Life didn't get easier, even in another world.

"Could you find anything?"

Kairen opened his eyes and turned towards Rai. He massaged his eyes that were sore and shook his head.

"No. There are a lot of traces in here, I can't tell which one belongs to the thieves. Plus, the thieves' traces must've gotten weaker as this place was robbed a few weeks ago."

Kairen stepped back and canceled his spell.

"Yeah, a lot of people have visited this place so it is no wonder that you can't find the thieves' trace. It's enough, let's move to the other mine."

Rai turned away from Kairen and walked towards one of the agents guarding the mine. The agent started talking as soon as he saw Rai approaching him.

"Oh, are you done?"

"Yes. We'll be heading to the next mine now."

"I'll prepare the car right away."

"Thank you so much."

The agent ran out of the mine as soon as their small talk was over. Rai and Kairen also followed him and left the mine.

There was a car parked not too far from the mine. They used that car to visit mines and investigate them since morning.

Kairen sat in the car, sighed, and massaged his forehead.

"How many more mines are left?"

Rai opened the car's door and sat in the back seat next to Kairen.

"Three more. Why? Are you tired?"

Kairen leaned back in his seat and looked out of the window.

"Not really, only a little bit."

"Hmm."

The driver also sat in the car and the vehicle started moving.

"We've only visited three locations though. Is casting that spell too exhausting?"

"Not that much..."

"Now that I look closely at your face, you look a little bit pale. Should we stop a little bit to rest?"

Kairen looked at Rai's concerned face and waved his head in the air. 

"I just lack mana. It's fine. It'll refill by itself till we arrive at the mine."

Kairen was indeed tired. He had to visit mines the whole day and use Trace magic in each mine a few times in search of any traces of the thieves.

This morning, the whole unit had to split themselves into groups to do various works. 

One group, which consisted of Glenn, Asa, and Reyan, stayed back in the office to arrange things about both the mascry case and the painting mission and search for any information about the case. 

Team leader Dains and deputy team leader Bray also stayed behind because they had to attend a few meetings.

The rest of the members separated themselves into groups with one mage in each team and visited mascry mines. They each visited some looted mines and some that weren't looted. They had to search the mines using magic to see if there were any traces or evidence.

Of course, the mines were investigated thoroughly before by the police and other SMF agents, but team leader Dains insisted that they needed to check everything themselves. 

In addition to that, Kairen had used up almost all of his mana yesterday while training. He was still tired because of that. Now, he understood how thoughtless he was.

'I shouldn't use all my mana while training. What if I need my mana after that like today? What if we were sent to kill monsters or something like that instead of just investigating? What would I do then?'

Kairen sighed.

'I should've thought about this before. I guess I should always save some mana in case it is needed.'

Kairen snapped out of his thought after hearing Rai's voice again.

"Alright but tell me if you need to rest. There is no need to rush we still have plenty of time."

"Thanks."

Kairen thanked Rai and turned to look outside the window. The car continued to move towards their fourth destination, driving smoothly on the road.

. . . . . . . . .

"This is the last mine we will be visiting today."

Kairen got out of the car and looked around. It was already getting dark because they had to spend a lot of time traveling between mines by car. They used teleportation magic at first to go to the first mine but traveled the rest by car as the mines weren't too far away from each other.

Kairen followed Rai and entered the last mascry mine that they would visit today, no, it would be better to call it a previous mascry mine.

Kairen walked inside the mine and cast the spell, using Trace magic to look for any evidence of the thieves. 

Different colors and different lines and paths that one would never be able to see without using magic entered his view after casting the spell.

Kairen looked around, but all he could see was a mixture of indistinguishable colors and shapes. There was no way someone could understand with one of these belonged to the thieves who stole the ores.

Kairen canceled his spell, walked further inside the mine, and cast it again.

After examining the surroundings, he canceled it again and walked further inside, and repeated the same thing again and again. 

The results were the same nonetheless. 

"Still nothing?"

"Nope."

Rai sighed and looked around the mine.

"This mine is the last one that got looted before the incident in Bordkly and there weren't many visitors after that... I thought we might find something here..."

Kairen canceled his spell and turned towards Rai. He massaged his eyes as they were sore after staring at all those colorful things.

"There should at least be something that the thieves touched or someplace that they went alone for me to be able to narrow down the traces."

"I know that. It's fine, we already expected that we wouldn't find anything in these places. This place was robbed around one week ago. The traces must've gotten shallow by now. There is no way we could find the thieves by examining only this mine."

Rai wrote down something on the notebook in his hands while still talking.

"If we really want to find something about the thieves, we have to visit the three mines in Bordkly. We will never find anything if we keep searching these empty mines."

Kairen tilted his head.

"Then why don't we visit them?"

Rai put his notebook in his bag and took out a bottle from it and threw it to Kairen.

"Do you think they would let the special military agents of a foreign country, especially the one that they are not on good terms with, enter their country that easily only to visit a few mines? I don't think they are that stupid."

Kairen looked at the bottle that he had received from Rai with confusion while thinking 'Why did he give this to me?' and opened his mouth at the same time.

"Then what are we supposed to do? How are we going to find the thieves?"

Kairen opened the bottle and drank what was inside, only to notice that it was one of those potions that he had previously received from the team leader.

Rai shrugged his shoulders in Kairen's answer.

"Not sure. They are negotiating about the issue right now. We will know about the results sooner or later, but I don't think we'll get the chance to visit those mines. Anyway, our job is done. Let's go back."

Rai said that and walked towards the exit with a teleportation device in his hand.

"Alright."

Kairen followed him to exit the mine.

'Soil...'

He looked down at the ground while walking towards the exit. Huge piles of soil were seen here and there inside the empty mine. 

It was said that the thieves were able to extract ores using a strange method. It looked like they had moved all the soil surrounding the ore and extracted it at the first glance. 

It was easy saying that they had moved the sold and took the ores, but it was something impossible to do. 

Mascry is one of the hardest ores to extract. They are all found in places with hard ground and lots of rocks. If someone wants to extract the ores as quickly as possible without harming them, they had to break the rocks into small pieces and dig the ground slowly. 

Also, everything had to be done by expert miners as machines weren't helpful in this work at all. There was a risk of harming the ore if one used a machine so everything was done by human hands.

However, looking at the mine right now, there was not a single rock here. No traces of stones breaking or digging the ground or anything like that. It was as if anything surrounding the ores had all turned into soil.

There were different theories about how the thieves were able to take all the mines and run away in mere few hours, but none of them had been proved right yet.

'Maybe, they used some high-technology device... Or a person who could control an earth-related attribute...'

Kairen shrugged his shoulders and walked past the pile of soil.

'Anyway, we'll find out about it sooner or later.'

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