There has been little progress in the modification of this ship. It has been both hard and annoying but there is no way that I am going to make any progress on it and time soon. Even with my master's notes, class seven formations are still beyond me. Give me a couple months and I will be able to start my work on it.

The only task that I have made any progress with is the process of adding cannons to the ship and even that has been more annoying than it should have been.

The main problem with that has been getting used to the ship and its formations. The layout of the formations on this ship have been one of the most confusing formation matrixes that I have studied in my life.

The first problem was that this ship was not meant to be a airship in the first place. It was meant to be a sledder and while the design of both a sledder and an airship is basically the same, there are still fundamental differences. Formations have to be modified to accommodate this difference in designs. Even I am surprised by just how much of a difference they have made in the formations.

The next problem is that my master was the one that inscribed all of these formations on his own. Now, airships tend to have a pretty standard design. After all, most airships come from a few places, most of which are present down south.

Those process obsessed bastards are only able to achieve their output by having completely standardised processes. How else would those fuckers be able to peddle their cannons and magic sails, if their customer is not able to setup those on his own.

It is not like I am complaining, those standard designs makes things so easy for us. Right now if I wanted to design my own cannon, I would be able to do it and put it on any ship I want because they are so standard. These designs have not changed for the last couple millenia at the very least.

That tends to make stuff like adding a cannon to a ship easier. I would have been able to add a cannon to such ships even in my sleep if it followed the standard layout. It is literally such a basic thing, that even a non formation mage would be able to insert the cannon if he wished to.

My master has his own way of doing things, though that means his designs are a complete mess.

The design seems completely nonsensical to me. Things aren't where they are supposed to be and even if they are, I am not really able to tell easily. To put it in polite terms, even the basic formations that my master constructs are completely beyond me.

I think a good way of explaining it would be. If I were to construct a class nine formation, I would just inscribe ten runes to complete it. In my master's case, he would have almost a hundred such runes to do the same thing.

It is not like these runes are useless as well. (As is the case with the inscriptions by most non formation mages) Each runes would have its purpose and its goal. Some might reduce the mana consumption, some might increase the effect of the formation.

Well, all of this in brief means that my master's formations are much more harder to understand and very hard to mess with, unless I want the entire thing to blow up on my face.

Just recognising those formations take me so much time and I certainly am not going to be messing with them any time soon.

The only reason that I have made any progress with my task is mainly due to the notes that he has left me on the topic. If that wasn't there, things would have been way harder. Thankfully I have finally succeeded at the task of adding cannons to the ships.

The cannons are of two elements. The first is of the fire element and is a mid range cannon. It is a class seven cannon. Fire cannons are the most economical cannons that you can have on a ships. Most of them pack a decent punch and considering most airships are made of wood, there is the added benefits of fires spreading on the other ship. Most people don't tend to bother with the enemy ship when their own ship is burning like wood at the campfire.

The second cannon of mine is of the light element. It is also a class seven formation. As is usual with this element the range of the cannon is very high but it has a pretty average damage even though it is a class seven formation.

I have managed to add these two cannons to the formations powering the ship so there is no need for me to charge and aim these cannons individually now.

If I did not achieve this now, then I would have had to power these cannons individually and let's leave the matter of aiming them. That would have certainly caused a mess since I need to pilot this ship as well. (And my master certainly would not like to pilot while I run around the ship setting of the cannons.)

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Even now it is not a perfect solution. Every shot of my cannon is going to be a risk. There is every chance that the cannons might delink from the formations of the ship.

Still, even getting in a couple shots can sometimes make the difference between victory and defeat in these air battles.

I have achieved this at the correct time as well. After all, we are about to enter into the soldar plains. I need to have a working defense if I want to be able to make my way through this area safely.

I guess I should explain why exactly the soldar plains is such a hot mess, though every person on the hex mountain knows of this bit of politics by heart. Our stomachs literally depend on it after all. Well, I am bored and don't have anything else to do anyways.

