Formation masters fear the battlefield for a simple reason. We cannot work to our best on the battlefield.

Take this perspective, you are being sent to the battlefield with the tools to build a weapon. You have to craft that weapon of yours in the middle of a battlefield, while the enemy is in the process of fighting you. You have shaped your blade while the enemy is shooting arrows at you and you have to heat the metal while the enemy is throwing fireballs at you.

Do you think that the enemy will allow you to complete that weapon of yours? No, he will stick his sword into you before you even get the opportunity to start on your work. It is a very risky position to be in.

Well, the battlefield might be a place where we cannot work to our best but it is also true that formations are often built on the battlefield in the middle of a war. The first step of war is to construct your forts and their formations, which the enemy will be trying to break and destroy. As you can see, the snowlords are masters of this kind of combat with the amount of practice they have had with the Snowwinders.

Even now, these bastards have caught me right at the most sensitive moment that I can have during the process of building a formation. To explain this better, let me begin by admitting that I have finally managed to build the formation base. The formation base is the part of the formation that is supposed to deal with the process of control of mana. It acts as a dam, storing the mana from the continuous stream of the elemental nodes and storing it in the formation core and then making use of it to power the entire thing. It is the heart and the spine of a formation.

So the formation base has one ability which is to store and manage a large amount of mana. The mana stored in this formation at the moment is so much that if I were to try and channel it into a class nine formation material is that it would cause a massive explosion.

I could try and channel it into myself, but that would just cause my death in even more painful ways (such as crumbling into the sand, suffocating while my skin and other organs turn to metal or the worst, swelling like a balloon due to the fluid in my body. Destruction by mana is quite creative.)

So essentially even with the formation covering the fort, there is simply no way for me to make use of it. That will be the case until I can inscribe one other formation at the very least, with more offensive capabilities. Until then the formation base cannot act like anything more than a powerful source of mana, one that will be more likely to destroy the vessel than the enemy.

As for why I am not able to do even basic inscribing is due to the three troops that have been surrounding us for a couple of days now, patrolling somewhere north of us. Even at the moment, I can feel these creatures camping somewhere to the north, their mana pulses barely noticeable in the frigid north.

Turns out the ice beasts are better at forming an army than most humans. Eighty circleless beasts (whose strength is equivalent to the soldiers.) Follow the command of a troop leader, who is a first class being (with strength roughly equivalent to mine.). Eighty such troops combined form a horde under the control of a snow lord.

It is this horde that makes a snowlord so hard to fight. In terms of pure might, all that would be required is for the commander to go and I think it would take like an hour for him to kill all the snowlords. But then the battle would not be that of troops but of individual ice beasts and the ice beasts are pests that the frozen peak cannot allow onto their fields. It is already a problem that they are suffering from.

It is said that every village of the snowwind empire has to maintain a militia simply for the fact that if they do not have one then they stand to be destroyed by hordes of ice beasts that might be looking for a snack.

If the situation were to get worse In the fields, then the snowwind empire might just end up facing a famine. (Not many forces are willing to trade with the snowwind empire, especially for things like food. Let's just say the neighbors of the Snowwinders will make heavy profits if that happens.)

Anyway, I am not here to discuss politics but to discuss my present situation. The ice beasts are acting to stall us, to prevent us from working on the formations any longer. That is why they are at the moment not attacking us.

If they were to attack us now, the battle might just end in our victory or our defeat. Then regardless of the outcome, the two sides will not be able to continue on their attack. This will then lead to my benefit as during that period I will be able to keep working on the formation greatly boosting our power.

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No, these beasts will do better by just hanging out acting as a threat to prevent me from continuing on my formation. That will be the case until somebody powerful enough will come and flatten all of us. I begin work on the formation, and these creatures will attack. It is not a threat that I can ignore when this creature nearly outnumbers us two to one.

It is a pretty common tactic, which is particularly effective when dealing with formation mages. That means that I do have methods to deal with it, but it is neither going to be easy nor safe. The main problem is that I am going to have to take a certain amount of risk personally.

