We are in a pretty fucked situation, to be honest. Right now we are hiding in the forest under the cover of trees. I have to be thankful that the mayfires are not pyromaniacs (let's just say they have managed to build a reputation for themselves. ), or we would be in a shitty position right now. The forest here is the only thing that is ensuring that we are not caught already.

  The forests provide us with the opportunity to camouflage ourselves. Right now this little bit of camouflage is the only thing that is keeping us alive. I wonder just how little of a fuck the mayfires give to farming. After all, such dense forests do not appear from nowhere. It might take centuries or a few decades if you are the druids.

  The sensory formations used by the enemy are useless. The skill of the people using these ships must also be quite shitty. Otherwise, the few branches with which my troop has covered the ship would not fool anybody.

  Well, This is all that my soldiers are capable of at this moment. To speak about the ship things are pretty bad. Our little trip in the forest has nearly wrecked the ship. The fact that there is anything to fix at this moment is proof that my ship is way more durable than the average ship.

  That is the reason that we managed to escape from the other side. They would have been destroyed completely trying to follow us in the forest. Their sensory formations are not good enough for them to follow us from up there. Still, I had to travel a hundred kilometers at my full speed to make sure that we left them behind.

  Right now we have landed in the forest, presently hidden. Another thing that I should be thankful for is that the trees here are old and strong enough. If this was a new forest, with trees younger than a few decades this would have been pointless. I would be leaving a trail of destruction that would have made taking such a risk pointless. The trail I would have left would have been enough to tell the people that I was here.

  Well, the present situation of my ship is also because these were not new trees. If it was new trees they would snap from simple contact. The old trees here recoiled with the full force at which my ship had hit them. Most trees that I have collided with have managed to leave pretty significant cracks on the ship. The trees themselves are fine though.

  The cracks are still fine. The ship will lose quite a bit of its durability, but it would be able to fly at the very least. The main problem right now is the holes in the ship. Airships are designed in such a way that there is little contact with the environment outside. After all, without a suitable environment, we will end up in the very uncomfortable position of being dead. Environment formations will help out a bit in a situation like this. They are not useful when you have hundreds of holes in your ship from which the air of your ship is leaking out.

  Without patching those holes, we will only be able to fly for five minutes. After that, the environment of the ship will become too dangerous for my troop and me. Right now, my troop is focussing on repairing these holes. They are cutting down the surrounding trees to make makeshift planks. They are going to use these planks to cover those holes.

  Once that is done, flying the ship is still going to be pretty risky. At the very least I will be able to stay in the air for an hour at least though. Also, there is a risk that the cut trees might be noticed, but Trevor is out there supervising the other two. He has assured me that the trees will be cut at enough distance from each other that nobody will be able to see the cut trees from that far up. As for the noise, there is no way a ship that far up will be able to hear this much sound.

  You would need a mana sense at least as strong as mine before my injury and a sensory formation as good as the stuff that my master makes for that. Even then you need to be experienced at using the sensory formation to catch something like that. If they were just a kilometer away from us though, I would be worried.

  Other than that, there has been quite a bit of damage on all the other formations as well, especially the sense-enhancing ones. I will be able to manage this amount of repairs though. Right now, my major problem is the formation room. The problem is that the shot has greatly reduced the integrity of that wall.

  That means that any shot at the formation room that will connect is going to lead to the entire wall giving away. No amount of reinforcement is going to help with that. If that sharpshooter were to attack us again, the wall is going to be a weakness that would mean my instantaneous defeat. That means we have to stay as far him as possible.c

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  I have to ask about that to Trevor. The man has all the detailed records on the soldar plains. All the documents that were considered to have sensitive information that I would not be able to keep hidden are all provided to Trevor. This seems to include all the detailed notes on the many pirate gangs that exist in the area.

  After all, a person who is so precise with a cannon has to be famous. I am sure that Trevor would be able to give me pretty detailed information about them as well.

  Right now, I have completely shut down all the formations on the ships to hide ourselves from our enemies. This includes the ambient mana gatherer. You see, the way that our ship is powered is actually from ambient mana-gathering formations. These formations can absorb the ambient mana around us and store it, which is used by me to power up our ship and our cannons.

