I settled in to watch as Samantha flew this flying tank around the city.

I still had access to Mana Sensing, which Samantha had active, of course, so I was able to tell that the vehicle I was in was identical to many of the ones chasing me.

I could also see that these vehicles were designed to have two inhabitants, one driver, and one gunner, but that didn’t seem to stop Samantha from performing both roles, far more effectively than anyone chasing us.

Samantha’s flying style seemed to be based on complete recklessness, disregard for her surroundings, and incredible precision. Every second was a new sensation—acceleration, deceleration, or that pit-like feeling where you are falling and your stomach tries to sink to your butt.

With each successful turn, I felt my lips tick upwards just a little more, into a wider and wider smile.

After watching for a minute, it didn’t actually seem like Samantha was trying to go anywhere. Every once in a while, I would catch the tall city walls off in the distance, but we never actually approached the city walls. Instead, it almost felt like we were show-boating, flying around the city drawing as much attention to us as we could.

And there was a lot of attention on us.

Every once in a while, a pulse of mana would flare towards us, and Samantha would somehow narrowly dodge.

Maybe it was my engrained “hero” impulse that made me consider collateral damage. Of course, this was an illusion, and collateral damage shouldn’t really matter.

But as I paid more and more attention to where the bolts that were fired towards us ended up, I started to realize that they disproportionately landed on the same building.

I couldn’t tell much about the building, except that it had a C-rank Mana Shield, which was accidentally being whittled down by the Metan soldiers’ artillery.

I felt slightly relieved that Samantha wasn’t just taking my body out on a joy-ride, that there was some purpose to this chaos that she was causing.

Samantha banked the flying car up suddenly into a vertical ascent, leaving chasing flying cars to crash directly into the building that I just realized she had been targeting this whole time.

Both flying cars exploded in flames, and at the exact same time, Samantha’s hands—my hands—hit a brightly colored red button on the control panel, and we were ejected out of our flying car, passing through the momentarily overpowered Mana Shield.

Samantha already had a Void Attuned Compressed Mana Crystal in her hands, which she fired once, while in free-fall, directly below her, towards the building below us.

We fell through the ceiling of the building that Samantha was targeting, and I saw with my Mana Sensing that just a second after we passed through, the Mana Shield around the building snapped back into place.

At the same time, the flying car that Samantha had been piloting crashed into a separate building, leaving a massive explosion in its wake.

The Mana Cannon had blown a circular hole through seven floors of the building, and Samantha fell rapidly through them all, until she landed heavily on a concrete floor that was glowing with the telltale signs of a Mana Shield.

But Samantha seemed to be expecting this. She was on her feet in an instant, planting several dozen brick-sized items that were glowing with mana directly on top of the Mana Shield, and then she jumped up through the hole that she had blown in the ceiling, just as the bricks exploded.

I felt the ground under my feet shudder and plaster me up against the ceiling, through the ceiling, and as quickly as I was thrown up, I started to fall back down again, through the freshly destroyed floor and the concrete that I had previously landed on, until I landed in a new room.

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I felt like every inch of my body was burning and bleeding, but somehow, Samantha never stopped moving.

I couldn’t physically see anything through the smoke and dust, but with Mana Sensing, I knew that there were dense spheres of mana around me.

Samantha was rushing the room, tossing things frantically into the Interdimensional Pouch at her side.

And then, almost as fast as she had entered, she left.

I could tell there were dozens, if not hundreds, of valuable-looking glowing spheres of mana, but Samantha left so decisively I was still studying what was surely a vault of some sort.

Samantha moved through the building quickly, drinking a Health Potion almost casually as the building’s security rushed past her, not noticing her under the Invisibility Cloak.

At seemingly random intervals, she would plant another brick—likely a bomb—against a wall or floor.

Samantha climbed a few flights of stairs, and then we entered a lobby, which had a large pair of double doors, which were currently sealed.

The Mana Shield around the building had been fixed, and I could see a dense wall of mana around us.

There were a few dozen people in the lobby, many of them lying on the ground, with their hands raised up in the air.

Around them were the patrolling security guards. From their mana signatures, I could only guess they were all over level 100.

I couldn’t help but wonder what Samantha had gotten me into.

One of the patrolling guards—a werewolf—seemed to notice Samantha, and Samantha shot her point-blank with a Void-attuned Compressed Mana Crystal.

I felt the familiar pain of the crystal, but Samantha didn’t so much as flinch, continuing towards the double-door exit..

I heard Samantha count in my head.

She moved towards the door, raising a Mana Crystal in her left hand and a C-rank knife in her right.

The various bombs that Samantha had planted around the building set off at the same time, causing the Mana Shield to flicker for a brief second.

In that same second, Samantha killed two of the guards at the door, one receiving a full-forced Mana Crystal blow to the chest, and the other receiving a knife to the throat.

Just as Samantha opened the doors and slipped out of the building, a heavy wave of magic enveloped the whole building.

I could feel the ambient mana around me shudder, and I saw everyone outside the building—the dozens of soldiers that were quickly forming a perimeter around the building—speed up, as if they were moving in fast forward.

Samantha kept moving, painstakingly slowly, until suddenly, she was out of the Time Dilation effect.

“There!”

“The entrance!”

Artillery fire rained down towards where Samantha was, turning the street into cracked brimstone.

Samantha sped up, tanking several of the area of effect spells, and dodging everything she could.

It only took a second for her to reach the first perimeter—the soldiers that had surrounded the building.

Samantha weaved through the foot soldiers easily, several of them noticing her somehow, even though we were still under the Invisibility Cloak, but none of them were fast enough to react to her presence.

As Samantha moved, she fired her Mana Cannon with incredible precision, targeting people hundreds of feet away.

The Mana Cannon itself was a silent weapon, and Samantha was using Void and Air Crystals, which made her position slightly harder to pinpoint. That said, I could tell from the positioning of the army that the perimeter was reforming, around her current location.

One of the flying transports above us was tracking us with what seemed like a laser pointer, allowing other soldiers to open fire on our position. But the laser pointer was always a half second behind Samantha’s actual location, and with Samantha’s boosted Agility, a half second was a long time.

Suddenly, I felt a powerful aura slam into me. I felt our body being telekinetically lifted in the air.

The moment Samantha’s feet left the air, Samantha stopped any kind of movement, likely realizing it was futile.

The telekinetic force ripped the hood of the Invisibility cloak off my head, revealing my head to the Metan soldiers around me.

“An Imperial Shadow,” I heard the voice appear around me, as though the sound originated from the air itself, rather than one location.

Flying in front of me, with no clear equipment or wings to support himself, I saw, and felt, the presence of the most powerful being I had ever encountered.

The man wore blood red battle robes with the Metan crest on the chest, and numerous bars and stars that were likely military recognitions. He had a burly figure, and a completely bald head, with a sharp nose and hawk-like eyes.

I felt my own body bend against my will, arms twisted behind my back and knees bent, as though I was kneeling.

The mana itself around the man bent to the man’s will, as though the man had complete control of everything around him.

“Impudent,” the man said, clenching his fist.

As he did, I felt the bones in both my hands shatter.

As the man in the red robe stared intently at me, I could sense the soldiers around us forming up, a half dozen flying tanks training their weapons on me.

Welp, we’re fucked.