I am happy that I don't need to worry about landing this ship. After all, this ship does not have a working suspension formation. The suspension formation would have created a field around the ship, cushioning it from all damage as we landed. Trying to land without that field is something that only a genius should be able to pull off. (I am skilled at piloting, but not that skilled.)
Anyway, all of this is a moot point. After all, the people in the fort will not let me do anything near their fort. Even now, they have taken control of my ship. The formation mages below will be landing the ship. That is why I don't need to worry about piloting the ship.
An airship is about the quickest way to destroy a well-fortified location. I can imagine quite a few methods of causing havoc if the ship were under my control. Hells, I don't even need to do much. Just aim the propulsion formation at the fort. I am sure that something will break. (A spell capable of moving an airship tends to pack a punch.)
Well, that is why at this moment, I don't have control of any formations from my ship. I will need to wrestle control from the formation mages in the fort to do anything. That is going to be an easy task, to be honest. The formation mages here shouldn't be called that. I don't even need to struggle much against them. Still, doing so will mean that the folk downstairs will have an excuse to destroy my ship and me. Meanwhile, the Snowwind Empire will declare the Black Mountain to be their enemy.
Seriously, how incompetent are the formation mages in this place? They were supposed to take full control of my ship and land me already. I am close enough to the place that if I had cannons, I could have already attacked them. To do something is a temptation that I am fighting at this very moment.
I could have destroyed the place and begun to run away by now. Wait, there they are. As I am recording this, they have finally decided to land the ship. I would have missed them if I were not actively looking for signs of their presence. Their control strings slide into my formations.
We formation mages control formations by making use of control strings. I should talk about them in detail someday. In brief, these strings connect to the runes on the formation and give us the ability to control them with our mana.
I can resist such control (by ripping apart the enemy's string with my control strings.). Doing so would be considered an act of war, though. A war that we cannot afford now. It is still a very icky and uncomfortable feeling to give up control of your formations without resisting.
Right now, my troop and the scholars are waiting here in the boarding room for our entry into the Frozen Peak. As for what the boarding room will open to is my primary worry at the moment. It could lead to a welcome, but it could just as likely lead to an armed troop.
When that happens, I will have to rip apart the enemy's control and try to flee. I will most likely fail, but a man has to try. (They might have incompetent formation mages, but everything else is top notch.) They can sink us pretty easily. I will be able to destroy at least a few of their defenses before they sink us, though.
I am sure that we won't be killed. There are not many forces on the continent that can afford to kill a representative of the Black Mountain. (Especially with my connections.) The Snowwind Empire is not one of them. At most, they will imprison me in their dungeons. It will be unpleasant but I won't die.
The door to the ship opens up, and I look outside. I feel two things the instant that I leave. The first is the bone-chilling cold. (At the moment I am wearing my thickest coat, by the way.) The cold here seeps into your very bones. I have been to cold places before. This is something very different. The best way to put it would be that this is not a coldness of the body, but a coldness of the soul. I am sure that if I were to cycle my mana, it would move slower as well.
The second thing is much harder to describe. It would be accurate to call it pressure, I guess. I think this is what a sheep feels when it looks at a dragon of myth. I can feel my mind enter a state of mindless panic. I can feel it creep up on me like I am a stranger looking at myself. I have to rein in this feeling. If I do not do that, I am sure that I will run away crying in this very instance, or I will just curl up into a ball, blabbering like a fool.
The instance I feel this, I focus on my mana sense. I am trying to look for the traces of a presence spell. Even as no traces appear, I know that this is no spell. The presence spell does strengthen your presence, but there is an artificiality to it. A fakeness to it that makes it a bit easier to handle. There is nothing like that here.
The source of this pressure is the man who is in front of me. He is an old man, thin enough that he resembles a skeleton more than a living person. Still, only a fool would consider the man to be weak. Just standing here in front of him, I can feel his strength.
"Young Master, I greet you. It is rare for us to see such a young talent so far away from the center of the continent," the Commander begins.
The instant that he speaks, the illusion breaks. The intense feeling of weight that I experience disappears like snow in the sun. Hearing him refer to me as a young master, though, my heart begins to pound. What does he know about my identity? (And more importantly, is he thinking of exposing it.)
"I bow down to you, Commander. I would like to state that I am a mere captain. I am no young master," I begin. Right now, I am trying my best to keep my fear from showing on my face. I bow, as is customary with this bunch. These are very particular people. A wrong bow might offend these people enough to start a fight. "I apologize for the delay in coming here. I had assumed people were exaggerating the danger of winter here. My overconfidence has caused us to suffer."
"That certainly is a mistake from our side as well, and as the Commander, I will apologize to you. We should have been more hospitable and sent a couple of people to welcome you. Sadly, even we are restricted by the onset of winter," The Commander speaks, leaving me to wonder what hidden trap lay in this apology. If only I could gather my thoughts, I am sure that I would find it. "For now, let us forgo serious talks. It is bad luck to stand too long at the door. You seem to be exhausted, and I am busy with my preparations for the winter, so we shall speak again later. My underlings will show you to your room."
