3 Chapter 1

Phanice slowly stirred awake, checking the time she had once again woke before her alarm rang. Perfect she preferred being before time rather than on time due to her line of work. Getting up she started her daily morning routine and in the next fifteen minutes, she was done. Now standing in front of the mirror dressed in black flat heels, a black office suit with a white blouse that was slightly opened to reveal a decent amount of cleavage that was not too much and not too little but kept professional. Putting on her glasses she then tied her hair into a ponytail to complete the secretary look. She picked up her work bag and car keys from her bedside desk and left her room and walked to the end of the corridor where she entered an elevator that took her into the basement that housed her car.

She got into her car and drove out of the garage whose doors opened up automatically all thanks to ALICE her home AI, ALICE stood for Artificial Living Intelligence, the only thing she needed was a body and she'd have the best housemate ever. [ Have a good day Miss]. "You too ALICE", Phanice replied while driving off towards Rogue Inc. where she worked as the CEO'S secretary. Driving in the underground tunnel road system that was implemented together with the bunker project to house civilians underground after the Mage attacks became frequent and the mages ensured they destroyed their homes or 'villages' as they called it. Though people still lived on the surface, they were required to have an underground bunker built under their houses so they could have a place to relocate and live when the mages attack. This also helped in relocating victims from fallen sectors or towns as they were previously called that didn't have the capital to support such infrastructure.

The underground road system was a two-way road fitted with a top-level surveillance system and lighting system that gave light reminiscent of the sun. Had she not have been a mage, though a fallen one, she could have believed it was the sun rays that were seeping in through the air shafts on the ceiling of the tunnel. The source of the light, the light orbs, were round orbs made of a mixture of tempered glass and adamantine crystals placed inside the air shafts to give the illusion that the light was coming from the surface. The adamantine crystals were manufactured to give the light produced by the orbs the same hue as the sun. this further spoke volumes of the human's tenacity and adaptation and at the rate at which the mana levels were rising in the capital, it wouldn't be long before the number of awakened increased and helped the non-mages turn the tide of this one-sided battle.

But only for a bit because unless they start getting awakened humans who could cast magic then they were doomed to fall. As a fallen mage she knew how powerful the mages were since the tower lords have never once stepped on the battlefield again to help the acolytes during their excursions or even when the noble faction sent their mage teams to gather mana orbs and hunt beasts for alchemic materials. The only time they did was during the Great Hunt when the first group of awakened faced off with the mages and were deemed a threat by the mage society and so they sent one tower lord. Only one and he wiped out every one of the awakened in one spell then left.

Time was all the non-mages needed and the Mage society would start seeing them as a threat but that was unlikely to happen any time soon. her investigations of late have been showing an increase in the mage society movement, something big had happened that required the usage of a high number of mana-cores and that meant trouble for the non-mages since the mage society will need to restock on mana-cores and that meant they would need to start raid parties on the villages very soon. And as always, the humans would fall since she wasn't sure they were prepared enough to face the mages head-on and thus be forced to relocate further to the south towards the Capital of the human territory, to rebuild again and amass their strength and numbers.

Parking her car, she was startled to see her boss's car which only meant one thing the raids had started and she was neither before time nor on time. She needed to adjust her alarm again.

 ***                                                                       

In one of the offices on the 100th floor of the watchtower, Rogue Inc. headquarters, a meeting was currently taking place that would determine the fate of the humans in the upcoming war.