log 006
When my master told me about how exhausting it was to be a captain of the black mountain, I had laughed at it. We are given nearly half a year of rest after each mission, along with the option to increase the days of the holidays by nearly a couple of years, though a valid reason has to be given. When you are a formation master though, there are no lack of valid reasons anyway.
For missions that normally last only four to five months, that is a lot of period of rest don't you think. I am understanding why that period of rest is needed though. Right now I am able to quite easily build a class nine formation( my vine armour is a class nine formation.), but building a class eight formation that too outside of the supervision of my master is a task that I am going to struggle with, that too on a battlefield. I am pretty certain that I should be able to achieve it, but that does not mean that it is going to be easy for me or that it is not going to drain me to my bone.
Right now, I have roughly five days of travelling to the temporary fort in a Caravan. In a airship, this journey would take a couple of hours at most but this far north the volatile flow of mana will wreck most airships. The good thing is I finally get to take a breathe.
I feel quite out of my depth in this rough land and the man that is supposed to help me make sense of it, Trevor has certainly not been particularly helpful especially since he is about a week away from me, with the scholars as they are going to ruin no 32.
I certainly do not like being split up in this way, but there is not much one can do while dealing with the scholars. Their stubborness is legendary. Anyway, I have a feeling that whatever place I am going to end up in is going to be way more worse than the ruins anyways.
Anyway, right now I am focusing on something that I have been neglecting for nearly a month and a half. That would be my cultivation. That is certainly another mess that I have sort out one of these days.
To begin from the absolute basics, every sentient creature holds in his body something called as the mana core. The mana core contains the life mana of a person. This life mana is the only mana that a person will have absolute control over. The only exception to this might be folks like the snowlords, who have nearly absolute control over external mana too. The process of growing this life mana is also called as cultivation and a method of cultivation is called as a magical path. Now that we have gotten the basic definitions out of the way I can discuss about my cultivation.
To those not familiar with the magical path of the black mountain, we follow the magical path of the ancient elves. The elves were master magicians that believed magic to be an act of creation and cultivating to be the process of the creation of a world.
That is why their cultivation is literally the process of building a world. There are nine stages in this process and I am presently at the very first stage, which is called as the foundation building stage. At this stage I am supposed to be building something called as the foundation, by absorbing mana from the world around me and using it construct a formation in my mana core.
Even right now, I am pulling mana from the air and condensing it to form a string as I am essentially weaving a massive rectangular slab. With enough time It will turn into a segment of my life mana. Though the true magic is inside the slab, full of complicated weaves and shapes that I am only able to construct because it is inside my mana core, where I hold absolute control over mana. Trying that in real life would be like trying to draw with your brush attached to the other end of stilt.
The complexity of the foundation is not comparable to any formation that I have ever seen in my life. The only thing that I can say that I have found comparable would be class 1 defence formation that is used to guard the hexmountain. With that though I couldn't even watch it for even a few seconds before my mana sight got burnt.
The lesser that I speak of that place though the better, even thought logs are not as safe as the black mountain likes to portray them as and this is something that the head office will certainly take offence at being recorded and would certainly cause me to be executed if I were the cause of a leak.
To get back to the foundation, there are supposed to be nine such rectangular slabs layered one over the other. I am presently in the stage of building the second slab, hence I am considered to be a foundation level, second stage mage.
As for the stages beyond the foundation stage, I do not have the permission to gain any information on i. My master has given me extremely clear instructions that I am not allowed to enter the next stage until I have built a class seven formation. Until then, I am not even allowed to know the name of the next stage or to gather any bit of information about it and granted the elves are nearly extinct, right now the black mountain is the only force In the continent that has access to the elven path.
Other than my path the magic I practice is of two types which are battery magic and formation magic. Right now I shall not speak of battery magic as to practice one needs to be of the stage beyond the foundation stage. I only practice the beginner level optimisations that will help me reduce mana consumption as I do my work. The only thing I know about battery mages are that they tend to have absurd amounts of mana and their efficiencies are so high that they can run on their reserves for days.
As for formation magic, It is the very core of the magic that I practice. There are four spells that every formation mage is supposed to know. With sufficient mastery in these spells I will be able to craft nearly any formation that I wish.
There is the basic formation view that allows one to look at a formation and make out its contents. Without it one cannot even get started on the process of making a formation. It is not an exaggeration saying that this is the spell that I make most use of. It is the only spell of mine that has reached the third level of journeyman stage.
The second spell that one should be able to make use of is called as the formation decomposition, which allows a mage to break apart formations and remove all useable parts from it. This spell is not one that I have found much use for personally, but my master has assured me that it is a pretty practical spell for the future.
The third spell is formation control, a spell that allows me take control of formations at a level that other people are simply not capable of doing so. A person at the master level of formation control is able to double the strength of a formation, while nearly control the mana costs of the formations by half. It is the spell that I have second most experience with, reaching the seventh stage of apprentice level.
As for the fourth spell, it is one that I have barely any understanding of. It is called as formation flow, whatever that means and it is supposed to greatly increase the speed of me crafting formations.
these four spells are literally the epitome of easy to learn, hard to master. Taking the example that my master used, these four spells are the foundation on which any formation mage has to work on, lacking any of the spells he simply won't be able to compete with a mage that does know these spells.
To those that do not understand what the classification system that the crafters association have for crafting spells( which is also used by those meatheads that practice combat magic.) A persons mastery of a magical spell can be divided into three main stages, which is the apprentice level, journeyman level and the masters level. Each stage is further divided into nine sublevels called as stages.
An apprentice level means that one is learning the process of using a spell. A journey man level means that one has begun to learn the usage of a spell and the many intricacies that are involved in the process. A master level means that one is able to modify the spell to their preferences and interests.
Since I am speaking of cultivation and related matters her, I might as well describe the path followed by the imperials and the snowlords, which is the draconic path. This is the path that the imperials have acquired from the draconic empire, traces of which must exist in the ruin we are visiting.
Anyways, Right now the only information that I have about the draconic mages is that their path is measured using something called circles, with each circle being roughly at the same level as a level of the elven path. I certainly do not have an idea as to how exactly their magic path works though it should something similar to the path that is followed by the elves, but these are not matters that I do not understand, so I shall not comment on it further. For now though I will use the draconic style of classification since my knowledge of the elven path is lacking.
With that, I think that I have a given a pretty clear idea of my power and where I stand and also given all the information I have about strength of our enemy. As for me, I am going to keep cultivating till I reach the fort after which I will have to return to the problem of building a class 8 formation.
To give context, I have built nearly a hundred class nine formations in my life, some to help out my master, some for my fellows and some for my personal use. Thr vine armour is my hundred and seventh formation actually and is something that I actually consider to be my best class ninth spell until now.
Anyway, I have built only three class eight formations in my life and two of them are essentially built by my master with me assisting.
As for the last, it is something that I gave built completely on my own, but sadly it is not portable in nature which means that formation is presently left in my master's cave gathering dust. though, It is thanks to that formation that I have even dared to accept this mission in the first place. Without it I will have to see what to do. Most of my formations I would have traded by now, but the few combat worthy ones that might have helped me out right now are all in the cave with my class eight formation. These were my masters orders, so I had little chance of refusing it.
Let me catch myself here, since my master also tends to read these logs and the man is not one to forgot these stuff. If he read this, he would certainly begin to imagine even worse methods of training (torturing) me.