Part 53: The Miner Bends His Wave Motion Shovel Blast
Part 53:
The Miner Bends His Wave Motion Shovel Blast
ALAN, CATRIA, LITHISIA, and the order of knights they had brought with them set up camp in a great grassy field.
“Now, everyone! It is time for us to begin this shovolutionary war and take back our country, shovel!” Lithisia proudly declared in front of the high-ranking knights.
Really? “Shovolutionary”? But none of the knights seemed bothered by her weird wording.
Lithisia gripped her red shovel and began to merrily sing. “Shovolution! Shovolution, shovolution! Hee hee!”
Lancelot simply watched in silence and nodded. Yeah, nothing I say here is going to make a difference.
“Alan, the princess’s illness is getting worse.” Catria shed tears for Elise as she thought of the uncorrupted doppelgänger. She could not afford to let these two princesses meet, no matter what. “She barely uses words that aren’t shovel-related.”
“That seems to be the case,” Alan said.
“Then stop her! You’re the only one who can!”
“I refuse.”
“But why?!”
“This is Lithisia’s war. I’ve decided to let her do as she wishes.”
The worst chill of Catria’s entire life ran down her spine.
If Alan had no intention of stopping Lithisia, things were bound to turn extremely bad. The shovelfication of the world was about to begin.
“And now, Princess Lithisia, allow us to explain the mission plan we’ve devised.”
While Catria combated existential dread, Lancelot began to break down the operation.
Using a map of Rostir, he plotted out their path from the camp to the capital, a journey that would take approximately three days. They would make directly for the city, storm the gates, and take Zeleburg’s head.
A straight shot to the capital. No tricks, no complex strategies. Just a good old-fashioned siege. This would, of course, draw the attention of their enemies, but the knights were prepared.
“I see… You want to dig through the front line. Not a bad plan, Lancelot, shovel.” Lithisia happily nodded.
Catria let out a sigh of relief, but too soon.
“But if I were to grade your plan, I’d only be able to give you a shore (score + shovel) of 60,” said Lithisia.
“You mean 60 points?”
“I mean a shore of 60. A route worthy of a shore of 100 looks like this.”
Ignoring Lancelot’s attempt to interrupt, Lithisia began to embellish upon his simple siege plan. At the starting point, she drew a rectangle, and at the objective, near the capital, she drew a sharp triangle. Once she had made these additions, she wiped the sweat from her brow.
A rectangle, one long line, and a triangle. It was obvious to one and all what they were looking at, especially since Alan currently had in his possession something that looked exactly like it.
“A shovel?!” Catria shouted, unable to hold back.
The rectangle was its handle, the single line was its body, the triangle was its metal head.
“This is the standard route for the Holy Shovel Knights, shovel!” Lithisia declared.
“But, Your Highness, this path would have us walk in something of a circle after beginning our march.” In other words, it was a route that might as well scream, “Please attack us!”
“And as Shovel Knights, it is your job to win regardless, Catria.”
Lithisia was asking the impossible, as usual, and Catria could do naught but hold her head. The princess wouldn’t listen to a word she had to say. Was that really okay? As the captain responsible for the lives of her men, was it really okay for her to accept such an absurd plan? As Catria descended into anxious vapors, Alan spoke up.
“Catria, don’t worry about the route. This is the perfect chance for you.”
“What do you mean…?”
Alan gripped his shovel and nodded down at the map of Rostir. “Haven’t I always told you that the shovel is at its most powerful on the battlefield?”
“Urgh.” Catria recalled with grim clarity their battle against Alice’s undead army. It hadn’t even been a battle, really. More like a one-sided massacre that had made her feel silly for thinking herself a knight. Are we seriously doing this again? Really?
“Catria, it’s about time you teach your men how to go to war with shovel in hand,” said Alan.
“N-no, please! I don’t know anything about that!”
“Don’t worry. I know you can do it,” said Lithisia.
“Don’t look at me with sparkling eyes! I might be able to do it, but I don’t want to!”
Catria resisted with futile tears as Lithisia and the knights watched on with warm smiles.
