Right now my arm is paining. No, calling it pain would be wrong. It is a prickly sensation that just seems to get under my skin in the wrong way. It doesn't let me think or move without feeling like somebody is putting needles in me. It is honestly worse than any pain that I have felt.

  It is a consequence of strengthening your body for too long using vital mana. You are supposed to strengthen your body only for a few moments with your vital mana. Any more than this and there is a significant chance of damaging your body.

  I can't stop it now though. Right now this is the only way that I will be able to throw the spear far enough to hit my enemies. Right now I am standing in the watch tower.

  The watchtower is used by the soldiers here for patrolling. They can look pretty far away from here using a spyglass. The watch tower is the tallest structure in the temporary fort. The reason that I am standing here right now is because this is the middlemost point of the tower.

  I am equally far from each of the four gates. Thus, from here my spears can hit anything close to the wall. The reason that I am forced to fight from here is the fact that right now three of the troop leaders are attacking us. They are not attacking as a team this time. Each of the troop leaders is attacking the north gate, the west gate and the east gate at the same time, respectively.

  I can hold my own against the three. Right now the strategy is to prevent the three from attacking the walls. To attack the walls they need to use their ability to control the surrounding mana. I attack any creature that seems to be doing this. while I have only managed to hit one of the creatures in the last half an hour (it was barely a graze.) I have also prevented them from attacking the walls.

  The strategy is barely working. The pain in my arms means that I won't be able to pull this off for long without permanent damage. Well, some medicines can heal mana overuse but they tend to be pretty costly.

  Well, I might be struggling quite a bit right now. The ice beasts are in a worse position. The strategy the enemy is using is monumentally stupid. While I am struggling to fight against the leaders, the grunts are being massacred by the soldiers.

  This is to a point where Shamon is not even needed to direct the troops. The man is standing here with me. The two of us are crushed against each other in this narrow space.

  As for what the man has been doing, he has been surveying the battlefield using his spyglass.

  The ice beasts are just charging towards their death. There is no strategy or logic in this blind charge of theirs. The longer this goes on the better for us. After all, if all the grunts are killed, then the troop leaders aren't a threat. Once they are alone they will be easy to fight. Once eighty soldiers begin to shoot their bows, the troop leaders will become porcupines pretty quickly.

  That is why Shamon is in here with me. The man feels that I will pull off something suicidal like jumping down the wall again and end up putting them in a worse situation. The man does not say it to my face of course, but it is easy to see from his actions.

  The man has been babying me for a while now. (Especially since my ill thought out jump down the wall.) He has people guarding me even when I am sleeping in the room. Do you know how weird it is to have people stare at you while sleeping? (Well, it is proof of how exhausted I am that I am getting sleep at all.) If the man had his way, he would have people watching me shit as well. While I am thinking all this I have been throwing the spears as well.

  "Captain, could you explain to me how exactly the quiver works and why you can't move it from this place.", he asks. "I have been asking about it for a while now."

  "Now how am I supposed to describe the quiver? The best description that I can think for it is that it is a hole in the iron skin.", I speak, trying to simplify it for the man. "Inside the hole are all the water spears that are being produced by the formation. There are not many water spears with me, only a hundred or so."

  Well, Calling the quiver a hole in the ground would be wrong. The quiver is a formation that makes use of iron skin as the base to build on top of which is the quiver. It can be placed anywhere the iron skin exists. I would have to make sure that you know that this is not a spatial formation. Such a formation would be class six at the very least. I have no desire to explain this to the man opposite me.

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  Water spears are constructs of water mana, so it would be accurate to claim that right now they are being stored in the iron skin. The iron mana in the iron skin ensures that the water mana present in the spear is not dissipating.

  Regardless of how the quiver works and looks like, I grasp another spear from it and aim it. Grasp would be the wrong word. It would be more accurate to call it willed to my hand. There is a lag in the process because I am using formation control to do it. With the class eight spell inscribed it will be instantaneous.

  I throw it as quickly as I can. I already give them too much time to react to my spear, but I can't throw it any quicker. If I manage to kill one of these bastards now, dealing with the remaining would certainly get much easier.

