astra and the girl from before sat at a table discussing about the books they found interesting, so far having a great time.
"oh! right" the girl came to realization " I never told you my name"
"I'm ari" she said stretching her hand out to shake Astra's hand.
"I'm astra" astra shakes ari's hand.
"so astra" ari looked at the book with the number 1 on it "what brings you here."
"oh I just wanted to get materials from the cave" "thought I'd stop here for a while and read up about stuff" astra awkwardly scratches her cheek "what about you?"
"I'm looking for someone important"
"oh?" astra picked up the weird book and started to read.
"family member?"
"no, to be honest I dont know much about him he looked like a royal of some kind."
"woah! didnt know royals are in this small town."
astra pretended to be interested but was already lost in the book.
"no.. I'm just trying to get information on him." ari plays with lumi who was on the table. "uh hey what time is it?"
astra looks at her phone "its 12am"
"huh?" ari looked at her confused
astra sighs" its noon"
"ok thanks" ari got up "I should get going"
ari left the library and astra just picked up the book and started to read again.
_______________________________________________
long ago seperated by ideals there was a battle between the humans and the magic users. no one knows who started this war but it was a battle between machines and magic. but our king who sought out peace invaded heaven and hell to create a total of 6 books to then-
_______________________________________________
the rest of the pages were blank.
"oh come on!" astra shouted "I was already investe-" astra covered her mouth remembering she was in a library.
"I guess I look for the rest of the books?" astra questioned holding the book up in the air.
"I mean there must be more if it has a number on it."
astra picked up another book she got from the shelves and started to read the rest of it.
_______________________________________________
[12:57]
astra looked at her phone and her eyes widened.
"oh come on not again." astra quickly grabbed her things accidentally putting the weird book in her bag.
_______________________________________________
"where is she.." kai said to himself grabbing a pickaxes like everyone else "the competition's about to start-"
"OK EVERYONE LINE UP!" a huge man holding a pickaxes twice kai's size (5'10) walks infront of everyone.
"W-WAIT!" everyone turned around to say astra running to join.
'of course...' kai stared at astra as she ran
"seems we got a late entry" "pickup a pickaxe and get in line!!" the man yelled at her
on the verge of tears astra struggled to lift the pickaxe and dragged it with her into the line.
'am I really she shortest here-' astra thought to herself (5'3).
"ok they rules are simple!" he started to explain
"you gots 10 minutes to dig up your winning stone!"
"of course you can keep any other rare stones you came across"
"the biggest rare stone wins 10k gold"
"magic is against the rules!"
everyone in the line spoke amongst theirselves expect for Astra she just stood there determined.
_______________________________________________
as soon as the got the ok they all went into the cave with their pickaxes in hand and started to look everywhere for the right stone.
(4 minutes in)
astra struggled to swing the hard enough to dig deeper but she was making progress. She hand 5 stones largest being 0.5 feet (15.24 centimeters).
kai got about 35 rare stones already biggest stone currently being 2 feet (60.96 centimeters)
"this is actually kinda fun" kai said with a huge smile and dollar signs in his eyes.
"how you doing over there astra" kai shouted as he saw her walking to another location.
but over the echoing sounds of pickaxes hitting the stone walls around them and the sound of her own thoughts she couldn't hear him.
kai just shrugged his shoulders and just continued digging.
____________________________________
astra walked somewhere far from the others.
"psst you ready lumi?" astra whispered
lumi nods and turned into the orb.
"ok ..let's do this" she aimed her staff at the wall
and used her lightning magic to make a huge hole in the wall.
alot of stones were shining as they were now visible in the hole astra made.
astra started to pick up the stones and a small rumbling could be heard but it then stopped.
astra thought nothing of it and kept picking.
She looked in the far back and saw a huge stone about 4 feet long(1.219 meters).
"Woah!" astra gazed at the stone from afar
"right! I got to dig this out" astra grabbed her pickaxe and started digging.
it took 4 more minutes but the almost got it out.
"just one more swing." she swinged her pickaxe one more time and the stone fell out of the wall.
"woah.... ....how are we moving this?"
again rumbling could be heard but it's closer this time.
"huh?" astra turns
it kept getting closer and closer until the wall behind astra broke and a huge worm creator could have been seen there inches away from astra.
Astra's reflexes kicked in and used her lightning to repel the beast.
it went back in the wall but astra knew that wasn't the end of it.
astra picked up her staff and started to run completely forgetting about the stone.
"I messed up, I messed up, I really messed up!" astra kept running and the worm broke through another wall and started to chase her again from behind.
_____________________________________________
kai was adding to his count of rare stones (48 so far) and he started to hear this weird rumbling sound and the ground started to shake.
"what's that sound-" kai asked to see astra running from a giant worm.
"what did you do know?!" kai yelled at astra but the beasts screeches were too loud to get through to her.
"Kai! HELP!"