Beams from the headlights of a tank burned the rest of Page's vision. Her legs were sluggish, having been shocked with a current earlier. Even with the healing spell pouring from her fingers, she couldn't get her frayed nerves to work, much less properly. Beside her, Dara's bobbed hair bounced on her head as she darted along with Page. The incompetent mule just had to trigger the trap system—something all mystics were taught the first day of training.

Page didn't even want to be with the woman, but the Premier was bent on getting this mission done for their plans to progress and Dara was the only other mystic available for deployment. The Ganara Upheaval left its mark on all mystic communities throughout the land, and the Domain wasn't spared from it. The Premier has been pressuring the scouts to rescue more mystics, to train their people in the art of spells more effectively. They needed soldiers, people who could stand up against the Laic Empire's hostile takeover and protect the future generation of mystics who weren't even here yet.

But Dara's head was in another realm, and Page simply had no patience to ride along with that. Just earlier, before they left the Domain, the girl had the gall to ask Page what spell would be ideal for removing gum from her trousers. Page could have thrown the girl out, but quarreling with one's partner hours before a mission was a way to get one killed.

And true enough, Dara, as inexperienced as she was in the field, stepped wrong inside the containment facility housing a rare strain of the magus ore, setting off a lab-wide emergency shut down. Page had been doing missions with varying degrees of success since she was first an apprentice, she had never anticipated this kind of amateur mishap, much less from someone who had lived through three apprentice recognition ceremonies since getting her badge. How were the teams Dara got lumped into survived without getting caught? Were they doing something that Page didn't? Perhaps, she ought to have a chat with the leaders once she got back.

A metal bullet whizzed past Page's ear before embedding itself on the arched door frame of the facility. Alright. If she got back at all.

"Halt!" An order issued from behind thundered over the cloud of footsteps and whirring laser rifles. Page gritted her teeth, circling a grip on Dara's arm and yanking her into a corridor divergent from the straight way out. What was the probability of losing the soldiers who practically grew up in this facility? Soldiers who had been trained to memorize every nook and cranny of the site they were to protect?

Darkness dawned on them, plunging their surroundings with a thick, inky veil. Dara's frantic breaths echoed in the haze, and Page felt her squirm against the hold on her arm.

"What are you doing?" Dara demanded, her high-pitched voice more annoying than scary.

Page rolled her eyes, mostly because she was certain the girl wouldn't see it. "I'm saving your ass, damn it," she retorted, digging around her pockets for a shine-stick. She found one in the left pocket of her vest. With a bit of her mana, she fed the biodegradable canister with it. A little to spare for an arduous journey ahead. It would be best to conserve her supply. None of them knew what was bound to happen beyond this corridor.

"We're taking the back route," Page continued, resuming their run with the shine-stick at the lead. It should help weathering through the immediate roadblocks like exposed plumbing pipes, gaps in the metal walkway suspended over raging waters, and the occasional wild foot of her mission partner jutting between her legs. Seriously, couldn't this girl even run properly?

Dara sniffed in disdain. She was a fan of this endeavor and escapade as much as Page was. "And then what?" she demanded. "I'm not following you to my death. We didn't even get the ore."

Page leaped off the end of the walkway, letting Dara jump ahead of her. It would be better for her to watch her partner from the back than lose her first when the Laics managed to catch up. They haven't lost their pursuers still, just delayed them until they rerouted and pinpointed where Page and Dara were going. It would only be a matter of time, especially if the Laics used those strange machines capable of thinking for themselves. What were those called? AY? AR? Whatever.

"Never mind the ore," Page answered through heaving breaths. "We'll come back for them later. RIght now, our priority is to not get captured."

Which was a tall order, considering it was Dara who was with her. If the girl hadn't tripped the alarms, they wouldn't even be in this mess to begin with. Page had been in and out of the facility since she was fifteen. It made her a valuable asset in the Premier's eyes, but it also meant she would be assigned to almost every retrieval mission the Domain encountered. Ever.

Her side started hurting a while ago, but she bit her lip to tell herself to focus on running. This was a huge facility. Without a hoverboard or at least a broomstick, it'd take a moment to scale it from end to end. Which made it a perfect hiding spot for the largest supply of magus ore in the entire continent and the favorite mugging spot of the mystic communities who wanted to get their hands on some mana.

That was how the Laics operated. No one knew where they came from or why they insisted on bulldozing the entire continent with their antics, but the mystics saw it happen before their eyes. It was as if the Laic Empire rose from the ground overnight, a sudden conqueror in a vast sea of unconquered lands. In reality, the empire had been slow in forming over a century or so, being made up of people who couldn't sense the mana in the air and, therefore, couldn't cast spells and perform the mystic arts.

Before, the mystics ruled the world, spreading knowledge and skills throughout their Domains, but soon, armed Laics rose from the east, bearing strange tools and weapons that could kill without using a drop of mana. That was the beginning of the Mystic Empire's fall. Soon, Laics advanced, developing metal arms and vehicles that moved on their own. Soon, their tanks and jets required no present drivers and pilots, which meant they could lose as many hunks of scrap metal parts as they could afford.

Worse, mystic arts didn't work on Laic devices. Whatever they used in it was something the Domain was dying to know. But they had realized the threat too late. By the time the Laics were recognized as the tyrants that they were, they had already razed the Capital to the ground, reigning over it and its resources for the next fifty years. And that much time enabled them to seize control of the norms, power structures, and society as a whole.

The once revered mystic arts was soon declared illegal. Magus ores, the main source of mana that was essential to the mystics, were confiscated and stored in scattered facilities throughout the continent. It was only ten years ago when the Premier learned of the research in the Laic labs done to the ores. Page didn't understand all of the details herself, but the gist was that the Laics harvested mana, transforming it into another kind of energy, which they, in turn, use to power most of their industries. The Engineer—a name used in the Domain to refer to the head of the Laic Empire—was at the forefront of all these innovations. To bring down the Empire and bring the control back to the mystics, the remaining soldiers in the Domain would have to take on The Engineer first.

And he was hidden inside the Laic capital. Page had never been to even its edge, but from the reports she heard, it resembled the Domain for all its protection, military tactics, and combat might. How they managed to get their hands on mystic knowledge was beyond even the Premier's imagination.

They swerved away from the darkness and punched through a corridor flushed with white light. Page recognized this area. It led to an atrium where the facility's workers go to relax. If they could get into uniforms, they could walk out of the front door without any qualms.

"Okay, here's the plan," Page said to Dara while looking ahead for any sign of danger. When she was met with silence, she whirled to find only empty air where Dara should have been.

"Ah, svitsvak," Page cursed, throwing her arms up in the air. Dara had taken a wrong turn, and whether that was purposeful or a genuinely stupid mistake was for the Premier to decide once Page turned in a passive-aggressive mission report in a day or two. This was the worst mission ever.