Looking at the damage done to the ship, I have to admit that it leaves a sense of depression in me. I did not notice it during the battle but there has been significant damage to the ship. Most of it is due to collision with enemy cannon shots. There is little to no secondary damage, either due to fire or any other element. That is a good thing since must of the damage is concentrated on the outer walls of the ship.

I am actually surprised that I did not have a complete idea on the damage done to the ship during the fight. Such negligence often tend to have pretty disastrous results. I tend to be good at stuff like this. Well, panic tends to really mess with performance. Anyways, getting back to the matter at hand.

The actual core of the damage, which would be the ship and the many holes that you can find in it, is actually not an issue. The reason for that is actually that my ship has an ability, called as memory regeneration. This was the ability about which my master had warned to use only when the ship was damaged.

To explain this particular ability i have to explain to you about heartwood. Heartwood is something of a legendary material to the druids. That is because anything that has been crafted from heartwood will always retain its shapes. Any weapon made from it will always remain as sharp as the day it was crafted. Any armour made from it will never lose its shape. Even being snapped in half, the material will return to its usual shape in matter of days. To the druids, that naturally do not have many materials like this a material like heartwood is one of their most precious secrets.

At the moment the most important thing is that the ship has finally gained this particular ability of memory regeneration. Now I will try and explain it as well as I can but you cannot blame for the vagueness, since that is my masters teaching style.

Until now the ability of the heartwood used to make the ship has been deactivated or not properly activated. it needs a second of specific formations to activate that particular ability.

My master has activated that ability fully about a week ago. That means that as long as the ship has enough mana, it will return to its old shape and I have finally gotten to see the process in its full glory. You want my opinion, it boring. It is literally like seeing wood grow. But seeing the difference from yesterday, I understand why the druids wanted such materials. It is almost like somebody is reversing time to a period when the ship was full and fine.

Well, it would be nice if this regeneration could be somehow given to the formations that were inscribed on the ship. Right now I will have to inscribe every gap in the ship. Thankfully, my master has left a few notes on the formations that he has used, so I should be able to figure out a few things given enough time. Until then I will need a different kind of environmental formations. The present environmental formation

will not be able to function for too long. Though there is little I can do until the regeneration process is complete.

That is why I have made myself busy with other tasks, them mainly being covering the ship with as much foliage as possible. The external senses of any of the ships should not be capable of detecting the ship. They mainly do so from the mana that is being emitted by the ship and at the moment we do not have any mana emission. That will occur if the ship were to activate.

The only threat that is then left is that they might have scouts visually searching for the ship. The foliage will trick them unless the ships is flying particularly low.

Other than that, ships are built with enemies in the sky in mind. They simply do not tend to have much capability in detecting stuff on the ground. It won't be able to fool a dedicated search party. So, our present hope is that the enemy suspects that we have escaped to much further ahead, narrowly missing the reinforcements. That will leave them looking in the wrong location. And if they do attempt a thorough search in the wrong location we will be gone long before they will find us. Atleast that is what I tell myself, you never know what can happen.

Thinking of this I wish that I would be able to take off now. At the moment the ship is completely and absolutely grounded, so thinking about that anytime soon will not be an option. The ship itself is in working order, but to take to the sky with a messed up environment formation is suicide. Choking due to lack of air is the simplest thing that can happen. I have heard of worser things (men popping like bloody baloons, becoming rabid like dogs). I thankfully never witnessed them myself.

Even my previous ship did not have such a messed up environment formation, granted that this time it is my own fault and my masters too. The man crafted the formations like this wantedly. Another test, i assure you. The remaining damage I can safely assume that a combination of me and the memory regeneration can handle easily.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Anyways, at the moment the main threat that I have to face is the environment formation and other than the druidic ones for which I certainly lack the raw materials, I have no idea about other environmental formations. There are standards formations for environmental control that you can use during emergencies called as cells. My previous ship also had a few of those. This is so that if the environment formation fails, the cell can temporarily take over that function of the environment formation until you end up in a safe place.

but since this is a new ship, it lacks a bunch of the stuff that a ship should normally have. So there are no cells in the ship. Even with a cell though I have no idea where we would go. The cell would last maybe a day or two and the only place that it will get me to is the mayfire castle. That is certainly not an option.

