The Art of Gold Digging

Seven pairs of eyes stared upward at the colossal figure partially visible through the clearing clouds—a titanic woman with obsidian skin and torn wings, her enormous dark eyes gazing down upon their world.

"What... the..." Ash whispered, yet his voice was still loud in the silence. "What... is that...?"

No one answered. How could they? Even Amy barely knew what that thing was. The sight defied comprehension—a being of such impossible scale that even momentarily looking at it made one dizzy.

It took all of Amy's strength to tear her gaze away from the sky. The others, however, were still immobilized.

Lyra had covered her mouth with both hands, eyes wide with terror. Iris stood rigid, her face drained of color. Zayd stared upward with an unreadable expression, though his hands trembled slightly at his sides. Lain remained stoic, but her silver eyes were wider than Amy had ever seen them. Meanwhile, Crow's expression had hardened into determination tinged with fear.

It was Iris who finally broke the paralysis gripping them. She turned to Amy with obvious panic.

"The fuck is that!?"

The voice awoke the group from their collective trance. Seconds later, one by one, all their gazes turned to Amy, their eyes demanding explanations.

"Amy..." Crow stepped forward, voice low. "What did you mean by 'our future'?"

Amy wondered how to respond to the question. Her gaze drifted toward her satchel but quickly returned to the others—Crow specifically.

After some more pondering, she finally decided.

It's time...

Indeed, it was time to make her ability stronger.

Amy swallowed hard, her mind coming back to what Libris and she had previously discussed: a way for the two of them to share one ability; this was the perfect moment to unveil it.

They had talked more extensively about it during this past week, and eventually, they had reached an understanding of what the ability would be like. Very simple and intuitive, really, but for some reason, she found herself hesitating; this was an important moment for her powers after all.

Alright. Better not fuck this up...

She took a deep breath before speaking. "I've... seen it before," she finally said, earning confused looks from the others.

"Seen it?" Iris echoed. "How? When?"

"My ability," she began, choosing her words carefully. "It's not just simple foresight. My book—"

"Wait. Your ability is foresight?" Iris interjected.

Amy looked at her for a moment with a frown before eventually shaking her head, deciding to ignore her question.

"My book," she continued. "It shows me glimpses of important events from the future." She gestured vaguely at the frozen wasteland around them. "This is the future it has shown me."

"Your... book?" Zayd repeated, his eyes traveling toward her satchel where Libris rested.

Amy's hand instinctively tightened around her satchel before she continued speaking, keeping her voice steady. "I can't control what I see or when I see it. The visions come with restrictions, fragments without context. But I've seen this... more than once."

She wished she could just straight up say that it showed her the future, but Libris had made it very clear that any more than this would be too much. They were, after all, already side-stepping the restriction made by the goddess to increase the limit of her power. This was probably the last time she would be able to simply increase her power through bullshit, at least until her approval with the readers increased.

"You've seen this before," Crow stated rather than asked, his dark eyes intense.

Amy nodded slowly. "Fragments. Impressions. The frozen city. The abandoned buildings. The... thing in the sky." She looked back up at the colossal figure, suppressing a shudder. "I've been seeing it in my book even before I arrived at the Academy."

"When you said you wanted to save people," Lyra whispered, realization dawning on her face, "you meant from... this."

Amy met her gaze and nodded again. "Yes."

"What is that?" Lyra asked, her voice trembling as she looked back up at the massive figure. "That... thing in the sky?"

"I don't know," Amy replied truthfully. She really did not know much about it. Though she recalled that in the manga it had been called the Devourer. "I just know that it isn't fully awoken yet. This wasteland, this frozen city... It's just the beginning."

"The beginning of what...?"

"Death," Amy said after a beat. "The end of everything."

The silence that followed was heavy; no one spoke. Everybody was in different states of shock. Amy couldn't blame them. Being suddenly told that the end of the world was coming was simply... too much. At least there was a buildup to it in the story, but here she just told them.

