Part 26: The Miner Digs a Grave

Part 26:
The Miner Digs a Grave

ALAN AND LUCREZIA raced down a marble road. They were headed straight to the location of the man behind the murder of Lucrezia’s father. Archon Jistice. He was currently on the job, which meant he was overseeing a trial at the courthouse. Alan’s idea was to arrest the archon in front of the judges and have him pay for his crimes in prison. With that, they’d be able to solve the case before the day was done.

At last, they came upon a titanic gate protected by two guards.

“Here we go. Ready, Lucrezia?”

“As ready as I am ever going to be. Is your plan truly going to work?!”

“It will. Believe in the power of the shovel!”

“I do not wish to, and yet…”

The guards demanded that Alan identify himself, to which he responded by swinging his shovel and knocking them out. He then drove his shovel into the center of the twin doors like a wedge and bam! They opened right up.

The inside of the courthouse was beautiful, almost like a concert hall. A judge sat high above the audience, who had begun to stir at the commotion. Upon seeing Alan, the judge banged his gavel.

“Order! Order in the court, I say!”

However, the judge was not the most dignified man in the courtroom.

“What is all this nonsense?” Standing in the center of the room was a bearded man in his forties, clad in green clothes befitting nobility. He slowly turned and directed his sharp gaze toward Alan. It didn’t take much for Alan to realize that this was Archon Jistice, the man who killed Lucrezia’s father.

The courtroom was filled with chattering and the judge once again called for order.

“Lucrezia, just do exactly as we planned.”

“H-hey, wait! At least let me rest!” Lucrezia took multiple deep breaths. She had sprinted with all of her might to keep up with Alan on the way to the courthouse, so she needed to get some oxygen into her head.

“Now’s our shovel chance, since everyone is confused.”

What on earth is a shovel chance? But of course, Lucrezia didn’t voice that question aloud. Instead, she let Alan push her forward.

Now Lucrezia stood directly in front of the entrance, and all eyes in the courtroom were on her.

“Who is that?”

“Isn’t that Lady Lucrezia?”

The crowd was abuzz.

“W-wait, I am n-not yet ready.” Despite Lucrezia’s trepidation, the crowd watched her with intense curiosity. If she backed off now, she’d be arrested for being in contempt of the court. “Argh, fine! I get it! I shall do it! Does this please you?!”

She had no choice but to do the thing Alan discussed with her.

“Jistice! Your Honor! Everyone in attendance! Listen well!”

Lucrezia’s clarion voice silenced the room. She took a deep breath. She had to calm her nerves and think. Common sense said she wouldn’t be able to call out the archon for his crimes—she had to resort to extreme methods. Alan’s plan was the only way to catch the culprit. Yes!

All that running had robbed Lucrezia of oxygen, affecting her thought process. That was ultimately why she raised her right hand.

“Archon Jistice! In the name of the shovel!” In that right hand, she held a shovel. “You are under arrest for the murder of my father!”

The courtroom went silent. For ten seconds, then twenty, not a single word passed the audience’s lips. Someone sneezed.

Lucrezia was on the verge of tears.

“Hrmph.” A mocking smile curled on Archon Jistice’s face. “Lady Lucrezia, might I ask what that shovel is for? You must be terribly unwell in the head.”

“Urgh… Ugh…” Lucrezia’s cheeks, ears, and eyes were bright red. She turned back to Alan, face covered in tears. “Alan, this is not going to work!”

“My lady, what exactly did you hope to accomplish here today?” Jistice asked, the soul of civility.

It was obvious what Lucrezia meant to accomplish: She was going to arrest him with her shovel. Hell, it was all in accordance to the written laws. A miner holding a shovel (according to Alan’s logic, Lucrezia was a proud miner) had the right to make arrests. It was written in ink and everything. But in the end, ink was all it was.

“Ugh, you terrible, stupid man!” Lucrezia cried at Alan.

But I am the true idiot. What was I thinking, attempting to arrest the archon with a shovel?! How could I let Alan’s strange ideas influence me enough to think for even a minute that a shovel could serve as a substitute for an arrest warrant?! I am such a fool.

How had she given up on the propriety that defined her humanity, all for the unhinged promise of the shovel? Now, Lucrezia was only a woman holding a simple tool, crying in a courtroom for the arrest of Jistice. It was the most shameful moment of her entire life.