  As I am speaking, I have launched three more spears each targeting a troop leader. Only one of those spears is a success as it grazes the leg of one of the creatures. It is not a heavy injury but these injuries tend to accumulate. Let's just hope I don't screw up my hand before that though.

  With the quiver formation, at the very least the water mana is not going to be wasted. Every few moments the elemental node grants enough mana to make a water spear. That is enough for me to throw a water spear every ten seconds or so. The earth mana is still going to waste though. With the ballista, I will be able to manage even that loss.

  Due to the water spear, I have managed to fight off the creatures even when they are split up like this. As for why they have decided to suddenly attack this morning, nobody knows.

  "Captain, you haven't told me yet why you can't move it.", he asks, interrupting my thoughts.

  "Well, a quiver is essentially something built by modifying iron skin.", I speak. "I can put the quiver wherever I want it to, but the runes need to be built by twisting the iron mana. Have you ever dealt with iron mana? The damn thing is a nightmare to shape. I barely had the quiver ready right now. I could put it somewhere else but that would take a week. I can use that time to build the ballista."

  "Did you have to pick this place? I am sure there are better places. How about the archer's tower? It would have been easier to defend.", he speaks, pointing to the other tower in this place which is half of the height of this tower.

  I see the man's point. The watchtower is not particularly durable. A single spell connects to the place and it might collapse the whole thing. It is pretty hard to do so, due to how thin the tower is. (The snowwinders built this tower under the assumption that only two to four people would be there.)

  The archer's tower is more solidly built and would be able to take more hits.

  "For the range of the ballista I am going to build, the watchtower is the better option.", I speak. "I had to modify the place for a bit but you will see how much it is going to benefit us."

  Well, I had to knock down a couple of the walls in the room, to make space for the ballista and its specification. The man is still pretty pissed off about it, it looks like.

  (After about five minutes.)

  “Shamon, I would assume that at the moment you should be down below commanding the soldiers. Why are you up here?“, I ask the man. I will be honest I wanted to ask that since the man popped in.

  “Well, captain. I am trying to figure out what the creatures are trying to do. There is no way that the creatures are so stupid that they would charge to their deaths like this. They have something planned.“, he speaks.

  "Well couldn't they be compelled by their master to attack us.", I ask.

  "That is true, but then why are the snowlords wasting their troops like this.", he replies.

  “if they are planning something, wouldn't it be wiser to just be down there?“, I ask. "You would be able to direct the troops better."

  "Well, maybe. But the watchtower gives me the best idea of what is happening out there. If anything happens, I will catch it first here. My soldiers are disciplined and smart enough to adapt to any sudden change in the situation.", he replies. "My only problem is what exactly could they be planning. Is it worth so many of their troops?"

  "Why are they targetting us so much in the first place? You have mentioned that it is an abnormal number of troops to be attacking a single fort.", I ask.

  "Normally they attack us with a single troop or troops. This many troops attacking has never happened before. Well, that has been going on in my mind for a while. Maybe the snowlords fear your formations.", he replies. "That would explain their reaction pretty well."

  "Even your people have just begun the usage of formations, Shamon.", I speak. "The snowlords are even more cut off than you. How the fuck would they have access to formation magic. Even if they had an idea about all this, do you think that they would be able to detect it from so far away? Even experienced formation mages can't predict the strength of a formation from so far away."

  "One of their allies is the sages, captain. Those bas....."

  The man speaks, the realization hitting him as the words leave his mouth. He zips his mouth immediately. Well, the man did not need to worry that much. He has not exposed anything vital after all. We at the hex mountain have always kept an eye on the sages.

  I really should speak about them in detail one of these days if they are involved but right now that would be stupid. Let's just say that they have a complicated relationship with the hex mountain, especially the legion. Also, I am not surprised that they are here. The sages like to be everywhere. It is honestly easier to find the folks who haven't traded with the legion than those who have.

  As I am thinking about what the snowlords could have traded with the sages, I feel a massive spike of mana. This is at the south gate. The mana is intense enough that I can feel my mana sense overwhelmed. I get what is the equivalent of sunspots, as I grab Shamon's spyglass.

  A glance is enough of me to confirm the existence of the massive spike of ice mana that has pierced the southern gate.