working.

The funny thing is I did not need to do this. I had almost double the time needed to reach here. This was most likely to account for the time we would have to spend on the ground because the formation that was meant to keep us afloat failed. Everything that I have been doing has only been stop-gap measures. measures that lead to even more measures. It is only my emergency repair skills that have kept the damn thing going and I am reaching my limit as well.

Don't even get me started on pirates, we have been sailing for a month and during that period we have had to face nearly ten attacks you know. Each is essentially a stressful game of cat and mouse where we push the ship as much as possible. Each time the propulsion formation takes a brutal beating. Not willing to wait I spend a couple of days at the very least to repair it. In all of that time, I had to hope that they would not find us in that period. Repairing stuff means that the ship won't be able to fly at a moment's notice. Perfect victims of a pirate. I can feel my hair greying with all the stress I have taken.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Still, Whoever heard of the propulsion formation of a ship failing five years after it had been built. Sadly, that is what I am worried is about to happen if the damn bastards behind me don't stop chasing me.

all of that is still manageable. the thing that makes me saddest about this airship is that It does not even look like a ship, this airship of mine. it resembles a cylindrical piece of wood. It is meant to reduce the mana costs of running these formations, l think. What fucking airship, this was meant to resemble a stupid arrow. A stupid arrow that was more likely to kill us than an actual arrow. My reservations aside, it is also a logistical problem since I have always trained with a standard ship. Fighting on this ship meant I had to relearn quite a few of my strategies.

Now, it is not a problem for others but I have had dreams related to this you know. After all, I am of the kin of Greybeard at the end of the day. Now to get back to more important matters. I have to explain my identity and the mission that I have been sent on. I will inevitably screw up and this log will terminate again. I certainly did not expect that I would be doing this while being chased.

My name is Antonio Sevenstars, a field captain of the black mountain. Am assisted three soldier level fighters escorting three captain level scholars. Normally I am supposed to give each person under my command the option to introduce themselves using my log. at the moment they are needed up there and their absence up there will have quite a disastrous result. I could call them up here now but there is a pretty significant risk that we might end up boarded if they are not there to remove any hooks as they appear. For now, Their identities and their purposes shall be found in their respective mission logs. I have to assume that everybody will be doing it correctly. If they are not, well I honestly don't care. The head office can handle that. If you want me to give a shit about protocol, a rule of thumb would be to give me a ship that I don't need to repair so much. I have been spending too much of my time on it.

Now, to describe what our mission is going to be. We are supposed to bring the scholars to documented ruin number 32, under our supervision. at the same time, we have to ensure that the folks who are in control of the ruin follow the Hexmountain treaty.

In our present case that is going to be the snowwind empire. Now the problem with the snowwind empire is that they are one of the bloodiest forces to exist in the continent. they have built their empire in one of the most inhospitable regions of the continent. They acquired each inch of their land by conducting a bloody war. The main reason for this is also the fact that they consider themselves to be the kin of the draconians. Most draconian descendants tend to have monarchies, which makes work hard for us. incidentally, we are going to explore a draconian ruin and that is the core of our problems.

So we are essentially what they consider grave robbers. They fear the might of the black mountain and certainly don't want diplomatic relations to be strained. we still cannot be sure that they won't end up killing us the minute that they end up meeting us. From that perspective maybe the pirates make a bit more sense. While I am sure that the pirates have not been sent here intentionally. the fact that even I can clear these pirates without the correct crew says enough about the treatment we are going to be facing in this place. Cleaning up for a guest is important. Not doing so must speak volumes.

It is also a part of the reason that I am being sent over there. I am sure that my skills are going to be quite useful to the snowwinders especially now. It is supposed to be a very harrowing experience based on what I have been hearing, though I do think quite little of my source's abilities (all of them spoilt brats.). It seems that at the moment they are also pretty likely to kill anyone other than me. The main reason for this seems to be a group of scholars that ended up blowing up a draconian ruin. They seemed to be testing a spell in there.

That is why active logging is so important to the head office. They cannot predict how the snowwind empire might react. They need to be able to send in reinforcements at a moment's notice. They might not like me, but I still have to assume that they would send in somebody as a reinforcement. Already I assume that I have started a panic in this first month. That would certainly not help my case at the very least.

Still, it does not make my work any less irritating knowing it is important. If anything it is even more annoying. Anyway, it is about time that I stop this stupid thing. That is if I can. I seriously don't even know how exactly I started the thing.

The pirates outside also seem to have finally started to fucking slow down. You know I can feel the ship breathe a sigh of relief as I slow it down. This ship might just end up surviving this trip. I can't tell for certain though until I can slow this hunk of junk down. I will need to see just how many fires I have to extinguish on the ship, both literally and figuratively. Thankfully, the benefit of a skeleton crew is I do not need to worry about the people at least.