Part 16: The Miner Defeats the Legendary Dragon
Part 16:
The Miner Defeats the
Legendary Dragon
ALAN LEAPT into the sky.
That was right.
The sky.
The pyramid had collapsed, leaving only sky above the party’s heads. It was this very sky that now served as Alan and the dragon’s arena. The miner soared through the air, buoyed up by a circular field of blue light that emanated from his shovel. It looked less like he was flying, and more like he was simply leaping a distance no human could hope to match. He was like a Pegasus. A pegashovel.
“He told me he could do this, but actually seeing it with my own two eyes… well.” What else could Catria say in response to such an insane sight?
“I always thought shovels were tools for digging through the ground.”
“Julia, you’re absolutely right. But the opposite is also shovely true.”
“The opposite?”
“The opposite of digging through the ground is flying through the sky!”
“Are you sure that’s what ‘opposite’ means?”
“Shovely so!”
“O-okay.”
“Lithisia’s confusing the Water Priestess. Do something, Catria.” Alice turned to the knight.
Catria wished she could, but she was powerless here. Alan was flying. What could she possibly say in the face of that? The man with the shovel was using its bizarre powers to fly through the sky. Come on.
“How can a mere mortal fly through my dominion?! My sky?!”
“I’d be a terrible miner if I couldn’t manage a little aerial combat.”
There were elder dragons and higher demons that could eradicate the ground at a molecular level, create huge open-air cavities, shift into astral bodies and fly unrestricted through solid earth, or even create parallel dimensions advantageous to themselves. Being able to do battle in the air was a necessary prerequisite for going up against enemies that could control the very nature of reality.
“You who violates my dominion with your presence! I sentence you to death!”
The dragon unleashed another roar of pure anger. Cracks began to appear in the air, and from them emerged a legion of smaller dragons.
Dragon-summoning magic.
“Eliminate him, my children!”
The army of dragons simultaneously unleashed their fire breath upon Alan. But it was too late.
“BURY!” A flash of light erupted from his shovel and created a shield around him. The fire attacks were absorbed into this energy shield.
“Oh my gosh! Catria, you absolutely have to learn how to do that! It’s your responsibility as the head of the Holy Shovel Knights!”
“That’s not happening unless I give up on being human.”
“Then toss your humanity aside!”
“...” Catria’s expression was the picture of the kind of despair that consumed a knight upon receiving an impossible order from their master.
Alan’s mid-air battle continued. He had already finished off the smaller dragons.
“Why doesn’t Sir Miner end things with his Wave Motion Shovel Blast?”
“He’s probably trying to get a read on the dragon’s true power. Remember all that stuff about safety first?”
“Sir Alan…” Julia was on both knees, praying for his victory. In the face of such an inhuman battle, all mortals could do was prostrate themselves before a higher power.
“My powerful children! My brood! Assemble!” The dragon roared yet again, preparing to use more summoning magic.
“Like I’m going to let you.” Alan lifted his shovel toward the heavens and focused his energy into it. KA-CHOOOOOOOOOOM! A howl erupted from the shovel that was not at all unlike the dragon’s. Shockingly, this one was much louder. The dragon’s summoning magic was overwritten, and the cracks in dimensional space closed.
“What was that?” Catria whispered. The shovel had howled?!
Off to her side, she could hear Lithisia hit upon a new, unsavory idea. “I get it! I totally get it! I finally understand, Sir Miner!”
“Your Royal Highness? What do you mean?” Catria didn’t actually want to know.
“Listen shovely closely, Catria.”
“I’m just going to ignore the ‘shovely’ part.”
“Shovels are objects that ‘dig up’ things, correct?”
“Well, er, yes. Generally speaking. Though as of late, I’ve come to doubt that concept.”
Lithisia held her index finger up. “Well, dogs dig up things as well! And they howl! See? It makes perfect sense for a shovel to do the same.”
A strangely chilly breeze blew through the desert.
