I haven't seen this captive of ours yet. Not that I would have been allowed to see him anyway. The scholars have him now, and they are going to be protecting the man like a jealous lover. Well, let them do their work. After all, it is the scholars who are going to be extracting any information of worth from him.

  None of the other factions can compare to the scholars on that front. They will be learning everything that the man knows soon enough. One of their requirements is that none of the other factions will interfere. If we were to try and pry into how they do their work, things wouldn't be pretty.

  I had a more important job to do anyway. Let's leave the captive to the experts. What is the point of the scholar's skill in torture if they do not have a prison to hold him?

  I am the captain of this ship, and stuff like this naturally became my task. I am the person who had to create the captive's prison, and I must say I have done a pretty good job.

  Now, normally, a ship is supposed to have rooms in place that can be used as prisons. Such prisons would be equipped with magic-blocking formations. These formations would be enough to disable any magic that a person can use. (At least it can block most types of magic.)

  There is no such prison in this ship. Now, if it were not a necromancer, we would have just made one of the factions empty their room and use that as a prison. Such places wouldn't stop the person from casting magic, but you can keep a guard on him to prevent it. He would be caught or at least killed if he tried to escape.

  The problem is that the other party is a necromancer. You see, one of the major issues with imprisoning necromancers is their mana. They cultivate death mana, and death mana is pretty hard to contain.

  Death mana is capable of damaging any formations that it comes into contact with. Even environmental formations are barely able to handle the mana's corruption. (Environmental formations are built to handle contact with any foreign mana.)

  Even here in the Bone Valley, (where death mana can be considered to be pretty low in concentration.) I have to keep an eye on my formations. I have to do the necessary repairs to make sure that they are working as they are supposed to. If I did not do this, I would find the environmental formations failing in the middle of the night.

  Thus, to imprison this necromancer, something had to be done about his mana. Thankfully, I already had something of a plan ready for such a situation. After all, I had a month to prepare, and we were entering the bone pits. Such a situation was pretty likely.

  My plan is simple, I just had to modify one of the preservation formations on the ship to hold the death mana. You see, preservation formation works by creating a bubble of mana. Anything placed inside the bubble will have its mana locked inside it.

  That usually means that any food stored inside it will not be damaged by the mana in the environment. At the same time you won't be able to access the mana outside from the inside of the bubble. That is what makes it such a good prison as well.

  I had two such preservation formations to work with. The question is which room should I have used? Whichever storage room I use as my makeshift prison won't work for anything else. After all, death mana is capable of affecting formations. Why would it not be capable of affecting food?

  The main storage room had a better preservation formation. That formation would have created a better bubble around our captive.

  Using it meant that we would have lost most of our food. I had about a month of food put in that room at the very least. The second room would be a worse prison. If he is smart enough, then he would be able to pop that bubble. Using it meant that we would only lose a couple of weeks of food, though.

  This decision to use the worst storeroom is why I am hanging from the edge of the ship. After all, somebody needs to check up on the preservation formation. I am making sure that there is no damage to the formation that might lead it to fail unexpectedly. I will have to do this to make sure that the formation won't suddenly be destroyed.

  As for why I have to hang like this on the wall, this is my fault. Normally, preservation formations are made in such a way that they can be accessed from the door of the room. This way, the formation can still be accessed easily even when it is in use.

  When we were adding in the formation here, I made the formation on the wall opposite the door by mistake. That means that the only way that I will be able to study the formation is by hanging off the edge of the ship like this.

  Normally, I would just need to enter the room to reach the wall and thus the formation. That would be easily possible by just deactivating the preservation formation.

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  That is not an option anymore, though, with the prisoner inside the place. Entering the place and working on the formation is the best way for me to get stabbed in the back by the captive. That is why I am checking on the formation in this weird way. I do look a bit like a clown, but there is nobody to look at me anyway. I can do my work in peace.

  The entire process of checking up on the formation takes me about ten minutes to complete. Incidentally, I have completed my work now. I am already climbing back the the top of the ship.

  It is not taxing work in any way. The only problem is that I have to do it regularly. That means that I will have to land the ship every few days and climb down the rope to check up on the place. I don't have anything much to report about the formation. The preservation formation is working as it is supposed to. It contains all the mana produced within it.

