The mayfires are one of our key allies. No, that is wrong they are even more important than that. I think they are our only true allies in the region. (We do have others, but they are also double dealing with our enemies.) They are the only ones that are truly loyal to us. That is why they are so important. They are the only ones that we can trust. Anyways, After all they have done to help us, we certainly will not be able to ignore them when they need us.

For a more practical and selfish reason, They are our warning bell. Any attack on the hexmountain would certainly be preceeded by a attack on the soldar plains. (The damage to our supply lines it would do is something that our enemies will simply not be able to give up on.) the greatest damage to our interests in the soldar plains is going to be removing the mayfires from the chessboard.

If such an attack were to happen, it would look something like what we are seeing here. No wonder the guard corps are in such a panic. They need to confirm the truth of the situation as quickly as possible. With enough suspicion, the legion will have to interfere and that is not an experience either group is going to enjoy.

An invasion on the hexmountain is always doomed to fail, but it will still cause us to suffer. (Even the head office will have to answer if such an attack were to happen.)

To speak of the mayfires, they are a fascinating bunch. People tend to forget about this, but they are not really a part of the soldar plains. Their history here starts as refugees from the desert in the east. The great desert there is as much as a mystery to me as it is to most of you. The only thing that is known about that place that is it's people are some of the strongest warriors on the continent.

To return to the mayfires, They managed to set up a presence in this region primarily due to their fire magic. In the soldar plains, that presents them with a very unique advantage, which they capitalised on to reach their present position.

You see, the soldar plains at its core is a region of earth mana and wood mana. Almost all the people here are Masters of earth mana and wood mana. Wood mana tends to be particularly susceptible to fire mana, as you can guess. (It doesn't really tend to affect the users of the earth mana, but earth mana is not particularly offensive.) Also, which power would like to fight the mayfires, who would be able to set fire to every single crop of theirs. When the only thing that you have are crops, you tend to be very careful around those that can burn it to the ground.

Still, what the mayfires have achieved is actually a step beyond that. They have managed to set roots in this area like no other new power in the region.

The mayfires have managed to create a base of power in this region that might be able to rival more established powers. They have been in this region for at most three hundred years and yet they are now able to rival powers that have been here for a millennia.

The reason for that is also the mayfires castle. Now, how is a man supposed to explain that castle's significance, when I have not even seen it with my own eyes until now. Much of what I am speaking comes from the logs of my predecessors (an heavily censored log at that. The mayfires are a key ally, which makes any information on them that tpmuch harder to give out.)

Well, the mayfire castle is both the military stronghold and the business center for the mayfire's. To explain the former, it is a castle after all. Even the guard corps consider that place as very hard to infiltrate. If you know the stuff the guard corps tends to do, that is praise that very few powers will be able to claim.

It is the latter that I am going to struggle at explaining. To put it simply, the mayfires are not farmers. (Unlike every other power that exists in the plains.) They might be able to burn every single crop in the soldar plains but it is of no benefit to them if they cannot produce crops of their own.

Instead they take up an unique approach. They rather act as the middle man between the black mountain and the many small powers that exist in the region. (Who would not be able to bring much to the table, if they were to do so individually.) These powers are often the ones that have had all of their warriors defeated and killed by the mayfires.

They offer protection to these small powers, protecting them from bandits and the like, making sure that their food is safely delivered to the mountain. These small powers grow the food and the mayfires transport it to us. With this approach, the mayfires have managed to establish quite a decent trade with us and at the same time made themselves quite important to their neighbours.

While they might not be the force in the plains with the most trade with us, they are comfortably in the top ten with this strategy. The way that they facilitate this trade is through that castle of theirs. It acts as a heart for the mayfires, both a place where they can coordinate this process and the place where they can store these grains.

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The mayfire castle is considered to be the greatest storehouse in the soldar plains. We have heard rumours that at their full capacity, the mayfire castle can hold enough grain to feed the hexmountain for a year. Another reason that we cannot ignore them.

Personally, I think that these rumours must have an element of truth to them. After all, there must be a reason that the black mountain gives so much importance to the mayfires. This is as good as any conspiracy, I say.

