Well, it has been nearly a day since the incident of the first log occurred. I had wanted to land immediately and start working on the formations which I know are clearly on the verge of destruction. I have to restrict myself though since I have been "advised" that it was not a risk that we could afford. Well, I cannot ignore this advice anymore, as I have done so many times already. The pirates could still be following us, so I had to run the ship for one full day. We are now in a position where we can be confident that we won't be attacked again. All of this tends to become more dreadful when the ship you are doing this in can fall from the sky at any moment.

Now comes the crappy part. Right now I am in the formation room. I will now have to inspect the entire room and every formation here to make sure that it is not damaged. Well, I can feel the damage in the formations in front of me.

The propulsion formation in front of me is on the verge of breaking apart. this time I do not know how to solve this problem on my own. There are fixes but the formation will fail, if not today then tomorrow.

Now normally the purpose of a propulsion formation is quite simple. to convert mana into some kind of spell that would be able to push the airship forward. That means that they are usually simple formations that have a single core and a control stick. The core is any material inscribed with the spell runes that will be the thing that will run the entire formation. The control stick is where I can link myself to the formation if I do not want to use my mana strings.

Right now the problem that I am facing is that the formation core is on the verge of collapsing. The material used for the core of this particular formation is a piece of sky bamboo. It is as far as I can tell inscribed with some form of a wind spell. The thing with sky bamboo is that it is pretty good at boosting the power of wind spells which makes it a good choice for this task. The only problem is that it has very low durability. Using it for an attack spell would be nice and would pack quite a scary punch but it would be consumed in a single move. A propulsion formation must run for days if not months on end. I am surprised that It has even worked for five years.

The sky bamboo is burning up. After pushing this formation to its limit yesterday, It has reached a state where the runes are physically visible. That means that the mana passing through it has begun to affect the material of the formation. It is such an impossibility that I have yet to see it occur practically. It is quite a risky endeavor too. With enough mana, you never know what can happen. It will most likely create a hurricane in the middle of the room. It could also create a void in which none of us can take a breath. Still, in either case the propulsion formation will stop working though by then that won't be a priority.

The problem with the propulsion formation Is that I cannot predict when it will fail. if it were to do that in the middle of the flight we would plummet straight to the ground in the best case. Well, the material of the formation has begun to burn up. There is simply no way for me to accelerate the ship like yesterday without consequences.

Well, other than changing the core of the formation I have no more solutions. Changing the core would essentially be creating a new formation. if I get a material that can act as the core to the new propulsion formation. I will still have to inscribe the formation. This will be the first time that I will be doing it practically for such formations.

The only thing I can do right now is to rearrange the runes that are supporting the core of this formation. This will reduce the strain on the core, which I hope is enough for me to keep this thing flying for a bit longer. If I were to do it though, our speed would only be roughly sixty percent of what it is now. On top of that it is only a stopgap measure not dealing with the actual issue at hand. The formation will still fail. Well, stopgap measures are the only thing I seem to have.

I should go and inform Trevor about this. He is one of the soldiers under me but he is essentially the boss here. he has been placed here to ensure that I don't screw up anything too bad. It is my first time leaving the hexmountain without supervision.

He has the one thing that I certainly lack, which is experience. I don't know much about the man, other than the fact that he has a mysterious past. He might not have a cultivation but the man has experienced quite a few legendary events. He is oddly quiet about it though. Still, without his suggestions, we would not have made it this far. This is especially true with the number of pirate attacks that are happening. It is pretty abnormal the number of times we have been attacked.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Enough that Trevor has begun to suspect an outside enemy. I wouldn't take it seriously though, the man sees enemies everywhere. The way he is going about it, he is going to consider me an enemy in a few days.

(A couple of minutes later.)

The state of the other two people who report to Trevor, Andrew and Jacob is quite dreadful. They always seem to be in a state of panic, running around carrying out Trevor's orders. Maybe that is why those two bastards enjoyed the scene whenever the old man would chew me out. The old man is quite indiscriminate when it comes to scolding you know. The problem with the old man is that his scolding is always correct, so there is little that you can do other than get scolded.

