Well, I am kind of fucked. To explain my present situation I will have to start from the very beginning. The deadliest place to build a formation is the battlefield. The reason for that is simply the fact that on the battlefield you have an enemy who is trying to disturb your work the entire time.

Inscribing formations tends to release massive bursts of mana. This much mana makes it more than easy for the enemy to detect when you are inscribing a formation. Even the formation base which usually has the least mana leakage, still is quite obvious if the enemy knows what to look for.

If the enemy managed to distract you in the process of inscription. well, I cannot imagine a more terrible way for a formation mage to go. He would literally be consumed by the mana that he is using to inscribe the formation. Naturally, my formations are still not that strong.

I could still end up destroying the formation core that they have given me if things go wrong. Somehow I don't think that the snowwinders have a lot of these material in reserve to grant to a stranger like me and anyways, the explosion that would occur when that would happen would still be enough to leave me stuck on bed for a month.

As for what the enemy is in the present case. It would be the troops of ice beasts that are standing guard outside of our fort. Now, I guess I have to explain what a troop is. The ice beasts are the beasts of the snow lords. Based on my understanding, they use these creatures for everything from labour to war.

You could also say that they are the reason that all the snowlords are not dead at the moment too. Every snowlord has a horde of these creatures under his command. Each horde consists of about eighty troops of ice beasts and each troop consists of a eighty icebeasts and a first circle icebeast acting as the troop leader.

The commander would not even break a sweat if he had to kill a thousand snowlords. (This is the approximate number of snowlords that come here every year.) Once he does that though, all the hordes that were under the control of the snowlord will become free without a leader. They will then migrate south in search of fresher pastures which would be the snowwind empire.

The commander might be able to kill thousands of these creatures with a wave of his hand, but that is if they are bunched up together. They are spread all over the battlefield. Even the commander and all of the frozen peak will not be able to detect each of these ice beasts before the battle will spill into the snowwind empire.

The soldiers at the frozen peak even try to do this, by sending all of their soldiers at the begining of each winter to hunt for these creatures. To the snowwinders this hunt is literally killing two birds with one stone, since it helps in reducing the icebeasts hordes while at the same time ensuring that the frozen peak has enough of a food reserve for the winter. The commander himself also participates in this hunt, trying to kill all the snowlords that he dares to.

These creatures are supposed to be fast breeders. If they become rooted in the empire, it will lead to a serious problem. Well that would be wrong to say, as this problem already exists in the empire. Shamon tells me that he and his people have to maintain militias around their villages due to the ice beast problem that they face.

One reason for this could be that the nobles do not care, which leads to more strained commoner noble relations.

Well, the ice beast problem would be a problem for the nobles as well since the region that would become infested would be the food plains for the empire. Having less food is always a problem for the nobles too.

The only reason that the nobles are not willing to get of rid of the ice beasts is that the nobles do not have enough resources to actually eradicate the ice beasts. The implications of this I do not need to tell you with the number of enemies that they have. The frozen peak exists to ensure that this problem doesn't become much worse than it already is.

Right now three such troops are present outside of this fort. I cannot see them personally, (both visually and in my mana sense.) but shamon assures me that he has seen many signs of these creatures. They are supposed to be masters at manipulating the snow in this region to form structures.

Shamon tells me that they have already dug massive tunnels in the snow to act as their base. That is supposed to be their magic, a basic ability to control elemental ice. It is not a particularly strong ability but in this area, it is one of the most terrifying abilities that you can face.

Their claws and their bites are powered by the ice mana that makes this region such a death trap. Even a single of their strikes could prove fatal unless the soldiers are shipped to the frozen peak. They would literally freeze from the inside out becoming a statue of ice.

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They gave it a pretty cute name too. They call it the chill, which I feel somehow doesn't really show the gravity of the situation that they are facing. Remind me to explain this better in the future.

Yeah, to return to the point, they have already built a base near the fortress. This underground base of their means that they have no desire to move from this region. Now, I am sure that such an action from our enemies has some kind of a conspiracy against me.

