I wonder how exactly I got so unlucky in my life. I just want to run a ship without it breaking apart in my hands for once in my life. That is what I am thinking as five cannons shoot into my ship. As I am plunging into the forest to dodge these shots, I can feel two of those shots piercing into the ship.
The first shot hit me at the back of the ship. Nowhere particularly significant. It is the second shot that causes my heart to come to my mouth. It managed to hit the storeroom. To give you a perspective, the storeroom is about a couple of rooms away from the room that we are in right now. The damage is not particularly significant. That doesn't mean that I will be able to take too many of those.
I am surprised that my formations have not already begun to fail. Maybe it is the quality of my master's work. Maybe I am just really lucky.
Looks like the archer is presently in the brawler, which I assume is the shadow. I can feel my mind blank out as I try to think of a plan of action. What trick can I use when the other party has such an aim?
"Captain, keep moving.", I hear a voice behind me. It takes me a moment to realise it is Trevor.
Fuck, I need to level out my ship. I can't just keep going down like this without crashing. Well, for now, I have to focus on moving and staying away from our enemies.
Right now, I absolutely cannot let the archer hit this room. I can give up on the ship if push comes to shove but the moment the ship pierces the formation room, we are done for. The problem is that we will all fall to our deaths. Also, before falling, we would be exposed to the elements outside and that will kill us even before the fall. (This ship does not have any type of formations to prevent that.)
The irony is that I know exactly what I need to do right now. Well, there is no real need to change my plan. I knew that the ship was going to fail from the beginning. I just didn't know the when and the how. (Now I do.) The problem is that we won't be able to make it very far with this ship. Already the damage to the ship from the trip in the forest has made this ship pretty unusable. I am surprised that it has not already begun to fall.
I do have a plan for this eventuality. One that I had made for if I was somehow overwhelmed by the enemy. Well, my plan is simple on the face of it. It is to crash the ship and escape to the Mayfire castle on foot from the crash site.
It is not going to be an actual crash, of course. I am not stupid enough to do that. It will be more of a cosmetic thing. The trick is to overload a few of the sensory formations, and it will seem like the entire thing has exploded. (At least you can't be sure when the thing will explode.) That is going to ruin most of the formations in the ship, but I will be able to land the ship. (ok, it is going to be more like controlled crashing.)
Already, I am hearing the people pipe up with the fact that bandits are like a pack of locusts. They don't tend to leave even the wood of the ship that they are looting. To them, I say that they are even bigger cowards. If they have the slightest doubt that a ship is risky, they won't enter it. Especially when they have another task to keep them busy.
Right now, the trick is to put up the appropriate amount of resistance. Too much, and they will come down after the crash to double-tap us. They can't have such a violent threat so close to their base. Too little and they will end up destroying us. (Well, being destroyed is the goal, but you have to do it with style.) It is a fragile balance to maintain.
While all of this is going on, the ship above me has been recharging its cannons. I mean, I might have been the one to give it enough time to do so. Still, I try to dodge the enemy ships by pivoting the ship to go down.
Well, it is not a surprise as the shadow finally takes its shot or shots, as all five of the shots hit the ship. I can feel the wood of the ship crunch as the shots streak through it. There goes the second storeroom, my room and Andrew's room. Thankfully, there is nothing in the rooms that is worth worrying about. The bloody fang is dangling from my hip right now, and my master's notebooks are here in this room. Everything else can be recovered from the wreckage if I need it.
Fuck, even if I have decided to abandon the ship, it hurts to see it damaged like this. This ship was barely in my hands after all before it was annihilated like this. Repairing all of this is going to be a pain. I will have to do all of this on my own. (I know my master very well.) After all, there is a class six formation here. Most people would trade their arms in for such a formation.
Well, I can't go down now. This close to the enemy they are going to come down to find loot. Our enemies are pirates, one can't forget that. Their greed can easily overrule their fear. The goal is to make it as costly for them to look for our ship as possible. More importantly, it has to be understood by the pirates intuitively.
Thankfully, the ground below us is a forest area. Looking for us is going to be a pain in the ass for anybody. Now the trick is to make them not want to look for the ship. If this area were like the rest of the soldar plains, I would be screwed. They would not have left the ship even if they had seen it crumble into ashes then. I would have to abandon the ship fully if that were the case.
