Right now we are travelling to the fortress via the caravans. This close to the northern wastelands, the mana in the air is too chaotic for airships to travel through it safely. It would be like trying to drive the airship through a storm of ice mana. This storm won't only be for a few hours though. It will be for every moment that I will spend in this place. It is the reason that the frozen peak consumes so much mana in the first place.

  That is why me and the troops are being taken to our destination through a caravan. The caravan is just like any other caravan that you can find on the continent if you discount the fact that they are seriously solid. I think that I would not be able to break the thing unless I channel mana through it.

  Well, leaving these suspiciously solid caravans aside, it is time for me to focus on the thing that got me here in the first place. Right now, the scholars are behind me in a caravan much like this one. Behind them are the remaining members of the caravans and a couple of soldiers who shall be their guides and escorts.

  This way, either caravan will be able to ensure the safety of the scholars who are in the middle. It is a bit overly cautious but I am sure that it is fine for the first mission. After all, I am sure that the head office is going to penalize me quite heavily if even one of these soldiers were to get injured and murder me if it happens to the scholars.

  This journey is going to last us about a couple of days, after which the scholars are going to end up in their damned ruin finally. Once they reach there, I do not need to worry about their safety at the very least. People tend to forget this but the scholars do not need us guards at all.

  They are more than strong enough on their own. On top of that, they will be able to use the formations that they have in the ruins to keep themselves safe. In the worst case, they will be able to blow up the entire ruin and take their enemy down with the ruin. Not that they are likely to do that. Scholars are more than able to give up their own lives if it means they can save a magical ruin.

  Even before that, I will be able to send reinforcements once the central formation at this temporary fort is built. So reaching such a desperate state is already pretty unlikely. The key point in all of this is that the scholars are going to be quite safe after all. That is one of the reasons that I was more than happy leaving the scholars to the ruin when I might have ended up in the frozen peak. All of this means that at the moment I have nothing else to worry about, other than my cultivation.

  I can't speak much about it other than the basics. The work that I do means that cultivation is pretty useless to me. Firstly the problem is that my strength comes from my formations. I don't need a strong reservoir of mana in my body personally. The world is my reservoir. I can use a fraction of the time that I need to cultivate to create a stronger formation to use.

  Secondly, most of the benefits that I might get for cultivating such as a stronger body or enhanced healing are pretty useless to me. Let's just say that I have ways of boosting even that. Anyway, it is not like we formation mages get involved in close combat. Letting things reach that stage can be considered to be a failure in itself.

  Thirdly, a great amount of information about cultivation has been hidden from me. My master does not want me to know about the stages beyond the foundation stage of the elven path. This particular command of his has become an absolute mandate in the hexmountain. You would be surprised just how much I have tried to wheedle out anything that I could. I have not even managed to find clues.

  So that would do a lot to explain my lack of interest in cultivation and why I seem to be so inept at it. What I am mentioning here is everything that I know about cultivation and the many paths to achieving it.

  To begin from the absolute basics, every sentient creature holds in his body something called the mana core. The mana core contains the life mana of a person. (Also called his vital mana.) This life mana is the only mana that a person will have absolute control over. The only exception to this might be folks like the snowlords, who have nearly absolute control over a single type of external mana. Their magics are something of an enigma to us. The process of growing this life mana is called cultivation and a method of cultivation is called a magical path. Now that we have gotten the basic definitions out of the way I can discuss my cultivation. (You would be surprised just how much these basics can confuse people.)

  To those not familiar with the magical path of the black mountain, we follow the magical path of the ancient elves. The elves were master magicians who believed magic to be an act of creation and cultivating to be the ultimate act of creation. Now why that is the case, nobody will tell me. It must be related to one of the later stages of cultivation.

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  All I know is that there are nine stages and I am presently at the very first stage, which is called the foundation building stage. At this stage, I am supposed to be building the foundation, by absorbing mana from the world around me and using it to construct a foundation slab in my mana core.

