We are on the verge of war. I don't think that I need to explain this to anybody who has come to the mountain in the last few weeks. While nobody is speaking about this openly, the signs are everywhere.

  The guard crops are busy negotiating to have more food added to our granaries. (Which has become a challenge since the fiasco in the Mayfire Castle.) The formations corps are busy double-checking our defensive lines. After all, they can't fail when they have to be used in the heat of battle. That would be a disaster.

  The most disturbing news in all of this has been that the legion has started to act. Well, I have heard only a few rumors about this, of course, so I don't know what the truth is. The legion naturally won't let their moves be detected that easily. Still, I have my sources, and I can tell that they are acting. The only people that I don't know anything about at this moment are the scholars.

  Even if they must be doing something, though. Other than that, the black mountain has begun to call back all of its forces to the hexmountain. The only reason that they would be doing something like that is if they were preparing for a siege. Every day, I can sense new airships popping up here in the castle and also down there in the shipyards. The sheer quantity of people returning to the place makes it clear that there is going to be a fight.

  Well, none of the truly powerful people have yet to make a move, so there is that. Things might still be a bit manageable if they are not acting. Even stuck in here, I can tell that the hexmountain is unusually active. That is why it is such a pain for me to sit here, imprisoned in my own room. It feels like I am missing out on something very important, right now.

  You see, I have been imprisoned in my own room. It is mostly for my safety. After all, I did attack a person of the Aegis. They tend to be touchy fuckers at the best of times. Now they will demand my head, I am sure.

  Though I am sure that my master intended this to be a punishment as well. My master knows very well that being free like this is about the worst punishment that he could have given me. That is the only reason that the man would have left me here with nothing but the bloody fang.

  I have been spending the last couple of weeks in my room, staring at the four walls of my room. I literally haven't seen anything else for the last couple of weeks. There is literally nothing for me to do in here. Well, there is one thing that I can do. The one thing that my master intended me to do by imprisoning me in here. That is to cultivate.

  The problem is that I am not able to get enough focus to enter into a meditative state. This has been the case for most of the time that I have spent here.

  That is why I find myself spending the last couple of weeks trying to build up the motivation to cultivate. It is not like I have not cultivated during this period. It is just that I have spent as much time staring at the walls of the place as I did actually cultivating.

  Now, I am sure that my master has some excuse ready for not giving me anything else to work on. He will claim that he wanted me to focus purely on cultivation. That I am not supposed to be wasting my time like this. I just feel like the man is trying to punish me without punishing me, you see.

  Anyway, I guess that I should speak about my cultivation. After all, that is the thing that I should have made some progress in. Well, I have reached forty percent of my fourth slab. I haven't yet started linking up with the third slab. (nor the second for that matter.)

  Well, I have to admit that it is a pretty lackluster performance. I have realised that at least in the last couple of weeks. I really suck at cultivation. In my defense, this is not an issue of skill. It is more of an issue of motivation. I have never really cultivated much, you see.

  There is no grand reason for this other than that cultivation has never been too useful to me. The thing is that there are basically three reasons that people at my age even cultivate. My issue is that none of these reasons applies to me.

  The first reason is to show off. After all, the greater your cultivation, the flashier the spells that you can use. You want to show off, you will have to cultivate to a certain degree.

  In my case, my ability to show off is not dependent on my ability to cultivate. If I want to do something flashy, I can just make a formation to do that. I don't need to spend my time on cultivation to do so.

  The second reason is the pressure of the elders. After all, every family tends to show off using its young masters (or its equivalent.) The greater your cultivation, the more the respect you will earn among your peers.

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  That doesn't really work for me because, in my case, my master is actively dissuading me from doing so. Everybody else is trying to reach the stage beyond as quickly as possible. In my case, I don't even know what the stage is called.

  Finally, people cultivate for the practical benefits of cultivation. That is the boost to your mana reserves that it grants you. After all, most people have to rely on only their mana reserves to power their spells.

  This also doesn't really work for me since I am a formation mage. I don't need to power formations on my own. I just need to link it to a mana battery for that. The only real use of my own mana that I have is my control strings. Even that has such a minor mana consumption that it doesn't motivate me to cultivate much.

