I was really fast. I’d never really measured my top speed in my not-true form, but I knew I had to be inhumanly fast to outrun a Mana Gorger. Frank, although he couldn’t hope to match my top speed, also ran a fair bit faster than one would expect from a guy his age.

Casey was the only one who didn’t get any physical enhancements with her true form, but she made up for it with her intelligence and ability to actually use the staff once we got to the top. For now, though, I had to carry her. Not that I minded too much.

“Ten o’clock. We need to go around,” she murmured in my ear and I immediately swerved to the right to avoid the tourists Casey had detected with her superior ears.

It was a very simple formation we had come up with, but it worked. Each one of us had a role to play. Frank carried our stuff in the back, I carried Casey at the front, and Casey acted as our sonar.

With that said, most of the journey through the overgrown base of the mountain went without a hitch. We hadn’t run into any animals, either, probably because this was so close to the city.

Once the trees thinned out, though, we began to have a few problems. There were a couple of people milling about and we had to sneak around. Worse still, since we weren’t using the main path, it was harder to traverse.

“Two  o’clock,” Casey warned.

I grimaced.

Right in the only direction we could feasibly go without having to backtrack. Maybe we could hide somewhere around here and wait till they passed through?

I eyed the nearby boulder and exchanged a glance and a nod with Frank before slowing down and stopping behind it. I let Casey down and we used the little downtime to drink some water.

Ugh. I wished we had borrowed that invisibility cloak thing from Elyssa. It would have made this so much easier…

Not too long after, my ears also picked up some noise coming from further up the mountain.

We settled in and made sure to stay quiet while the voices got closer.

“–crappy resolution,” a feminine voice said, annoyance oozing from her tone.

“Shut up… I couldn’t afford a better camera,” the male voice grumbled. “And it’s enough! It’s not like we need super HD shots for this anyway. You’re just being too much of a perfectionist.”

A scoff.

“It’s my marks on the line here! I could have bought us a better camera if you just asked.”

“It’s a group project,” the male voice snapped. “Whatever, dude! Stop bitching already.”

“Don’t call me ‘dude’!”

The argument continued but I tuned it out. They seemed to be photographers working on a school project or something. Which meant that we needed to make extra sure that they wouldn’t spot us. Someone claiming to have seen animal people was one thing, but having actual photos was another. Sure, a lot of people would simply assume it was photoshopped or AI art but one could never be too careful.

Luckily, the two were too busy arguing about this and that and weren’t looking around, so we just had to wait it out. We didn’t even risk poking our heads out. No need.

Unfortunately, just as they drew closer, I spotted something in the sky. A small flying device with propellers and a camera–

My eyes widened and I immediately pressed myself against the boulder harder, gesturing for the others to do the same. We waited with bated breaths, praying that the quadcopter wouldn’t turn its eye on us while the two strangers passed our hiding space.

Five minutes later, I let out a sigh of relief.

“What was that about?” Frank whispered.

“They had a quadcopter with a camera.”

“Oh… shit.”

“Yeah.”

With nothing more to say, we continued on our way up the mountain in the same formation as before.

After about half an hour, it became impossible for us to safely run while I was carrying Casey, so I let her down and we continued at a slower pace. Unfortunately, neither one of us had any experience with rock climbing and we didn’t have any equipment either – should have really packed something, hindsight was twenty twenty – so we had to take a lot of detours.

“How high should we go? All the way to the top?” Frank asked.

“Well, ideally, yeah. But then again, people would probably see us all the way at the top,” Casey admitted as she glanced up the mountain. She then pointed at one of the lower peaks and said, “I think that place could be good enough… hopefully.”

Hopefully.

I still felt like we had no idea what we were doing. No idea whether this would even work. But we weren’t going to turn around and go back home now.

We set off again.

It took us about fifteen more minutes before we found ourselves just below the peak we had been aiming for. Unfortunately, we hadn’t realized that there was no good way to walk all the way up. We had to climb.

