Throughout this entire day, Mary was more fidgety than usual, and Shu picked up on it.
"Hey Mary, are you okay?"
"No, there's a chance today everything I worked for will get destroyed."
Mary said that and seemed a bit like she had lost her mind.
They reached a plateau, and it was already dusk, but Mary didn't want them to stop.
"Mary, do you know if there's another plateau ahead?"
Alexander asked. He worried they wouldn't have a place to camp through the night.
"It's fine. After we get to the top, we can slide down to the opposite side of the mountain, and there must be a plateau there."
Mary answered. She was speaking with haste, and her eyes flickered around. She was clearly not comfortable with this place.
"What is so bad about staying here?"
Alexander noticed Mary's disarray, but he knew her plan required them not to sleep until late through the night. They won't be able to go for long if they don't sleep correctly.
Flashes of previous timelines passed through Mary's mind. This is the place where they always camped when the system was destroyed.
"I can't answer."
She replied.
Alexander was annoyed by this thoughtless answer, but the fear in Mary's eyes... They weren't piercing like always, but terrified, like an abused puppy. And not even Alexander was evil or crazy enough to feel nothing seeing an abused puppy.
"Fine."
Alexander said, and they kept climbing the mountain.
********
They reached the top of the mountain. Looking down, they could see the train station.
The mountain was broad on one axis, which is why they couldn't go around it, but it was very narrow on the other axis, and it was impossible to walk down the cliff that was the path ahead.
They each needed to find a way to get to the mountain's feet.
"Pluma procidens."
Mary chanted. She might not be great at magic, but she knew a few helpful spells which are versatile in her line of work.
After chanting, she jumped off the mountain and descended slowly.
Alexander ran down, creating floating platforms under his feet.
Shu and Shuāng Wěi looked down and then at each other. Not the lion nor the fox could go down that mountain as swiftly as these humans. Or at least that's what Shu thought, but Shuāng Wěi had a different thought.
The air around Shuāng Wěi's legs became cold, and the water in the air liquified. He then walked down the mountain by a trail of liquified water conjured under his feet.
Shu couldn't help feeling shocked. This lion can walk on water?! What else? Can he make water into wine? Can he heal people with his blood? At that point, he would be no lesser than the human god!
After seeing all his allies go down the mountain one by one, Shu was left with a problem. How can he go down that mountain?
Then a realization hit him. Didn't he fall from greater heights twice already? Once when he was sent to this realm and the second when Antony sent them with winds. He took a few steps down and mastered his courage.
Then, at full speed, he jumped off the mountain. He was there, alone between heaven and earth. He could hear the wind and heat around him and feel their movements.
For some reason, as he felt those things, he could feel his strength growing.
He thought back to his life up until this point and remembered something. His father taught him many things throughout his life. One such thing was a spell his father claimed could let Shu use magic.
This was a big deal. Shu was one of the few people with no potential to use magic. The metric of whether someone could use magic and to what capacity had nothing to do with someone's potential of how long they could live. It was a complicated mix of someone's intelligence, genetics, and luck.
Theoretically, Shu could use magic, but only the simplest of spells, for an evident reason. He was not very intelligent, the Redfox family's main line was not known for their affinity to magic, and Shu had terrible luck as a baby. The only good fortune he had as an infant was his great-grandfather giving him away to the demon god.
But this stroke of good luck was beyond the average person's luck. The demon god had many responsibilities over the world. Aside from being the one who stabilized the realms and the system, he is also the god of magic. And as such, he could create a spell Shu could use to draw magical energy from the world around him.
"Vulpis petitionem!"
Shu shouted and felt the air around him becoming denser with raw energy, an energy that even when a god was around, unlike other mortals, he wouldn't typically sense.
He then copied the spell Mary used to descend the mountain.
"Pluma procidens."
The speed of his fall slowed down significantly, but he felt his head hurt, and he couldn't sense the magic around him anymore. This spell has put a lot of strain on him, which he could only feel after the fact.
He reached the mountain's feet. And was surprised to see everyone's shocked expressions.
"Shu, what was that?!"
Alexander asked. Usually, he would act cool, but the amount of magic energy around Shu a moment ago shocked him.
"I used a spell my father taught me in the past. It lets me use magic."
Shu answered innocently, and Alexander knew there was no way Shu would know more. If he knew more, he wouldn't have hidden it.
"So, where to now?"
Shu asked as he looked at Mary.
It took Mary a moment to pull herself out of the shock she felt from seeing that spell. He had never used this spell in previous timelines.
Why was it? Were they not important to him enough? Did he not remember this spell existed? Or did he not know any magic spell that would make that spell useful?
"Does any of you have money?"
Mary asked, but then remembered they were both members of the tournament, so they didn't have much time to gain a lot of money. Not to mention, one of them was an escaped prisoner, and the other was Shu...
She sighed, understanding it would either be her who paid or they would sneak on board again.
The issue with sneaking on board was that, at this point, they were weaker than they were in the previous timelines when they did that, and they had fewer people this time as well. She couldn't risk it.
Not to mention, she didn't want to go to the new lands yet, and because they hadn't met went to the Nipon Mountain yet, so she couldn't trust the captain of the guards at that station to bail them out. So paying it is...
When she went to the counter, she felt the pain of losing so much money, but what the lady-looking thing at the counter said made her question the validity of this timeline.
"You will need to pay extra for the pet and to sign these forms that dictate that if the train consumes you, it has nothing to do with us."
Mary pulled out her wallet and paid the fee, and they all signed the contracts.
They were given four tickets to a private room on the train. The passengers in private rooms had a lower chance of being consumed, and it was the only way to get a pet on the train.
They took these tickets and went to their room on the train.