As usual, I can hear those two idiots scuffling on the above floor, unless it is the scholars though that seems unlikely. (I do not think they have left their rooms since the beginning of this journey, even during the attacks.)

As for me, I am standing outside Trevor's quarters, which is also his office. Entering into the room is an experience. To paint a scene, Trevor's room has a bed to the side, something that never seems to be used. His table though is the exact opposite, full of papers and documents. I am surprised it has not broken yet. He is always sitting in that chair, doing whatever he does. I do not know what it is and I do not dare ask. Opposite him, he has two empty chairs. Even right now, he is so focused on this work that he has not noticed my entry. It might also be the fact that he seems to be partially deaf, though I certainly won't be the one to say that to him.

"Soldier Trevor, I have something to ask of you.", I begin, trying to bring out some form of authority in front of him. I am quite thankful that I failed though. I have no desire to be lectured again.

"When did you come in captain", the soldier replied with an annoyed tone.

"Well, I need your advice Trevor", I begin, quickly standing next to him.

"Go on, young man and do not come any closer. I can hear you plenty clearly from there. Any closer and we would be close enough to kiss.", Trevor began, though I interrupted him before he continued. His lectures could go on for ages. This man certainly enjoys the sound of his voice.

"I have told you of my worries with the propulsion formations before as well. Most of them are coming true at the moment. The formation core is too fragile to handle this kind of strain again. I believe the formation core would burn out in a couple of days at the minimum and a week at the maximum." I spoke.

"Well, how much time would we take to reach and how much time will the formation last then?." He asked.

"I think that we can take a fortnight to reach now and this way the formation will last a month or even two," I say.

"Then it is a risk that we will have to take. Don't forget, Even If an attack does happen, you should be enough to deal with them. Right now we are pretty close to the frozen peaks. There will be no sky pirates here. Even if there are, they should be the variety that we can handle. I will keep Jacob and Andrew on a patrol." The old man spoke after a minute of pondering.

"You will also have to be ready though, we might need a foundation stage mage to help us if need be. Anyway, If we are attacked, it might end up helping us. It will be easier to deal with the snowwind bastards if they think that we suffered in the journey. They should be escorting us to the base. As for the issue of the formation failing, don't worry about it. This is something that the folks in the head office also know is pretty likely. They will provide us with a new one or with the materials for a new one at least."

"Are you sure about that, Trevor? I mean won't they consider us to be weaklings if they were to see us running from the pirates.", I ask.

"Well, that would normally be the case, but you do have to remember that at the moment we are not going there as diplomats. You can be considered to be part of the apology the black mountain is sending to the snowwind empire. That is why they have sent you instead of a more experienced person from the guard corps." Trevor replied. "If we were to do too much of a show of force, it would most likely backfire on us. Right now is the time to do the opposite. A show of vulnerability means that the opposite side will underestimate you. The head office realises that. That is why they have sent you the crappiest model that they have."

"I guess that makes sense, then why have you made me start making my armor? With that and the ship I have barely been sleeping in the last couple of weeks.", I ask him. The armor is a separate headache I will talk about later.

"Well, just because you must seem vulnerable doesn't mean that you have to appear weak. Remember the snowwinders are vultures. If they feel that you are weak for even a moment they will eat you up.", the old man spoke, giving me what I hoped was a bit of clarity. "Anyway, what is more disarming than a little kid trying to look like an adult in front of the adults."

Hearing that I am left flabbergasted, how the fuck am I even supposed to reply to that. The old man seems to be thinking that I am ten eleven years old by the way that he talks to me sometimes. I am almost seventeen you know, give or take a few months.

I do want to ask him about a lot of stuff but the old man is not likely to reply to anything that I ask of him. so I leave wondering not for the last time who exactly is supposed to be the boss here. Well, I do know the answer to that, but who would like to admit it?