After all, I am told that these temporary forts are built by the dozen at the beginning of each winter. It is rare for even a troop to appear like this in this manner. I have three. Now whether this is because the snowlords have discovered something or they have been told about me by somebody from the peak, I don't know. I have been more than careful not to let anything leak. Still, I do have a bit of a reputation so you can't really tell. with my survival on the line, now is not the time to ponder on this. This is a question for tomorrow.

the enemy troops are acting like a sword on my neck. If I begin to inscribe any formation at this moment all the enemy has to do is swing and I am dead. The fort will be destroyed and even if I were to survive (the enemy has three figures at my strength.) the enemy would be able to hunt us quite easily in this place.

We are literally surrounded by plains of snows on all four sides. Even our mana stands out in this frozen wastelands to a point where the enemy does not even need mana sight to track our path. I am not sure if I will manage to reach even the temple (which is the closest to us.) with enemies chasing us.

Now, I think that I will manage to build at least one third of the formation base before the enemy will detect us. They do not have the mana sight and certainly do not seem to be sensitive to mana.

As for what I want to build now, that would be the metal side of the formation base, a nifty little spell that is called the ironskin. It was a pretty popular spell among the druids. The spell literally allows you to coat yourself with metal mana.

Due to the nature of metal mana (it is not particularly easy to shape such a mana. It takes days to shape metal mana if you were to work on it personally.) this spell is naturally not particularly useful for humans.

Many druids used to practice it too. They used to say that if you ran this spell everyday for a century, the ironskin would become visible and with a long enough time this iron skin would become strong enough to compare to the hardest armour. These druids even were called as the “iron druids” and even the generals struggled to hurt them during the campaigns. The iron skin that I will inscribe will do the same but to the building itself. The metal mana used to form this barrier will act as my reservoir for metal mana.

To get back to the point, the only reason that this won't be detected is due to the static nature of metal mana. Once the iron skin starts working, it will also be quite detectable even to these beasts. All of this means that there won't be any immediate solution from the formations that I have to build. I could try the earth based formation base too but it runs into similar problems and the water base will be detected in an instant.

So yeah, I am stuck in a conundrum here. I cannot get rid of the enemy without formations and I cannot build formations as long as the enemy is here. Now, Shamon assures me that he will be able to handle the enemy soldiers quite easily using the fort.

The only problem that he is facing is the troop leaders. Any one of them will be able to bring down large chunks of the wall of this fort with a focused attack. If that occurs then the only benefit that we have against the enemy will be lost.

Well, I cannot really blame shamon too on this. Even without the troop leaders they are outnumbered two to one. Then there are the troop leaders. I think I will be able to kill one troop leader quite easily. I will be able to fight two of them, though it is going to be a very hard fight. Against three, even I cannot tell who will live and who will die.

It makes me wonder why they are not attacking us already. With their numbers they have a more than a decent chance of bringing us down with them. I am not even sure if they will face any heavy losses in the process too.

Well, I will lose my mind if I have to ponder on the thoughts of the enemy. The situation left my control the instant that I appeared here. Right now the only thing that I can do is adapt. It is not like I am completely helpless as well. I have a few plans in the pocket, though they are going to be quite risky. I just do not want to record them in the middle of an active battlefield. You never know who is reading this stuff after all.

Well, I had started this log to record about my successes with the elemental nodes. It is not like ranting about my present situation is going to help me in any way. Well, it did calm me down a bit.

About the nodes, I have found all three of the nodes that I need to power this class eight formation of mine. I have not redirected any of them at the moment though. The major reason for that was the fact that I did not have any plans to build the formation base this quickly.

Too much mana of a single variety flowing in a single location is actually quite deadly. The weather here and even the chill is quite tame compared to what can occur with other types of mana. Some types of mana can kill you in a few moments if you do not have a shield against it.

You will swell with water when you have an excess of water mana. You will crumble to dust when you have an excess of earth mana.

As for metal mana, I have heard that your blood will literally solidify into metal, killing you in a few moments. I can't verify that one though.

It won't take too long for the redirection to occur anyways. I will do it whenever I decide to build the formation base. With the way things are going, it won't be long as well.