The mayfire castle is something pretty unique in the soldar plains. This is not the south, where you shall find the entire place littered by forts. (There are so many forts down there, that it is sometimes also called as the plain of forts.) The nature of the conflict in the soldar plains will simply not allow it. the thing that is important in the soldar plains is grain. All the major players here will have acres and acres of land in which they are farming. You could fill the entire place with forts but how exactly are you going to protect your grain from your enemy.

  It is something that you won't be able to bring inside a fort. You could hide yourself in a fort, but then all the enemy needs to do is set the crops ablaze around you. Doing that would be enough to destroy even the strongest forces in the soldar plains. Most of the groups here are not able to store grain for more than a couple of years before it is spoilt. The few that can, have not managed to scale it to a level where it can store a large amount of food.

  You would be helpless to act as all of your year's work is burnt to ash. Instead of a fort that would take decades to build, the better method would be to use the same money to build a set of temporary outposts. They would be able to cover more ground this way and they will certainly be easier to replace.

  The only exception to this rule in the soldar plains is the mayfires. Firstly, they do not have any crops of their own in this place. Any grain that they acquire is from the grain that is being sold by the surrounding powers. Now you could attack these surrounding powers and burn their crops but who among the mayfires would care about that.

  You can destroy the grain of somebody that is five kilometres from here, then the mayfires would go to one that is ten kilometres away. They might have to spend a bit more than the usual, but they wouldn't even notice that. The people that you have attacked would certainly notice it though, causing you to be stuck dealing with their revenge.

  The mayfires have included themselves in the grain trade mainly as a way of enhancing the relation between us and them. Their main source of income is actually from more violent sources, specifically mercenary work.

  Their magic makes them more than ideal to work as bandits themselves. While the mayfire might condemn these people if and should they get caught, but at the same time there is no real way you could punish that single individual without setting off the entire group. It is also not like every person in this group is going to be attacking others.

  The main mercenary work in the soldar plains is actually protecting the grain ships. Their work is to escort ships from their source to the hexmountain ensuring that nobody is attacking you. Based on what I have understood about the mayfires, they have basically cornered that market. For example, if a hundred ships were leaving for the mountain, then at least fourty of those ships are under the protection of the mayfires. Another fifty would be under mercenary groups that are run by somebody from the mayfire castle.

  While the grain that they send towards us is significant, it is not a source of worry for us. Their lack of presence will reduce the grain shipments coming to our location. In a manner of speaking, I can see why the mayfires suddenly losing communication with us caused so much worry for the head office.

  The effects of their disappearing will be seen in a few months with the price of grain. (As long as their time being inactive is not extended too much. Otherwise things will end up more messy than a simple Increase in price.) Anyways, I have been speaking about all of this to point out the simple fact that the mayfires do not have a lot of weaknesses. You could burn the forests that surround their lands and they would join in with you, just for the fun of it. Just the fact that they have such intact forests is a good example of this. If they were attacked, the first thing to happen would be the entire thing being destroyed, after all.

  At the same time, they do not have enough manpower to actually maintain a set of outposts like the other powers do. (While each member of this family is pretty strong, they don't have as many people. They are just too new of a power for that to be the case.) The smartest choice for them is to actually concentrate all of their power in a single location, exactly as they have done right now. That way when somebody does end up attacking them, they know where exactly they are going to be attacked.

  Not many powers in the soldar plains would be able to attack their fort and take it like this. There is no way that the bloodfire gang was a part of that list. They came into existence five years ago. they have some form of external support. The problem is who could that be.

  The man in the building in front of me might be able to answer that. He doesn't even need to speak with me. just his presence is enough. he is a contract cultivator and one that has made a contract with a demon at that.

  That already cuts of most of the churches. What they peddle is just another form of contract cultivation after all. They won't accept another competitor in that market. The merchants down south might work with them, if their identities are not revealed. Still, it would be a risky investment. If they were discovered all the churches would stop doing business with them.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Those fanatics to the east will also not really work with chaos demons, except a few exceptions. Now that I think about it, this actually does not reduce my list at all. I can only confidently say that the churches can be removed, but now that I think about it I can already think of a couple expections even among them.