  Most formations mage have to at least cultivate until the fifth stage. After all, having a mana sense tends to make so much of our work easier. I don't even need to do that. I naturally had a mana sense from birth. (Which tends to be activated when you are at the fifth slab.)

  At least with the bloody fang, this has finally been rectified a bit. You see, with the linking spell, there is finally some use for my vital mana. The only problem is that for it to be useful, I will need to link it with my foundation slabs. I can do that now, but the process is just a bit too painful for me. I don't want to do it just yet. After all, I have a feeling that I will be entering into action soon enough. To leave myself vulnerable in that way is dangerous.

  All in all, I don't really have a lot of motivation for cultivation. That is especially a bad thing, since you really need a lot of motivation to cultivate. There is nothing more boring than cultivating bound in a single room like this. The problem is that everybody else seems to think that this is the best way to cultivate.

  They inscribe the runes of the foundation slab every day, in the hopes of completing it. I have never understood where people get the energy to spend their time in this manner.

  My peers must have spent at least a few years in closed-room cultivation, like I am supposed to be doing. (Which is why all of them are about to enter into the stage beyond.) They all actually prefer to spend all of their time in closed-door cultivation if they could. For them, the problem is that they have to get distracted by doing their work.

  In my case, I actually cultivate better when cultivating is something that I do in the middle of other work. I have tried to explain that quite a few times, but nobody seems to get it. They all seem hellbent on getting me locked into a room like this.

  When cultivation is the only work that I am supposed to be doing, I tend to get distracted very quickly. Even right now, I am supposed to be cultivating, but I have started this log.

  Well, I guess that the free time that I have been given is not fully a waste of time. Though. You see, I have been thinking about my kit whenever I am not cultivating. I have not built anything for it yet, but I have certainly been planning for it.

  I guess I should explain what a kit is. Well, a kit is a set of formations that every formation mage must have. These formations are made to tackle any situation that I might find myself in. These formations usually tend to be the only method of attack we have in most cases.

  I have been pretty lax in recent times regarding my formation kit. The main reason for that has been the bloody fang. The blood fang just boosts my power so much that all of my other formations have basically become useless. That is why most of my formations from my kit were left here in this very room, incidentally. Well, there is no use thinking of my previous kit. My master must have already destroyed all of them in that cleansing of his.

  Well, the Bone Pits have clearly shown me just how over-reliant I have been getting on my sword. I have barely been able to fight in the bone pits because of my overreliance on the sword and its mana.

  I will have to correct that soon enough. The kit is the best way to do that. The only problem is that making a kit is a long-term commitment. It is not something that I will be able to make anytime soon.

  I will need to make at least five formations. Each formation will focus on attacking, defending, support, healing, and surveillance, respectively. Now that I think about it, I can stop worrying about healing and surveillance for now. After all, anything I make will be worse than the boost that I will get from the sword. I also won't be going to a place devoid of people like the bone pits, for me to not have easy access to blood mana.

  That still means that I need to make three formations focusing on attack, defense, and support. I don't just need to make them. I also need to make them work together. I also need to think about how I am going to power them. The best solution would be to power it with my own mana.

  The problem with that is that it is going to limit my options quite a bit. I can easily power a class nine formation for a while. (And a class eight formation for a bit.), but I certainly can't power three of them at the same time.

  I could rely on mana stones, but that is going to introduce an additional dependency. I will have to maintain a mana stone reserve. (Which, granted, is not particularly difficult for a formation mage. It is still something that I am reluctant to do. It just introduces an additional weakness.)

  There are also other unconventional methods of powering formations. I will have to consider all of those as well. The problem is that every question I ask, I can think of ten more questions at the back of my mind. Formation making is a very practical art. You cannot really answer any of the questions without actually starting work.

  Without formation cores to experiment with, I am going to be stuck. That is another reason that I can't really work on my cultivation. Do you know how annoying it is to have questions haunt you like that and not be able to solve them?

  It is annoying enough to snap me out of any focus I achieve whenever my thoughts end up in that direction. Well, I find myself getting annoyed just discussing it. I will continue this log when I actually end up achieving anything.