The only task that I have made any progress on this last week is the process of adding cannons to the ship. Even that has been more annoying than it should have been.

  The main problem with that has been getting used to the ship and its formations. The layout of the formations on this ship has been confusing me to no end.

  The first problem was that this ship was not meant to be an airship in the first place. It was meant to be a sledder and while the design of both a sledder and an airship are pretty similar. There are still fundamental differences in the design of these ships.

  My master had to fundamentally modify the formation designs to accommodate the difference in shape. Even standard designs which I am very familiar with are completely different here.

  The next problem is that my master was the one who inscribed all of these formations on his own. Now, airships tend to have a pretty standard design. They have been created after millennia of research after all. The runes tend to be fixed and so do the spells that need to be inscribed.

  The problem is that my master has his way of doing things, though that means his designs are a complete mess.

  The design seems completely nonsensical to me. Things aren't where they are supposed to be and even if they are, I am not able to tell easily. To put it in polite terms, even the basic formations that my master constructs are completely beyond me.

  I think a good way of explaining it would be. If I were to construct a class nine formation, I would just inscribe ten runes to complete it. In my master's case, he would have almost a hundred such runes to do the same thing.

  It is not like these runes are useless as well. (As is the case with the inscriptions by most non-formation mages) Each rune would have its purpose and its goal. Some might reduce the mana consumption, some might increase the effect of the formation.

  Well, all of this in brief means that my master's formations are very hard to understand. It is also very hard to mess with unless I want the entire thing to blow up in my face.

  Just recognizing those formations and their purpose is taking me a lot much time. There is no way that I will be modifying these any time soon.

  The only reason that I have made any progress with this task is mainly due to the notes that he has left me on the topic. If that wasn't there, things would have been way harder. Thankfully I have finally succeeded at the task of adding cannons to the ships.

  To speak about those two cannons. The first is of the fire element and is a mid-range cannon. It is a class seven cannon. Fire cannons are the most economical cannons that you can have on a ship. Most of them pack a decent punch and considering most airships are made of wood, there is the added benefit of fires spreading on the other ship. Most people don't tend to bother with the enemy ship when their ship is burning like wood at the campfire.

  The second cannon of mine is of the light element. It is also a class seven formation. As is usual with this element the range of the cannon is very high but it has a pretty average damage even though it is a class seven formation.

  I have managed to add these two cannons to the formations powering the ship so that means that I can charge them up remotely and shoot them remotely.

  If I had not done this, then I would have had to go and power these cannons up individually. Let's leave the matter of shooting them. That would have certainly caused a mess since I needed to pilot this ship as well. (And my master certainly would not like to pilot while I run around the ship setting off the cannons.)

  Even now it is not a perfect solution. Every shot of my cannon is going to be a risk. There is every chance that the cannons might delink from the formations of the ship. What can I say, my master creates complex formations,

  Still, even getting in a couple of shots can sometimes make the difference between victory and defeat in these air battles. Just having these cannons should intimidate most pirate ships.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  I have achieved this at the correct time as well. After all, we are in the soldar plains right now.

  I guess I should explain why exactly the soldar plains are such a hot mess. Though every person on the hex mountain knows of this bit of politics by heart. You could say our stomach depends on this after all.

  Well, the Hexmountain is the largest mountain on the continent and acts as the home base for the black mountain. That means what we have is an iron grip on one of the easiest places in the continent to defend. We have made full use of this as well by constructing what can be considered to be one of the greatest fort chains on the hex mountain guarding it. All of this means one simple thing.

  Our enemies can come and try to lay siege to the hexmountain. I am not even sure if the enemy will be able to put even a dent in our lands by attacking us directly. Almost nine-tenths of the buildings of the black mountain are present in the hexmountain. The remaining tenth tends to be outposts for the scholars spread out across the entirety of the continent whose loss won't even be noticed by us. Therefore, our enemies have no real way to strike us until they manage to cripple the hexmountain.

  The fact that the Hexmountain is such a mighty fort is the reason that the soldar plains are in such a chaotic state. You can say that the soldar plains are the breadbasket of the hexmountain.

  This can be considered to be one of the only weaknesses of the hexmountain. When you can't destroy an enemy fort, the next best thing that you can do is to starve them.

  The soldar plains are a valley surrounding the hexmountain. Firstly, the only thing that is of any real importance in the plains is their grains and their farms.

  The only real consumer of grain that these people have is the hexmountain. I mean they could sell it to the north and the south, but they would have to be able to transport it first. That is a pretty costly process.

  That quickly leads to a complication of positions as every power in the plains is trying to attack every other person on it. After all, the hexmountain will buy grain from the person with the cheapest price. Costs (and therefore price) tend to go up if a pirate were to enter your land and torch the grain that you have grown for the last year. When you are competing with multiple sellers, driving costs tend to be a good way of hedging things in your favor.

  Most do this through funding pirates (behind the scenes of course.), whose duty it is to go into any other territory and do their banditry. That is why every pirate that is worth his salt always has people going for those grain ships. (It is also a good way to train their recruits, I have heard.)

  Most pirates end up being financed by somebody or the other. I would not be surprised if there are auctions where the pirates sell their services to the highest bidder.

  Anyways, all of this has led to a complex web of alliances and betrayals that means that nobody here knows who to trust in this place.

  The guard corps does try to maintain order in this place. We hunt and destroy any of the pirates that cross the limit. Stealing grain is one thing, but killing villages for the heck of it is not. The problem is that the guard corps cannot take too much action or things could get really bad for us.

  To explain it we need the people of the plains divided and united at the same time in a nutshell.

  The hexmountain cannot have a single power rule over the plains. That would give them too much power over the hexmountain. If all these guys were to suddenly decide that they did not need to sell us their food, a majority of us would starve. Well, maybe not starve but it will certainly be a hit on our coffers. After all, it would be just as costly to transport food from the north or the south to our location as it would be to transfer it from our location to theirs. Whatever happens we cannot let them reach such a consensus.

  At the same time, we cannot allow too many people to rule over the plains. If that were to occur, they would be too busy fighting each other for the farmers to do their work properly. The result of that will also be equivalent to the previous case. We therefore need to maintain a balance. Destroy any faction that looks like it will be able to unite these people and promote any faction that will cause more discord.

  That is why the guard corps has to be very careful in how we act here. We make use of a mixture of negotiations, threats and guard patrols to keep the situation in the plains ideal for us. We also cannot do this in a heavy-handed manner or we might just end up uniting the plains against us.

  All of this is further complicated by the fact that all of our enemies are interfering with this place.

  Some of our enemies tend to fund a single group to make them achieve domination over the entire place. Some tend to fund them all, to devolve the place into further chaos and most tend to do a mixture of this, trying to achieve either.

  Even now, of the nine powers that rule the soldar plains, we are sure that at least seven powers are related to outside powers in some way or the other. Not that we are going to tell them about knowing that though. After all, they are now a known quantity.

  If we were serious, just the guard corps would not be enough to manage this complicated mess. I am sure that the scholars are there in the background assisting them. I have heard that scholars can tell the mood of our enemies based on how many pirates are there in this place. I don't know how they make heads or tails of this complicated mess. All I can say is that even they struggle to figure this out.

  All in all, this place is a proper mess. One that we need to go through with a precious ship. (Especially one that looks precious.)