At the moment, what I need is to do a bit of shopping, getting materials to replace the environment formation atleast temporarily and maybe figuring out a way to boost the defensive capability of the ship. For that to happen though, I have two main problems again.

First, I certainly do not have any cash. Most formation mages do not really need cash since most people are quite ready to sell stuff to us on credit for the simple fact that they need somebody to help out with their formations always. Also, having a formation master owe you is quite the benefit for any person. Therefore money is not much of a issue, unless you happened to need to keep a low profile, such as if you happened to be in enemy territory and you don't want them to identify you.

And that leads to the second issue, that the only place that I can do this trade is in the closest tradehub to us, which happens to be the mayfire castle which based on our present assumption is under the temporary control of the blood heart gang. Trevor tells me that he had a way for me get into the city, beyond the noses of our enemies.

Well, to explain this situation better I present to you the chat I had with Trevor regarding this issue. This was around the time that we had enemy ships flying above us. They have been appearing in intervals like that. No ship stays here for too long though.

"The enemy do not seem to be a thorough search for us, captain. A dedicated search would have already revealed our presence to them already. The ship is not exactly hidden down here.", shamon speaks.

We all were huddling next to each other in the core room, catching our breathe as if our breathe would reveal our position to the enemy. Naturally that is not the truth, but hey fear had weird ways of showing itself.

"Well, it could be that they are doing a dedicated search, just at another location. They could reach this position any second now.", I reply, better to assume the worst don't you think. "We don't really have a method of fighting without taking to the air."

"Well, that could be the truth. I don't think that is very likely though. They will be more than busy looting the mayfire castle. At the end of the day the gang was setup for the purpose of looting not hunting the guard corps. Nobody will waste their precious time looting to look for a guard ship.", he replies. "Destroying us or not destroying us will have the same result to the blood heart gang and they know it very clearly. They would rather maximise their profits and run away before we can send a fleet after them."

"Still, that doesn't change the fact that we are quite helpless. We can't move unless you want to choke right now. Even if we could, We cant even return to the hexmountain, unless you want me to be removed from the guard corps.", I ask him. "We can't even go to the mayfire castle now. How the hell Am I supposed to get the ship fixed now."

"Well, we can go to the mayfire castle to get whatever you need to repair the ship.", Trevor replies. "It will be a bit unconventional, but I am pretty sure that I can get you through the walls of the castle. We can't take the ship with us naturally for obvious reasons."

"It is under blood heart control according to you, so how are we going to be doing that.", I speak. "I would assume that they would think to look for me in their own city wont they. Even they must know it is the only option they have left."

"Well, the mayfire castle is too big a bone for the bloodheart gang to manage. If they had complete control over the place, I would eat my boots. They are bandits, taking everything in the place and then retreating before the locals can react to their presence. Taking a location and keeping it steady is not their skill. I would have to assume that they have made one of the buildings in the castle to be their base and they might have control over a small portion of the city.", he speaks. "The folks of the castle are more than capable of holding their own against the blood heart gang individually. The blood heart gang cannot rob without thinking or they will likely end up facing the wrath of the people."

"So if they are besieging the castle, how exactly are we supposed to be sneaking into the place. It is not like we can just walk to the place.", I ask. Well, neither possibility that he had ststed seen to be good for me.

"Well, that is what we are planning to do, captain. Though it will be only the two of us.", he said and completely shut up about it.

I will actually leaving with him for this hidden path in a while. On foot, it will take us roughly two days to get to the castle. What will happen in that period I do not know. Trevor as it seems to be his nature is keeping particularly quiet on this topic.