Part 64: The Fake Princess Understands All

Part 64:
The Fake Princess Understands All

 

AMIDST THE RISING smoke and dust, Catria stood absolutely still. Shovel Hell was no more, but the sight before her was even worse.

Rostir, engulfed in the Wave Motion Shovel Blast, had been annihilated. All that remained was a mountain of rubble. The only other objects left were a sheet laid out on the ground and two nearly naked Lithisias sprawled out upon it.

Yup. Two princesses. One of them was even the real deal. She was staring blankly at the other Lithisia. Said other Lithisia was staring down at her own stomach.

“Huh?” She appeared to not comprehend a single thing that had just transpired.

This was the fake princess, Elise. Surrounding her were pieces of her dress that’d been blown off by Alan’s attack. Her skin was drenched with sweat, and her body was splashed with some kind of goop (probably residue from the Wave Motion Shovel Blast.) Her breasts heaved with each breath she took.

Something around Elise’s stomach shone. In fact, it looked a little swollen.

Lucy flapped her way over to the fake princess.

“Um, so…” She seemed unsure of what to say, but for the meantime she smiled. That was all she could do. And with dead eyes, she did her job as an angel. “Congratulations on your pregnancy!”

Thus was Elise congratulated by a divine entity for the miracle of her immaculate conception.

“Huh?” Elise stared up at Lucy. What the hell? (What the hell?)

“…”

Alan drew close to Elise. He actually looked way worse for wear than the princesses; wounds covered his upper body and his adamantine shovel looked several millions of years older—basically a rock. The aftershock of a miracle, no doubt. Said miner looked down upon Elise and laid it all out frankly. “…Sorry. I misfired.”

“YOU WHAAAAAAAAAAAT?!” The small piece of Catria’s mind that had managed to return exploded. Being such a small piece, her mind soon collapsed again. All she could do was laugh. “What are you going to do about this?! Seriously! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!”

“I have to do something,” Alan agreed, “but for now…I need rest… Catria, Lithisia, I leave the rest to…”

And just as he was about to finish his sentence, Alan collapsed in place between Elise (a virgin, if pregnant) and Lithisia (still just a virgin).

Next to him, the seven orbs fell from the shovel and turned to ash, signaling that their job was done. Immaculate conception via Wave Motion Shovel Blast. In order to forge this miracle, the orbs had used the last of their power.

Illuminated by the sun’s light, the ash of Rostir was carried into the distance by a gust of wind.

“Shovel!” Lithisia gently caressed Alan. “Sir Miner, aaaah… I’m so sorry…!”

A misfire. He’d misfired. All because of Lithisia. All because she had wished for more time. Sir Miner had done nothing wrong. He had missed because her conviction faltered, ultimately leading to Elise’s virgin pregnancy. The princess continued to apologize as the tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Wait, pregnant? This has gotta be some kind of j-joke.” Elise stared at her round stomach and once again whispered to herself. She hadn’t yet collected herself.

“It’s no joke. If anything, it’s legendary,” Catria snorted.

Indeed. What had transpired on this day was undoubtedly legendary. The strongest man in the world had fallen in love with the maddest woman in the world, and due to incredible powers, induced an immaculate conception that was subsequently announced by the angels themselves. Except the pregnant girl in question was a fake.

What a fascinating new legend. And Catria had been present for it all.

Crack.

Something snapped. It was the sound of Catria’s entire self snapping in half. She suddenly started digging at the ground.

“Um, Catria?”

“Oh, Lucy. Hey. I was just thinking of taking a brief eternal rest.”

“There’s nothing brief about eternity!”

“If I have to watch the world devolve any further into a shovel, I’m going to end up becoming one myself.”

Catria chuckled. It was all over. Shovel Hell was gone, but Rostir was now the Holy Land of Shovelir, and it even had a brand-new legend thanks to the Wave Motion Shovel Blast. The world no longer had any common sense for regular human Catria to protect.

“Y-you can’t! Without you, who will save the world?!” Lucy pleaded.

“Please, let me rest… The world is over… I just want to die as a human.”

“No, no, no! And plus, you’ve basically already given up on being a human anyway!”

“Excuse me?!”

“Hey, you guys!” Elise shouted. “C-could someone please explain to me what’s going on?!”

“You’re asking for the impossible,” said Catria.

Nobody present could give Elise what she wanted. If anyone could, they’d be a shovel.

But Catria’s knightly obligations compelled her to give in and give it a shot anyway. “First, let me cut to the chase. You’re pregnant. You can thank that Wave Motion Shovel Blast.”

Talk about starting with the impossible.

“Excuse me?”

“Alan meant to do it to Lithisia, but he missed.”

“What? Huh? What sort of lazy joke is that? This must be some kind of bad dream.”

If only it were a dream. Sadly, it was reality.

Sweat beaded Elise’s forehead. “N-no, seriously. Stop joking around. I mean, I’ve finally attained the power of a god…”

“You mean the power of shovel. Could you please just understand that one simple fact?”

“But! If this isn’t a miracle caused by a god, then we’re on the path to destruction!”

Catria attempted to clear up this misconception, but before she could, Lucy and Elise both stiffened in terror.

