Fuck everything is so cold. It feels like I am sitting on a block of ice. this is the way in which the chill is affecting me. Well, I guess that I should explain the chill in detail before trying to complain about it.

Well, I have explained you the situation that we are here in this frigid wasteland with the example of the boat. Right now the chill would be the same as if a hole has sprung in the boat. Ice mana is flowing into my body from my wounds. Here the ice mana has set, completely preventing me from passing mana into that part of my body.

The chill is quite insidious in the way that it manifests. I can keep the thing in control by continuously channeling my mana to my wounds strengthening it enough that I can handle the adverse effects of this mana. Then the chill is much more manageable. It just feels like standing in a relatively cold spot without a jacket. That is on the condition that I keep channeling my mana.

The moment that I forget to maintain this cycle though, the cold hits me like a bull. It feels like my insides have literally been dipped in ice as the ice mana flows into it taking over more of my body and freezing it. It is literally like a shock in the very core of my being.

Even the coat that the soldiers have been using has not been particularly helpful to me. The coat helps me by cutting me off from the ice mana outside. That doesn't change the fact that there is already too much ice mana inside of me. Until I get rid of that there is little to no chance of me getting used to it.

The only way to recover from it is to restart my mana cycling. Even then it takes me a few minutes to enter into a state where I can ignore the chill again. This has become a cycle now with the chill striking me in waves. At it's worst, I am not even able to walk let alone work. At it's best, I can work at the very least.

Thankfully on a more positive note, the drain on my mana reserves is more than manageable. It is more than a trickle, but I should be able to maintain a few weeks of this at the very least. Without those reserves I do not want to even know what would happen to me.

Maybe I would end up in the same situation as the soldiers and end up freezing into a statue. Maybe, my flesh will end up dying due to ice mana. I honestly don't want to find out.

Right now I am actually risking this happening simply due to the fact that I have to keep working. I did not risk my life in the raid before and facing this chill now simply to destroy a few troops of the enemy. If that were the case, there are much easier and safer ways for things to be done.

The reason that I had gone on this suicidal mission is for the fact that I am buying time for me to begin work on the formation. The only problem with this plan is that I did not account for myself to be injured. It was supposed to be a clean mission with minimum fighting and minimal injuries in the process.

That means that to justify my injuries I have to now work with my injuries. After all, the reinforcements to the batch of ice beasts that survived the collapse outside would be coming any day. If I do not have a working defense by then things are going to be really bad. I do not have another formation core to waste even if I wanted to.

Well, the chill has slowed my work down a bit but I am happy to tell you that I have finally managed to complete the formation base. Right now I have formations that are taking in mana from the three mana nodes and sorting and storing them in some form or the other.

With the other two elements, the storage of the mana is much more mundane. The formation core itself is acting as the storage center for this formation. Spells like the iron skin are rare which do not use the formation core for the purpose of storing mana. It has its benefits and costs.

With this I will be able to finally focus on the more offensive spells of my formation. I guess that I should begin by explaining to you how exactly formations beyond the ninth class work. Ninth class formation are what people think of when they are thinking of formations.

These formations are created by inscribing runes into a class nine formation. These formations are basically spells at its core. When you are casting a spell you are essentially crafting a set of runes in your mana core which you can manifest into reality as a spell.

We do the same thing, though we do it in the physical world instead of our mana core. This is the riskiest step, since holding runes in our mana core is already a hard task. If It is like trying to shape water into a specific shape in the core. Trying to do the same thing in the real world is like trying to shape air into a specific shape. In the core if the runes do not achieve a specific shape then you break apart the entire thing before it can explode on you. We do not have that luxury in the real world.

After the rune is crafted we have to maintain this rune while slowly adding each part of it to the formation core. We do this by binding these runes to the material of the core. Once every rune has been successfully bound to the material of the core the spells become set. (which mainly means that it won't explode on you.) After this they do not tend to change shape unless somebody breaks the core physically. Now the inscribed spell can be triggered by supplying mana to it. What I have explained is a pretty simplistic explanation but it will suffice for now.