Well, I begin by aiming the ship towards the sky. I can feel the ship go up into the air more slowly than it should have done. Looks like the propulsion formation is failing. Well, that might be a bit of a wrinkle. The propulsion formation is an indicator of how the other formations are. It failing usually means that the other formations are close to failing as well.
Screw my reserves, I am going to crank the ship to its maximum speed. With the way that I am burning my reserves, I am going to have five minutes to get away. At least this is selling the fact that this is a wreck.
I shift to the left almost on instinct, cleanly dodging the other party's shots. Looks like the archer was expecting me to remain stationary. Well, nice to see that the other side has missed at least once. (especially that fucking archer.)
Again, the ship has begun to shake, but it will be fine for now. At least there is no risk of spiraling. Right now with the mana I am spending it should be enough to leave the brawler in the dust. It is barely able to keep ahead. I would say that it is about seventy percent of the speed at which I was moving from the patrollers though. (This means that the propulsion formation has begun to fail)
To be honest, I am thankful the brawler are not willing to burn through their mana stones to catch up. The patrollers were a bit too willing to burn through theirs, so I was worried for a bit. The same thing would take a fortune with the brawler. Something even a rich gang like the Bloodfire gang can't afford, I am sure.
Right now, they are about five hundred meters away from me. (Thankfully, the shadow is still going in the direction opposite to me, though it has begun to slow down. It will begin to catch up soon.) The only reason that the hunter is not already wrecking us is due to the crazy way in which the ship is moving.
The damage to the ship is certainly more extensive than I expected it to be. My controls have begun to fail. It is almost like somebody is having a stroke while controlling this formation. That is how much it is jerking around.
As I am thinking this, the next set of shots is charged by the enemy. I try to dodge this one by shifting the ship to the right. It is not successful as three cannon shots spear into the ship again. This time, I do not bother to see the damage done to the ship. It will just distract me. Right now, my focus has to be on guarding the core of this ship, which is this very room.
Right now, this room is the most important thing about this ship, if you ask me. These sets of formations are the true treasure of this ship. Men like my master do not tend to make such basic formations very often. It could be sold at prices that I wouldn't even be able to afford.
As long as this room is safe, I will be able to restore this ship. I might even restore it to its pinnacle.
fuck, fuck, fuck. I was so lost in my thoughts that I did not manage to react in time. Three shots hit me from behind. The other two missed me. Right now, we are about a kilometer away from the other side.
This time, the damage is a bit more extensive than I would like. It is due to the fucking archer. His cannon managed to pierce the food storage room. Entire months of food reserves are lost just like that. That is not my problem, though. (At least not immediately.) This room housed a very key node for the sensory formations.
With this, the effectiveness of my sensory formations has been cut by half. Already, I can feel its loss as the visual behind me has become blurry. I am sure that there is more damage here but I won't be able to tell anymore. My sensory formations have become unreliable.
Well, I seriously can't take this anymore. I focus the ship straight ahead. I am already at one and a half kilometers. I just need to push the ship to its maximum. To be honest, that is the only thing that I can do at this moment. I have tried to move the ship to the left and the right. Both controls have stopped working.
Well, this time the impact of the cannon shots is more like dull thuds. Well, that is not a good thing. The sensory formations are more damaged than I had originally thought them to be.
Well, I think the propulsion formations are also failing as we are getting slower. That means that the propulsion formation has begun to fail as well. I can't be certain since the sensory formations are not working as they are supposed to.
That is why I am thankful that my sensory formation has failed. Nobody likes to see their ships failing. I tip the ship toward the ground, as it falls toward the ground. At least that part of my ship is working. This is the part that I need to nail. If I were to make it convincing enough, they would leave my ship alone.
As strings of mana leave the formation room, to the few sensory formations I have still left. I can feel the mana leave my body as I begin to overload it with mana. Within a few moments, these formations are stuffed with enough mana. Each of the nodes of the sensory formation explodes like a bubble.
Thankfully, I have lost what was left of my sensory formation. I do not feel the actual collision into the ground as the world loses all traces of order.