Reaching the frozen peak, I do not need to worry about landing this ship. That is why I am so calm right now. After all, this ship does not have a working suspension formation. (It is a formation that actively slows down the ship when it reaches the ground.) Trying to land without it is something that only a genius should be able to pull off. Thankfully, I am a genius.
Landing like this is not something that I want to show to the snowwinders, though. They are already not going to be intimidated by me in the least, coming in this piece of trash. Let's just say that landing a ship without a suspension formation looks pretty stupid. It would make us look even less intimidating than we already must look.
Anyway, the people in the fort will not want me to try something like this near their fort. 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.
Heck, I don't even need to do much. Just aim the failing propulsion formation right into their defensive walls. I am sure that something will break.
Well, to do that, I will need to wrestle control from the folks on the ship. That is not going to be easy, of course. Once that happens, we will end up dying. Meanwhile, the Snowwind Empire will declare the black mountain to be their enemy.
Regardless, complete control of the ship was supposed to be taken by the people in there. At least they were supposed to do that, but they have yet to do anything. Seriously, how incompetent are the formation mages in this place?
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 take control of the ship. I would have missed it if I were not actively looking for it, though.
We formation mages control formations by making use of control strings. I should talk about them in detail someday. 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 to be an act of war, though. Right now, that is something that is neither good for me nor for the black mountain. It is still a very icky and uncomfortable feeling to give up control of your formation in that way.
That is why 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 into 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. We will most likely fail, but a man has to try. I will be able to destroy at least a few of their defenses before they catch us.
I am sure that I won't be killed. There are not many forces on the continent that can afford to kill a representative of the black mountain. 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 at least.
The door to the ship opens up, and I look outside. I feel two things the instant that I leave the safety of the ship. The first is the bone-chilling cold that I feel the instant that my skin hits the outside. Well, at the moment I am wearing my thickest coat. The cold here seems to seep into my 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 cycle 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. 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 be running away at this very instant, or I will just curl up into a ball, blabbering like a fool.
The source of this pressure would be the man who was standing 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 and I can feel his strength.
Other than his raw power, though, I do not know much about the man. I am not allowed to read the record they have on this man. That is enough to tell you how important they consider the man to be. We guards are given information about the folks that we deal with.
"Young Captain, 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 fear that I experienced looking at him disappeared like snow in the sun. Hearing him refer to me as a young talent, though, my heart began to pound. What does he know?
"I bow down to you, commander.", I begin. Right now, I am trying my best to keep my fear from showing on my face as I bow, as is customary with this bunch. These are very particular people. The wrong bow might offend these people enough to piss them off. "I apologize for the delay in coming here. I had assumed people were exaggerating when they told us the danger of winter here. My overconfidence has caused us to suffer."
"That certainly seems to be 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 spoke, 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 much more 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. The man could have used dimensional magic, but such magic would have still left traces. The man was simply so fast that I could not process him moving.
Two soldiers were standing at attention to the side of the commander. A male and a female soldier, with strength at roughly the fifth level of the foundation stage. (They are cycling their mana to intimidate me, so this is a precise judgement.)
Maybe I can hold my own against them, but that would require me to go all out, and I would have to reveal the vine armor. 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.
"Right now, you will have to give up all your weapons. You shall be escorted to the guest room once you have come that.", says the male soldier.
Normally, I would give at the very least lip service to this man and argue with him for a bit. At the moment, I am not even able to form the retort in my head. The meeting with the commander was more intense than I had expected it to be. So I quietly give up my weapons, though I leave my formation on me. It would be stupid to expose such an ace. I would eat my boot if the two guards in front of me had a sensitive enough mana sense to sense it. Even if they could, they won't recognise it as a formation.
Thus, we begin to make our way into the frozen peak. My first opinion of the frozen peak is how ordinary it looks. The place looks like any fort that I have seen near my home. I thought that it would be a massive structure with soldiers marching everywhere. The entire place is supposed to echo with the sound of soldiers' footsteps. My seniors on this mission made it sound like that.
Well, I am sure that it still might be true. After all, I will not be taken anywhere interesting right now. The snowwinders would be quite careful with both us guards and the scholars. After all, at the moment, we are the folks who blew up their temple. Anyway, this much caution is always there for the scholars and their guards.
Still, I try and force myself to observe these confusing sets of tunnels that we are walking through. We are supposed to maintain clear and simple records throughout our journey as well. This is especially true during any mission. Most people would argue that we already have the scholars for such a task.
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. We guards can be called the normal perspective in these missions. It is our records that will be used by other guards. (Well, even the legion and the formation corps rely on our records.)
We thus try to record everything that we can. From the behavior of the servants to the many habits of the guards. Every single piece of information is taken in and analyzed in the hexmountain.
You never know which place you might end up needing to take over, so any information is welcome. You have the obvious information, such as the defenses and the troop placements. Even petty information such as the sleep schedule of the people, the places of 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 particularly well, one cannot forget about 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 can be considered to be the toughest nut that the legion had to crack. The place managed to survive the siege of a general and his soldiers for two years. Even after that period, it did not seem close to falling. If anything, it was our troops that were suffering heavy losses.
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.
Anyway, the reason that I am keeping detailed records is a bit different. If one of these fine folks kills me tomorrow, the guard corps will know who to target. (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 that we had taken 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 had a mental formation trained against us. (Such formations make use of mental magic to prevent you from remembering a few things.)
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 will be better than a dungeon. Such rooms tend to be full of surveillance formations. I am sure that the snowwinders will know everything that we shall be doing in the room.
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?