Right now, I am feeling a peace of mind that I had not had since I had come to this fort. The reason for that is that I have finally managed to complete the inscription process for the metal spell. I do not feel like making a log but I have to do so in case I want to reference it in the future.

I should leave a record of the formation that I am building and make sure that in case of my untimely demise, whoever will come here will at the very least know what the formation does. Misusing formations is the easiest way for you to cause a massive explosion, especially one linked to an elemental node.

The class nine formation that I am building is a very basic nurturing formation among the druids known as the iron skin. this spell is used by the druids to increase the durability of their skin. The spell does this by adding an extremely thin layer of metal mana covering your skin. The spell itself is not very strong as this layer of metal mana is often not strong enough to block the strike of a blade and even if it managed to do that, the metal mana gathered would dissipate in blocking that strike.

The main problem with this formation is because of the speed at which the spell works. For example, if a druid managed to run this spell for nearly a hundred years continuously without being consumed even once the metal mana layer that is going to cover the user will finally become visible and at this stage, only a general level figure would be able to harm that druid. These druids have a special name, called the iron druids. Even at its peak, the druids only had two iron druids.

That is the goal of my metal formation is to constantly cast the iron skin spell on the fort and create a metal barrier for every inch of the place. You can see the speed of the spell for a human, so naturally, for the fort it is going to be even slower. I would not be surprised that it would take a thousand years to reach a state similar to the Iron Druids. (If it does, it will be quite unbreakable.)

That is even the case after I have found an elemental node for the metal element. The spell can make use of any mana to do this, but pure metal mana is the best for this task. It is kind of like using paint, it will naturally take longer to paint a building if he had to process and make his paint from scratch with its raw materials each time he had to paint. If the paint is already available, one just needs to paint it on. The elemental node is a stream of paint for me in the present context, a thin stream, but a stream nonetheless.

Hey, every bit of it will help me whenever the fort is going to be involved in a conflict. Well, It is nearly a week since the last log and I have to admit that I have underestimated just how annoying the cold is going to be. First of all, why the fuck is this place is so fucking cold. I have enough mana in my body that I do not need to worry about the cold affecting my fighting capabilities.

That does not mean that I stop feeling the cold, if anything the cold that I am feeling is way worse than the cold that the soldiers above are feeling. They are quite warm sitting up there you know. I have been spending nearly all the days that I have since coming here, down in these tunnels and while they are covered like a ball in coats to keep them warm, I have a thin layer of clothes to keep me warm. Anymore and my agility in battles will be affected. Honestly, why the fuck did I think that the vine armor was going to be useful in this fucking cold. Oh yeah, I have two of the three elemental nodes needed for this process. One is the metal node and the other is the earth node. That only leaves me with the water node, which it seems is going to take quite a bit more looking.

Well, rather than talking about my miserable time down there, I am going to focus on the situation of the temporary fort. Now, I have been learning why exactly these folks even need to attempt something like the temporary fort.

The temporary forts are something that the Snowwinders have attempted very recently, as recently as a couple of years ago. To explain why exactly they are needed I have to explain the problems that are faced by the snowwinders in their war with with the snowlords.

The place that we are in, the northern valleys is a place that acts as the border between these two warring powers. On the snowlander side, this valley ends up in a plateau beyond which we have the northern wastelands. The northern wastelands are not a place that a mage will go lightly to. To put it simply, the northern wasteland is a location where even mana tends to freeze. They are said to form crystals of mana, that certain species use as fuel. Most of these species are now extinct, maybe due to their fascination with entering the northern wastelands. The only people who have any idea about the wastelands are our enemies.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Anyway, If we were to go to the Snowwinders side, this fight would go on in the plains of the Snowwind empire. That would put the snowwinders in a pretty weird position since they would essentially be destroying their land to fight the snowlords. It does not help that the land that the Snowwinders are protecting is the farmlands of the Snowwind empire.

Hence the only real place where these two forces can fight is this region, this valley that borders both the regions. Yet one point that one must not forget is that even here the snowwinders fight at a disadvantage. At the onset of winter, the valley has to face snowstorms with ice falling from the northern wastelands, which the snowlords make use of to strike the snowwinders. The snowwinders should have ended up dead in this exchange, especially the fact that the temperature at this place is enough to freeze most of these guys into a block of ice. They should have ended up dead or at least at a disadvantage in this fight.

the main reason that the snowwinders have even managed to level the playing field is the fact that they have frozen peaks. The frozen peaks act as a place where the snowwinders can rest whenever they are not fighting. Otherwise in such a hostile environment just surviving would be hard, let alone fighting.

You can see a trace of that occurring in the temporary fort at the moment. The enemy has yet to strike us but it is quite clear that we are in a pretty deadly situation anyway. The enemy does not even need to appear at this fort for it to fall. All that needs to happen is a decently powerful snowstorm to hit us and the place will fall. Right now that is my main worry. I am not sure If the metal spell that I have inscribed will even have an effect on the situation or if the base material that they have used for the fort is so weak that even a class nine formation will not be enough to make the fort durable enough for this place.

Anyway, as I was describing this means that the fight that is occurring here is essentially one of construction. The snowwinders will try to put up forts in the area and the snowlords will try to break them before the snowwinders can succeed in their task and if possible they will try to loot the fort to get useful materials. The snowlords have Quite the advantage in this matter since nobody can tell where they will strike next. They have the storms with them.

After all, even the construction of the simplest fort tends to take multiple months and during that period it is a prime target for the snowlords. So the temporary forts are the solutions that these guys have on this matter. Rather than try to build a proper fort traditionally, they are building a very large number of temporary buildings most of which the snowlords might end up breaking in a couple of strikes. The cost of materials invested is not much, especially when the fort has been built in such a way that even if it has been broken it can reconstructed quickly and efficiently. Even if they don't become the next frozen peaks, these forts will act as outposts for it, greatly increasing Snowwind influence in the place.

if even one of these buildings lasts for six months, it would completely be enough to satisfy the materials that have been invested into the task. That means that my present goal is to just make sure that fort will last for as long as possible. If they manage to make another fort last in the way that they have managed to make the frozen peaks last, at a fraction of the cost that they built the frozen peaks at, then they can keep doing this every year, for centuries if necessary.

I am beginning to understand why exactly I have been sent here and the reason that I have ended up here. I am essentially acting as an experiment for these people. Maybe it is my skill in formations or my knowledge as a person of the black mountain that they want to test. Maybe they think that a stronger central formation is the way that they need to go to make these forts a success or something like that. (I certainly think so.)

Regardless, I cannot afford to fail in this task even if it is meant to be an experiment. The ruin that at the moment is holding all the people of my troop is at the moment protected by this exact fort. If at this moment the ruin is attacked I can send a group of soldiers to help protect them, but that is granted that these soldiers are not busy fighting for their lives because the fort that was meant to protect them has been destroyed just because the wind is blowing too hard.

Now I am starting to wonder if I am making a mistake. Maybe a nurturing formation is not the way for me to go. Maybe I should have just focussed on inscribing a formation from the first day. After all a nurturing formation requires time to show its true power and that is something that I am not even sure if I have enough of. Well, a formation built is a path set. I can't change it even If I want to.

Regardless, I have managed to complete the very first and the most important part of the formation. The other parts of the formation can be added slowly and steadily with time, at least the fort is not at risk of collapsing immediately. Now it is time for the riskiest part of the mission to begin, after all, one can never tell the power of a formation without the first contact with the enemy.