If it was any other time, I would be celebrating this very moment. After all, the fact that you are reading this is an achievement of mine. My skill with mental magic or lack thereof is legendary in the hexmountain. To be frank, I still don't know how I have managed to get this device working. Even now, I don't know how it activated. I wasn't even trying to activate it. Still, I managed to get the damn thing working.

  Why did it have to be in the middle of an airship battle though? Based on how this is going, it feels like I have activated the damn thing just to record my demise. I barely know what I am doing at this moment as well. After all, I am forced to maintain a state of focus. Otherwise, I would be disoriented by the sensory formation.

  Simply put, making use of a sensory formation is a very intense experience. It is pretty hard to get used to it even after a month of manning the airship. Firstly, everything is so blurry. It feels like somebody has cursed me with blindness curse sometimes. It feels like I am trying to look through a grey fog.

  Well, the only reason that I can even see this far is due to the sensory formation. Right now, I am taking in information from about a hundred kilometers away. It is a surprise that I can even sense this far even with the formation. I would say that sensory formations are the only good thing about this ship. Granted, I am one of the only people at my power level who should be able to use this formation to this level.

  Right now, we are being chased by three ships. Studying the ships behind me, they were the worst type of ship that you could find this north in the continent. (Which is saying something considering the quality of ships they already have.) It does not even have a cannon. These ships are what are popularly called battering rams. They are used to crash into other ships. Both the ships are destroyed in the process.

  It is a tactic that is rarely used even by pirates due to how wasteful it is. After all, how will you loot a ship if it is down on the ground shattered to pieces? On top of that, you will have to even sacrifice a ship of yours. Regardless of how useless such a ship is, a commoner here would have to work for many years to save up to get it.

  Well, it is time for me to focus on the battle at hand. I have three ships following me and I have no way of dealing with them as even I do not have cannons. The ships are antiques which means that they won't be able to catch up with my ship any time soon. That doesn't mean we are safe because the propulsion formation of my ship is failing.

  I am sure that you must have never heard of the propulsion formation of a ship failing. The problem is that the head office has given me a piece of junk as well. Well, they were ready to give me a standard guard ship. They had offered me the trashiest ship that they could find in the name of diplomacy and I had accepted it like an idiot.

  I will tell story some other time. All you need to know is that it is my fault, the way that I have ended up in this situation. To any future captain going on their first mission. If the head office begins to praise your abilities, be sure that they are trying to screw you in some crazy way.

  I honestly don't know when the thing will fail but in the instance that it does so the ship is going to fall. When that happens I can't even try for a gentle crash. The thing has a busted suspension formation. Even the gentlest of taps is going to be destroying this vessel.

  My musing is distracted by a knock on the door. That would be Trevor, I think. With a wave, I open the door letting the man in. He is a soldier under me, though he has been placed more as a guide than an underling. It is a pretty interesting arrangement, about which I will speak later. Really, Why did this thing have to work in the middle of a battlefield? I do not get to speak on so many important things.

  “Trevor, how are the hooks? Have they managed to get any into us?“, I ask the man, hoping that the answer was no. I don't want to be dealing with boarders at this very moment. With boarders, I will have to get involved eventually. I cannot leave control of my ship at this moment. My soldiers would be able to handle them for a while, but they can't fight them forever. It would allow the ships to catch up.

  “No, Captain. They have not managed to get any hooks into us. Still, it is rare to see such persistent pirates. Most would have given up by now.“, Trevor speaks. “Almost makes you wonder about the reason that they are willing to do this.“

  “Well, let's hope that they do not have any more patience. This entire ship won't even need the pirates to be destroyed. Still, I have managed to activate my thought logger finally.“, I speak, pointing to the thought logger. It is a small device made up of crystals.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Well, better a month later than never. The head office was behind my back due to your inability to get that thing working.“, replies Trevor. “you found the absolute best time to get the damn thing working, though. It will act as nothing more than a distraction.“

  “What can I do, Trevor? It is not like I have been sitting free in the last month to focus on just the thought logger. You have given me the absolute worst ship present in the shipyard. The only reason that this ship is floating is due to my hard work.“, I speak, getting annoyed.