In the manga, the protagonist's party discovers during their stay in the library that whatever the origin of that thing was, it was basically the enemy of all factions:

The Academy, the tribe of Onyx, the blood emperor's forces, the Gaspards and noble families, and even the chaos creatures who sought the destruction of the world. They all fought in their own ways and with their own motivations to stop the obsidian colossus, who would bring the end of times.

This was something gradually introduced throughout the Library arc. And honestly, despite being a big hater of the original story, Amy had found that buildup very engaging. In another world where her life wasn't on the line, she would have let the protagonists discover it all by themselves. Alas, she needed to prepare for Act Two of the second Arc; there was no time to lose on useless stuff. She had a world to save, just like all the other factions. Her fight to stop the colossus had begun.

"The Library," Crow suddenly said, breaking the silence and snapping Amy from her thoughts. His voice also snapped his friends from their shock and brought them back to the conversation.

"This changes nothing about our immediate objective," he continued. "We need to find the Library—that's the whole reason we came here. We will worry about all this later." He paused, glancing at Amy. "Perhaps there we'll find answers about... that."

The silence that followed Crow's declaration was tense. Iris was the first to break it, her eyes wild with disbelief.

"Are you serious right now?" she demanded, gesturing frantically at the sky. "We just found out the world is ending, and you want to just... what? Continue our little treasure hunt like nothing happened?"

Lyra nodded, hugging herself tightly. "I-I agree with Iris. How can we just ignore... that?" Her voice quavered as she glanced upward again, quickly averting her eyes from the massive figure.

"In his defense, I don't think Crow means to ignore it," Ash said carefully, though uncertainty lined his face. "But what exactly are we supposed to do about... that thing... right this second?"

Lain, who had remained silent until now, finally spoke. "...We need information first..."

"Exactly," Crow affirmed, his gaze moving across the group. "If there's information about this entity anywhere, it would be there. In the Library." He turned to Amy. "I'm guessing you don't know how to stop it?"

Amy shook her head. "No, I don't..." Her voice came with more emotion than she intended, making Crow's gaze linger on her, examining her with an unreadable expression.

"So, let me get this straight," Iris began with anger in her voice, shifting the attention back to her. "We're just supposed to casually stroll to the Library while the apocalypse looms over our heads? Are we deadass right now?"

"What else can we do?" Crow replied. "Panic? Stand here staring up at it? How do you expect us to fight that thing?"

The sharp logic of his words seemed to penetrate Iris's irritation. She crossed her arms and looked away, muttering something under her breath.

"The Library was our destination before we knew about this," Crow continued, gesturing toward the ominous figure in the sky. "Now we have even more reason to find it. If there are answers anywhere, they're there."

"Or at least somewhere warm," Ash muttered.

Lyra looked at Amy, her eyes searching. "Do you know if the Library might have a way to stop... this?"

Amy looked at the girl, their gazes meeting for a moment before Amy looked away, her shoulders sagging slightly.

"I wish I knew..."

Lyra's eyes stayed on her. She looked like she was about to start pressing more, but Lain's hand pressed against her shoulder, stopping her.

"So the Library," Ash spoke, sighing heavily while running a hand through his hair. "I don't like it, but Crow's right. We need information before we can do anything useful." He looked toward Iris, who was staring intently at the figure above. "Right now, that place is our best bet."

The girl didn't respond immediately; instead, she stared at the colossus with an increasingly annoyed expression. It took a while for her gaze to come back to earth.

"Fine," she conceded reluctantly. "But when we get there, finding out about that thing becomes priority number one. Anything else is secondary." She said this while looking toward Crow with an intense gaze. "Deal?"

Crow frowned, clearly hesitating to answer. The whole reason he had come here was, after all, for his father.

The silence stretched uncomfortably. Crow stayed silent, not responding. Iris's gaze sharpened, and a subtle tension between the two appeared. Luckily, Lain cleared her throat, shifting the attention to her before what looked like an argument began.

"...Which way?" she asked quietly, looking toward Crow.

Crow remained silent, his dark eyes still on Iris for several moments before he turned to Lain.