***
The knights in the tent focused their attention on Alan. In the end, it had been decided that he’d show them what to do. Catria’s role, meanwhile, would be to explain his techniques. The lady knight insisted that this was a job more suited to Lithisia, but Alan refused.
“Do you really think she’d give an explanation that a human could understand?” he asked.
His words rang so true that Catria found herself without a response.
“N-now then, everyone. Please watch Alan very c-carefully. Ahem.” Catria cleared her throat and passed the proverbial baton to the miner.
“Thank you. On any battlefield, the most important thing is information.”
The knights nodded deeply. They were well aware of this fact.
“Know your enemy, know thyself, and you shall not fear a hundred battles.”
“However, the battlefield is currently covered in the fog of war, meaning we will always be working with an incomplete understanding of the situation.”
“That is indeed true,” one of the knights agreed.
“That’s where the shovel comes in.” Alan took his shovel from his back, then placed a large piece of wood on the table in front of him.
“Er…” said one knight.
“Yeah, that sure is a piece of wood from a tree,” said another.
“It’s even got leaves on it,” said a third.
“This is a chunk of wood from a fog tree that I cut down over there,” Alan explained, nodding over his shoulder. “The fog bit is very important, because that links it to the battlefield, where we want to create our change. Now on to the next part—what sort of emotion is often found on a battlefield? Passion.”
“Huh?”
“People are passionate on the battlefield because they fight for a cause.” Alan began to carefully carve the wood. Within a few seconds, the piece of wood had taken on the shape of a doll. More specifically, it was a doll of a naked girl whose clothes had been ripped away by tentacles. She was trying to cover herself up.
Actually, it was just Catria.
“What the?”
Every last anatomical detail was spot-on.
“Ooooooooh!” The knights raised their voices in excitement.
“EEEEEEEEEEK! What are you doing?! Alan, st-stop looking?!”
Once Catria realized the situation, she tried to cover up the wooden doll, but it was too big.
“My apologies. When I thought of the word passion, you were the first person who came to mind.”
Catria’s cheeks burned. That’s what you thought when the tentacles tore at my clothes?! You big dumb jerk! Don’t just say things like that in front of other people!
“Hrm, I can feel the passion from this.”
“Indeed, we have a truly passionate captain.”
The entire group of knights folded their arms as they nodded their heads in stern agreement.
All Catria could do was stare at her hands. She would forevermore live in disgrace.
***
“I’m not sure I understand the reason behind carving the fog tree wood into a passionate doll.”
The knights pressed Alan for an explanation, but he just nodded and gripped his shovel.
“Thanks to the work we’ve done, the fog tree doll is now linked to the battlefield through the concept of passion. Now we shovel it up.”
Alan proceeded to shovel up Doll Catria’s fog-wood chest. Catria flinched, but Alan paid no mind to her, instead focusing on the book he uncovered in that wooden torso.
“Here we have it: Zeleburg’s military placement and mission structure. The complete collection,” Alan announced. “By digging up this passionately posed fog tree doll, one can acquire all kinds of information. In essence, it allows us to dig through the fog of war.”
“Ooooooooooh!”
The knights were vocally impressed, but Catria crouched down and sobbed. She had been shoveled. Her heart had been shoveled, even if it wasn’t technically hers.
While Catria continued to let her tears fall, she noticed Lithisia fidgeting. She was looking dolefully between her own ample chest and the wooden doll’s noticeably more modest one.
“Sir Miner, don’t you think they’re a little…shovel?” she asked.
“Say what now?” said Alan.
“Huh? Er, um, it’s nothing, shovel!” That clearly wasn’t the case, but Lithisia nonetheless smiled.
Alan nodded. “I’ll make one of you later, so cheer up.”
“Huh? But I, um, um!” Lithisia pressed her index fingers together, incapable of turning down his offer. “Shovel. (I’m so happy.)”
And thus did Alan open the map detailing the location of Zeleburg’s forces. His army had been separated into six units. The closest unit belonged to Zalbag, one of the Eight Demon Generals. This complete collection of intelligence really was something else.
“His unit’s a mix of dragons and giants?!” Lancelot gasped.