Saying that the old man disappears, and I mean that literally. The man was there one second, and he was not there the next. He could have used dimensional magic, but such magic would have still left traces. That leaves only one possibility. He is so fast that I could simply not process his movement.
Two soldiers have been standing at attention to the side of the Commander all this while. A male and a female soldier, with strength at roughly the fourth or fifth level of the foundation stage. (They are cycling their mana to intimidate me, so this is as precise as I can be.)
I can hold my own against them, but that would require me to go all out. I would certainly have to reveal the Thalion's Vine. (I have lost most of my combat ability without my sword. I don't usually tend to struggle against such weaklings.) Jacob and Andrew can hold their own against one. I could fight the other just as easily. With Trevor here, this fight is too dangerous for us. They wouldn't even need to try to kill him. So I calm myself down.
"What shall I address you as?" I speak, bowing to them in a manner that would be considered polite. Everything feels a bit dreamy right now, if I am honest.
"You can call us guards," says the female soldier. Her tone is picked with such neutrality that I can't guess her emotions at all.
"You will have to give up all your weapons. You shall than be escorted to the guest room only then," says the male soldier.
Normally, I would give at the very least lip service to this man and argue with him for a bit. Still, the meeting with the Commander was more intense than I expected. So I quietly give up my weapons, (which is basically the sword I stole from the lady.)
I leave my formation on me, hidden underneath my coat. It would be stupid to expose such an ace. I will eat my boot if the two guards in front of me have a sensitive enough mana sense to find it. The draconic path is by its nature an overbearing path. It doesn't let itself get distracted by "silly things" like a mana sense. Even if they could sense it, they won't recognise it as a formation.
Thus, we begin to make our way into the Frozen Peak. My first thought about the place is about how ordinary it looks. The place looks like any fort that I have seen down south. When I had heard about the place, the place had seemed more intimidating. The entire place is supposed to echo with the sound of soldiers' footsteps. There are supposed to be enough people here to fill a small town. (That is at least ten thousand people.)
The Snowwinders will be quite careful with both us Guards and the Scholars. After all, at the moment, we are the folks who blew up their temple. If we are to be their enemies, any knowledge we find here is going to give us an edge on them. They will try their best to hide information.
Still, I try and force myself to remember these confusing sets of tunnels that we are walking through. We guards are supposed to maintain clear records throughout our journey as well. Most people would argue that we already have the scholars records.
The problem with the Scholars is that they see too much. You can read the logs of a scholar, but then you won't be able to get anything of use unless you are a scholar yourself. We guards can be called the normal perspective in these missions. It is our records that will be used by other guards. (And the Legion, and the Formation Corps as well. They will never admit it, though.)
We thus try to record everything that we can. From the behavior of the servants to the many habits of the labourers. Every single piece of information we record is taken in and analyzed in the Hexmountain.
You never know which place you might end up needing to conquer, so any information is welcome. You have the obvious information, such as the defenses of a place and the troop placements. Even petty information such as the sleep schedule of the people, the places they rest or what they do during rest. (You would be surprised just how much poison mages can do with such information.)
To explain this thing, the best example is the Iron Forest. During the Druidic Conquest, the Iron Forest was one of the last centers of power for the Druids. Iron Forest and the iron wall surrounding it could be considered to be the toughest nut that the legion had to crack. The place managed to survive the siege of a general for two years. No, the word survive is wrong here. It would be more accurate to call it thrived.
The reason that it was destroyed was from the log of a soldier known as Albert. He noticed the fact that the soldiers of Iron Forest had a habit of watering the iron wall to realize that it was a tree. Then it did not take long for our formation masters to figure out what they needed to do. A lot of poison to the roots, and the Iron Forest became a part of history.
Otherwise the Druids might have still existed to this day. The reason that I am keeping detailed records is a bit different from why Albert did so. If one of these fine folks kills me tomorrow, the Guard Corps will know who to target, at least. (They certainly won't be wasting the energy to investigate.)
Returning to the Frozen Peak, all I can tell is that we have been taken somewhere deep inside the fort. I cannot tell the route that we have taken other than the fact that it is a confusing mess of twists and turns. I have lost track of the route about a couple of turns ago.
Maybe the logs of one of the other soldiers might shed a better light, though I wouldn't expect too much from them either. It is just a part of working with forts. I wouldn't be surprised if the other side has a mental formation trained against us. (Such formations make use of mental magic to prevent you from remembering a route you have just taken.)
I am sure that we are being taken to the guest room. Every fort has one. A room that seems ordinary, even comfortable. Most of them are fit even for a king. Yet, I am not sure if this guest room is any better than a dungeon. Such rooms are meant to be given to enemies, you see.
Well, this is a part and parcel of dealing with semi-hostile forces. At least I will be able to sleep well here. I wouldn't be able to do that in a dungeon now, can I?