I have finally got this piece of nightmare in my hands working. Nobody would think much of the crystal device in my hand. After all, kids use this as a toy back home.
Well, my skill with mental magic (or lack thereof) is legendary in the hexmountain. To be frank, I still don't know how I have managed to get this device working. Even now, I don't know how it activated. I wasn't even trying to activate it. Still, I managed to get the damn thing working. I really should not get bogged down with the how.
Why did it have to activate in the middle of an airship battle though? Based on how this is going, it feels like I have activated the damn thing just to record my demise.
Right now is the time in which I have to maintain a state of focus. After all, what I am doing with the sensory formation is a bit dangerous. I am pushing the sensory formation of this ship to its limits right now. Right now the volume of information that is entering my head feels like I have been pushed in the middle of a waterfall. To call it overwhelming is an understatement.
Right now, 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 other sensory formations would have already burnt out. I would say that its sensory formations are the only good thing about this ship. Granted, I am one of the only people at my power level who should be able to use this formation to this level. (I did not need to say that, but a man has got to boast sometimes.)
Well, I have wasted enough time right now. Let's get back to the issue. We are being chased by three ships. Studying the ships behind me, I would say they are the worst type of ship that you can find in the north of the continent. (Which is saying something considering the average quality of ships they already have.)
Well, ships like this exist in many parts of the continent. These ships are what are popularly called battering rams. They are used to crash into other ships. Both the ships are destroyed in the process. That is why the battering rams tend to be the worst ships you can find. They tend to be just a few years away from being scrapped.
It is a tactic that is rarely used 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 to do this. Regardless of how useless such a ship is, a commoner here would have saved up for many years to afford it.
All in all, The ships following us are antiques which means that they won't be able to catch up with my ship any time soon. That doesn't mean we are safe because the propulsion formation of my ship is also failing.
I am sure that you must have never heard of the propulsion formation of a ship failing before. (It does happen, though it is a pretty rare occurrence. I have never seen it happen.) The problem is that the head office has given me a piece of junk in the name of diplomacy. Well, they were ready to give me a standard guard ship. I was the one who had accepted the ship.
I will have to tell that story some other time though. All you need to know is that it is my fault, 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 way.
I honestly don't know when the thing will fail but the instant that it does so the ship is going to simply fall from the sky. When that happens I can't even try for a gentle crash. The thing has a busted suspension formation. lets just say landing the ship will destroy it.
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, about which I will speak later. Really, Why did this thing have to work in the middle of a battlefield? I do not get to speak on so many things.
"Trevor, how are the hooks? Have they managed to get any into us?", I ask the man, hoping that the answer is 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. My soldiers would be able to handle them for a while, but they can't fight them forever. It would allow the ships behind to catch up. Do you know how much I have been working to prevent that exact thing from happening?
"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.
"Let's hope that they do not have any more patience. This ship won't even need the pirates to be destroyed. The way that everything is failing. Still, I have managed to activate my thought logger finally.", I speak, pointing to the crystal device I had in my hand.
"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 worst 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 just the thought logger. You people have given me the absolute worst ship present in the shipyard. The only reason that this ship is floating is due to my skill.", I speak, getting annoyed.
"Well, you were the one that accepted the ship when the head office had given it to you. It is not like they were forcing it on you. Anyway, learning a thought logger should take a week or two at most. It is the first time that I have seen it take a month like this.", 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. It is strong enough to shake the room I am in. It cannot be left there for long. I don't need to say anything as Trevor leaves to remove it.
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 it very hard to remove once it has been planted. You can barely consider it to be a formation. All ships have them in case they need to drag something with them.
The pirates have been quite creative with using their hooks. The hooks enter into the ship attached with a chain that would be quite easy to climb. It is a pretty risky method, with half the people dying en route to our ship. The problem is half the people are still too many for us to handle.
I mean I will be able to, but then there will be nobody here to pilot the ship. Those fucking hooks have been the main problem. We simply cannot let them get too close with those hooks of theirs. Even with how far away they are those hooks are a bit of a risk. (Though the farther away they are, the less chance they can damage my ship.) well, that was the case until today at least. I have finally finished the modifications on my hook.
Well, they are not the only ones that can weaponize their hooks after all. I won't spoil it for you, but let's just say it is going to be explosive. The only problem is that my modifications have greatly reduced the range of these hooks. I will only be able to use my hooks if the enemy gets closer, which is a risk in itself.
Well, it is almost as if they read my mind. Behind me, one of the ships has begun to accelerate towards my ship. I am sure that they are overloading their formations to achieve this speed. Seriously from where are they getting the mana stones to do that?
Regardless, I get to use my hook as I aim it. The release of my hook is quite ordinary. I wouldn't be surprised if the enemy had not even noticed the hooks hitting them. Well, I would not have noticed it myself if I had been hit like that. Fuck, that thing was supposed to have already exploded.
I had overloaded the hooks in my ship with my mana. They are supposed to explode on contact with the enemy ship creating a massive hole in the ship. That would have been enough to cause the environmental formation to fail in their ship. They would have then choked to their death.
I had almost given up and began to plan my surrender when my hook finally worked. (A bit too effectively.) The ship popped like a balloon as flames engulfed the entire ship. My hook would not have been enough to do that, though the reason becomes clear in a bit.
The idiots 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 opportunities to celebrate though. A burning ship so close to mine, I am struggling to keep my ship steady.
I am sure that the explosion has already knocked out a lot of the formations placed on the outside of the ship. If I don't navigate through this area safely enough then the burning debris is going to take my ship down as well. The main problem is that I have lost most of my sensory formations in this process.
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 the ship was destroyed quite thoroughly. If it was in one piece, well we would have accompanied them to the ground.
I am sure that the burning debris is causing quite a lot of fires on my ship. That is something that I will have to leave for later.
As I manage to stabilize the ship, I have to return to a more immediate problem. The pirates boarded our ship in the time that they managed to get close to us. I am sure that at the very least four hooks had gotten into our ship in their suicidal charge.
I am sure that at least ten boarders must have climbed into the ship in that period. Right now there are only three people on the ship other than me who will listen to me. Of them, only two can fight. (Nobody tells Trevor I said that. The Man is already so annoying. A suicidal charge for glory will be one step too much.) I will have to go and help them out.
The only reason that I dare to do this is that my sensory formations have been knocked out. Right now I am essentially blind anyway. Even if I could sense something, I wouldn't be able to act on it. What can I do piloting the ship? All I can do is keep to the path that I have put the ship in and hope that this is enough to keep us ahead of the enemy.
Anyway, I have a formation to test. It is an armor-type one that I have been working on for the last couple of weeks, in whatever free time I have got. (Not that I got a lot of that.)
I am calling it "vine armor" and without my sword, this is about the only method that I have left to attack in this mission. Now, about why I have not brought my sword here, you can blame my master for that. It was another of his challenges. Anyway, now is not the time for me to be thinking so much. I have a bunch of boarders to be fighting.