My master would be the first person to do something like that. Well, as for what I am going to be doing, I will decide that based on some very professional advice or at the very least something quite similar. In my present case that would be shamon. He might not look like much but he is an experienced soldier who has fought in this place for years.

Well, on that note it is about time that I go and meet him. I have been trying to stay out of his way for a couple of days, you know. He has enough stress to deal with, without trying to talk to me. These guys bend over backward whenever they see their commanding officer in the room.

(After a while.)

I almost forgot that I had to activate this thing.

"My lord, I greet you.", Trevor is standing opposite of me, bending opposite to me.

“No need to do that, Shamon.", I speak "I have a certain business to discuss with you. I would prefer it if we had some privacy."

I say that looking at the soldiers next to me, who quickly disappear at my kind. These guys might have overly complicated rituals, but discipline is something that they are very good at.

"Now to get to business, I have a plan to deal with the ice beasts.", I ask him. "For it to work, I need to understand. How exactly do these beasts think? What are their tactics."

"Well, If they were under the control of snowlords, there is no real way for us to predict their behavior. The snowlords do tend to be quite diverse in the way that they react to their enemies. Some to be very aggressive, some defensive, though it is most common to see them being somewhere in the middle.", Shamon begins. "With only the ice beasts, it is easier. They are stupid creatures when they are not actively under the control of their masters. They will certainly be easier to fight."

"Well, the plan is not to fight them, Shamon but annihilate them as quickly as possible", I Begin. "What do you think is our situation at the moment."

"Well, we are in a pretty stable situation for now. The ice beasts do not have any reason to attack us and they should wait. As long as we maintain the fort correctly, these beasts have no way to strike us. They are trying to isolate us and then attack us while preventing any further scope of attack. We cannot stay in the fort forever. They are trying to starve us out.", shamon speaks. "We need a plan of attack for the inevitable day that we are forced to leave the safety of this fort."

"We will deal with that situation when the day comes, shamon. Those are concerns for the future. Right now we are at a more deadly standstill.", I speak. "To explain our present situation it is best to take this example. Imagine that you are a wolf stuck in the forest you notice in the distance that there is a hunter priming to strike you, his bow fully taut and ready to strike you. whichever direction you go now, you can't be sure if the arrow will hit you or not. What do you think the beast will do now."

"Well, it would charge towards the hunter and try to kill him before he can do that. That way even if the hunter succeeds, I will be close enough to take him down with me", Shamon replies.

"Well, we are the hunters in this example. We have essentially put an arrow in the bow and are now having it at a full draw in front of the enemy and the enemy is charging at us. Now is not the time for us to passively wait for the enemy to make a move. Rather than shoot an arrow, we need to throw a knife at its face.", I speak to him.

"Captain, what about your formations then? There must be some way for you to make use of it.", Shamon asks.

"Well, I do not have much good news there. We can make use of it but there is a certain risk involved in the process and If I want to execute what I am planning to do, I will need ten of your best soldiers.", I ask him.

That does not go well with the soldier. He keeps it in check though.

"Well, I can provide you with these soldiers.", shamon speaks. "Their loss will be felt very clearly, captain. We are not just fighting three troops. More will come in the future."

"I understand that, shamon. You need not worry. Your soldiers will be fine.", I say to him.

"Captain, at the same time, I want to send messengers to the remaining temporary forts. I do not think that there is no way that we will be able to maintain this fort on its own", shamon begins. "Other than us there are five other forts. For each fort, we will need to send at least two soldiers for safe passage."

"Well, it is not like their presence will be too much of a help for us, Shamon.", I say to him." How likely are the forts going to take such a proposal."

"Well, I am friends with the head of two of these forts. They will certainly listen to us at the very least. The remaining I am not so sure. Such a request might be seen as a sign of weakness and the person extending this request to be insulting you.", Shamon speaks. "It will still be foolish of us to not try though. After all, we are in the same situation."

"Good, then do the needful.", I say "I will need those soldiers in a couple of days. As for what I am planning......"

(It is standard operating procedure to not reveal any information that might get intercepted by the enemy. After all, if I were to put my entire attack plan here and the enemy got access to it. Well, it is my corpse that is going to be lying there not yours. You shall know what I plan to do at the same time as the enemy.)