  Well, leave it be. My duty is to not think of all of that. I will leave it to people that are better at this than me. Right now I am following a contract cultivator. well, I guess I should explain what that is. A contract cultivator is considered to be a figure that relies on external items or external powers to get their cultivation.

  You could get this power from any creature. I have seen contract cultivators with their powers coming from demons, elementals, sprites, or even devil's. Though if you find a devil cultivator, I would say that you run away for your life. they are the most dangerous of the bunch. If you know that the other party is a devil cultivator, then chances are you are going to be killed in the next few moments.

  Returning to the matter, the man codenamed as the demon and whose original name is Steve, is a demon cultivator. Of that I am sure by now. Right now I am scouting him.

  If you ask me how, at the moment I am pretending to be a labourer that is doing the work of shifting things in a warehouse. (Well, can it be considered to be pretending when you are getting paid for it for a couple of days now.)

  It is actually not that hard. The rags were quite easy to find and steal and right now there are too many labourers here, for anybody to know that I am actually not from here. (I just need to make sure that nobody will look at my hands. They are too smooth to be a labourers) The only thing that might be considered to be a problem is the fact that I might have had to use a bit of my mana to get this particular work done.

  The amount of strength that I have shown is something that shouldn't be possible only with my physique. Well, it has been a couple of days, nobody is looking at me anymore. Any suspicions would have been confirmed a couple days ago and any attempt at my life already taken.

  All of them are a bit too preoccupied with the people that are opposite the warehouse that I am working at right now. They could attack here any second now after all. This is the place that has been made as a base by Steve and the soldiers that are under him.

  Even right now I can look at his soldiers that are systematically looting the entire fortress and bringing it back with them to the warehouse in front of me. That is going to be a problem. Pirates are not supposed to be so disciplined.

  That too pirates that are being led by a demon cultivator. Demons are creatures of chaos and you can see the same behaviours repeat in the people that take their power. The only way that would be possible is if these people were being led by something that is pretty scary. Well, I won't talk about this problem for now. For better or worse, this is a problem for Tomorrow.

  Right now my target is Steve and his warehouse. Things are going to be a bit easier than I hoped it to be. The damn bastard is preparing for a blood sacrifice. Well, I guess that I have to explain how blood sacrifices work with a demon. Naturally when a person enters into a contract with a demon, the demon is not doing it out of the goodness of its heart.

  The only reason that it is doing something like this is to get something in return. That is usually the souls of the victims of its contractee or at least their life force.

  Now the thing with such sacrifice spells is that it tends to leave the person committing them quite weak. (After all they need to punch through the dimensional barrier.) The general consensus is that it tends to cause a cultivators cultivation to drop by two levels at the very least.

  Granted that the other party is already one of the weaker captains, suspected to be a seventh stage foundation mage. If he were to weaken himself in such a manner I would be able to survive a fight with him. I might even end up winning, but it is not something that I am willing to bet my life on.

  I won't say that it is too helpful. With the boost from my sword this is going to be an easier fight at least. That is the hope at the moment. You can never tell with demons what tricks they have up their sleeve. That is why conflict is not my primary goal. I just need to locate the book, take it and escape from the place. If I manage to do that along with dealing some damage to the gang, this is going to be a pretty succesful mission. Right now the goal is not to draw attention to me.

  That is why I am here right now, doing what can be considered to be moderate excercise. Granted most of my work is in the warehouse, my mana sense has recovered enough that I can follow a person that is actively emitting their mana.

  Granted it is still not precise enough that I would be able to tell their exact numbers, I can confirm that there is one major source (which should be the demon) and at least six to seven minor sources.

  These minor sources I can't confirm exactly but based on the people that I have seen leaving, the other side should not have more than ten figures with them.

  There should be more, but I think a majority of the people here have been redirected to the archer and his patrollers. Right now that is the main thing that the gang must be worried about. After all, I would not be surprised if the head office is already preparing a force to take care of them. Nobody would like to have a mad dog rampaging in their garden.

  Right now my main work is to ensure that we are meeting up with the mayfires. Clearly, the organization is not one that we should be trusting.

  Trevor is sure that the only reason that they are not betraying us is due to the fact that they need something from us. The mayfires are the more trustworthy figure here, though I don't know if anybody from that family is even alive. Trevor is sure that they are, but I have my doubts.