log 013

Well, right now we are being besieged by a group of four troops, which honestly makes me feel a bit insulted. I was under the assumption that we would be fighting a larger number of enemies. Our present situation is still pretty crappy, but i was expecting worse.

Anyway, right now i am not making any move in this fight. The enemy troop leader have not moved an inch from their base. I am sure that they are expecting an attack like last time. One of the problems with relying on formations like me is that I am forced to be very passive. Until the enemy comes to the walls of the fort, water bolts simply does not have the range to hit our enemies.

I normally have more mobile formations to help me deal with this. All of that is presently stuck in the hexmountain with my master. This is a mission of his, meant to train me it seems.

Right now the enemy does not know of the water bolts and these bolts will do the maximum damage with an element of surprise. If used correctly i can get rid of atleast one troop leader from the group. The only problem is that this is something that they have not been doing at all. They better come quickly, since I have paid quite the bit for this ace of mine.

I did not even get to make use of the vine armour you know, before i blew it up. Well, that was worth the risk though, as the water bolt formation will be boosting my power way more than the vine armour could ever do. The only problem is all of that power is presently stuck in the fort. Well, that is the case with most formation mages anyway, but that does not mean that i have to like it. I can't even project my mana like i did before, because i do not have any more materials at hand that can handle the output of the formation base. Even if I could, this method truly wastes too much mana. While I have plenty, I can't keep being careless with how I use it now.

Well, there are the soldiers at the base, but organic matter is such a poor receptor for formation mana at the best of times. (There is a fundamental difference between formation mana and the mana that we cultivate. That is all i know though. Mana is an enigma to the smartest among us.) And well converting human beings into bombs is not something that I have an inclination of doing. It will not help if in this process of transportation these soldiers were to crumble into dust, which is a pretty significant risk in this process.

Even if I wanted to do it, it might lead to a diplomatic incident. Anyway, where was i, i was complaining about how i have rarely been so passive. It is not a particularly good feeling, especially since i like to keep busy as a person. I cannot even keep working on the formation for the simple fact that the enemy leaders will be the first to attack if they knew i was working on the formation and if they manage to disturb me during inscription, well the effects of that would be quite deadly, to put it in simple terms.

It has been almost three days since my last log and these troops have been under constant assault for the last couple of days. In this particular part of the fighting I have no desire nor any capability of joining. Leading these people is something that I don't think I have the capability for. Therefore, this part of the fighting is something that snowwinders have to manage on their own.

I don't think i need to worry about the snowwinders anyways. This type of fighting with the usage of defensive structures is something that they are experts of. It is almost a wonder for me to see the way that the soldiers have been flowing throughout the fort, trying to stay ahead of the beasts. Since the beasts outnumber the soldiers, the strategy is to make sure that they do not breach the wall at any cost. For this there is a troop of fifty soldiers that focus on different sections of wall to prevent any sneak attack and at the same time hold out a place whenever the number of beasts are low there. The remaining soldiers will go wherever the enemy is focussing their attack and reinforce them under the command of the general.

If I were to try and direct them here, all it would lead to is chaos. Such a flexible strategy requires great understanding between the leader and the troops. To understand the exact intricacies of this troops movement i would need to join the snowwind army and learn it from scratch. Shamon must have done it years, decades even to have such fine understanding of such an intuitive style of battle. I can see why people would consider the snowwinders to be a threat.

Well i have no interest in learning that and i do not want to be in shamons place anyway, even when he has essentially taken my office and and set up a miniature commander center. I am somewhere in the cellar of the fort with the formation core. It is the only place in the fort that I won't be at risk of disturbing anybody and for somebody to disturb me.

Regardless of how experienced they are, you have to agree that they are in a pretty crappy situation. Everyday, i can see the soldiers getting more and more tired. They have to spend literally the entirety of the day on the wall, making sure that no ice beast can get on the wall and kill the beast if they fail at that. shamon has been trying to get these soldiers to rest as much as possible it is getting harder and harder. In two days, I don't think that these soldiers have gotten more than six hours of sleep. All of these soldiers have mana flowing through them, so all of them are still able to fight at their peak for quite a while even without sleep. That is true only for short while.

