The dark blue robed wizard stood at the end of the corridor, hands clasped behind his back, his gaze slowly sweeping over the crooked graffiti.
"Everyone." He spoke, his voice not loud, yet it drew everyone's attention.
"We've already spent nearly six hours here."
Everyone present immediately understood what he meant.
Six hours was indeed far too long for a mission that required handling multiple locations.
The wizard teams that had chosen more popular sites had likely already dealt with one or two anomalies and were on their way to their next targets.
"You should all know the strength of these anomalies by now," the dark blue robed wizard continued. "To be honest, they aren't that powerful. Whether it's Salty Finger or Graffiti, their energy level isn't high. Their traits are just troublesome—especially that state of merging with the rules and possessing no physical form, which leaves us with strength but nowhere to use it."
The young witch nodded. "If our output level hadn't been restricted, even with such troublesome traits, they wouldn't have been this difficult to handle."
"That's exactly the problem." The dark blue robed wizard turned to face the crowd. "These things aren't inherently hard to deal with. If we drag this out too long, the teams that have finished dealing with their anomalies may very well come here and meddle. If we're unlucky, we could be judged as having failed the mission and lose our exploration slots—we can't just stand by and watch other teams snatch up all the slots to explore the anomalous plane."
He put it bluntly, yet no one present thought it inappropriate.
They were all high-ranking wizards, not hot-blooded youngsters.
In this mission, dealing with anomalies and saving civilians were the stated goals, but everyone knew perfectly well what the true driving