"According to my father's notes, the Library should be beneath the Academy," Crow continued, pulling out the folded paper and studying it briefly before tucking it away. "Right below the Eastern Wing."

"If this really is Eldoria, we know the way at least," Lyra said, pulling Crow's cloak tighter around herself.

Crow nodded. "Then let's move. Standing here accomplishes nothing."

They set off through the frozen streets, constantly aware of the massive figure looming above them. Amy tried not to look up, focusing instead on placing one foot in front of the other, but she couldn't shake the feeling of being watched.

The journey through the abandoned city was eerie. The frozen city was eerily similar to the Eldoria they knew, yet distorted like a nightmare version of reality—which, Amy supposed, was exactly what it was.

As they approached the city limits, Crow, who had taken the lead, suddenly dropped into a crouch, one hand raised to signal the others to stop.

"What is it?" Iris whispered, crouching beside him.

Crow pointed silently ahead.

In the distance, where the Academy should stand on its hill overlooking the city, something was wrong. The towers and spires were barely visible through what appeared to be a shifting mass surrounding the entire structure.

"What is that?" Lyra whispered, squinting to see better in the dim light.

Crow gestured for them to follow him to a better vantage point—a partially collapsed building that offered both cover and height. They climbed carefully, mindful of the creaking, frost-weakened stone, until they reached a position where they could see clearly.

What they saw made everyone freeze.

The Academy was surrounded—completely encircled by a seething mass of creatures. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, pressed together so densely they appeared at first as a single writhing entity.

After squinting, Amy could make out their varied and grotesque forms: some humanoid, others bestial, many defying classification altogether. They simply stood there, as if waiting, occasionally shifting but not doing anything else.

"My gods," Lyra breathed, her face pale.

"Are those chaos creatures?" Ash hissed.

"I... think so..." Crow replied.

Contrary to the last nightmare with blood mimics, this one contained chaos creatures, an entirely different kind of being appertaining to an entirely different faction. Their origin wasn't known, but it was theorized that they came from the void. They were also the principal antagonists of Act 3 and one of the causes of Lain's death.

Amy stared at the scene, at first with tension at the sight, but then slowly but gradually with confusion.

Wait...

Her confusion slowly mixed with growing dread. She squinted her eyes further, her gaze traveling back and forth through the entire horde.

This wasn't right...

In the manga, yes, there had been monsters—just like the ones she was seeing—but not like this.

Not in these numbers, not gathered all at once; there were too many.

Am I imagining things...?

She glanced at her satchel, instinctively seeking guidance from Libris, but stopped herself, the memory of the cracked cover reappearing in her mind.

No, I can't ask Libris for help...

"Why are chaos creatures here...?" Zayd murmured, his amber eyes narrowed. "Moreover, they appear to be... waiting for something."

"Or guarding something," Crow added grimly.

"How the hell are we supposed to get past them?" Iris said, a frown visible on her face. "There must be thousands..."

"We need to think," Crow responded, moving back from the edge. "Find another way in. Or wait, observe their patterns. They might move eventually."

"Do we have supplies for that?" Ash asked, shivering visibly now. "Because I'm not sure how much longer I can handle this cold."

"I have," Lain spoke up quietly. She held up her hand, showing a storage ring on her finger. "Food and water... for three days... between us all."

"Good," Crow nodded. "Then we'll set up position here, take shifts watching the horde, and formulate a plan. After a day or two, we—"

"No," Amy said suddenly, the word escaping before she could consider it. Everyone turned to look at her.

"No, what?" Crow asked, brow furrowed.

"..."

Amy stared at the horde of chaos creatures surrounding the Academy. Only one thought traveled through her mind.

This isn't right...

She really hoped she was misremembering. It had been a while, after all. Moreover, she had seen it in a drawing, not in real life, so her perception might have been different. Yet...

In the original story, it had taken days for them to amass in such numbers. Their presence in the material realm was supposed to be difficult, their manifestation gradual.