  Even right now, I am pulling mana from the air and condensing it to form a string as I am essentially weaving a massive rectangular slab from pure mana. With enough time It will turn into a segment of my life mana thus increasing my life mana reserves. However, the true magic is inside the slab, full of complicated weaves and shapes that I am only able to construct because it is inside my mana core, where I hold absolute control over mana.

  Trying that out of the mana core would be like trying to draw with your brush attached to the other end of a stilt. It is ridiculously hard. I would know, I spent the first year of training trying this. The only reason that I was forced to stop in the first place was because it was becoming impractical to maintain this folly of mine.

  To get back to my foundation I am presently in the stage of building the second slab, hence I am considered to be a foundation level, second stage mage. I really should focus on it a bit, but I am already so busy. I have been trying to learn how to build a class seven formation and that is no easy task I assure you.

  My master has given me extremely clear instructions that I am not allowed to enter the next stage until I have built a class seven formation. Until then, I am not even allowed to know the name of the next stage or to gather any bit of information about it and granted the elves are extinct, right now the black mountain is the only force In the continent that has access to the elven path and its techniques. So I cannot use my newly found independence to find out anything. (That is another reason that I needed to access the market.)

  Other than my path the magic I practice is of two types which are battery magic and formation magic. Right now I shall not speak of battery magic as to practice it one needs to be on the stage beyond the foundation stage. I only practice beginner level optimizations that will help me reduce mana consumption as I do my work. The only thing I know about battery mages is that they tend to have absurd amounts of mana and their efficiencies are so high that they can run on their reserves for days.

  As for formation magic, I can speak more about it. It is the very core of the magic that I practice. There are four spells that every formation mage is supposed to know. With sufficient mastery in these spells, I will be able to craft nearly any formation that I wish.

  There is the basic formation view that allows one to look at a formation and make out its contents. Without it one cannot even get started on the process of making a formation. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is the spell that I make the most use of. Without it, I would be a blind man painting.

  The second spell that one should be able to make use of is called formation decomposition, which allows a mage to break apart formations and remove all useable parts from them. This spell is not one that I have found much use for personally, but my master has assured me that it is a pretty practical spell for the future.

  The third spell is formation control, a spell that allows me to take control of formations at a level beyond other people. With it, I will be able to push the formation in a manner that would be impossible otherwise. I would be able to push it to output double the strength at half the cost.

  As for the fourth spell, it is one that I have barely any understanding of. It is called formation flow, whatever that means and it is supposed to greatly increase the speed of me inscribing formations.

  These four spells are the epitome of easy to learn, and hard to master. Taking the example that my master used, these four spells are the foundation on which any formation mage has to work, lacking any of the spells he simply won't be able to compete with a mage who does know these spells.

  With that, I think that I have given a pretty clear idea of my power and where I stand. As for me, I am going to keep cultivating till I reach the fort after which I will have to return to the problem of building a class 8 formation. I do so little cultivating already.

  Anyway, I have built only three class eight formations in my life and two of them were built by essentially my master, with my assistance.

  As for the last, it is something that I built completely on my own, but sadly it is not with me. I sold it to get a few materials. (including the core for my vine armor.) Well, these were my master's orders, so I had little chance of refusing them. The man believes that keeping me away from my work will help me grow my character.

  Still selling that core was about the worst thing that I could do. It is one of my more combat-oriented formations too. It was called “the vine spear” and the formation is very much like the armor that I am using now.

  It was supposed to make things easy for me as these spears would be able to keep the enemy's wounds from healing. All the wounds that it inflicts also keep bleeding all the time. With my swords ability that is about the best thing that it would be able to do.

  My vine armor design came from this spear. I think that a polite way of putting it would be I was inspired by the vine spear to work on the Armor because my bastard of a master made me sell it. Still, there is no point in thinking about the spear now. I am sure that it must be already broken and burnt to ashes by some enemy of the hexmountain.

  After all, it was a person of the legion that bought the spear in the first place. Their weapons do not tend to last. Okay, how the hell did I even end up talking about the spear I do not know but my point is that I have experience with building a class eight formation.

  Even with this experience though, I would not say that my success is guaranteed.