The entire ship is rocking like it is caught in a typhoon. Every second, I have to wrestle with the ship's control to bring it under control. Right now, I really am not supposed to be recording. The only reason I am doing this is that right now, I am the only person who is in a state of recording. (My position as the pilot does tend to make me detached from the actual fight.)

  There is supposed to be an entire field of study among the necromancers known as corpse alchemy. Necromancers make use of corpse alchemy so that they can raise stronger undead. They cut together weaker corpses to create abominations that are stronger.

  The reason that all of this information is coming to me is because of the damn creature that is assaulting us. It can only be the result of corpse alchemy. This makes me wish that there was some way to read up on it. Sadly, I have no idea how corpse alchemy is supposed to work.

  Maybe it would have given me the method to detect the creature. At least something better than relying on my sensory formation. I have worked myself into a headache keeping an eye out for an abnormal concentration of death mana. I still did not manage to detect the damn creature.

  Even now, I am trying to figure out how to fight the creature (I want to get in a couple of strikes at least.), and I am barely able to sense it. Technically speaking, the creature is not a single creature. It is an amalgamation of at least a couple dozen undead. Individually, each undead wouldn't even be a challenge. When they are working together like this, the case is different. The sum is much greater than the parts here.

  It looks like a giant made up of bones. I can detect it, but it is not as easy as it should have been. Looking at the giant, it looks like somebody has emptied a graveyard to make it. Somebody arranged all those bones to make a very macabre statue.

  Only this statue is presently riding my ship like a horse. Even right now, the creature has wrecked much of the upper decks of my ship. Right now, the only reason that he hasn't broken through to the lower decks is because of Lauren. She is holding the creature back on her own.

  Well, calling it fighting is wrong. She is blocking every attack of the giant with her hammer. If she were to try and fight the creature, the ship wouldn't survive that. The lady's blows are not particularly gentle. (If it came to it, I am not sure who would do more damage, the undead or the lady.)

  I will be honest, I am still in a bit of shock regarding the situation. (Maybe that is part of the reason I am so calm right now.) It had happened so suddenly. The creature appeared like a ghost as it fell on top of the ship like a massive shower of bones.

  I swore for a second that I thought the necromancers emptied a cemetery on top of us. It did not take long for the bones to stitch together into the abomination above us. In all of this process, I couldn't detect any significant mana from the creature.

  I am embarrassed to admit this, but I did not manage to react to the trap at all. I had been on a very sharp lookout for anything out of the ordinary. I still did not manage to detect the creature before it was too late.

  Not that I did not try. The moment I saw the creature, I had prepped up my cannons. Sadly, I could not shoot by the time the creature reassembled itself. Almost as soon as the bones began to fall, Lauren was up there with her hammer. Even I don't know how she knew it was there. She always did have sharp instincts.

  She is giving us all the time to react to this sudden change in the situation. (And preventing me from shooting the damn creature off the ship. Not that I am sure if my cannon would be able to do that.) At the moment, she is doing a good job of taking all those strikes. She will hold for a while. I shouldn't risk exposure by waiting too much, though.

  Just where is my troop? They were supposed to be here five minutes ago with their respective faction leader. At the very least, Andrew and John should have been here. They are supposed to be with the main fighting troops of this strikeforce. They cannot be this lazy when an enemy strikes.

  Just as I am recording this thought, the door to the room bursts open.

  Three people enter the room. It is John, Andrew and Anthony. I had expected Anthony to take much longer before he answered my summons, if I am honest. That is how they justify their importance in a mission. By not participating when they could have come to help. It is a hard strategy, but I am not exactly favored among the guards anyway.

  I have to assume that they have come to assist us in competition with the legion. (They certainly are not doing it out of a sense of duty to me.)

  "Where are the others?" I ask Andrew as I return focus to stabilize the ship.

  I really should stop getting distracted. The enemy is literally on top of us. The few moments of distraction would have crashed us.

  "The sages claim that they are maintaining a barrier around the ship, captain. Something about holding Death Mana away. They claim that they can't be disturbed. Trevor would not even let me see them.", Andrew speaks. "The mayfires have agreed to act as their guards. They are hesitant to use their magic in an airship. Jacob is with the mayfires even now."

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  I don't reply to this as I wish I could have smacked myself. The first thing I needed to do was check the environmental formations. The creature up there is emitting a significant amount of mana. I had forgotten to do so, since I had not detected an abnormal amount of mana.

  The strain on them is pretty low if I am honest, but it is there. Death mana is very corrosive by its nature. If the formation had been damaged in the middle of the fight, things would have gotten pretty shitty.

  "I would have thought that you would have been up there.", I speak, taking to John. "You are the first to go for such things."

  He was always the second person in the group to charge into a fight after Lauren.

  "What exactly can I do up there? I would be blown into the air the moment that I take a step out.", he replies. "Among my troop, only Lauren holds the ability to fight up there."