  “Well, you were the one that accepted the ship that the head office had given. It is not like they were forcing it on you. Anyways running a thought logger should take a week or two at most.“, replies Trevor.

  “Well, how was I supposed to know that the ship is going to be so crappy?“, I ask him.

  Trevor does not get to reply to this as one of the ships behind me shoots a hook right next to the room that we are in. This close to my room it packs a punch. It cannot be left there for long. I won't be any threat from people attacking me here but the room cannot get damaged. I can barely control the ship as it is.

  Trevor leaves the room to get rid of the hook on my ship. I guess that I should explain what a hook is. What is called a hook is nothing but a harpoon. Granted, it is enchanted to make it very hard to remove once it has been planted. All ships have them due to their many and diverse uses and the pirates have been quite creative with theirs. The hooks enter into the ship attached with a chain that would be quite easy to climb. It is a pretty risky method, with half the people dying en route to our ship. The problem is half the people coming into the ship are still too many for us. The other side must have at least fifty people. If even half of them come in here, then we will not be able to hold them back.

  That is why I have to keep so much distance from them. Managing to outrun them is the best case scenario. I have never seen such persistent pirates. We have been doing this chase for too long. Those fucking hooks have been the main problem. We simply cannot let them get too close with those hooks of theirs. Even with how far away they are those hooks are a bit of a risk. (Though the farther away they are, the less chance they can survive the trip.) well, that was the case until today at least. I have finally finished the modifications on my hook.

  Well, they are not the only ones that can weaponize their hooks after all. I won't spoil it for you, but let's just say it is going to be explosive. The only problem is that my modifications have greatly reduced the range of these hooks.

  Well, there goes my peace of mind. Behind me, one of the ships has accelerated towards my ship quite dangerously. I am sure that they are overloading their formations to achieve this speed. Seriously from where are they getting the mana stones to do that? Well so much for saving my ace.

  The release of my hook is almost ordinary, even more so than the hooks used by the enemy side. I wouldn't be surprised if the enemy had not even noticed the hooks hitting them. Fuck, that was not what was supposed to happen. I had overloaded the hooks in my ship with my mana. They were supposed to explode on contact with the enemy ship creating a massive hole in the ship. That would have been enough to cause the environmental formation to fail in their ship. They would have then choked to their death.

  I had almost given up and began to plan my surrender when my hook finally worked. (A bit too effectively.) Fuck the entire ship has gone up in flames. The ship literally popped like a balloon. My hook would not have been enough to do that, though the reason becomes clear in a bit. The bastards were using a fire based propulsion formation. Such a propulsion formation grants a decent amount of speed but there is always a risk of self implosion. So much fire mana in a single place is always risky. My hook acts like a trigger, setting the entire thing off. Well, I do not get a lot of opportunities to celebrate though. A burning ship so close to mine, I am struggling to keep my ship steady.

  I am sure that the explosion has already knocked out a lot of the formations placed on the outside of the ship. If I don't navigate through this area safely enough then the burning debris is going to take my ship down as well. The main problem is that I have lost all of my sensory formations in this process.

  Right now, the only thing that I can rely on is my mana sense. At these distances, it is not very accurate but these ships emit a lot of mana. I can't say for certain, but none of the other ships seem to be accelerating in this manner. That is good because I am not sure if I can pull off something like this again. Thankfully the ship was destroyed quite thoroughly. If it was in one piece, well we would have accompanied them to the ground.

  As I manage to stabilize the ship, I have to return to a more immediate problem. The pirates boarded our ship in the time that they managed to get close to us. I am sure that at the very least four hooks had gotten into our ship in their suicidal charge.

  I am sure that at least ten boarders must have climbed into the ship in that period. Right now there are only three people on the ship other than me. Of them, only two can fight. (Nobody tells Trevor I said that.) I will have to go and help them out. Normally, That would be very annoying but I have a new formation to test anyway. It is an armor type one that I have been working on for the last couple of weeks, in whatever free time I have got. (Not that I got a lot of that.)

  I am calling it “vine armor” and without my sword, this is about the only method that I have left to attack in this mission. Now, about why I have not brought my sword here, you can blame my master for that. It was another of his challenges. Anyway, now is not the time for me to be thinking so much. I have a bunch of boarders to be fighting.