Lithisia continued with her explanation. “Sir Miner looked to Mother Nature for inspiration… How beautiful!”
“Going by that attempt at logic, you might as well start calling ice cream shops ‘shovels’, since there’s so much scooping!”
“Oh my gosh! You’re right! Let’s do that when we take my country back!”
“I was a fool for saying anything.”
And just like that, Rostir earned a new tourist attraction.
The battle waged on. Alan’s shovel pierced the magically enforced scales of the dragon, which began to crack like dropped plates. On the surface, dragon scales were considered the hardest material in the world. That said, shovels were considered harder than all others beneath the surface.
“Dragon, it appears to me that your knowledge stops at the surface.” Alan was beginning to grasp this beast’s abilities. The dragon was undoubtedly strong. Its ability to summon its brood and the power of its fire breath placed it solidly among the most powerful members of its kind. And yet, compared to Alan, who had spent a thousand years digging beneath the surface, it showed an overwhelming lack of experience.
“Why?! How is this possible?! This is madness!” The dragon opened its maw, guided by its rage. It was planning on firing off its breath again.
Alan chose not to dodge. Now that he knew the limits of the beast’s strength, he had no need to play it safe. He began to collect blue energy at the tip of his shovel.
Both combatants fired their attacks in the same moment, and the Wave Beam Cannon proved significantly more powerful.
“DIG!”
The Wave Motion Shovel Blast engulfed the dragon’s breath, and the resulting collision tore open a rift in space. The ergosphere that formed around this void spun faster than light itself, radiating destruction in its wake. Gravity distorted. The laws of physics began to warp.
The planet, unable to withstand the immense power of the Wave Beam Cannon, was on the verge of collapse. It was a Shoveltastrophe.
And the dragon’s massive body was being torn apart by the dimensional collapse.
“Why…”
Having recognized its own defeat, the ancient beast managed only that one word. Why? Why did it lose? How did it lose to a human?
“Dragon, there is but a single reason why you lost this battle. To put it simply… Dragon, your claws are incapable of holding a shovel.”
The dragon let loose one final roar as its form was erased from existence. “I DON’T GET IT!” it cried.
Catria understood exactly where it was coming from. Yeah, I know. I totally agree.
***
And so, Alan returned to the surface with the Red Orb in hand. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
The first person to run up to him was Lithisia. “I’m so very moved! I must record today’s battle in our scripture!”
“And how exactly do you plan on describing it?” asked Alice.
“Just say the shovel was victorious…”
“A perfect idea,” responded the undead queen.
Leaving Alice and the others to figure this out, Alan approached Julia.
“The dragon… It’s…” Julia was still staring slack-jawed at the demolished pyramid.
This was no longer a forbidden land, but rather, the grave of the Despair-Eating Dragon.
“Sir Alan, no, I mean, I… Ahhh…” Julia fell to her knees as if she were begging for forgiveness. “I can’t believe I had the nerve to call you by your name! I…” Tears fell from the girl’s eyes. “Someone like me… I… I should be calling you God!”
“C’mon, raise your head, Julia. I’m no god.”
“B-but…”
Indeed, when it came to shovels, Alan was the man. But he didn’t have the power to govern the world like a god, nor did he plan on becoming one.
“I’m Alan.”
And so, he took a knee and looked Julia straight in the eyes.
“Just an ordinary miner.”
A warm gust of wind blew through the desert. Julia simply stared into Alan’s eyes. Who could blame her? She’d just heard the most incomprehensible words imaginable.
Eventually, someone patted Alan on the back. It was Catria.
“Alan, there’s something I have to say.”
“What is it?”
Catria sighed deeply. She had reached her limit. What she had to say next, she was saying on behalf of the rest of humanity—on behalf of the dead dragon, even. And so, she inhaled and then shouted with all of her might.
“HOW IN THE WORLD ARE YOU JUST AN ORDINARY MINER?!”
Her words echoed through the furthest reaches of the desert.