Specifically, a squad of ten Hell Wyrms and a brigade of stone-throwing giants. First, they would engage the enemy in a joint attack, then a phalanx of ogres would storm the front while teams of lesser demons launched attacks from both sides.
All in all, at best, the “human” forces were outnumbered something like a hundred to one. Zeleburg’s army wasn’t just large enough to take over Rostir, it was grand enough to annihilate the entire continent.
“Alan, I’m sure you could beat them all by yourself.”
“That’d be pointless. The invaders must be defeated by the hands of the Rostirians themselves.”
So you’re saying you could defeat them all, Catria thought to herself, already having given up.
Alan grasped his shovel. “Listen well, knights. After shoveling the fog of war, the next step is to break down our enemy’s plan.”
“You mean get one step ahead of them?”
“No. The thing about a well-crafted plan is that even if all the details get leaked, you can’t necessarily get ahead of it.”
“I see. Then what would you have us do?”
“We dig a hole in their plan. Specifically, we dig a ‘grave.’”
“Can’t you just do this yourself, please?” Catria moaned.
She could just picture what was coming next. A hole would be dug in their enemy’s battle plans, and a totally bizarre thing would occur—like their main forces abruptly having to go on a day-long trip back home to Hell.
I know how this goes now. Nothing surprises me anymore, Catria thought to herself. She’d already given up. Again.
Alan thrust his shovel forward and a flash of light filled the tent.
CLAAAAAAAANG!
His shovel reflected right off the mission plan.
“Hrm,” said Alan.
“Wha?!” said Catria.
“Shooooooooovel?!” said you-know-who.
All three of them were genuinely surprised.
This bewildering moment was followed up by a strange mechanical voice rising from the mission plan itself. “Alert. Unauthorized access detected. Requesting Lord Zeleburg’s genetic identification.”
“Alan, what is this?!”
“Hmph, a protection program. So he’s already figured out how to deal with me…”
“Figured out how to deal with you, Sir Miner, scoop?!” In all of her shock, Lithisia used “scoop” to end her sentence.
Catria was in a similar place, her mouth opening and shutting in stunned surprise.
Zeleburg had managed to defend against the shovel’s conceptual interference? How could Alan’s invincible shovel be countered? Wait, wait, what am I saying? It almost sounds like I believe in his shovel!
While Catria tried to make excuses for herself, a woman’s voice rang out from behind them—a voice with which Catria was all too familiar.
“I never thought I’d see the day when that protection program activated.”
“I-It’s you!”
Catria turned to find the princess standing there, only she was translucent, her lower body buried in empty space, and she wasn’t holding a shovel. In other words, it was Elise, the fake princess.
“Elise, did you do this?!”
The fake princess shot Catria a serious gaze. “That’s my line, Catria. Who exactly are you? How could a non-deity, a mortal no less, use conceptual interference? What Pantheon did you sell your soul to? Or is this perhaps the work of some artifact I’ve never heard of?”
Elise glared at Catria. As a higher demon, the intensity of her gaze was enough to make Catria wince.
“Catria didn’t do it, shovel! It was Sir Miner, shovel.”
Shump, shump, thud. This was the sound of a shovel destroying the atmosphere.
“Excuse me?” Elise turned to find Lithisia standing behind her, shimmering pupils shaped like shovels. The condition was already terminal for her. “Oh, my. So you’re the real deal… Hold on, wait. What’s with the ‘shovel’ thing you keep saying?”
“Shovel means shovel when you apply shovel to shovel!”
Elise went silent for a few seconds. “Catria, what is this thing?”
“The real princess.” Or perhaps she was better described as the person Catria wished was not the real princess.
“Enough with the jokes. She looks extremely similar, but there’s no way the real princess would walk around holding a shovel.”
Catria desperately wanted to agree, but at the end of the day, that Lithisia was the real deal.
“Having a shovel is a part of a princess’s duty, shovel. You’re the one who’s shoveling fake, shovel!”
“Er, you’re right, I am. But I’d rather you of all people not tell me that.”
“Shovel!” Lithisia snarled.
“Huh?! What was that unearthly noise?!”
The fake Lithisia and the shovel Lithisia were having a battle of words.