While this is not a big issue in the short term, it can be quite deadly in the long term. If this situation persisted for a week or two, mistakes will begin to occur in this smoothly oiled machine and mistakes in this case will lead to death or injuries at the very least. The more such things occurs, the more work each individual soldier will have to do. This is a pretty vicious cycle. Again, i have no real solution for this situation. All i can do is hope that shamon knows what he is doing and at the moment the man is showing to me that he does. .

While the soldiers under the control have been quite impressive, it is the ice beasts that have surprised me in the present situation. I have no idea why shamon considers them to be dumb.

They are not attacking like wild beasts at all. Instead they are like an slime. They have completely surrounded and rather than try to outnumber us, which they can do quite easily, they are trying to find a chink our defences. For example, they could be attacking the northern wall gate with two hundred soldiers but these soldiers will retreat and suddenly attack the eastern gate or split into two groups two attack the other two gates.

Their main strategy and goal is to somehow breach the wall. For that what they are trying to do is pile us snow and ice against the wall of the fort. That way they can climb the fort en masse breaking through that point.

Since we do not have any defensive measures such as crossbows or ballistas, there is little that can be done stop the formation of such a slope. All that can be done is to make sure that no ice beasts can use this slope to breach the wall. That is another additional pressure on the soldiers, to keep the beasts from building the slope as much as possible.

It is only the fact that shamon seems to be predicting the exact location that these guys will attack next that he has even managed to keep the losses so low in this fight. At the same time though, we are still at a disadvantage. After all the enemy can afford to lose nearly ten soldiers and barely notice this loss, but for us that is ten percent of our forces. Thankfully we have not had deaths in our sides, but there have been injuries. These injuries are nothing particularly heavy but it will only be a matter of time for them to get worse.

Anyway, i have been quite the worrywart. At the very least i am still making myself useful by trying to map the enemies newly dug base. I can finally use this time to explain to you how the mapping skills of the dwarves. I am gathering mana into my right hand, letting it go in a single pulse. Now that pulse of mana will flow freely into the ground until it find a gap in terms of tunnels which will reflect it back to me. Right now the best place to do such type of mapping would be down here In the formation base, so it is honestly two birds with one stone. I guard the core and map the enemy locations.

While I am mostly sure that I won't be able to pull something like last time. it is still pretty useful to have that knowledge. Well, this time there is not much worth of destroying their base though. These guys are building two bases at the very least, completely disconnected from one another. I can't say for certain though.

That means even if I had a core I will not be able to repeat the last times attack. The enemy were being particularly slothful for that particular to even succeed. A more alert troop would have detected using quite quickly.

In conclusion, i do not want to be in shamons place. while i can't look at the man, i can say that he is under quite the bit of pressure simply from the number of enemies that are attacking, regardless of how flexible they are they cannot change the fact that they are outnumbered nearly three to one. Also from down here I can hear the sound of the soldiers acting as messengers. Their footsteps are like a constant beat that i have begun to push to the background.

A dangerous habit if I am to be honest, to get this used to noise. I have heard stories you know, about Assassin's whom you cannot sense even if they are standing in front of you. Those stories scare me more effectively than any horror story. Well, now is not the time for me to think about that. I have enough real worries as it is. Why does so much random stuff pop up in my head.

I wonder how the scholars are doing in the present situation. I am sure that nothing too problematic for them to handle. The ruin is not really a priority for either side, regardless of what the snowwinders claim. I am sure that Trevor and those two idiots must be relaxing at the moment while the scholars do whatever it is that they do. i hope that have not blown up anything yet.

Anyway, i will be stuck in this state here until the troop leaders finally makes a move which i am starting to worry will never happen.