  "What about your soldiers, Anthony?" I ask. "Will they be of any use up there?"

  "No, Antonio.", he replies. "With the way the ship is moving, they will lose balance in a few moments and fall to their deaths."

  I can hear the bitterness in the man's tone as he says this. The Aegis doesn't like to be one-upped by the legion.

  "Well, we don't have long then. Lauren has already begun to weaken." I speak. "She won't hold for long."

  I can feel the panic rise in my spine as I speak this. I force myself to calm down, though. Now is not the time to start a mass panic. Anyway, things are not that out of control yet.

  "Each blow of the giant outside is strong enough to destabilize this ship into crashing. Right now, she is taking all of those strikes so that the ship doesn't destabilise." I say to the men, explaining the situation. "I am barely able to stabilize the ship after every strike, even then. Trust me, Lauren will not be able to hold for long."

  "What can we do? Can't you use your cannons to blast the creature off the ship?" he replies.

  "It is more likely that I will hit the ship. Also, Lauren is right next to it. I could hit her by mistake.", I reply. "Anyway, how am I supposed to aim? Right now, it is taking my full focus to make sure this ship doesn't hit the walls of this valley."

  "Is there any way for you to land? We will be able to fight properly on the ground.", Anthony asks. "I will be able to get the creature away from the ship."

  "Maybe.", I reply. "The problem is that landing will be pretty risky with the creature on our ship like this. When you are that close to the ground, even a single blow could be enough to cause a crash."

  "What if the creature was immobile when you were landing?" John speaks. The man gets excited like this when he has a plan.

  "Well, then there won't be a issue.", I reply. "It shouldn't be able to throw a strike while we are landing, though. Even if it hits nothing, it will cause us to crash to the ground. It would be best if it were completely stationary."

  "Well, Eric has a little something ready for that, then.", he says. "It will take us about five minutes to prepare it. Will you be able to hold until then?"

  "Yeah, I will be able to manage that pretty easily.", I reply. "I can't say for sure if Lauren will be able to hold for that long, though."

  "She will hold.", John assures me as he quickly exits the room.

  (After five minutes.)

  Well, I have managed to keep the ship in one piece in all of this whole. I would like to say that it took some great effort from me. That particular praise will have to go to Lauren.

  Right now, she is not in a pretty situation. The lady has been holding against the creature quite spectacularly. She just seems to be getting more durable the more injured she gets. Every strike she takes should have been enough to cause her to crumple to the ground.

  Still, she takes them like it's nothing. If anything, she is getting more aggressive. She even managed to get in a couple of hammer strikes on the undead. It did manage to cause a couple of pits to form in the creature. These had begun to fill even as they were inflicted.

  In all of this time, I have been steadily lowering the ship to the ground. It has not been easy. It has been like trying to ride a bull on a slope. Any wrong move and the ship will hit the ground at full speed.

  Still, I have reached a suitable distance away from the ground. I will be able to land the instance that the damn abomination has been bound up. I wonder what they are going to do. Since it is supposed to be one of Eric's tricks, I would say that it is going to be something far away. It also has a pretty good chance of working.

  That is a good thing since the area outside the ship is not particularly hospitable anymore. The environmental formations are beginning to fail. The undead is somehow redirecting its death mana to attack my environmental formations. (That is the only way that my formations are getting this damaged.)

  It is nothing catastrophic. It won't even take me particularly long to get it repaired as well. All of us inside the ship won't even notice it. To somebody outside, though, things are going to get harder. It also means that the barrier that the scholars had put up has begun to fail.

  While I have been recording all of this, Eric has been taking a position near the entrance of my ship. I can't say where he is precisely since I have no way of monitoring inside the ship. (I am having to rely purely on my mana sense here.) Still, the man must be in position.

  I don't know what he is waiting for, though. Lauren is struggling now. She is glowing with a storm of vital mana. Even then, her entire body has gone pale. She has broken at least a few of her bones. At least there are no external wounds. That doesn't mean much, though. She is going to be bedridden after this fight for a couple of weeks at least.

  Finally, Eric pops out of the gate of the ship with his crossbow in hand. The crossbow shines with mana as he shoots it. The arrow flies true as it strikes the undead in its chest. The interesting thing happens a few moments after striking it. The arrow is basically like a seed, which began to grow. In a couple of moments, there is a massive set of vines that has covered the abomination.

  The creature is so tightly bound up that it can't even move an inch. As the creature begins to struggle against the vines, I tip the ship downwards. Landing is going to be tough, but I shall get away with minimal damage to the ship. At least that is the hope.

  As the creature begins to rip through the vines, the ship lands safely in the river. I can feel the death mana in the river assaulting the ship's formations.

  It is nothing serious, but it is a steady drain on our mana reserves. Better that I keep an eye on it. As I am recording this, the creature snaps the final remnants of the vines binding it. I finally ask myself a relevant question. How in the hells am I going to get the creature out of my ship?