Honestly, I wish they’d both just vanish from the continent, Catria thought to herself.
Just then, Alan stepped forward. “You called it a protection program. Was this Asmodeus’s doing?”
Elise stopped in her tracks to face him. “And who are you? Are you one of Catria’s soldiers? No, you must be a construction worker, considering the shovel.”
“I’m just a miner. Alan the miner.”
“Hmmm. You seem rather wise for someone who claims to be ‘just a miner.’ But you’re correct, this is Lord Asmodeus’s power. It neutralizes any tampering with the laws of the world—other than Lord Zeleburg’s, of course. It was Asmodeus’s trump card against the Pantheons, but I’m stunned a human could use it.” Elise laughed happily. “Not bad at all, Catria. I want you even more now.”
“Um, it really wasn’t me.” Catria had determined that she needed to tell Elise the truth. It hurt her heart to keep getting misunderstood like this. “I’m just a knight. Alan did it.”
“Hah?” Elise looked lost.
“Wrong, shovel! You’re not just a knight, you’re the captain of the Holy Shovel Knights, shovel!”
“We’re not going to get anywhere at this rate, so could you please be quiet, Your Highness?”
Lithisia made a triangular face of apology. Even when she went quiet, she found a way to be shovel.
“Catria, I hate boring jokes. Answer me truthfully.” Elise’s eyes glowed a terrifying crimson, the color of magic accumulation. “Are you telling me that this regular old miner performed conceptual interference with a shovel?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Catria sighed.
“You’re telling me that he interfered with the Laws of the World using a shovel?”
“That’s…correct,” Catria answered as she put her hand on her forehead and began to shed tears of despair. That’s right. It’s all right! This is all the work of that man’s shovel!
There was a long pause. “I asked you to answer me honestly… I’m disappointed in you.”
Elise’s astral body rose up into the air. Behind her opened a crack in space that resembled a black hole—a vortex of magical energy, a winding, bending space. The laws of physics contorted in the area.
Catria showed no surprise at any of this. She was all too familiar with this kind of phenomenon. The power to unearth the world itself, to interact with the laws of reality, she felt a similar power coming from the hole behind Elise. She could feel it, but…
The shovel is even more amazing… she thought.
“Pay for your sins and die. Destruction Ray!”
GI-ZOOOOOOOOM!
Catria couldn’t be shocked by the dark black beam of energy headed her way, nor could she be particularly afraid of it. She was used to this sort of thing. Catria had seen exactly this kind of beam before.
At last, Alan took action. “Catria, step back.”
It all happened so quickly. He raised his shovel above his head, unlocked the safety (where this so-called “safety” was, nobody knew), and unleashed his blue Shovel Barrier. It was almost as if time itself froze in the instant that Alan unleashed this ability, and it was after he finished that he fired it.
“DIG!”
KA-CHOOOOOOOOM!
Alan’s Wave Motion Shovel Blast.
A blue and white beam ripped through the space between Heaven and Earth, an invincible power capable of digging through anything. The width of Alan’s beam exceeded Elise’s Destruction Ray by an order of approximately one hundred, and it zoomed by Catria’s eyes before engulfing the fake princess’s attack.
Just before it hit Elise, it smoothly bent and instead struck the hole in space.
When it was over, all that remained was Elise and her torn clothes—singed, a bit, thanks to her proximity to the beam.
Silence took the tent.
What the hell? (What the hell?) Elise’s bewildered thoughts fused into but a single word. “SHOVEL!!!”
Meanwhile, Princess Lithisia celebrated. “Sir Miner, Sir Miner! Your Wave Motion Shovel Blast bent like zwoom!”
“It did. I knew she would make a fine prisoner and an excellent source of information. I had to take her alive.”
“But of course! Leave the shoveling to me, shovel! After training with Alice for so long, my shovel is something else!” Lithisia delightedly explained.
Catria sighed deeply as she gazed upon Elise, who stared at Lithisia and Alan with a completely frozen expression.
Man, I thought she’d last a little longer.
The trouble was, Catria’s shovel-sensing abilities had long since reached spiritual enlightenment, and this made it a bit difficult for her to assess the unafflicted.