Laravel webpack unable to locate Mix file

Trying to use versioning and i get this error .

Unable to locate Mix file: /core/public/css/app.css. (View: C:\laragon\www\project\core\resources\views\master.blade.php)

My webpack.mix.js file

const mix = require('laravel-mix');


mix.js('resources/js/app.js', 'public/js').extract(['vue']);
   mix.sass('resources/sass/app.scss', 'public/css');

   if (mix.inProduction()) {
      mix.version();
  }

header

<link href="{{ mix('/core/public/css/app.css', '/core/public') }}" rel="preload" as="style"
    onload="this.onload=null;this.rel='stylesheet'">
<script src="{{ mix('/core/public/js/manifest.js'), '/core/public'}}"></script>
<script src="{{ mix('/core/public/js/vendor.js'), '/core/public' }}"></script>
<script src="{{ mix('/core/public/js/app.js'), '/core/public' }}"></script>

mix-manifest.json output

{
    "/js/app.js": "/js/app.js?id=170c03d22dcc6f5e5936",
    "/css/app.css": "/css/app.css?id=3306ee8f312fb58dd115",
    "/js/manifest.js": "/js/manifest.js?id=41f053ba9a94d81b39f8",
    "/js/vendor.js": "/js/vendor.js?id=cf78339b219ecdecb320"
}

File structure inside project is

core
└───public
│   │   mix-manifest.json
│   │
│   └───js
│       │   app.js
│       │   manifest.js
│       │   vendor.js
│       |
|       css
|       |   app.css 
|       |
|
|
|
|''' 
└───webpack.mix.js
|...

I can't seem to find a way to sort it out, any help would be appreciated, thank you and regards.