It is a pretty weird feeling to sense the world through a sensory expansion formation. It feels like I am looking at the world through a blurry fog. It is pretty hard to get used to it even after a month of manning the airship. Even with how blurry it all is, it still is causing me a headache.
Well, I am taking in information from about a hundred kilometers away. It is a surprise that I can even sense this far even with the formation. Most people would simply bleed to death due to the strain of the task. I am one of the only people at my power level who should be able to run this formation. Well, that is not important right now.
If it was any other time, I would be celebrating this very moment. After all, the fact that you are reading this is an achievement of mine. My skill with mental magic or lack thereof is legendary in the hex mountain. To be frank, I still don't know how I have managed to get this device working.
Instead, I am forced to be in a state of focus, trying to keep this hunk of junk afloat. We are in a state of battle. I cannot have distractions be a cause of my death. It would be about the most embarrassing way to die. I certainly don't want to be the one that ended up dying on his first thought log due to being distracted by his first log.
Right now, we are being chased by three ships. All of them are antiques. Outrunning them with a standard ship would not have been an issue at all. The problem is that the head office has given me an antique as well. Well, they were ready to give me a standard guards ship. They had offered me the trashiest ship that they could find in the name of diplomacy and I had accepted it like an idiot.
I will speak about the exact story behind it some other time. It is honestly stabbing myself on my own sword, the way that I have ended up in this situation. To any future captain going on their first mission. If the head office begins to praise your abilities, be sure that they are trying to screw you in some crazy way.
Well I guess that I should focus on the matter at hand. Studying the ships behind me, they are the worst type of ship that you can find this north in the continent. (Which is saying something considering the quality of ships they already have.) It does not even have a cannon. These ships are what are popularly called as battering rams, ships which can be used to crash into other ships. both the ships are destroyed in the process.
It is a tactic that is rarely used even by pirates due to how wasteful it is. After all how will you loot a ship if it is down on the ground shattered to pieces. On top of that you will have to even sacrifice a ship of yours. Regardless of how useless it is, a commoner here would have to work for many years to save up to get it.
Well, it is time for me to focus on the battle at hand. I have three ships following me and I have no way of dealing with them from my present location as even I do not have cannons. The ships are antiques which means that they won't be able to catch up with my ship any time soon. That doesn't really mean we are safe due to the fact that the propulsion formation of my ship is failing.
I honestly don't know when the thing will fail but the instance that it does so the ship is going to fall. I can't even try for a gentle landing because the thing has a busted suspension formation. Even the gentlest of taps is going to be destroying this vessel.
My musing is distracted by a knock on the door. That would be Trevor, I think. With a wave, I open the door letting the man in. He is a soldier under me, though he has been placed more as a guide than an underling. It is a pretty interesting arrangement, of which I shall discuss later. Really, Why did this thing have to work in the middle of a battlefield? I do not get to speak on so many important things.
"Trevor, how are the hooks? Have they managed to get any into us?", I ask the man, hoping that the answer was no. I don't want to be dealing with boarders at this very moment. With boarders, I will have to get involved eventually. I cannot leave control of my ship at this moment, regardless of how slow the ships behind me are and my soldiers will not be able to handle too many boarders.
"No, Captain. They have not managed to get any hooks into us. Still, it is rare to see such persistent pirates. Most would have given up by now.", Trevor speaks. "Almost makes you wonder as to the reason that they are willing to do this."
"Well, let's hope that they do not have any more patience or this entire ship won't even need the pirates to be destroyed. Still, I have managed to activate my thought logger finally.", I speak, pointing to the thought logger. It is small formation made up of crystal that I have not been able to get working until the beginning of this log.
"Well, better a month later than never. The head office was behind my back due to your inability to get that thing working.", replies Trevor. "you found the absolute best time to get the damn thing working, though. It will act as nothing more than a distraction."
"What can I do, trevor. It is not like I have been sitting free in the last month to focus on the thought logger exclusively. You have given me the absolute worst ship present in the shipyard. The only reason that this ship is floating is due to my hard work.", I speak, getting annoyed.
"Well, you were the one that accepted the ship that the head office had given. It is not like they were forcing it on you.", replies trevor.
