Right now we are at the wall of the inner keep. The place that we are standing in right now can be considered to be the closest place to the inner keep in the city.

  We are naturally in the sewers that connect to the inner keep. The barrier extends to down here so there is no hope of being able to enter the inner keep easily. The room that we are in right now is one of the nodes of the barrier. Just behind the barrier I can see the runic script that will be powering the entire thing.

  The node can be considered to be the formation that is powering the entire formation barrier. Depending on how many nodes there are, destroying the runic script in front of me would bring down a part of the wall or the entire wall itself.

  I wonder why exactly the mayfires would have placed such a key component of their defenses in such an obvious place. well, I can think of a thousand reasons for it. The most obvious reason that I can think is that they must have assumed that it would make the barrier more easy to maintain.

  After all, even though I can see the formation on the other side, I won't be able to damage it. After all, the barrier will completely stop any mana from my side to enter the other side.

  My mana will simply not be able to pass through this barrier unless I manage to overpower the barrier. even a basic class nine war formations uses about ten times the mana that I would be able to provide it and this is a class six formation at least.

  I could concentrate all of my mana into a ball and I still will not be able to make a dent in the barrier. My mana would literally bounce away like a ball bouncing on a wall. At least, that would have been the case if somebody like my master had made this barrier.

  This barrier has been made by somebody way below that level. This, there are flaws in the barrier. Flaws obvious that somebody like me will also be able to detect it. My plan will be to exploit these flaws to pierce into the barrier, creating a small hole.

  Detecting these flaws is not easy. Thankfully my mana sense is sensitive enough to do so. The barrier appears like a literal void in my mana sense. Looking for flaws in the barrier is kind of like looking for a less black spot on a fully black wall.

  Right now I am looking for these very spots. I am throwing my mana against seven possible sites to see how the mana will bounce of it. If it shows a less intense then I have my flaw in the wall.

  Well, it is a long and tedious process, but I have been making steady process. When I had started this log I was at sixteen possible spots. This tediousness is why I have started the log actually. It was also meant to distract me from how conjusted this place.

  Right now, even with only four people I am barely able to move here. The other three people are huddling at the other end of the room and still I have barely any place to move. Thankfully, formation work does not require a lot of movment or we might have needed to retreat before we could try anything. That is just how little space we have here.

  This close to the inner keep, the organisation would not have dared to expand the tunnels. These tunnels are therefore as thin as they are supposed to be, which is just thin enough for a reasonably thin person to pass through.

  I am down to five spots now. Meanwhile, I might as well talk about our journey to this little room. For how much I have payed for this, it almost seems anticlimatic. We literally just took a walk through the sewers to reach our present position.

  It seems simple, but that is only because the organisation was with us as a guide. Just like any organisation that would have a maintained a fort, the mayfires have protected their sewers with a large amount of traps and surveillance formations.

  I have worked on enough forts with my master, to know just how gruesome some of these traps can be. (I am literally qualified to work only on the traps when my master used to take me with him.)

  I could have maybe managed the traps, (bring overconfident with traps is a dangerous thing.) but the surveillance formations are something that I don't think I will be able to do. The surveillance formations will inform those in the inner keep about our presence.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Right now, we don't know whose those formations will report to. Will it be the vampires or the mayfires. If it is the latter, we will be fine but if it is the former we will end up screwed. The enemy would know of our precise location and we would then have to run away.

  These sewers are literally a maze for us and while it will be the same for the folks they send after us, the other side might have access to the schematics of the sewers here. If they have that, then we will be caught.

  That is why we need the the organisation. Firstly, the route was planned entirely by the organisation. I don't think that this route was even meant for us. The organisation must have prepared it for the day that they would have fought the mayfires.

  After all, It must have taken years to craft this tunnel. Firstly, they could have only done this like rats, slowly disabling one trap after another. If too many traps are disabled at the same time then it would alert the mayfires about this and they would have fixed all the traps.

