I have been making use of the free time that I have gotten in the last week to begin my work on the remaining spells. Right now, I have completed all of the spells that could have given me an edge on the battlefield.
The three spells of the formation base have been completed. Then we have the water spear spell and the quiver spell to store it. After that, I have completed two spells, which together work to form my ballista.
Before I knew it, I had already completed the inscription of seven spells. (Minor completion of a formation means that I have inscribed everything except the final spell in the formation. It means I can use the formation at full power using formation control.)
A class eight spell is more than powerful enough to fight the snowlords. I haven't been given much opportunity to play around with a class eight formation. (The most basic spell that my master uses is at class six. Even those he has to use carefully to ensure that it doesn't get destroyed in a moment. Sometimes his strength seems so far out of my reach.)
Each time that I have taken control of a class eight formation, it is such a heady feeling. (Even an incomplete formation) It feels like I am a god. It is an illusion, I know, but there is no way that a snowlord can be stronger than a class eight formation.
I guess that I should speak about the remaining spells that are left for me to complete. There are three class nine spells left.
The first spell is a certain spell known as "Earth Pack". The spell allows for the earth to be compressed to make it stronger. Much like the Iron Skin, though, it is a spell that takes time. With time, the spell will be able to compress the earth to make it more solid..
It is also supposed to strengthen the ground by packing it with earth mana. This is done to ensure that when the copper bark does take root, the ground will be able to handle its weight. It is not particularly useful right now, though. The only use it has right now is stopping enemies from digging into the ground below us.
Even that is not particularly needed since the ground here is covered in so much snow. Other than that, the ground under it is as hard as stone. It makes me wonder how exactly the dwarves have dug their mines into this land. Well, the dwarves and their bombs are almost legendary now.
Well, the second spell that I have to describe is the iron bubble. Well, how do I describe the iron bubble? It is a spell that is meant to supplement the iron skin spell. It doesn't provide me with any particular boost to the spell. The only thing it does is aurify iron mana into a bubble around the fort.
The bubble is going to be useful, much later, once it has been given a chance to grow. For now, it does not have much use. It might be able to block a few arrows from the enemy, and it will also insulate the fort from outside mana. That means it will reduce a bit of the ice mana in the region. (It is enough for it to have a significant effect, though.)
That leaves me with my final class 9 spell and class 8 spell, neither of which I want to talk about at this moment. The final class nine spell is related to the nasty surprise, and the less I record about it, the better. As for the eighth-class spell, now is not the time to waste a good surprise, is it? At least, the gambles that I have been taking in the last couple of months have finally paid off.
Right now, we have managed to survive anything that the enemy has thrown at us. Every troop that they have thrown at us, we have managed to destroy. That has brought us at least a couple of weeks of peace in which I will manage to complete my work. The hunt has ended, and that means that we are going into the storm season, it seems.
The storms of this place are legendary. Even the snow tribes (who can survive in the northern wastelands.) tend to struggle with the storms here. The storms are why I am getting so much time to inscribe, though.
Shamon has been very busy for all of this time. Well, the man has a mountain of work with him and not enough people to do it. At the moment, he has thirty soldiers who are still able to keep fighting in this moment. These soldiers are not even enough to maintain vigil at one of the gates. That is why we have completely shifted to me monitoring the iron skin to look for enemies.
The injured soldiers are the ones who are having to face the worst of the situation at this moment. They are all suffering from the chill, though at varying levels. The storms are going to flood the fort with ice mana again. That means that the soldiers have to worry about wearing their coats again.
The non-injured soldiers, he stationed the soldiers at the southern gate. That is because the weakness at the southern gate is something that I cannot fix right now. It took me all of my creativity to make the gate fall in the first place. Spells like the Iron Skin tend to have runes in them that describe the exact region in which mana has to be applied. (Getting the runes wrong means some pretty deadly things.)
Without these runes, it would be quite impossible for the iron skin to even function. Manipulating these runes should only be done at their creation. This way, the iron skin can be applied to every wall, at every gate and every hinge. It is literally like a second skin to the walls of this place.
I can manipulate these runes even after inscribing them. It is very risky, though. It is like trying to remove a card from a castle of cards.
To achieve my task, I essentially removed the hinges of the southern gate from these runes. With a weakened hinge and the mass of corpses putting pressure against the gate, it came down like a piece of paper. (Don't ask me how long that took to calculate.)
I could try and change the formations to make it go back to its usual state. The only way to do that is to modify the runes again. That is a risk that I do not want to take. You see, if the entire castle were to fall because I needed to return one card to its position, I would be mad. Maybe I would burn the entire thing down in frustration.
Well, I think that Shamon has understood that point by now. At least the man has given up trying to convince me to repair the damage to the formation. He has taken to more mundane methods of reinforcing the southern gate.
A group of soldiers has been reinforcing that gate with everything that could be spared in the fort. I have seen old furniture be dismantled to shore up the gate. Old spears, old barrels, and everything that was there in the stores have been used for this.
I honestly don't know how effective it is going to be, but at the very least, it should be able to do something. It also shows the legendary ability of the snowwinders to build. They deserve this reputation when their foot soldiers can build something like this.
The gate cannot be used at all now, so these new reinforcements better be worth it. It has kept the soldiers busy, and at the moment, that is enough. Right now, I would say that the southern gate is the most defended location in the fort.
Speaking of soldiers, I should tell you that Shamon has not gotten any reinforcements.
I was not expecting anything from the frozen peak. That fort is useless at the moment, as anybody they will send will have to travel for a week to reach here. With the retreat of the nobles, the snowlords can attack with their full strength.
The remaining temporary forts are a different matter. They are close enough that they come to our aid in a couple of days. Based on what I have been hearing (naturally, I am making use of my superior hearing here.), the other forts have not been attacked as intensely as they are usually attacked.
Shamon has been making very good use of this rhetoric to try and get a few soldiers here. Not that he has been particularly successful at this. He has been sending letters through messengers for the last couple of weeks. The only thing that he has gotten from all the forts is a maybe.
This bit of politics I understand at the very least. The other forts are trying to save their hides. They have more than enough soldiers to spare, but they are not going to do so. It is simpler to keep their soldiers with them. It would be quite risky to commit your soldiers to some random fort whose success would not even help you.
If they were to commit their troops to help us, it would be their strength that would be reduced. If their fort came under siege, it would just make their work that much harder. After all, they will be rewarded or punished based on the state of their fort. Why would they waste their time fighting for this fort?
Now, the commander has a pretty good strategy to counter this. Normally, at least a single family is given control of the place. This way, there is a clear chain of command in place. If they do end up focusing on a single fort like this, then they can just force troops from one fort to move to another.
Well, the commander usually gives this control to two or three families. That way, there is competition among the nobles. This way, the nobles are busier fighting each other. This way, they are not wasting their time bullying the commoners.
The lack of nobles has also led to another problem, which is the lack of powerful mages in the temporary forts.
Based on Shamon's estimate, there are only seven mages in total here, including me. One for each fort. That is an abysmal amount. Even the average strength of these mages is pretty low. Most of them are only halfway through the first circle. That would be equivalent to a mage at the fifth stage of the foundation stage.
Every fort, at the very least, needs four to five mages in the first circle stationed at their forts. (I am something of an exception because I had the formation to support me.)
Well, I will leave the politics of this to the scholars. The only thing that I care about at the moment is this fort of mine. As long as it lasts and the ruin is protected, all the other forts can fall for all I care.