"Well, how was I supposed to know that the ship is going to be so crappy?", I ask him.
Trevor does not get to reply to this as one of the ships behind me shoots a hook right next to the room that we are in. This close to my room it packs a punch. It cannot be left there for long.
Trevor leaves the room to get rid of the hook on my ship. I guess that I should explain what a hook is. What is called a hook is nothing but a harpoon. Granted, it is enchanted to make sure that once it enters into the opposite ship it will be quite impossible to remove them. All ships have them due to their many and diverse uses and the pirates have been quite creative with theirs. The hooks enter into the ship attached with a chain that would be quite easy to climb. Boarding like this is quite risky but compared to other methods it is quite cheap. I angle down the ship to dodge another hook flying above us.
Once the hook enters the ship the enemy will be trying to board. individually they are not very strong but the other side has at least fifty people per ship. When you have a crew that can be counted on a single hand, you do not fight, you run. It does not matter how strong you are. Even if you can take on ten of these soldiers for sport, you do not want a fight to the death with a hundred of them. That would be such a pointless endeavor.
Better that I should keep as far from them as possible even if it is pretty risky. Well, there goes my peace of mind. Behind me one of the ships has accelerated towards my ship quite dangerously. I am sure that they are overloading their formations to achieve this speed.
Normally speaking I should be worried about this. After all, the entire reason that I am in my present situation is to prevent a boarding from occurring. The only reason that I am not losing my mind in fear is due to the fact that I have an ace. Just like any other ship, my ship also has hooks. Only in my case, the hooks are more explosive than they usually are supposed to be.
One side effect of that has been that the range of the hook has been reduced. That is why I have not used it until now. That is the only reason that this humiliating chase exists in the first place.
The release of the hook is almost ordinary, even more so than the hooks used by the enemy side. I wouldn't be surprised if the enemy has not even noticed the hooks hitting them.
My heart actually freezes for a couple of seconds. I can feel my mind beginning to go through each contingency. Thankfully, my anxiety doesn't last for long as the enemy ship explodes like a balloon.
Such a massive explosion should have been impossible. The week that I spent filling the hooks with mana should not have been enough to cause such massive damage. At most it would have created a hole in the ship.
It took me a few seconds to find the actual reason that such a massive explosion occurred. The bastards were using a fire based propulsion formation. such a propulsion formation grants a decent amount of speed but there is always a risk of self implosion. So much fire mana in a single place is always risky.
My hook acts like a trigger, setting the entire thing off. Well, I do not get a lot of opportunity to celebrate though. A burning ship so close to mine, I am struggling to keep my ship steady.
It takes me a few minutes to stabilize my ship. I am sure that the explosion has already knocked out a lot of the formations placed on the outside of the ship. Most of these would be sensory formations, which would allow me to look at the world outside. Well, that literally reduces my headache at the very least.
I will have to spend a while studying the formations after this battle. With the sensory formations gone things going to be a nightmare to deal with.
Right now, the only thing that I can rely on is my mana sense. At these distances, it is not very accurate but these ships emit a lot of mana. I can't say for certain, but none of the other ships seem to be accelerating in this manner. That is good because I am not sure if I can pull off something like this again.
Thankfully, I might not have to. The problem now would be related to the pirates that had boarded into our ship. I am sure that at the very least four hooks had gotten into our ship in this suicidal charge. I would eat my boots if they had not expected their ship to be destroyed.
I am sure that at least twenty to thirty boarders must have climbed into the ship. With only three people in my troop, they outnumber us ten to one. That means that I have to get involved in this fight personally.
Normally, That would be very annoying but I have a new formation to test anyway. It is an armor type one that I have been working on for the last couple weeks, in whatever free time that I have got. (Not that I got a lot of that.)
I am calling it "vine armor" for now, and it will have to be my primary method of attacking in this mission. Without my sword, this is about the only method that I have left to attack. Now, as to why I have not brought my sword here, you can blame my master for that. It was another of his assignments.
Anyway, now is not the time for me to be thinking so much. I have a bunch of boarders to be fighting. It would be quite sad if my troop were to have any fewer soldiers than they already have. It is already a pretty pitiful number.