Right now, we are at the wall of the inner keep. Technically, we are in the sewers that connect to the inner keep. The barrier extends down here, so there is no hope of being able to enter the inner keep from here. (You would be surprised how many of them forget to do that.)
The reason I am here is due to the node. The room that we are in right now is one of the nodes of this barrier. Just beyond the barrier are the runes that are creating this barrier.
The node is the area in the barrier that is going to have the most weak points. I wonder why exactly the mayfires would have placed such a weak point here. This is the perfect place to breach the inner keep.
This is a mana isolating barrier by the way. As its name suggests it doesn't allow mana of any kind to enter or leave. Any mana will simply repel away from the barrier. One way to breach the barrier is to overpower the barrier with pure mana. Just keep suffusing the barrier with mana until it can't push the mana out. Even a basic class nine formation uses about ten times the mana that I would be able to output at this moment. This is a class six formation. There is no way I can brute force this barrier open.
I could concentrate all of my mana into a ball, and the ball still would not be able to make a dent in the barrier. My mana would bounce away like a ball bouncing on a wall. At least, that would have been the case if somebody like my master had made this barrier.
Thankfully, we formation mages have another way. The problem with such barriers is that there are flaws in the barrier. These flaws are obvious enough that I will be able to detect them. I plan to exploit these flaws to pierce through the barrier, creating a small hole through which we can pass.
Detecting these flaws is not going to be easy. Especially with my present physical state. Let's just say that a week was not enough time for me to heal up from all of my injuries. Right now, I have healed up enough that I will be able to move. At the moment, the pain of moving is so great that it feels like it is taking over my thoughts.
Thankfully, my mana sense has recovered enough that my injuries shouldn't be a problem. (Or so I hope.) The barrier appears like a literal void in my mana sense. Looking for flaws in the barrier is kind of like looking for a less black spot on a fully black wall.
Right now, I am looking for these very spots. I am throwing my mana against seven possible sites to see how the mana will bounce off them. If it shows a less intense reaction, then I have my flaw in the wall.
Well, it is a long and tedious process, but I have been making steady progress. (As long as I don't move my body. The pain completely breaks my focus.) When I started this log, I was at sixteen possible spots. This tediousness is why I have started the log. It was also meant to distract me from trying to move my body. Anyway, there is no place for me to move.
Right now, even with only four people, I am barely able to move here. The other three people are huddling at the other end of the room, and still, I have barely any place to move. Thankfully, formation work does not require a lot of movement.
The reason for this is that the organization did not bother to expand the tunnels here. It is too close to the inner keep to try something like that. These tunnels are therefore as thin as they are supposed to be. I would say it is just thin enough for a reasonably thin person to pass through.
I am down to five spots now. Meanwhile, I might as well talk about our journey to this little room. For how much I have paid for this, it almost seems anticlimactic. We just took a walk through the sewers to reach our present position.
It seems simple, but that is only because the organization was with us as a guide. The Mayfires have protected their sewers with a large number of traps. They similarly have a lot of surveillance formations too.
I have worked on enough forts with my master to know just how gruesome some of these traps can be. (I am qualified to work only on the traps when my master used to take me with him.)
I could have maybe managed the traps (being overconfident with traps is a dangerous thing, by the way), but the surveillance formations are something that I don't think I will be able to handle. The surveillance formations will inform those in the inner keep about our presence.
Right now, we don't know whose those formations will report to. Will it be the vampires or the Mayfires? If it is the latter, we will be fine, but if it is the former, we will end up screwed. The enemy would know of our precise location, and we would then have to run away.
These sewers are a maze for us. It will be the same for the folks they send after us. The only problem is that they have access to the schematics of the sewers. If they have such a thing, then we will be caught.
That is why we need the organization. Firstly, the route was planned entirely by the organization. I don't think that this route was even meant for us. The organization must have prepared it for the day that they would have fought the Mayfires.
After all, it must have taken years to craft this tunnel. Firstly, they could have only done this like rats, slowly disabling one trap after another. If too many traps are disabled at the same time, then it would alert the mayfires about their attempt. They would have fixed all the traps, and things would be back to square one.
