Have you ever been woken up because something is running towards you and your are sure that you are about to die. I have experienced that today.

Well calling it woken up would be wrong. After all one doesn't simply wake up from being unconscious. What would be the accurate term I do not know. Maybe shocked into awareness would be right. Regardless of how you describe it, here I am as if somebody filled my mind with drugs. This must be the death trance that Philip likes to speak so much about. Focus of such extreme degree that the world seems to have slowed down to a standstill.

Well, whatever it is I certainly did not expect the scene in front of me. Thankfully the storm seems to have passed with minimal damages to the ship. Well minimal would be relative to what is in front of me. The other side's ship has essentially split into two. The two pieces are connected to each other by the barest piece of wood.

There is simply no way that ship is going to be moving any time soon. I don't think it ever will. My ship is much better off. The bow has been bent to a weird angle. I certainly am not going to be doing any ramming with this ship and there are holes in the ship. The only one that I need to worry about is the one that is near the bow, the one that was caused by the ramming of the enemy ship. The hole has expanded becoming much larger in the process. It would be easy for a elephant to enter from there let alone a man. That would have been quite a source of my worry if it were not for the fact that there is a chance I might not survive this fight. This ship might not sink but that much ice mana is not good for anybody.

The annoying thing is that the thing that woke me up was a glowing man that stood out like a fire that is charging at the ship at this moment. Somehow the glow of the man's tattoos seems to be even more intense here than in the fort. If I did not know better I would have thought that the man was on fire. Well it makes sense, if their tattoos work on ambient mana, they have way more mana to work with here than they had elsewhere and he certainly seems to be running his tattoos at full throttle. if that is the case The man is going to chew through me like a toffee.

I don't dare to look at him with my mana sense. After all that much mana in my mana sense would be pretty dangerous. It might even lead to permanent damage.

Right now the only chance of survival that I have is to ensure that the other party is not going to be entering into my ship. Thankfully that is something that I have a certain level of experience with. The process of preventing boarding has been the only thing that I have been spending my time on my journey here. I have to admit that I have never done this against a single man though. The basic principle should be the same though. Such a thing would be impossible with an airship. Most die just being exposed to the sky after all.

Right now the glowing bastard has only one point of entry to enter into my ship. That is where I think that he is charging towards. I am not completely sure as the man can simply punch a hole in the ship too. Granted the ship is sturdy enough that I think it should last a while under his assault, he has too much control of mana for me to tell accurately. At the moment retreating is not a option. The man is moving towards me at a speed that the sledder will not be able to match. It is like a tortoise that is trying to swat a mosquito. The only option left then is to go on the offensive and not let the man anywhere near the hole in the ship.

Strings of mana worm their way into the formations that are working. I quickly access the sensory formations as my mana sense overlap with the input from the formations. (A risky step but I need precise information of the enemies location.) I began my move at the correct time. I begin to accelerate the ship, which is not as impressive as it was before (it is only half the acceleration that I have managed before). I don't know what has been damaged and I do not care at the moment.

Thankfully the man certainly did not expect me to go on the offensive. He just pauses there for a second as he processes what has just happened here. Sadly, He is barely able to jump to the side as the winds caused by the ship cause the man to be blown away. Now is the time that the true threat begins. The man is very close to the ship and I can't create a distance from him anymore. The only option left is to keep attempting what I am doing, trying to run over the man with the sledder while keeping him as away from the hole as possible.

Sadly, the man seems to realise that at the same moment as me as he begins to charge towards the hole in the ship with a renewed effort. He is at the moment on the side where the hole is. Again I pick the more agressive choice as I turn the ship in his direction. This sledder has not been designed for this as I can feel the ship bending too much for my comfort but at least it does not overturn. The man is ready for such a thing as he jumps to the side. I honestly wish this ship had hooks. With such good sensory formations it would be quite easy to snipe the man. At least it would do more to keep the man on his toes than what I am doing. The man is very careful at the moment, playing very defensively. If he was more aggressive, well this mosquito would be quite capable of biting into this tortoise.