  The main problem with those formations is that they tend to be very obvious to everybody even with a lackluster mana sense. It would be like a black spot on a white sheet. It is a bit of a risk though. If we are discovered we do not have enough reserves to even run our cannons let alone run away. Doing this also greatly reduces the risk of being discovered in the first place though.

  I am pretty sure that Trevor doesn't approve of this, but it is for this reason that I am the captain. He doesn't have any idea how airship battles normally occur. If we were to follow his plans we would be discovered in half an hour. At least that is what I am telling myself. Any second now I am sure that our enemies are going to make their way here and kill us in moments.

  Well, there I go sending myself into a panic. It is not like these what-ifs are going to be helping me. The only thing that I can do is focus and work on what I can work on. I have done enough recording for now. I will continue this log when Trevor makes his way here. I after all have repairing to do now.

  (After about half a day)

  Well, we are yet to be caught so that is a positive at least. Not that it is helping with my anxiety. The troop is halfway through the process of patching the ship up.

  Trevor is right now in the formation room with me. I was about to go and meet him in his office, but the work with the formations has taken longer than I had expected it to take.

  "So who was it?", I ask the man.

  "Who?", he asks.

  "You know as well as me, what I am talking about. Who has attacked us?", I ask him, a bit more fire in my voice than I would have liked. This was a pretty embarrassing defeat after all. If it was a brawler, it still would have been fine. I am in such a situation due to a mere patroller.

  "Well, I will be frank, we don't know who it is.", he replies. "We still have records on him though."

  "How can we not know? We have a near-constant presence here.", I interrupt him. The scholars not having a record on somebody so close to home is pretty surprising.

  "Well, this particular ship has never attacked a black mountain ship.", he replies. "All we know comes from second-hand information, from both their allies and their victims. As you can guess, this particular enemy of ours has quite the ability in stealth...."

  "Get to the point.", I reply, snapping a bit. The man was about to go off on one of his tangents.

  "Well, You were the one to ask.", he replies. "It is a pirate gang, one called the Bloodfire gang. The person who attacked us is called the archer, called so due to his precision of aim with a cannon. This archer is confirmed to be a captain of the bloodfire gang."

  "So speak about the Bloodfire gang. I don't know what a captain means for them.", I command him.

  "Well, the Bloodfire gang is a pirate gang. They are just like any pirate gang out there. The unique thing about them is that they have a very clearly defined hierarchy. Even more well-defined than the chaotic mess that such gangs usually have.", he speaks. "They start at the recruits, newbies that have never gone on any mission for the gang. Then there are the soldiers, who have gone on at least one mission and can hold their own in a fight. Then there is the sub-captain, a soldier who has been given control over a patroller. This is followed by a captain, who is given control of a brawler and lastly, we have the leader of the Bloodfire gang."

  "To return to the archer, he is a captain of theirs. The people that we have captured claim that he has never missed a shot in his life. We don't know how true that is, but with the performance of his that I have seen it can't be very far from the truth." He continues.

  "Well, such a precise shot is very hard to believe. The man would have made a killing in the bone pits. Why would he be here?", I ask. "And if he has a brawler, why was he in a patroller."

  "Well, nobody knows why he is here. As for why he was in a patroller, that is his usual strategy it looks like.", Trevor speaks. "He ambushes people using a patroller. After all, nobody is expecting a patroller to be capable of dealing such damage. Any other ship would have been destroyed with that first shot. That is why he calls his ship the shadow, it seems. It is rarely seen in use."

  "If that is one of the captains, what about the others.", I reply. "If one of their captains has come into action, it must mean that we are facing the Bloodfire gang in some way or the other."

  "Captain, I can give you all the information that you need but I need the guarantee that you won't go about blabbing about them.", he speaks. "The reason that you weren't provided with all of these documents in the first place is that you don't have much control over your mouth. The head office was worried that you would go about leaking all this information, without suitable reason."

  "Fine, I will shut down the log now and I swear that I won't speak about them unless we have to fight them.", I reply.