A simple way of putting it would be that at class nine, the formation is literally a spell that can be cast automatically as long as you can supply enough mana to it.

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From the class eight onwards, formations undergo what is known as chaining of spells. This means that to craft a class eight spell into a formation, you need to inscribe ten class nine spells into it to act as a base for the class eight spell. To craft a class seven spell, you need to inscribe ten class eight formations into it. This means that you have to inscribe a hundred class nine spells for these ten class eight spells. This chaining goes on till class one formations, where the number of spells that need to be inscribed reach absurd numbers.

To return to the point, right now to inscribe the class eight spell into the core I will first need to inscribe ten class nine spells into it. I have completed three such spells already. That would be the formation base and the spells related to it. I am still left with seven more spells to inscribe. The class eight formation that I am building is meant to nurture the formation core and thus a majority of these spells are geared towards a non-combative purpose.

Still, there are a few offensive spells and the spell that I have to inscribe next is exactly one of those. It is a spell known as the water spear. The spell is a simple one, converting water into a spear like shape. These spears can the be physically wielded by the user or thrown towards the enemy. The spear will then explode once it hits it's target.

The power of the spell is pretty high especially for the amount of mana that it requires. Most spell formations of this variety tend to be guzzlers of mana but this spell is one of the most efficient spells that I have seen. Any other formations would require two times the mana to do the same thing. This comes at the cost of speed and range though.

The spell is quite a bit slow. I think that I will not be able to use this spell to attack enemies at a long range. If I were to try something like that the enemy will have too much time to dodge my strikes. The only time that this can be used is when the enemy is right next to the fort.

Other than the usual threats though, there is also the problem of stability. This spell requires me to actively maintain these spears as there is no way for the spell to do this automatically. I can maintain maybe ten of these spears with my full focus. When you have to throw hundreds of these spears, this naturally will throw a wrench in your plans. There is a fix for this though, which I can't implement this quickly. It is another spell that I have to inscribe.

Still, this spell will provide me with enough of a offense against the enemies. That is only possible if the enemy were to come and attack me at the fort. If they try to maintain another seige like the one that they were attempting before, there is little that I can do against them. Somehow though, I feel that the enemies will not be able to remain as passive as they were here.

If you ask me, this is the biggest cost of being a formation mage. Our power comes from the formations that we build and each of these formations has a limited range across which it will be able to show its might.

Within this range we might be equivalent to gods but the moment that we cross that range our power will reduce drastically. Still, this formation does provide a sense of security. After all if Shamon is to be believed we are going to be facing entire legions of these creatures soon enough.

Turns out the snowlords do not like to reveal too many of their troops during the hunt. If they were to send too many of them during the hunt they risk attracting the attention of the frozen peak. After all if they were to lose too many troops, the commander will be able to kill the snowlord without worry. How the man is able to tell which snowlord has how many troops, nobody is able to tell. Only that he can tell it.

Still, If they were willing to send so many troops during the hunt, they are certainly going to be sending more of them after it. With a working water spear formation I can manage it even if ten troops came here (at least I can guarantee that the fort won't fall). Right now, Shamon's major worry is related to if the snowlords will be willing to come here personally.

It is pretty unlikely since we are still quite close to the frozen peak. A snowlord here would be in a dangerous situation. The commander would take literally a couple of hours to reach here. Even if he can't kill the snowlord due to their horde, cutting their limbs off is no problem for the man.

The only problem that we are facing here would be the fact that the snowlord would not even require more than a couple of minutes to kill us all. The only real chance of survival that we would have is if I were to inscribe the class eight spell into the formation completing it by then. Even then it is not a guarantee.

Well, this got really serious in a hurry there. Again it brings to my mind why the snowlords are so insistent to attack me. The problem in my case is that the other side has too many reasons to attack me. Right now I cannot act in such a way that any of my secrets will be revealed to the enemy. After all, If they knew everything they would certainly not be this passive. I am sure that the snowlords would already be here if that was the case. Still it would bring me some peace of mind If I knew what they knew.

At the very least I would know which of my secrets I have to be hiding right now.