  It is the same case with the The surveillance formations. They must have disabled each of the traps bit by bits, spread over the years. They would have had to be slow enough to not alert the mayfires.

  That is how they must have crafted a tunnel like that and it is something pretty precious, if you are to be honest. Tommorow, if the organisation were to be attacked by the mayfires then they would be able to use this tunnel of theirs to cause a lot of chaos in the enemy lands.

  Well, the ledgers that we have gotten them will offset any loss they face from making use of this tunnel. Anyway, as I am recording all of this, I have reduced the number of possible weak points down to two.

  Well, I have been probing these two spots for a while now. Of these two I am not sure which might be the actual weak point. It could be both of them, it could be one of them or it could be none of them.

  I am still trying to prove it but it is not as easy as it looks. I could pick one of them and try to open up the weak point, but it is not a choice apthay I can take lightly. The way that I will be breaching the barrier is that I am going to be concentrating all of my vital mana into the tip of my sword.

  Then I am going to pierce the weak point of the barrier. If I have guessed right then it will create a hole in the barrier, one that we will be able to crawl through. This hole will be there long enough for the troop to be able to make it through. If I guess wrong, the hole formed will be small enough that I won't be able to put my hand through the hole.

  Then I will have to sit down and meditate for about a couple of hours before I will be able to attempt it again. Given that right now we have no food supplies and with no water, we will be able to stay down here for about a couple of days. Well, there is enough time. It will take me at most two to three tries to do this.

  It will still do me well to be a bit careful. I mean there is a small chance that a large enough hole will form but it could close in the process of entering the hole. The chances of that happening is pretty low. There is more chance that a bolt of lightining will kill me right now. At least that is the hope. Being cut by a mana isolating barrier is not pleasant. Any being with vital mana channels in their body would do well to fear it. It literally creates a void of vital mana in that place.

  Without vital mana, that part of the body will begin to die. Within a few moments that part of the body feels as if it has been rotting for the last couple of weeks. All in all, it is not something that I want to be imagining right now.

  Screw it, the more that I delay this the more I am going to be losing my nerve. I pick one of the two spots that I was struggling and begin the process of controlling my vital mana. Controlling vital mana like this is completely different from controlling external mana. It is both more familiar to me and yet at the same time it is completely different.

  I would say that my vital mana is like a excited kid, almost flooding towards the direction that I direct it towards, while with vital mana it is more like a old man who has to be forced towards going anywhere. The difference makes controlling vital mana quite a bit of a challenge. Even as I am recording this I can feel my mana flowing into the sword like a way.

  No matter how cautiously I try to make the mana flow this is how it goes with my vital mana. I can feel my body weaken, old pains returning and new pains appearing in other places. I can feel my body grow heavier as well, as I wrestle with my mana to get it into one spot.

  It literally feels like I am wrestling with a waterfall as I finally manage to get my mana into the tip of my sword. I won't be able to hold it there for long as I pierce my sword into the barrier.

  As my sword pierces into the barrier I can feel the barrier trying to push away my mana. My mana manages to overpower the barrier as my sword pierces into the barrier. as it passes through the barrier, I finally lose control of my vital mana.

  My vital mana literally rips into the barrier creating a hole about twice the size of my head. Right now is the moment of truth. If I have picked right then the hole will stabilise at its present size, holding for a few minutes.

  If I have picked wrong then the barrier will shrink back to about half of its present size. I hold my breathe in anticipation for a few moments.

  Finally, after about ten seconds of time I finally decide that the hole will hold for a while.

  "Time to get moving, trevor.", I speak, reminding him "I can guarantee you about two minutes in which the hole will last. As you enter into the hole, make sure that you do not touch the barrier. You won't like the results of that."

  As I say this, I finally sit down as I feel a wave of exhaustion eat me up. I almost collapse to the ground. I wonder how exactly the martial bastards make use of their vital mana so freely.