This importance of theirs is a reason that we don't really tend to allow the scholars to spy on them. (We can't really do anything to push them to the enemy now) This leads to something of a paradox actually, as we know less about the mayfires than any of our enemies. We know very little on the mayfires, other than the magics that they wield. Weirdly, we have quite a detailed record on that. (I will speak of it later when we actually meet them. Until then it is a waste of time. The closer to your heart you keep such information the better.)

Of the little that is known about them, the amount that I have access to is even more little. The little that I had access to, I have mentioned in this log. (This will actually help me out later, stops me from having to read all the necessary logs again.)

I am supposed to be a formation mage. We are supposed to carve magic formations to deal with any enemy. There is little I can do when I don't even know much about our allies, let alone anything about their enemies.

Well, I have already done as much preparation as is possible. I won't be able to go beyond this. At least until I get more information. It would just be a waste of time, I feel like.

Right now trevor and the other two are getting familiar with the ship and its layout. Their work is to familiarise themselves with the layout of the ship. Once they do that, they will then be practicing with the cannons. Before the head office loses its mind on this matter. My troop is training with the cannons as a temporary measure. I can still control the cannons remotely but it is always better to have backups (and no, the coordination matrix won't help this quickly.)

Right now I have only managed to Inscribe seven class nine spells of one of the class eight base. Well, the coordination matrix is actually a repetition of the same spell. It is known as the "manipulate" spell and it is used to control any cannon.

Every spell being inscribed into it is actually the same. The reason for that is the spell being used in the coordination matrix, has a pretty significant chance of failure. (That is why every cannon troop tends to have multiple people for a single cannon.) Instead of setting off the cannon, the spell will not react at all or in the worst case actually backfire on you. (Thankfully the chances of that are very low.)

That is why the matrix uses multiple copies of the same spell, making sure that even if a single iteration of the spell fails, another will succeed where it fails. (I mean this does increase the chance of the cannon exploding, but the control it gives me is worth the increased risk.)

So with that bit of theory out of the way, right now I have seven iterations of the spell to work with. that is roughly two spell iterations for each cannon. So all of that means that right now, I still will have to depend on the troop to man the cannons if and when things go wrong. Thankfully this is the worst case so there is that.

I should be in a better situation by the time that I reach the mayfire castle but this is the best that I can do with the limited amount of resources that I have at hand. (The most limited of it being time.)

Let's hope that my luck holds up this time at least. With that I guess I should speak about the remaining tasks. for the first task, which is my cannon. Progress has been slow on that front. After all, until the coordination matrix is more set up, I won't be able to use it. That is why right now, most of my focus has been on the coordination matrix.

That doesn't mean that I haven't made any progress on it. I have been studying it's makeup and I know precisely where the problem is in this cannon now. Well, to explain that flaw I will need to explain how these cannons work.

The way that they work is actually kind of like how propulsion formations work. in a propulsion formations you are essentially converting mana into a spell that will push the ship. This occurs in a steady manner, allowing the ship to stay in the air.

The cannon is essentially the same thing. Except, in this case the spell is not released directly like we do with a propulsion formation. Instead we are storing that spell in a containment unit, where the spell can be stored and compressed. Then we can simply open up the containment unit using the trigger spell to release the stored spell directly at our target.

Right now the problem on the cannon is actually on the containment unit. Somebody seems to have struck directly at the containment unit causing it to fracture. This means that right now the containment unit has some serious fractures present in it causing the entire thing to leak like crazy.

Right now my work is just to convert this half broken containment unit into something that will be able to hold a charge at the very least. I can focus on boosting the damage after this.

To speak of the third task, which is the "fusion" spell, that has been a proper mess. I have tried to study it for the last few days, but there is a limit to which I can study this theoretically. Right now I have reached a point where I need to practically test stuff to understand it further. If only the damn thing was not related to my mana core.

I will have to leave this task until I reach a safe place. Right now, when I am at the risk of being attacked any second, this is a pretty stupid thing to try.

That finally leaves my final task, which is the incomplete formation that my master has left for me. At least on that front I have more positive news. I have been studying the notes that my master has left for me. While my understanding of the spells is nowhere near anything useful or practical. I am making progress at the very least.