“My word, if you were anyone else, I would doubt your sanity, Lady Lucrezia.”

At this point, her only option was to kill Alan and then herself. Lucrezia swung the shovel toward Alan’s head with the intention of smashing his cranium.

“If you intend on accusing me, the archon, of a crime, you will need much more than a single shovel.”

Lucrezia froze mid-swing. “H-huh? M-more than a single shovel?”

The judge nodded his head solemnly. “Indeed, Lady Lucrezia. That is shovely true. If you are to accuse him of a crime, you need proof.”

“Wha? Huh? Eh?!”

“Exactly. I was certainly surprised that Lady Lucrezia had a shovel to begin with, but…”

“Arresting the archon with but a single shovel is no easy feat. You would need at least three, perhaps more.”

The defense lawyer and prosecutor added.

“See, Lucrezia? Just as planned,” said Alan. “This is our chance.”

The common sense that Lucrezia thought she had reclaimed immediately crumbled back to dust. It had worked. It actually worked. It seriously, shovely, worked (her words were already falling apart). Shovels were amazing.

And so the judge delivered a question to Lucrezia.

“Lady Lucrezia, do you have evidence to back your claims?”

“O-of course I do! I do!” She presented evidence to the judge that Jistice had murdered her father. With the way things were proceeding, they might believe her! “My evidence is, of course, this shovel!”

Complete silence washed over the courtroom. Everyone in attendance stared at the young woman.

“Lady Lucrezia, do you think this is a game?” The judge’s voice was frigid.

“Huh?”

“My lady, a shovel cannot serve as evidence.”

“Huh? Er…”

“Perhaps you should have a doctor take a look at you, Lady Lucrezia.”

“Ha ha ha!”

“Ha ha ha!”

“Ha ha ha!”

“Nngh!” This was the most shameful moment of Lucrezia’s entire life (and the second time in three minutes that she’d thought this). She’d been betrayed. She trusted in the shovel, and yet it let her down. “Alan! Alaaaaan!”

“Don’t worry. Believe in the power of the shovel.”

“I’m never believing in this thing ever again, you awful man!”

“Might I have a moment, Lady Lucrezia?” Archon Jistice cut in. “I did not kill your father. In fact, I have proof that it was an accident.”

“Proof?”

“The truth is that today’s assembly is a preliminary hearing to review said evidence.”

Jistice snapped his fingers and a video was displayed on the wall of the courtroom. It showed the horse and carriage that Lucrezia’s father rode on the fateful day of his death. This technology was the product of a Magical Video Stone, an artifact from the ancient era of magic that was capable of recording events. It was one of the many things that Lucrezia’s father had collected.

Eventually, the video showed her father’s carriage tilting off the cliff. A bee had stung the horse right in the ear, causing it to go out of control. The driver did his best to get the horse under control, but ultimately failed. And so the horse and carriage tumbled off the cliff, ending the footage.

“As you can see, Lady Lucrezia, I did not murder your father.” Jistice smiled and bowed his head to the young woman. “I too find this to be an awful tragedy. In an attempt to uncover the truth behind his death, I retrieved the stone your father had on his person. There is now no longer any reason to doubt the reality of what happened.”

“Nngh!” Lucrezia had no words to spare. Her father had indeed carried the Magical Video Stone as a kind of insurance. There was little reason to believe that the archon had tampered with it.

But something about the situation still bugged her. Was this really all just an accident? Was this really all just a misunderstanding on her part? Had the shovel simply eaten away at her common sense, causing her to go a bit crazy?

“Lucrezia, you gotta believe,” said Alan.

“Silence! I shall never trust a shovel for as long as I live!”

“No. Believe in yourself.”

“Huh?”

Alan cast a gaze upon Lucrezia more serious than any he’d yet shown her.

“You believed more than anything that this wasn’t an accident, right? Then follow that path to its true end. Keep digging until you find the vein you believe is there. The belief to plow forward.” Alan gripped his shovel. “It’s the same for both miners and nobility.”

Lucrezia was once again robbed of her words. Follow the path to its true end. That was something her father had taught her.

How dare he say such things after all the nonsense he has spouted…?

