Fighting with this ship this time is a completely different experience from the previous time that I fought in one (or more accurately ran away in one.) My previous ship feels like a tortoise compared to this one both in speed and the way that it moves. This ship reacts almost immediately to every command that I give it. If there is any lag I can't detect it.

The ship behind us is a pretty good vessel, though. I am pretty sure that the other side has at least two cannons. They have been trying to get their cannons in position for quite a while now. (Since they started to chase us.)

Often the cannons are placed to the side for convenience and to put as many cannons in the place as possible, but the opposite ship have taken the option of keeping it to their front and back. They can keep much fewer cannons that way, but it is going to be harder to hit them with my cannons.

The ship shouldn't be particularly strong in combat though, for the simple fact that it has managed to ambush us. That means that these pirates have invested quite the bit in their camouflage formations. (And you can tell most pirates never spend much on their ships. That is why they are such wrecks.)

The fact that even my sensitive mana sense did not manage to capture them, means that they should have spent a lot on it. It could also be that my senses have not recovered as much as I hoped they would have. My master would have detected them for certain, but the man is the kind that he would not bother to mention it to me so that I can have a learning experience. He is right now in the storage, so I can't really expect him to react. Well, I should be able to handle them or the enemy would have been destroyed before I even sensed them.

I would have already taken down the ship too if they had not ambushed me like this. The ship is a mid sized one and the reaction speed of the ship can be considered to be quite decent too though it is still a bit slower than mine. The problem is that their pilot is pretty experienced too (certainly more than me. I was given a ship to drive only when I was made a captain. While I have been studying the theory of piloting a ship since I was a kid, it is not really that helpful at the end of the day. Practice makes a man perfect as they say and raw talent can only help out so much.), so I won't be able to take him down just by using basic tricks.

The ambush was a cannon shot that should have pierced through the ships defence and hit the formation room. It is a common tactic to attack the formation room. You will end up missing most likely but you will still end up hitting something. (Especially since formation rooms tend to be the middlemost location in a ship anyways.) That would have wrecked most of the control formations and would have made the process of boarding quite a bit easy for the other side.

The opposite side missed and I entered into action, quickly diving down to dodge any further attacks. That means that the opposite side doesn't have particularly strong cannons (granted my ship is smaller than the average.). It should be class eight or even class nine. The surprising thing is that the ship even managed to hold up quite well.

The cannon did not even manage to penetrate the outer wall. There is damage but I think that I will be able to repair it on my own quite easily. After all, after running that heap of junk that I used while going to the north makes this ship feel almost invulnerable.

Returning to the ship, right now we are trying to get into positions. The enemy ship is trying to get perpendicular to me while I am trying to get parallel to them. As is usual, I have placed the cannon to the sides of the ships. While two cannons are not particularly a large number of cannons, it is something I am used to and it is not like I will only be using two in the future anyways. the flame element one is on one side and the light based one is on the other.

Where the enemy suddenly turns forward or backward. I immediately back down or go up, essentially dodging the shot but it also ruins all my chances of lining my shot. A more skillful pilot could maybe pull of the turn, essentially turning in line with the ship so I am parallel to it and peppering it with all of my shots. That is the standard method of operation based on all I have learnt.

That is the usual method, but I do not have the skill to pull it off with the opposite sides pilot. He seems to almost realise my intent and react accordingly to it. If I even show an inclination of going their way, the enemy almost dives down so steeply that I can't help but wonder if they are crashing. You can never really tell with pirates and the ancient stuff they use. (I have never been that lucky though.)

Otherwise, if the other ship was a combat worthy ship of this era, this would be a terrifying fight. Thankfully most such ships are not something the general public would be able to access anyways. Heck even seeing them is a rarity. Some of the newer models, even the head office is not sure they exist. The scholars certainly do though and they will never tell us.

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So we dance, each trying to get a shot without the other hitting us. My trip to the north has at least increased my patience with energy consuming chases. Here I have quite a bit more control. This is especially since, we haven't even stopped making our way to the hex mountain. It is still a couple of days away. The closer to the hex mountain we are though, the more allies that we have. Not that we need them at the moment.