Well, the hexmountain is the largest mountain in the continent and acts as the home base for the black mountain. the black mountain has essentially taken over all of the safe parts of it for our personal use. That means what we have is an iron grip on one of the easiest place in the continent to defend. We have made full use of this as well by constructing what can be considered to be one of the greatest fort chains on the hex mountain guarding it. All of this means one simple thing. Nobody will be attacking my home by force.

Almost nine tenth of the buildings of the black mountain are present in the hexmountain. The remaining tenth tend to be outposts for the scholars spread out across the entirety of the continent whose loss won't even be noticed by us. Therefore, our enemies have no real way to strike us until they manage to cripple the hexmountain.

The topic of conversation is not the hexmountain but the plains that surround it. This can be considered to be one of the only weaknesses of the hexmountain. Surrounding the hex mountain is the soldar plains.

It is like a valley surrounding the hexmountain and due to that one fact it is one of the most chaotic locations in the continent. Firstly, the only thing that is of any real importance in the plains is their grains and their farms.

The only real consumer of grain that these people have is the hexmountain. (I mean they could sell it to the north and the south, but they would have to be able to transport it first. That is a pretty costly process.) that means that we are basically the only buyer and we have almost nine to ten sellers for us to choose from.

That quickly leads to a complicating of positions as every power in the plains is trying to attack every other person on it. After all, the hexmountain will buy grain from the person with the cheapest price. Costs (and therefore price) tend to go up if a pirate were to enter your land and torch the grain that you grown for the last year. When you are competing with multiple sellers, driving costs tend to be a good way of hedging things in your favour.

Most do this through funding pirates (behind the scenes of course.), whose duty it is to go into any other territory and do their banditry. That is why every pirate that is worth his salt always has people going for those grain ships. (It is also a good way to train their new recruits, I have heard.)

This particular thing has grown so complex that I am not even sure if the pirates even know which power is funding them or if all of them are. I don't think they particularly care at this point as well. Most pirates end up being financed by somebody or the other though. I would not be surprised if there are auctions where the pirates sell their services to the highest bidder.

The guard corps does try to maintain order in this place, but it's hands are tied by the situation in the plains. We need the people of the plains divided and united at the same time in a nutshell.

The hexmountain cannot have a single power rule over the plains. That would give them too much power over the hexmountain. (If these guys were to suddenly decide that they did not need to sell us their food, a majority of us will starve. Well, maybe not starve but it will certainly be a hit on our coffers. After all it would be just as costly to transport food from the north or the south to our location as it would be to transfer it from our location to theirs.)

At the same time, we cannot allow too many people to rule over the plains too. If that were to occur, they would be too busy fighting each other for the farmers to prosper. The result of that is also starvation for us.

That is why the guard corps has to be very careful in how we act here. We make use of a mixture of negotiations, threats and guard patrols to keep the situation in the plains ideal for us. We also cannot do this in a heavy handed manner or we might just end up uniting the plains against us.

If we were serious, just the guard corps would be enough to manage this complicated mess. (Not even considering the other forces at our disposal.)

All of this is further complicated by the fact that there are a lot of outside powers trying to strike at us through the plains. Well, even if you ignore the legion which can be considered to be the sharpest spear in the continent, there is the problem that we have control of the hex mountain which can be considered to be the greatest fort in the continent. Our enemies do not have many avenues to attack us from.

Some of our enemies tend to fund a single group to make them achieve domination over the entire place. Some tend to fund them all, to devolve the place into further chaos and most tend to do a mixture of this, trying to achieve either. Even now, of the nine powers that rule the soldar plains, we are sure that at least seven powers are related to outside powers in some way or the other. Not that we are going to tell them about knowing that though.

I am sure that we have entire buildings worth of documents on just the soldar plains and an entire legion of scholars trying to figure what the hell is going down here.

All in all, this place is a proper mess. One that we need to go through with a precious ship. (Especially one that looks really precious.)