I wonder how exactly did I get so unlucky in my life. I just want to run a ship without somebody blowing it to smithereens for once. Well, I at least want to have a working ship by the end of a mission at the very least if not even that is possible.

That is what I am thinking as five cannons shoot at my ship. They are more skilled at this type of fight than the ones in the patrollers. They are shooting at me in waves. (another military strategy. This man has some affiliation with an army, I am sure of it now.) This means that as I am plunging down to the forest to dodge these shots, I can feel two of those shots piercing into the ship.

This is not a particularly easy to execute strategy as well since you would need to be able to reorient a cannon on the fly. Something only somebody trained for it will be able to do.

The first shot hit me at the back of the ship. Nowhere particularly significant. It is the second shot that managed to screw with me. It managed to hit the storeroom. To give you a perspective, the storeroom is about a couple of rooms away from the room that we are in right now. The damage is not particularly significant but that doesn't mean that I will be able to take too many of those shots.

Only one person could have such a crazily accurate shot. Looks like the archer is presently in the shadow. I can feel my mind blank out as I try to think of a plan of action. There is no trick, nor any plan in which we can escape safely with the damn ship coming out safe at the end of it.

"Captain, keep moving.", I hear a voice behind me.

That reminds me that I need to level out my ship. I can't just end up crashing into the ground. Well, for now I have to focus on moving and staying away from our enemies.

Right now, I absolutely cannot let the archer hit this room. I can give up on the room and the ship if push comes to shove but the moment the ship pierces the formation room, we are done for. The problem is that we all will fall to our death. Also, before falling we would be exposed to the elements outside and that will kill us even before the fall will. (This ship does not have any type of formations to prevent that.) Let's not forget about the formations that would be lost in the process.

Well, there is no real need to change my plan. The goal is still going to be to escape. How are we going to do that. Right now the problem that I am facing is the fact that we won't be able to make it very far with this ship. Already the damage to the ship from the trip in the forest has made this ship pretty unuseable. I am surprised that it has already not begun to fall. Well, let's not tempt fate.

If I were to consider the ship as disposable there is something that I can do actually. A plan that I had made for the piece of crap that I was piloting in the previous mission. Something that is going to end up in the ship being completely and utterly screwed up.

Well, my plan is simple at the face of it. It is to crash the ship and escape to the mayfire castle from our present position on foot.

It is not going to be an actual crash, of course. I am not stupid enough to actually do that. It will be more of a cosmetic thing. Overload a few of the sensory formations and you will make it seem like the entire thing has exploded. That is going to ruin most of the formations in the ship, but I will be able to land the ship. (ok, it is going to be more like controlled crashing.)

Right now the trick is to put up the appropriate amount of resistance. Too much and they will come down after the crash to double tap us. They can't have such a violent threat down here when they are maintaining a defensive line. Too little and they will actually end up destroying us. (Well being destroyed is the goal, but you have to do it with style.) It is a fragile balance to maintain.

"How far are we from the mayfire castle?", I ask the man next to me.

"It will take a day in a ship, captain. if you mean on foot, then it will take us about a couple weeks.", trevor replies, the man already guessing what I am planning to do. How does that man do that? It is kind of annoying if I am to be honest. I guess that is why he has been paired with me.

"Good, well everybody brace for impact.", I scream to the people surrounding me. Not that I need to.

While all of this is going on, the ship above me has been recharging it's cannons. I mean I might have been the one to give it enough time to do so. That is the problem with a bag of tricks. You need to be able to pick a trick when the time comes to choose or you will end up in a worse situation than when you have no trick.

Well, it is not a surprise as the shadow finally takes it's shot or shots as all five of the shots hit the ship. I can feel the wood of the ship crunch as the shots streak through it. There goes the second storeroom, my room and andrews room. Thankfully, there is nothing in the room that is worth worrying about. The bloody fang is dangling from my hip right now and everything else can be recovered from the wreckage.

Even if I have decided to abandon the ship it hurts to see it damaged like this. This ship was barely in my hands after all before it was annhilated like this. Repairing all of this is going to be a pain.

