Using this ship is a completely different experience from the previous time. My previous ship feels like a tortoise compared to this one, both in speed and the way that it moves.
The gentle sword reacts almost immediately to every command that I give it. If there is any lag, I can't detect it. I might barely understand my master's work, but he knows what he is doing. Smooth sailing like this is every pilot's dream. The only complaints I have about the controls of this ship are that they are pretty basic.
The ship behind us is not too bad itself. After all, it managed to ambush us. The ship shouldn't be particularly strong in combat, for the simple fact that it managed to do this.
These pirates have invested quite a bit in their camouflage formations. (And you can tell most pirates never spend much on their ships. That is why they are such wrecks.) After all, even my master's sensory formations did not manage to capture them. Granted, my master's sensory formation is a bit of a rush job, and I don't have my mana sense. (It is a still class eight formation, though.) They would need a camouflage formation of at least class eight to do something like this.
My master would have detected them for certain, though. There is not much that escapes the man's eye. The man is the kind who would not bother to mention such things, so that I can have a learning experience. Anyway, he is still in the storage room, so I can't expect him to react. Well, I should be able to handle them, or the enemy would have been destroyed before I even sensed them by my master.
I guess that I should describe the ship. The ship is a mid-sized one. I would say it is double the size of my ship. The reaction speed of the ship can be considered to be quite decent, too. After all, it is able to react to every move of mine, though it is still a bit slower than I am. The problem is that their pilot is more experienced than I am.
What can I say, I was given a ship to drive only when I was made a captain. I have been studying the theory of piloting a ship since I was a kid. It is not of much help to me, though. The other ship is simply not letting me line my shots at his ship. At the moment, I don't want to give them another shot at my ship.
The bastards managed to ambush me, you see, at the beginning of this mess. They managed to get close enough to me that they managed to get a shot at my ship. (It was only due to their formations, though. I have been keeping an eye out for an attack.) The cannon shot was close enough that it grazed the formation room.
It is a common tactic to attack the formation room. You will end up missing most likely, but you will still end up hitting something. (Especially since formation rooms tend to be in a central position anyway.) If it had hit, that would have wrecked most of the control formations. That would leave us sitting ducks.
The opposite side missed thankfully, hitting somewhere to my left. These few moments were enough, as I ducked to dodge any further attacks.
That also means that the opposite side doesn't have particularly strong cannons (granted, my ship is smaller than the average.). It should be class eight (or even a class nine.) based on the impact I measured. The surprising thing is that the cannon did not even manage to penetrate the outer wall of the ship. This ship is more durable than it looks.
There is damage, but I think that I will be able to repair it on my own quite easily. I guess, after using that heap of junk, this ship feels almost invulnerable.
Returning to the ship, right now we are trying to get into positions. The enemy ship is trying to get perpendicular to me. The reason for that is that it is where their cannons are. These people have put them on the front of the ship. This is done very rarely because you can only fit a few cannons in the front. You would also need to keep turning your entire ship to get any shots in. Such a placement is only done by scout ships, which expect to chase and be chased by their enemies. Once I evaded them the first time, they have not managed to hit me yet. They got close enough to take a shot, though.
I am trying to get parallel to them. As is usual, I have placed the cannon on the sides of the ships. I guess I could pull off something like my enemies as well. It is not something I am used to, though. It is not like I will only be using two cannons in the future anyway. The
Where the enemy suddenly turns forward or backward. I immediately back down or go up, essentially dodging the shot, but it also ruins all my chances of lining up my shot. A more skillful pilot could maybe pull off the turn. It involves turning in line with the ship so I am parallel to it and peppering it with all of my shots. Then retreat up or down so that the enemy cannot get any shots in. It sounds so simple, but you need to be really precise to pull off something like this.
It means that I can't get any shots in, but the enemy is also failing quite miserably. Thankfully, the opposite ship doesn't have any other means of attacking. Otherwise, if the other ship were more combat-worthy, this would be a terrifying fight.
Thankfully, such combat-worthy ships tend to be much bigger than normal. They are also not something the general public would be able to access anyway. Certainly, no normal enemy would have such a thing. Heck, even seeing some of them is a rarity. Some of the newer models, even the head office, are not sure they exist (or not.). The scholars certainly do, though, and they will never tell us.