“?!”

An overwhelmingly powerful presence descended, one defined by unimaginable heat and pressure.

“What is this?!” Goosebumps covered Catria from head to toe. Whatever approached surpassed the power of Alan’s immaculate conception beam. Driven entirely by instinct, Catria looked up at the sky, though she immediately doubted her own eyes. “The sky…the sun?!”

The giant sun loomed directly overhead, but there was no sky to speak of. To put it more accurately, the entire sky was blocked out by an enormous flock of what looked like birds from afar—70 percent birds, 30 percent sky. But they weren’t birds; birds didn’t possess shining holy auras.

As Lucy trembled, she whispered quietly, desperately. “Ah… Ah… Lord El…”

“El?” Catria followed Lucy’s line of sight, back to what she thought was the sun. She soon realized the error in her judgment. Though still miles away, its form seemed to directly pierce her consciousness.

A perfect, golden-haired girl. Her eyes were closed, making it difficult to assess her expression. In human years, she appeared to be around sixteen. But it was obvious that she was no human. Her face, ears, chest, wings—her entire existence shone. Her golden locks extended all the way down to her feet, giving off golden light almost like a solar flare.

“That’s…a god?”

There was but a single imperfection in her image. Her shining white robe had been torn, nearly revealing a bit of her chest. In fact, the manner in which it was torn reminded one of the fake Lithisia that Alan had impregnated.

How had that come to pass? The moment she had the thought, Catria began to sweat profusely. Don’t tell me…

Sun God El’s voice boomed through the air. “Mortals, you have committed grave sins.”

The air itself shook.

“First, in all of your impertinence, you dared turn my world into Hell.”

The voice in itself proved Catria’s theory correct. The god’s clothes had been torn by Alan’s Wave Motion Shovel Blast, which had scraped the very sun.

“Second, you dared impale my sun with something so filthy. Third, you have made light of the most holy way a life can be brought into this world. Fourth, you have violently damaged the great Sun God El’s favorite outfit. For these grave four sins, I shall pass judgment upon you in the name of the Sun God El.” Finally, her expression changed. The perfect god puffed out her cheeks like a child. “I’ll never, ever, ever, ever forgive you!”

As she yelled, the army of angels descended from the sky with screeching violence.

“Ha ha…” Catria laughed. She took up her sword. They were in terrible danger. Alan’s Wave Motion Shovel Blast had only been strong enough to damage the Sun God’s clothes, and said deity now intended to crush them.

But Catria laughed nonetheless. After all, she yet again had proof that she wasn’t crazy. Even the gods hated to see what had come of this world.

“See?! You did this, Alan!”

He had performed such a bizarre shoveling that he had infuriated the powers that be.

 

“That is indeed…a god.”

Next to Catria, Elise was on her hands and knees, staring up at the sky. A real god was going to wreak divine retribution upon them. Why? Elise already knew the answer to that question, though she didn’t want to.

Alan and Lithisia were not gods; they were nothing. Catria had been right.

“It…can’t…”

Elise had been unable to accept her shoveled fate.

“It can’t be…”

And now she would die at the hands of the furious heavens.

“It…can’t…be…”

Tears welled in her eyes.

Why? This can’t be happening to me. This wasn’t supposed to happen! I should be a God-class entity who exceeds the might of even the Demogorgon. A being nobody can scorn. The ultimate existence.

But the reality was that Elise was naught but a frail creature to be insulted and destroyed.

“I… No… I… This can’t happen… NOOOO!!!” The tears flowed freely from her eyes.

Swoosh!

Lithisia stood between Elise and the angels. With her red shovel, she deflected an angel’s sword slashes while clad only in her underwear.

“Huh…?”

“Elise, step back,” said the princess, almost entirely in the buff. She held her red shovel tightly with an expression that seemed ready to take on the world.

Elise blinked wildly. The appearance of the princess shocked her to the core.

“I’ll protect you,” Lithisia declared with a smile more confident than that of divinity itself.

Elise sat bewildered for several seconds before finally collecting herself. “There’s no way! You can’t do that! That’s the army of God! They’re not like you guys. They’re the real deal!”

“That means nothing, shovel.”

“Nothing, shovel?!”

Lithisia smiled once more. Her smile was laced with a dash of loneliness, yet joy still peeked through. It might have been due to a misfire, but Sir Miner’s successor still existed.

My request led him to use all his power to make a miracle. In that case, there’s only one thing for me to do.

Lithisia remembered the words he had once spoken to her.

“My shovel can pierce everything that ever has been or will be.”

Faced with the heavenly host staring her down, Lithisia couldn’t stop shaking. Yet she did her best to use the inhuman levels of willpower she had developed on her journey to keep her fear in check.

I made Sir Miner do something absurd. That’s why I need to take responsibility for my actions. I have to do this.

“Even if I face a dragon…” Lithisia declared as she pointed her shovel at the Sun God. “Even if I face a god, shovel!”

 

This would, in the future, become the preface to the Founding Constitution of The Holy Shovel Empire.

 

To be continued…

 

(What the hell am I going to do with this? ~Author)