Part 12: The Miner Saves Julia, the Water Priestess

Part 12:
The Miner Saves Julia,
the Water Priestess

 

AND SO, Alan’s party infiltrated Desertopia.

But not without incident.

The group had disguised themselves as traveling shovelists (excuse me?) in order to pass through the checkpoint. But Lithisia went berserk after one of the guards made fun of shovels, and Alan was forced to use his Wave Motion Shovel Blast to annihilate said checkpoint. Since the military immediately mobilized in response, the miner created a path through the desert for them to escape. A path leading directly from the border to the capital city.

It only took Alan five seconds to create this twenty-kilometer path.

“I know I destroyed the checkpoint and all, but since I made a path to the capital, I’d say we’re about even.”

“Your sense of balance is wonderful, just like a square shovel!”

“About even?! Are you kidding me?!” Catria looked at the massive stone path stretching out to the end of the desert and sighed.

Who the heck is this guy?!

This was already the eighth time she’d asked that question today.

“Hrm, so this is the modern capital city, eh? Impressive,” whispered Alice, a childlike smile on her face.

“It’s been three hundred years since I last saw the world… I wonder how it’s changed.”

Lithisia shuffled close to Alan. “Sir Miner, Alice looks really happy.”

Indeed. Despite what happened yesterday with Lithisia and her shovel, the girl seemed full of life. Her conversation with Alan must have given her a lot to think about.

“Hee hee, if she’s this lively now, we can shovel until the cows come home!”

“Eek!”

“Stop playing around. We’re about to enter the capital.”

Needless to say, the security in the capital was much tighter than at the checkpoint, but Alan managed to circumvent all of that by digging a tunnel under the castle walls in point two seconds. This was clearly something no human should’ve been capable of, but the party had long since grown used to his absurdity.

Just beyond the tunnel was a bustling marketplace. A myriad of merchants, all wearing turbans, loudly advertised their wares.

“Amazing! I’d heard that the markets in Desertopia were something else.” Lithisia’s eyes were drawn every which way. “Sir Miner, Sir Miner! They’re selling lots of children’s clothes over there!”

“...Do you want some?”

“Yeah! I wanna dress Alice up in all sorts of outfits and shovel her up.”

Alice (usually invisible to the eyes of others) let out an exasperated sigh. “Because I have an astral body, anything I wear becomes see-through.”

“Hee hee, is that so…? All the better to shovel with… Shrool…”

That was her way of combining “shovel” with “drool.” The princess was getting creative.

“Let us make some purchases! Come now, Alice.”

“Gah! Don’t touch me! I’ll go with you, just don’t touch me with that shovel of yours!”

“I’ll accompany to guard the princess.”

“There’s no need for that. Alice is 300 times stronger than you are.”

“Urgh…”

Alan wasn’t being cruel, he was merely speaking the truth. 300 Catria stood no chance against the undead queen. While she looked like a young girl, she had inherited a tremendous amount of power from Veknar, the strongest of the liches.

“Plus, I lack common sense. I need someone like you around to help me.”

“So you admit to it?!”

“I’m a miner, after all.”

“You ought to apologize to all the miners out there.”

And so, Lithisia and Alice went one way, while Catria and Alan went in search of information about the orb. It was then that Alan’s eyes landed upon something. Someone, in fact.

A slave.

Standing on a wooden platform were women and children in tattered clothes.

“The slave trade. Apparently, it’s totally legal in Desertopia,” Catria explained.

“What’s the point in owning a slave?”

“They can carry things, clean, do heavy lifting… All kinds of simple work.”

“Why not just simply use a shovel?”

“Do you even hear yourself?”

Alan looked at the slaves lined up on the platform. One in particular caught his eye. “Even that girl is a slave?”

Unlike the other slaves, the girl in question was wearing clothes made of thin, white fabric, and had blue hair so beautiful that it rivaled even Lithisia’s. She had a slender nose, and her skin was blindingly white. Hanging from her neck was a sign with a price tag.

And then there were her breasts, which were massive. There was even some underboob action going on, due to her current attire.

“Come one, come all! We’ve uncovered the biggest treasure of the year! Julia the dancer!” When the merchant clapped his hands together, all eyes focused on the girl. Immediately noticing the lewd eyes honing in on her chest, the girl tried to cover it from view. Despite being in handcuffs, she moved with grace and elegance.

“Hey, stop covering up! You got great tits, so show ‘em off to the audience!”

“Ah… Okay… I’m so sorry…” Julia followed the slave merchant’s orders and brought her arms down. “My apologies…”

Each time she apologized, she gripped something tightly. It was some kind of glass bottle filled with water.

“Alan, what are you looking at?” Catria asked. She looked annoyed. “What, you want a slave or something? She your type?”

“No, I don’t want a slave. My Shovel Senses are reacting to that girl.”

“Speak human, please.”

“She has the aura of someone with ‘something’ buried deep within her.”

“You mean she’s got some sort of incredible talent or something? I suppose she does have that sort of aura.” Even ignoring her obvious beauty, the way she moved was hypnotizing.

“Thank you for your patronage!” The slave merchant clapped his hands together, and a broadly built, middle-aged man walked on stage. He had apparently bought Julia.

“Huh… Ah…” Scared but powerless to resist, Julia simply cried out in fear.

“Oh ho ho… Hrm? What’s this glass bottle?” The man grabbed it from Julia’s hand.

“That’s… No!!!”

“What’s yours is mine, slave. Hah. I’ll be taking this.”

“N-no, please…”

Julia stretched her arm out. Whatever the bottle was, it was clearly important to her.

“It’s just water? Whatever. I’ll use the bottle for my own drinks.” The large man immediately emptied the water out onto the ground in front of the girl.

