To be honest, I think that I should be able to work right now. That is, if I can somehow ignore the feeling of my bones, which feel as if they are being placed on a block of ice. It is a hard feeling to describe. The closest I can come to describe it is that it is like an ache in your tooth. A pain that is quite mild, yet it seems to take over your every waking thought. It somehow becomes a headache that doesn't let you think.
I am forced to wear one of the coats of these people to keep the chill under control. This is going to make fighting a very hard task. At least I don't need to worry about going to sleep and suddenly waking up with my arms frozen into ice.
Right now, the only way I have to resist this is to keep cycling my vital mana. The intensity of the cycling is not as intense as it would be when I am dueling. That would strengthen my body enough to resist the chill but I wouldn't be able to maintain it. I would run out of vital mana in minutes.
I am cycling enough mana to make my body resist the chill. It is just enough that I can focus on my work. The moment that I forget to maintain this cycle, though, the cold hits me like a bull. It feels like my insides have been dipped in ice. It is literally like a shock at the very core of my being.
The only way to recover from it is to restart my mana cycling. Even then, it takes me a few minutes to enter a state where I can ignore the chill again. This has become a cycle now, with the chill striking me in waves. At its worst, I am not even able to walk, let alone work.
I had to work with this chill to create the formation base. I almost screwed it a couple of times, but I managed to keep at it and I have a working formation base now. The mana storage for the other two elements is not as fancy as the iron skin, but it will do for now. The mana is stored in the formation core itself. That way, I don't need to waste my time creating a mana battery. The only problem is that, should the formation core fail, I will not have a pretty fate. That much mana is enough to rip through any foundation-stage mage.
Speaking of the mana core, I have finally managed to solve the problem of the soldiers freezing. The place is not completely free of ice mana yet. The man in the area has decreased enough that the soldiers can fight without their coats. (They still have to wear it when they are not fighting.) So that is good. It could not have happened at a better time, as well. After all, the troop has been taking care of the survivors of the tunnel collapse. They did not disturb me during my work. If I had to help them out, I would not have done things this quickly.
I managed to inscribe the formation base in a single week. Even without the chill, that should have taken me a couple of weeks at least. (Seems like I work the best under pressure.)
With the formation base here, I have a bit more freedom to act. As I mentioned before, the formation base tends to be the most complex part of the formation. From here on out, the inscription process should not be as stressful. At least I don't need to rely on risky plans like this.
With this, I will be able to finally focus on the more offensive spells of my formation. I already have an idea of which spell I want to inscribe into the formation core next. The spell that I have to inscribe is a spell known as the water spear. The spell is a simple one, conjuring water mana into a spear-like shape. These spears can be physically wielded by the user or thrown towards the enemy. The spear will then explode once it hits its target.
The only problem is that the spell is quite slow. I think that I will not be able to use this spell to attack enemies at a long range. If I were to try something like that, the enemy would have time to dodge my strikes. The only time that this can be used is when the enemy is right next to the fort. I have a solution for that though I can't create it immediately.
There is also the problem of stability. This spell requires me to actively maintain these spears. I can maintain maybe ten of these spears with my full focus. When you have to throw hundreds of these spears, this naturally will throw a wrench in your plans. There is a fix for this, though I can't create this immediately as well.
I could have made the water spear the first thing that I came here. (I only need the water part of the formation base to power it.) The thing is that I had underestimated just how much of a threat these damn creatures could be. I mean, I expected them to be physically stronger, but I expected to fight a beast.
A beast is easy to fight. They are servants of their instincts, and their movements can be predicted. Now that I reflect on the fight, there was something very human about the creature. Be it the way that it reacted to the collapsing cavern. A beast would have begun to run away about that time, a slave to its instincts. This one just stood there as if it could not imagine something like this happening. You could see it in the way that it fought as well.
I will need to consult about the creatures with Shamon one of these days. Still, another factor in all of this has been my powerlessness. The power of a formation mage is dependent on his formations. After the fight with the ice beasts, I realized how true this statement is.
I can't be like an elemental mage, who would be able to use their magic anywhere on the continent. (A fire mage would still be able to use his fire magic here, though it would not be as strong for obvious reasons.)