So we dance, each trying to get a shot without the other hitting us. My trip to the north has at least increased my patience with energy-consuming chases. Here, I have quite a bit more control. This is especially since we haven't even stopped making our way to the hexmountain. It is still a couple of days away. The closer to the hexmountain we are, though, the more allies we have. Not that we need them at the moment.
This particular dance, where neither side can shoot the other, will continue for a while. That is, until the pirate would either retreat, attempt a boarding, or do something crazy. It is the crazy ones you should be careful with. They will end up destroyed, but they will also end up taking you with them.
(After about ten minutes.)
Our enemies are wavering. Even as we have been trying to get into position, they have been lagging as if they are not sure what to do. I don't mind their hesitation.
We have allies in the area who would be able to help out a friendly ship like me. They won't be coming unless it looks like I will crash. That puts the pressure of completing this fight early on the enemy rather than me for once.
The enemy finally does something decisive. Rather than try to weave around me, the enemy ship decisively comes towards me. Rather than try to charge at me, it takes a sudden turn, which essentially puts it in parallel to us. The enemy begins to shoot hooks into my ship. So that proves that they are trying to board us.
The enemy essentially allowed me to shoot at them in return for a chance at boarding my ship. A risky move for them, so I naturally take the opportunity as the enemy presents it to me.
The side facing the enemy ship is where my fire cannon is, so I let it rip. Even as I record, the shots fly as the fires of the cannon eat into the enemy ship. These fires will be enough to leave the enemy ship quite damaged, even if they manage to escape. Wood is wood, no matter how much you enchant it.
The hooks are a problem, though. Fighting a boarding battle in such a small ship is unwise, even if I wanted to. The enemy seems to have banked on that, expecting to catch me off guard. They did manage to get two hooks into my ship, but nobody is coming through it. My cannon must have caught them off guard.
Already I begin to recharge the cannon. It will take a few moments. I am not too worried about the hooks. I have dealt with the hooks even when I barely had any tools at hand.
This is even easier since I have a cannon on my ship. The mana in those cannons per shot is easily ten times the mana that I had overloaded my hook with. That means that the cannon doesn't even need to be accurate to destroy the other side's hook. It will just burn up like a paper placed in a fireball's vicinity. On top of that, these fireballs are still hitting the enemy ships, causing even more fires on the ships.
With the failure of the boarding hooks, I think the opposite side has decided to retreat. The ship begins to dip, falling behind me as if they cut their propulsion formation. I could try to shoot my hooks into this ship, but that would ultimately earn me nothing. Destroying this ship would simply mean that another pirate gang would take over.
After all, if the pirates were so easy to deal with, the guard corps would have defeated them already. The pirates here must have something that allows them to fight with the guard corps on equal footing. I certainly am not in the mood to discover that ace in the hole, especially with this new ship of mine.
After all, if the ship were to get damaged, I would have to pay for repairs. My master certainly won't be spending a single stone of his own. he will call it a learning experience.
Well, the only armed force that I can rely on this close to the hexmountain is the guard corps. The problem is that they do not like to interfere much in local politics for obvious reasons.
If it were the legion, all the pirates that are popping up here would be destroyed in a matter of a few weeks. Then again, the legion doesn't know how to be gentle. They will raze the soldar plains to the ground in trying to get rid of the pirates.
Even the guard corps can manage the pirates here quite easily, if I am honest. They supposedly send newcomers like me to places like this on missions. Well, most of these tend to be easy missions, since nothing dangerous exists in the area. The only threat that can exist in the region is the pirate gangs.
Most of them are nonexistent threats. They tend to be farmers who had their lands snatched or ambitious young men who are out to make a quick buck.
It seems almost a pity to have to hunt them down. The issue is that traveling would become quite a hassle if too many pirates were allowed to pop up in a place. (even more than it is right now.) While we are not a trade center, the trade of grain is something that needs to happen.
Anyways, regardless of how weak these pirates are, it's wise not to underestimate them. After all, one just needs to see the existence of the pirate lords for just how much of a pain in the ass they can be.
Most of the present pirate lords have started as mere farmers after all. They were not nipped at the right time. That is why they have grown so powerful now.