Well, I can't go down now. This close to the enemy they are going to come down to find loot. Our enemies are pirates, one can't forget that. The goal is to make it as costly for them to look for our ship as possible. Thankfully the ground below us is a forest area. Looking for a ship made of wood is going to be a pain in the ass for anybody that does not want to look for it. Now the trick is to make them not want to look for it. If this area was like the rest of the soldar plains, I would be screwed. They would have not left the ship even if they see it crumble into ashes. I would have to abandon the ship fully if that were the case.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Well, I begin this process by aiming towards the sky. I can feel the ship go up into the air slower than it should have done normally. The five cannon shots must have affected the propulsion formation finally. Well, that might be a bit of a wrinkle. If the propulsion formation has begun to fail, it usually means that the other formations are not particularly far from failing as well.

Screw my reserves, I am going to crank the ship to its maximum speed. With the way that I am burning my reserves I am going to have five minutes to get away. At least it is really selling the fact that this is a wreck.

I shift to the left almost on instinct, cleanly dodging the other parties shots. looks like the hunter was expecting me to remain stationary. Well, nice to see that the other side has missed at least once especially that fucking archer.

Again, the ship has begun to shake but it will be fine for now. At least there is no risk of spiraling. Right now with the speed at which we are going it is enough to leave the brawler in the dust. I would say that it is about seventy percent of the speed at which I was moving from the patrollers though. (This means that the propulsion formation has begun to fail completely)

Thankfully, a brawler is still slower than the patroller. The main reason for that is the other party is not willing to burn through their mana stone reserves like the patrollers were willing to. That would take a fortune to be frank. Something even a rich gang like the bloodfire gang can't afford, I am sure.

Right now, they are about five hundred meters away from me. (Thankfully, the shadow is still going in the direction opposite to me, though it has begun to slow down.) the only reason that the hunter is already not wrecking us is due to the crazy way in which the ship is moving.

The damage to the ship is certainly more extensive than I expected it to be. My controls have begun to fail. It is still pointed towards the castle, but it is almost like somebody is having a stroke while controlling this formation with the way it is jerking and bobbing.

As I am thinking this the next set of shots are charged by the enemy. I try to dodge this one by shifting the ship to the right but it is not succesful as three cannon shots spear into the ship again.

This time I do not bother to see the damage done to the ship. It will just distract me. Right now my focus has to be guarding the core of this ship, which is this very room.

Right now that is the unique thing about this ship if you ask me. While the material it is made from is more durable than the average wood these sets of formations are the true price of this ship.

The efficiency of every formation in this room is off the charts. If you were to ask anybody, matching multiple ships running on mana stones with a ship running on ambient mana storage in terms of speed is something that many people would call a dream. On top of that, men like my master do not tend to make such basic formations very often. It could be sold for well above the price that other such formations would command.

As long as this room is safe and my master was not boasting about the nature of this material than I will be able to get this ship back to a working state, maybe even back to its pinnacle. Well, boasting is something that my master does not like to do.

fuck, fuck, fuck. I was so lost in my thought that I did not manage to react in time. Three shots hit me from the ship behind. The other two would have missed me naturally. Right now we are four kilometres away from the other sides ship.

This time the damage is a bit more extensive than I would like. It is due to the fucking archer. His cannon managed to pierce the food storage room. Entire months of food reserves lost just like that. That is not my major problem though. this room housed a very key node for the sensory formations.

With this the effectiveness of my sensory formations has been cut by half. Already I can feel its loss as the visual behind me has become blurry. I am sure that there is more damage here but I won't be able to tell anymore, as my sensory formations have become unreliable.

Well, I seriously can't take this anymore. I focus the ship straight ahead. I am already at five kilometres. I just need to push the ship to its maximum. To be honest that is the only thing that I can do at this moment. I have tried to move the ship to the left and to the right. Both controls have stopped working.

Well, this time the impact of the cannon shots are more like dull thuds. Well, that is not a good thing. The sensory formations are more damaged than I had originally thought them to be.

Well, I think the propulsion formations are also failing as the ship behind us is getting clearer and clearer. (And no that is not due to the fact that my sensory formation managed to repair itself miraculously. That is going to be my work.) that means that the propulsion formation has begun to fail as well.

That is why I am thankful that my sensory formation has failed as I tip the ship towards the ground. At least that part of my ship is working, as my ship goes down towards its inevitable crash.

As strings of mana leave from the formation room to the few sensory formations I have still left. I can feel the mana leave my body as I begin to overload it with mana. Within a few moments these formations are stuffed with enough mana to cause the entire thing to explode.

Thankfully, due to the loss of the sensory formation I do not feel the actual collision into the ground as the world loses all traces of order.