“Ah… The Water of Rahal…”

Tears began to take shape in Julia’s eyes as she collapsed to her knees.

“I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry, everyone…”

Her new owner violently grabbed her by the neck and drew her close, bringing his hand near her ample breasts. He was clearly thinking something terrible.

“Human trash.” Catria was already reaching for the sword on her back. Julia may have been a slave, but Catria would be a failure of a knight if she didn’t stand up for a young girl being shamed in front of a large crowd like this. “Aren’t you going to do something, Alan?”

Despite the whole shovel thing, she’d thought he had a real sense of justice. Just as she was beginning to feel disappointed, Alan answered.

“I already have.”

A moment later—

KA-CHOOOOOOOOM!

A massive hole opened up in the platform.

“GYAAAAAAAHH!”

The middle-aged man screamed in terror as he plummeted from view. For tens of seconds, there was no confirmation of him reaching the bottom of the hole, but finally, everyone present heard the distant splash of water. Alan tapped the hole on the wooden platform with his shovel, and it shone brightly before closing up.

“Wha? B-but, what about the hole…?”

“Fear not. I just dug one up with my shovel.”

“Excuse me?”

“I didn’t take his life. I dropped him into an underground water vein.”

“Excuse me?!”

“Did you really think that explanation would float with a normal person?!” Despite her words, Catria wore a smile on her face.

What was I thinking? This is who he is. I know he can be a pain in the butt at times, but this shoveling jerk has a real sense of justice.

“Wh-what just happened!? What in blazes did you do?! Guards!”

The slave merchant rang a bell and the customers immediately dispersed, allowing capable-looking warriors wielding falchions to flood in. There were about 50 in total, and most already had bows and arrows trained on Alan.

“Ah… Ah…” Julia instinctively approached Alan. She was clearly panicked. “P-please run… You don’t stand a chance against them.”

Alan was moved. Despite being in mortal danger, this girl was concerned for his life.

“Don’t worry, I plan on running. But you’re coming with me. I’m sending you home.”

Julia quietly shook her head from side to side.

“No.” Her intent was clear. “I’m going to stay here. I can act as a distraction.”

“You’ll die.”

“Maybe… But I don’t have a home to go back to anymore…” Julia explained weakly, her decision seemingly final.

“I don’t know what your deal is, but I’m guessing I won’t be convincing you one way or the other.”

“I’m sorry… Please take care, kind sir.”

“Which means I gotta do this my way.”

KA-CHOOMDOOGLESHAAAAAM!!!

A flash of light erupted from Alan’s shovel. Just like that, Julia’s handcuffs and legcuffs were destroyed.

“Huh?! Wh-what did you just… Aaah!”

Alan silently lifted Julia up into his arms. He wasn’t taking no for an answer. Elsewhere, Catria quietly chuckled.

“You can’t! Put me down! I’m a sinner! I’m not worth saving!”

“A sinner?”

“I… I betrayed everyone and fled from my village…” Tears ran down her cheeks. “I was scared of being the Water Priestess, so I ran… I just ran…”

“Don’t worry. I may not know the details of what happened, but I’ll go with you and apologize, too.”

“You can’t… I’ve done something I can’t undo…” Julia looked down at the ground. “And… And I’ve lost the proof that I’m the Water Priestess…”

The proof she spoke of was the Water of Rahal, which her owner poured out onto the ground only moments ago. The liquid had already been absorbed into the sand. There would be no reclaiming it.

“I can’t ever get that water back…”

Julia continued to weep.

“Hrm.” Alan had a solid grasp of the situation now, and he knew that Julia believed she’d never be forgiven for her sins. Which meant that the first thing he had to do was clear up one of her misconceptions.

“Julia, right? Let me correct you.”

“Huh…?”

“You’re right. You can’t ever get that water back. However.”

Alan gripped his shovel with one hand.

“DIG!”

The ground split into two, and from the crack emerged a lump of earth about the size of a house. It was the same ground that had absorbed the Water of Rahal only moments ago.

Alan focused his energy into his shovel. He was going to activate Time Shovel. This technique allowed him to reverse the flow of time in an object to a certain point. As time began to march back, so too did the flow of the Water of Rahal.

And just like that, Julia’s bottle was full again.

“Wh-what…?”

She stared in shock at the glass bottle, clueless as to what had just transpired.

“With a shovel, I can absolutely get that water back.”

“Huh?”

The slave girl was still unclear about pretty much everything.

“Alan! The guards are coming!” shouted Catria. Alan nodded.

ROOOOOAAAAAR!

Responding to Alan’s Shovel Power, the air in the desert roared as the wind whipped up into a fury. The aura surrounding his shovel grew bigger and bigger until it surpassed the size of a human, eventually reaching for the heavens.

“DIG!”

KAA-ZOOOOOOOOSH!”

Fifty different beams of light exploded from the shovel, firing in all directions. This was Alan’s Shotgun Wave Motion Shovel Blast. Instead of firing a single beam in one direction, it fired multiple homing beams. The beams sank into the ground under the guards’ feet, immediately creating holes that they then fell into.

“?!”

Julia was more confused than she had been in her entire life, but that was only to be expected. There wasn’t a single human on the planet who wouldn’t be confused by the Shotgun Wave Motion Shovel Blast.

“See, Julia? With my shovel…” Alan paused. “I can save your spilled water. The Water of Rahal? No sweat. Your village? No problem? You? Absolutely.”

Julia stared at Alan in dumbfounded silence. Everything she knew about the world had been turned upside down in the span of minutes. Who… Who is this man?! What is he?!

Watching from a distance, Catria sighed. Looks like today’s sacrifice is this Water Priestess.