The creatures' objective was the same as theirs—to enter the Library—but unlike Amy's group, they couldn't pass the test required for entry; they weren't alive in the conventional sense, after all. So their strategy had been to gather enough numbers to force their way in, something that should take them numerous days...

Amy felt a wave of foreboding wash over her as she kept staring at the monsters.

If the chaos creatures were already here in such numbers, what other deviations from the story she knew might be waiting? What else might go wrong? If this truly was a deviation...

This is different from Iris and Kaelen. I can somehow see how my actions might have affected their presence through the butterfly effect. But this...

"No," she repeated more firmly. "We can't wait. We need to go now—today."

"What do you mean?" Ash asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.

Amy gestured toward the monsters surrounding the Academy. "These creatures—they're going to keep coming. More and more will gather here." She placed a hand on her satchel. "I've seen it in my book. If we wait, their numbers will only increase until there's no way through."

"And you think we have a chance now?" Iris challenged, though her voice lacked its usual edge. "Have you seen how many there are? Easily more than a thousand."

"Better odds now than tomorrow," Amy insisted. "Every hour we delay makes our task harder."

"It's too risky," Crow countered, shaking his head. "We need time to observe, plan—"

"She's right."

The unexpected voice made everyone turn. Zayd stood slightly apart from the group, his amber eyes fixed on the chaos creatures. A thin trickle of blood ran from his nostril down his upper lip.

He wiped away the blood. His normally composed features had tightened into an expression of intense concentration, tiredness, and unease.

"Fate is... all over the place," he murmured, his voice strained. "Threads snapping, reforming, tangling... I've never seen anything like it." His gaze finally focused, shifting to Amy with an intensity that made her uncomfortable.

"What...?" Ash frowned, looking confused. "What do you—"

"I mean that if we stay here, we die. All of us."

A stunned silence fell over the group. Everyone stared at him, shock evident on their faces, even Amy.

Die...?

Amy felt her heart hammering in her chest.

No one was supposed to die here. Not in this way, not at this point in the narrative.

What is going on?

"The fuck you just say?" Iris asked with concern written all over her face.

Zayd's gaze remained fixed on some point in the distance, as though seeing things invisible to the rest of them. Another thin trickle of blood ran from his nostril. "I don't get it myself. The threads... they're unraveling. Something's wrong with fate itself."

Amy's mind raced, trying desperately to make sense of what was going on.

Death. Her death. The thought slammed into her with unexpected force. It wasn't the first time confronting the notion, and it also wasn't her first time putting her life on the line. But hearing that it would happen if she did nothing felt... weird.

She knew that the end of the world was coming and that she had to stop it, but that was something happening in the future. Not right now, and definitely not so unexpectedly.

"You're certain?" Crow asked Zayd, his voice tense.

Zayd nodded, wiping away another trickle of blood. "The possibilities... they're collapsing. Too many variables changing at once." His eyes drifted to Amy again.

Amy felt a cold that had nothing to do with the frozen wasteland around them. She felt her stomach contract, and her mind wander.

I could actually die here.

"Crow..." Lyra called. "What do we do?"

Crow stood motionless, his dark eyes scanning the horde of creatures surrounding the Academy, then shifting to the colossal figure partially visible in the sky. For several long moments, he said nothing, his expression unreadable.

Finally, he turned to Amy.

"Do you have any ideas? Any way through...?"

The question jolted Amy out of her shock. She looked at Crow, then at the others—all watching her with varying degrees of intensity.

She bit her inner lip and then took a deep breath, steadying herself.

Get it together. Right now isn't the time.

"Yes," she said, nodding slowly. "With my book, I've seen a way to reach that place." Her hand tightened around her satchel. "I don't have an answer to our situation, but with what I know, we can reach the Library."

"What do you suggest?" Lyra asked, hope flickering in her eyes.

Amy's gaze traveled across the frozen cityscape, her mind racing through fragmented memories of the manga panels, recalling how exactly they had done it in the original story.

"There's someone we need to visit first," she said finally.