This particular dance where neither side is able to shoot the other will continue for a while. That is until the pirate would either retreat, attempt a boarding or do something crazy. It is the crazy ones you should be careful with the pirates. They will end up destroyed but they will also end up taking you with them.

Anyways, We will have allies in the area, who would be able to help out a friendly ship like me even if we were to end up in a fight. That puts the pressure of completing this fight early on the enemy rather than me for once.

After a while of this stupid chase, the enemy finally does something decisive. Rather than try to weave around me, the enemy ship decisively comes towards me. Rather than try to charge at me, it takes a sudden turn which essentially puts it in parallel to us. The enemy begins to shoot hooks into my ship. So that proves that they are trying I board us.

The enemy essentially gave me the opportunity to shoot it in return for a chance at boarding my ship. A risky move for them so I naturally take the opportunity as the enemy presents it to me.

The side which the enemy has parked at is the side where I have placed the cannon of the fire element. I let it rip, as the fires of the cannon eat into the enemies ship. The fires that it will cause will be enough to leave the enemy ship quite damaged even if they manage to escape. Wood is wood, no matter how much you enchant it.

The hooks are a problem though. Fighting a boarding battle in such a small ship is unwise, even if I wanted too. The enemy seems to have banked on that, expecting to catch me offguard. Here I have to again thank my experience dealing with hooks from my journey to the north. (Thankfully there were no cannons involved in our journey north or we would be a wreck.)

My normal trick to deal with enemy hooks were to shoot it with my hook, essentially causing a head on collision. This is a good enough trick to deal with single ships and their hooks and is useful even here. It needs you to have a pretty good aim though.

This is even easier since I have a cannon on my ship. The mana in those cannon per shot is easily ten times the mana that I had overloaded my hook with. It would literally take me ten weeks to gather that much mana. That means that the cannon doesn't even need to be particularly accurate to destroy the other sides hook. It will just burn up like a paper placed in a fireballs vicinity. On top of that these fireballs will still end up hitting the other sides ship.

The enemy certainly does not seem to have expected such a reaction, especially since what I have done is shooting at myself to prevent the enemy from boarding. It does damage my ship but I expect a boarding would be harder to deal with and would certainly cause greater damage anyways.

With the failure of the boarding hooks, I think the opposite side has decided to retreat, as the ship begins to dip falling behind me as if they cut their propulsion formation quite a bit. I could try and shoot my hooks into this ship but that would ultimately earn me nothing. Destroying this ship would simply mean that another pirate gang would take over this region.

After all, if the pirates were so easy to deal with, the guard corps have people that are expected to take on entire armies. A few pirates would be quite easy for them I have to assume.

The pirates here must have something that allows them to fight with the guard corps on equal footing. (To speak nothing of just how messy this place would become if we were to try something like that.) I certainly am not in the mood to discover that ace in the hole, especially with this new ship of mine.

Even my previous ship, is a size above this one, though no pirate would be likely to attack the thing simply for how poor it looks. A small pretty ship means people assume the ship to be a easy prey. After all, anybody powerful enough to be a threat would be travelling In a ship that would be matching his strength.

Well, the only armed force that can operate near our home base is the guard corps except the fact that they do not like to interfere much in the local politics for obvious reasons.

It sometimes feels like they want the soldar plans and its many powers to feel like the guard corps to be way weaker than it actually is. I am not really sure how effective it is though. They barely do anything unless something serious has happened. Even then they send newbies like me to the spot to manage it.

Most of these tend to be easy missions, since nothing really dangerous exists in the area. The only threat that can exist in the region are the pirate gangs.

Most of them are non existent threats. Farmers that had their lands snatched or ambitious young men that are out to make a quick buck tend to be the targets of our missions.

It seems almost a pity to have to hunt them down, but travelling would become quite a hassle if it is allowed to continue though (even more than it is right now.) and while we are no trade center or a land people would like to travel to, trade of grain is something that needs to happen and too many pirates doesn't help that.

Anyways, regardless of how weak these pirates are, if they do manage to survive our hunting they also tend to become quite the pain in the ass too. After all, one just need to see the existance of the pirate kings for just how much of a pain in the ass they can be. At least we don't need to deal with them.