  Well, it is pretty unlikely that the preservation formation will fail now. Give it a couple of weeks, though and I don't know what the situation will be. The preservation formation was never meant to contain death mana after all. On top of that, we are visiting the bone pits. The death mana there will be more powerful.

  That place is going to be a nightmare to deal with. Speaking of the bone pits, I will have to plan how to tackle that place. My original plan was to rely on the strikeforce to ensure the safety of the ship. The giant has proved that it is not going to be enough.

  The problem is that this giant has caused more injuries than anybody expected. The damn creature managed to take out quite a few of our people. None of them is in a really bad situation, but I also can't expect them to fight in the battle. To give a list of the injured. The first are the three scholars. All three of them are going to be stuck in their room for the next couple of weeks.

  They have overdrawn on their mana to create a barrier around the ship. The barrier was an elemental barrier, meant to block out all types of mana except elemental mana. (I don't know how three mages managed to cast it. It is magic beyond what a foundation mage should be capable of.)

  The barrier is pretty effective (And nearly impossible to detect.) But it consumes a ridiculous amount of mana. I don't know why they cast such powerful magic this quickly. Maybe they were not thinking too clearly about how suddenly we were attacked. Maybe they wanted to show their ability. Everybody wants strong allies after all.

  Even leaving the scholars, the sentinels are presently at half capacity. Lauren has her arm in a sling and is limping even right now. I have seen her so badly injured only a few times. Eric is not exactly injured. The man won't be able to make use of his mana for a couple of weeks as well. Well, with how frequently he overdraws on his mana, I will cut that down to one week.

  All the people in the Aegis will be able to fight for now. Their people must also be injured, though it is hard to tell how severe it is. They don't let us learn anything about them. The damn idiots have not even left their room since the fight. This lack of information is to a degree that I still don't know anybody except Anthony Greyvoid. (I don't even know their names.)

  The only person to leave their room presently among them is Anthony. He does seem to be in a pretty bad situation as well. There is no outward injury to the man. Still, his internal injuries leave him a mess. The man is having problems controlling mana. He overdrew on his reserves in the fight as well.

  The Mayfires are the only people in this fight who have managed to come out without injuries. Well, my troop could claim the same thing. The problem is that in terms of fighting capacity, my troop is pretty much useless. Well, we can leave this all for later. The smell of the food makes me want to quicken my footsteps.

  John is a very good cook. On top of that, the man is being pretty liberal with our food right now. Normally, we would be using our food in a planned and controlled manner. Now that I have to empty an entire room of supplies, all of that food is going to rot pretty soon.

  As I am recording this, I enter the camp. It is a pretty simple affair, overall. Each of the factions keeps to itself while John is in the center of the camp. He is stirring a pot that has been placed over a bonfire. His troop is sitting to his left.

  They are presently staring daggers at the aegis, who have finally left their rooms, it looks like. They are situated opposite this group, with John in the middle. The mayfires are also here, though only Alfred Mayfire and Amelia Mayfire are here. There are supposed to be three more mayfires with this bunch. They are presently patrolling the place, making sure that no undead will be sneaking up on us.

  They keep to themselves, though I can't blame them for that. Right now, getting overly friendly with any faction will only cause problems for them. It will make them the enemies of the other factions. Standing with them are the three people of my troop. The two mayfires are presently chatting with Jacob. Andrew and Trevor are just sitting nearby.

  Finally, the scholars are not here at all. They are presently standing guard over our captive. They are not going to leave him anytime soon. The scholars can only work if they remain a mystery even to their allies. At least that is what they believe.

  I also think that this is their way of declaring their neutrality. I know the scholars. It is more than likely that they would have supported the guard corps normally. They have an agenda of their own, it looks like. With that, I can't tell who they will support. They won't make it easy to find out as well.

  As I record this, I realize with a start that everybody in the camp is looking at me. I am just standing at the edge of this camp while staring at everybody. As I realise this, I can feel my face become red as I quickly join my troop along with the mayfires.

  As I get closer to them, I realize that they are using their magic right now. (or at least Alfred is.) The bonfire is a flaming cat that looks like it is playing with the logs that surround it.

  Looking at Alfred though you wouldn't think that he is the one who is maintaining the. I can't give the entire credit to the man, though. It is the nature of their magic that it is easy to maintain. They can leave quite a few of these projections up at any time.

  As I am thinking this, my stomach grumbles. I am ending this log here for now.