Despite the irritation in her heart, Lucrezia understood what Alan was saying. She could not give up. She had to find the hole in Jistice’s logic. Being a noble meant standing at the top. And that meant not changing one’s beliefs because of a single setback. Lucrezia was a proud noble. She would believe in herself and carry on.

“Jistice! What if that bee was sent there on purpose?”

The archon’s lips twitched. “Ha ha ha, what a fascinating concept. But what sort of proof do you have?”

His reaction was suspicious.

“Perhaps there’s proof somewhere in your mansion that you keep bees…!”

“Ha ha, fine. Explore all of my rooms to your heart’s content.”

It was no good. The archon was nothing if not careful. He wouldn’t let her grab his tail so easily.

Think! Think, Lucrezia! But she couldn’t come up with an answer. She was at an overwhelming disadvantage when it came to evidence and leads. Actually, she only had a shovel to go off of. Given that, there was probably something wrong with this plan from the start.

Nonetheless, there was no turning back. She had to do something. Lucrezia grit her teeth.

A strange sound interrupted her determination. Alan was digging a hole in the courtroom floor (made of high-quality wood) with his shovel.

“You are going to be arrested for property damage,” snapped Lucrezia.

Granted, that was hardly important at the moment.

“No worries, I’ll just fill it in later. More importantly, keep going at Jistice.”

“I cannot! I do not have the evidence!”

“Don’t worry, I just dug a hole.”

“And how is that supposed to help me?!”

Archon Jistice cackled. “You have no chance, Lady Lucrezia! In exchange for thirty thousand Republic gold coins, I had my food trader supply me with that bee! Then I had the assassin’s guild, Alazkan, use it to murder your father! There is no proof left to be found!”

All eyes in the courtroom turned to Jistice.

“Ha ha ha, if you really must know, I have a receipt in the accounting book I hid in the second-floor bedroom of my mansion. It is in a secret vault, so you must push the switch hidden in a black, softcover book called The Lactia Maiden and Her Many Lovers. On top of that, you must have my butler, Sebastian, enter the secret code that only he knows. Otherwise, the vault will never open!”

At this point, the people in the courtroom looked like their souls were leaking out of their bodies.

“Sebastian is extremely loyal. He would never leak the secret code out to anyone. Well, as long as you do not attempt to seduce him with a bronze-skinned dancer from the desert with massive breasts, that is! Ha ha ha!”

“Summon a bronze-skinned, big-breasted dancer from the theater immediately!” shouted the judge to the prosecutor.

“Now then, Lady Lucrezia. How will you unveil my grand, perfect conspiracy?!”

In short order, the butler Sebastian had fallen to the honey trap, allowing the courts to get their hands on the dastardly bee-related receipts, leading to the arrest of Jistice. He was found guilty of all crimes in question and sentenced to life in prison. When the judge handed down his verdict, Lucrezia simply watched on in a near-comatose state.

“With that, this court is adjourned!”

Lucrezia very, very slowly turned to Alan. He was holding his shovel as per the usual.

“What exactly did you do?” she asked flatly.

“I dug a grave.”

Lucrezia looked down. Carved into the floor in front of the hole in the courtroom were the words “Here Lies Archon Jistice (TBD).”

Alan had literally dug a grave for the man.

“Didn’t I say before, Lucrezia? Believe in yourself. Believe in the shovel.” Alan gave his usual smile and raised his shovel. “That’s what’s needed to win in the courtroom.”

Lucrezia looked upward. What exactly was a shovel? She didn’t understand anything. Well, there was one thing she sort of understood. That she was saved by the shovel. Saved by this…man.

“All right, Lucrezia. Time for you to keep your promise.”

That was right. Lucrezia was fated to be shoveled by this shovel man and his shovel. Alan’s tool was shining, and she couldn’t look away from it.

“O-of course! I remember just f-fine.” Lucrezia’s exquisite body began to tremble, but not from fear. The shovel’s shine, a shine meant for digging, would be directed toward her. “Ah, w-wait, no!”

“No what?”

“Er, nothing! It is nothing!”

This could not be. There was no way she would let herself form any kind of interest in Alan and his shovel that had somehow cut through the holy court of law.

Lucrezia’s heart beat a mile a minute.

What is he going to do to me? N-not that I care!