It is the same case with the surveillance formations. They must have disabled each of the traps bit by bit, spread over the years. They would have had to be slow enough not to alert the Mayfires.
That is how they must have crafted a tunnel like that, and it must have taken years to make it. This is a tunnel right into the heart of the enemy lands. It would have caught the Mayfires by surprise if they had gone to war.
Well, the ledgers that we have given them will offset any loss they face from using this tunnel. Anyway, as I am recording all of this, I have reduced the number of possible weak points down to two.
Well, I have been probing these two spots for a while now. Of these two, I am not sure which might be the actual weak point. It could be both of them, it could be one of them, or it could be none of them.
I am still trying to figure it out, but it is not as easy as it looks. I could pick one of them and try to open up the weak point, but it is not a choice that I can take lightly. The way that I will be breaching the barrier is that I am going to stab it with my sword. I am going to be concentrating all of my vital mana into the tip of my sword as I do so.
If I have guessed right, then it will create a hole in the barrier, one that we will be able to crawl through. This hole will be there long enough for the troop to be able to make it through. If I guess wrong, the hole formed will be unstable. Unstable enough that we can't use it.
Then I will have to sit down and meditate for about a couple of hours before I will be able to attempt it again. Given that right now we have no food supplies and no water, we will only be able to stay down here for about a couple of days. Well, there is enough time. It will take me at most two to three tries to do this. (I am not even thinking about my injuries.)
It will still do me well to be a bit careful. I mean, there is a small chance that a large enough hole will form, but it could close while we are entering the hole. The chances of that happening are pretty low. There is a greater chance that a bolt of lightning will kill me right now. At least that is the hope. Being cut by a mana-isolating barrier is not pleasant. Any being with vital mana channels in their body would do well to fear it. It creates a void of vital mana in the regions that it passes over.
Without vital mana, that part of the body will begin to die. (Especially due to my injuries.) Within a few moments, that part of the body feels as if it has been rotting for the last couple of weeks. All in all, it is not something that I want to be imagining right now.
Screw it, the more that I delay this, the more I am going to be losing my nerve. I picked one of the two spots and began the process of controlling my vital mana. Controlling vital mana like this is completely different from controlling external mana. It is both more familiar to me and yet at the same time, it is completely different.
I would say that my vital mana is like an excited kid, flooding in the direction that I direct it towards. While with any other external mana, it is more like an old man who has to be forced to go anywhere. The difference makes controlling vital mana quite a bit of a challenge for me. It needs to be used with a sensitivity I just don't have. Even as I am recording this, I can feel my mana flowing into the sword like a wave.
No matter how cautiously I try to make the mana flow, this is how it goes with my vital mana. I can feel my body weaken, old pains returning, and new pains appearing in other places. I can feel my body grow heavier as well, as I wrestle with my mana to get it into one spot.
It feels like I am wrestling with a waterfall as I finally manage to get my mana into the tip of my sword. I won't be able to hold it there for long as I pierce my sword into the barrier.
As my sword pierces into the barrier, I can feel the barrier trying to push away my mana. My mana manages to overpower the barrier as my sword pierces into the barrier. As it passes through the barrier, I finally lose control of my vital mana.
My vital mana rips into the barrier, creating a hole about twice the size of my head. Right now is the moment of truth. If I have picked the right spot, then the hole will stabilize at its present size, holding for a few minutes.
If I have picked wrong, then the barrier will shrink back to about half of its present size. I hold my breath in anticipation for a few moments. Finally, after about ten seconds, I decide that the hole will hold for a while.
"Time to get moving, Trevor.", I speak, reminding him, "I can guarantee you about two minutes in which the hole will last. As you enter the hole, make sure that you do not touch the barrier. You won't like the results of that."
As I say this, I finally sit down as I feel a wave of exhaustion eat me up. I almost collapse to the ground. I wonder how exactly the martial mages make use of their vital mana so freely. Then again, they don't tend to be as injured as I am.