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And thus our cat and mouse chase begins. The man tries to close in to the hole, while I turn the ship towards him always attempting to hit the man. Twice I manage to get a hit as my damaged bow hits the man, the force of the blow enough to make the man fly. He always returns, with barely any damage to the him. I think I can feel the bow cracking with each succesful collision. I think the ship is going to give away before the bastard is going to get tired.

This is not as easy as it looks like. A ship is naturally much slower than him. Every second it feels like the man has reached into the ship. Every turn that doesn't allow him to do this surprises me just as much as the man outside. The sensory formations of the ship are amazing. Now that I am using it take study the world, I realise just how much the sensory formations are helping me to handle this.

I don't know how long I can manage this. I can feel myself tiring and each reaction of mine is just a fraction slower than before and it is starting to add up. My movements are already like a man that has not slept for the last couple of days. I am quite sure that my vision is going blurry and I can't say for certain but I am certain I have peed my pant. I dont dare to check my pants. That is a distraction that I can ill afford.

I cannot feel my body anymore as the only thing that I can see becomes the man blowing around me like a leaf. He is always near the hole, no matter how I try to surprise him. Every turn of my ship is just that bit slower. Every moment I can feel him come closer to breaching the ship.

For a moment I wonder why I am even doing this. I will literally only buy minutes, maybe seconds doing this and there is no man here that truly cares to save me. Even cloak only has helped me because he fears my master. Otherwise, I can feel the venom that exists in the back of his mind. The man has no reason to risk his life to save mine. I guess that I should feel angry and I think that I do feel it, but exhaustion is the only thing that I can really feel now. The only thing that I am sure of is that I will be the death of these men.

That thought proves to be my undoing as the man uses this moment of lapse to enter the ship. I let go of my strings, as I finally notice that I seem to have collapsed to the floor.

I can at least confirm that I do seem to have peed my pants. It could be sweat too I can't really tell.

I think that I should be scared at the moment, but I have never been this exhausted. I can't move an inch, though I am still trying to crawl away. The world seems to have slowed down as I wonder what I could have done to not end up in this situation. When is the fucker going to come here. Thinking has never been such a chore.

The world suddenly flashes like somebody overloaded a light formation. The only thought I could think before my executioner entered the room was, the bastard did not need to destroy a wall, the door was unlocked.

Everything after this is a blur of memories, though I guess that I should try and make sense of it. I have to admit that I have had to edit much of this particular part of my memories. Most of this I found out much later after the event occured. immediately after my loss of consciousness the man that came into the ship was not Laufen, as I had expected. Instead it was a giant grey wolf who had literally charged through the ship to get to me.

The thing that caught me off-guard about the wolf was how familiar it seemed to me. I had never seen the creature in my life but there was something familiar about it. It is the size of a small giant, so that shouldn't have been possible. Such a large beast is not easy to forget.

The first thing that I noticed as the wolf came deeper and deeper into my ruined ship was that the wolf had a set of limbs in his mouth. A pair of arms and a pair of legs. As soon as he saw me, the wolf dropped these limbs and scampered towards my side.

As he entered the room the wolf opened its mouth, most likely to eat me in a single gulp. Instead it holds me in such a gentle manner that I feel like it is carrying me in the air.

As we are leaving the sledder I can see the damage that has been done to the ship. The sledder given to me looks literally as if somebody has shot an arrow into it though my memory of it is quite vague. I honestly can't tell if it is memory or imagination at this point. Other than that the force of the impact burned through most of the formations on the thing. The two ships involved in this sorry affair are lying there like a monument to our fight.

Yeah where was I. The wolf carried me away from the ruined ships and dropped me on the ground outside. The beast begins to shudder as a man emerges from it. As I begin to lose consciousness I recognised the man's face. Bald like a ball, with a mustache that dominated his face. Yet the most unique feature of the man was the scar that ran through his face from his left eye to his neck like some giant dragon had clawed his face.

This was the grand wolf of the black mountain, the beast that defied death and my master.