I can't be like the martial mage, whose strength comes from their body. Without my formations, I don't think I will be able to fight even a decent fire mage in this freezing wasteland. I will need to make my moves with a bit more thought.
Without the proper formations, I am only able to show a small fraction of my powers here. Otherwise, regardless of how smart the creature is (or seems to be), it is ultimately a beast. There is no way that they would have fought such an even battle.
I have complained about my situation enough. I should speak about what I mean when I say that I am inscribing a spell into the formation. You need to have a clear understanding of what that means if you want to read the logs of a formation mage.
Formations are created by inscribing runes into a formation core. Everybody knows that. They also know that these formations are spells at their core. When you are casting a spell, you are essentially crafting a set of runes in your mana core. These runes then manifest into reality as a spell. What you are doing with a formation is you are inscribing this set of runes into a formation core.
This is the hardest part of our work. You already know how hard it is to form a spell in your mana core. Most children take years of training to cast even the most basic spell. Doing that outside of your mana core is many times harder than that.
Once every rune has been successfully manifested, they have to be bound to the material of the core. Once this happens, the spells become set. (which mainly means that it won't explode on your face.) Now, the inscribed spell can simply be triggered by supplying mana to it. What I have explained is a pretty simplistic explanation, but it will suffice for now.
We can cast a thousand spells at a time if we want to and if we have enough mana to power them. That is where the true power of the formation mage comes to the forefront. You can see that very philosophy shines in the formations in class eight or beyond.
From class eight onwards, formations undergo what is known as[chaining of spells. This means that to craft a class eight spell into a formation, you need to inscribe ten class nine spells into the formation core. To craft a class seven spell, you need to inscribe ten class eight formations into it. This means that you have to inscribe a hundred class nine spells for these ten class eight spells. This chaining goes on till the class one formations. (where the number of spells that need to be inscribed reaches absurd numbers.)
To get back to the point, I will first need to inscribe ten class nine spells into it. I have completed three such spells already, which form my formation base. I am still left with seven more spells to inscribe, of which one is the water spear. Now that I have spoken so much about this, I might as well explain a bit about my class eight formation.
The class eight formation that I am building is a druidic formation. Just like all their formations, this spell is meant to nurture the formation core. It also has a few spells meant to be used for fighting, though it is mainly meant for defensive fighting.
It is fine for me. I have no desire to enter the plains outside to fight the beasts anyway. Still, I would have liked it if I had the option of not being so passive. Even right now, I can imagine a snowlord stumbling upon our fort and destroying it in a couple of hours.
One of my primary goals is to create a class seven formation. The reason for that is my master and his unreasonable demands. I have already mentioned to you how my master has restricted my knowledge of cultivation.
Well, the reason for that is my master thinks that I will not be ready for the stage beyond the foundation stage. (Henceforth called the stage beyond for simplicity.) without being able to create a class seven formation.
Only my master can have requirements like this. Can you understand just how powerful a class seven formation can be? It would be able to destroy a person at any level of the foundation stage with a single move.
Even the meanest of the class seven formation will have the strength of a hundred spells. Let's just say that this was even the most basic spark spell. If you could boost its power by a hundred times, that thing would burn through a mage.
Even the people in the formation corps tend to create a class seven formation when they are on the stage beyond. Their literal work is to create formations and they don't even try something like this.
I honestly don't know why my master expects that I will be able to do it, but I have not been able to convince the man that I can't do it. He is not ready to listen to anything that I tell him. The man has the same reply for everything. It is tradition, and then he goes on a rant about how his master made him do it as well.
Building the class seven formation is the only way I have left to learn it. I have tried to wheedle out the information from anybody in the black mountain. I have tried to threaten people for it, and I have tried to beg people for it. Nobody is ready to share it with me.
That is the reason that going shopping in the frozen peak was so important to me. I had a secret hope that I would find something related to the elven magical path in the shops here. Some hidden techniques or arts from which I would be able to learn about the stage beyond.
It is a fool's hope because the scholars are the only people on the continent who can read elvish. My master has intimidated them all into keeping quiet. Most scholars aren't even ready to speak to me. Still, a man can dream, can't he?
No, all I found were mithril swords that I could have found at any shop at the hex mountain. The few techniques I did find were meant for the draconian magic path.
Fuck, thinking about all of this has annoyed me. I am ending this log.