“Okay, it’s fine. Only Casey needs to get up, right? We’ll just help you up and catch you if you fall,” Frank reassured.

“Right… Okay then.” Casey nodded, nervous.

She then grabbed the staff out of the backpack Frank had been carrying, double checked it to make sure everything was in order, and then further pulled out one more item. It was the same crystalline orb with glowing runes she had given Mom to draw magic into her.

“First, I’ll use the staff with the divine crystal to purge the plague, and then I’ll swap the crystal with the mana conductor and drain all the mana from the world,” she explained at my frown.

“Oh, right.”

Somehow, I’d forgotten that we also needed to get rid of the mana afterwards if we didn’t want to permanently turn our world into one with magic.

However, now that I looked at the mana conductor and the staff closer, something uncomfortable nagged at me. I wasn’t entirely sure what it was though.

I shook my head, deciding it wasn’t important for the time being.

To make things easier for Casey, I took all the magical items and climbed first to find a relatively safe route for her to use. The idea was that I would leave the items at the top and Casey would then climb up herself and do her thing.

I was about halfway through when I heard Frank swear.

“Shit! The drone!”

I froze and gripped the rock harder before tilting my head backward. The drone hovered several meters away from me and had its camera trained right at us.

Crap! It had to be those photographer students. I hadn’t been paying attention! I hadn’t thought their drone would find us now.

I grit my teeth in frustration.

This was bad. We were being recorded and there was no doubt those two would share the footage with the world. We needed to stop that.

And then I saw a blast of magic whizz by the drone, missing it by a hair as it swerved to the side.

Shit! Was Casey trying to blast it out of the air?! What was she doing?! We could have passed ourselves as cosplayers or something before, but now the thing had seen her use magic!

Several more bolts of magic flew and missed it and the thing began to retreat.

I began to panic and despite being in a very precarious position, I let go of the cliff with one hand, reached into a pocket of my battle dress, pulled out one of the Infinity Shurikens I’d brought with me, and whipped it in the drone’s direction with incredible precision.

It hit its camera, but didn’t hinder its ability to fly at all.

I threw the shuriken again immediately as it reformed in my hand, this time cutting into one of its propellers, causing it to fall out of the sky and crash into the cliff just below us.

I took a deep shaky breath and sighed.

Problem dealt with… for now. But I just knew this would come back to bite us later. We needed to make sure the camera’s memory card got wrecked later.

I mentally shook my head, pocketed the shuriken, and grabbed the rock again, before continuing to climb.

It didn’t take too long after that and nothing else interrupted me. Once I got to the top, I plopped the staff with the crystal as well as the mana conductor.

And then I stopped as I stared at them, a memory prodding at me.

I finally remembered.

I hadn’t noticed because they were still separated, but… The staff with the mana conductor instead of the divine crystal was… the weapon Casey had used in my dream in the fight against the octopus.

This wasn’t going to work.

We were probably going to have to go fight the boss right after this failed.

“Fuck…” I muttered, before shaking myself out of it and climbing back down.

“Dammit, the stupid drone…” Frank ranted once I got back.

I opened my mouth, intending to tell them about the staff… but then I just sighed in defeat.

“Let’s just… do the thing. We’ll need to destroy the drone’s memory card too,” I said as I looked out below, trying to spot the drone’s owners. I couldn’t see them anywhere, though; they had to be further away.

“Right…” Casey sighed as well. “Let’s do this then.”

With my tips and instructions and Frank’s constant hovering below to catch her if she fell, Casey quickly made it to the top.

She grabbed the staff, took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and then lifted the staff into the air.

Frank and I watched in anticipation as the light inside the divine crystal got brighter, faster, and more erratic.

Our surroundings began to get oddly heavy and I had the distinct impression that space itself began to shake.

Then Casey opened her eyes, lifted her staff even higher, and the entire world flashed around us.

For a split second, I found myself floating in an endless space, countless colorful galaxies surrounding me.