Right now we are at the wall of the inner keep. The place that we are standing in right now can be considered to be the closest place to the inner keep in the city. Any further and we will end up in the inner keep.

  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 directly.

  The reason I am here is due to the node that is here. The room that we are in right now is one of the nodes of the barrier. Just behind the barrier, I can see the runic script that will be powering the entire thing.

  The node can be considered to be the formation that is powering the entire formation barrier. Destroying the runic script in front of me would bring down a part of the wall or the entire wall itself. That depends on how many nodes there are.

  I wonder why exactly the mayfires would have placed such an important part of their defenses in such an obvious place. Well, I can think of a thousand reasons for it. All I can think is that they must have assumed that it would make the barrier more easy to maintain.

  After all, even though I can see the formation on the other side, I won't be able to damage it. After all, the barrier will completely stop any mana from my side from entering the other side.

  My mana will simply not be able to pass through this barrier. The only way to breach the barrier is to overpower the barrier in terms of pure mana. Even a basic class nine war formation uses about ten times the mana that I would be able to output 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.

  This barrier has been made by somebody way less skilled. Thus, there are flaws in the barrier. These flaws are obvious enough that somebody like me will also be able to detect them. I plan to exploit these flaws to pierce into the barrier, creating a small hole.

  Detecting these flaws is not easy. Thankfully my mana sense is sensitive enough to do so. (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 it. 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 process. When I had 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 how congested this place is.

  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. That is just how little space we have here.

  The reason for this is that this close to the inner keep, the organization would not have dared to expand the tunnels. These tunnels are therefore as thin as they are supposed to be. 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.) 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.

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  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 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 to not alert the Mayfires.

  That is how they must have crafted a tunnel like that and it must have taken years to make it. Tomorrow, if the organization were to be attacked by the Mayfires, then the organisation would be able to use this tunnel of theirs to hit the enemy in his heart.

  Well, the ledgers that we have gotten them will offset any loss they face from making use of 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 small enough that I won't be able to put my hand through the hole.

  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.

  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 in the process of entering the hole. The chances of that happening are pretty low. There is more 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. 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 towards going 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 right 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 into 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 bastards make use of their vital mana so freely.