Part 40: The Miner Makes a Dungeon With His Shovel

Part 40:
The Miner Makes a Dungeon
With His Shovel

It only took half a day for Kuronono’s Kingdom of Darkness Shovel Squad to take back the capital from the demons. The princess herself led the charge (a champion in her micro bikini, even if she was embarrassed as all get out). Behind her trailed excited men wielding Demon Shovelers that fired powerful beams of light; it took no time at all to demolish the forces of Hell.

Back at the grand dining hall, those very same men were celebrating their victory.

“Thank you so much, everyone! You all looked so valiant out there with your shovels!” Kuronono stood on shage and raised her shovel, a heroic smile on her face as the micro bikini continued to dig into her skin.

The passion in the dining hall was overwhelming.

“LOVE! LOVE! KURONONO LOVE!”

The Kingdom of Darkness was a country built beneath the surface of the earth itself. In total, its territory included twelve mountains. The One True Steel City where Odessa and the others had been held was a six-thousand-foot tall mountain not unlike an ant hill; it sprawled with rooms and passageways.

And yet it took them a mere half day to free it from the tyrannical rule of the demons.

“Oh happy, happy day! All hail Lady Kuronono! All hail Lady Odessa!”

“H-hey, wait a minute!”

The crowd tossed Odessa into the air, but her mind was still in shambles. It seemed Alan had only just brought out his shovel, yet the revolution had begun and now it was ended.

What…what happened?! I don’t understand a single thing that happened today!

“Lady Odessa! Oh, thank you so much! I never thought this day would come…!”

“Aaaahhh!! I love you! I’ve always loved you, Adelle. Let’s get married!”

“Of course, Abel!”

Two of Odessa’s closest friends embraced each other in tears. The woman had been torn away from her lover, and the accursed seedbed symbol had been carved into her stomach. That symbol was removed via shovel, allowing her to reunite with her beloved. The couple was overjoyed, of course. They hugged as they shared a passionate kiss.

They truly looked happy.

“Ah…urgh…” Odessa held her head in her hands. What the heck is a shovel? This is weird. This is completely weird. But everyone’s smiling…

Odessa’s dream of five years was unfolding before her very eyes. How could she dismiss the immense joy she was witnessing?

“Ngh…”

The shovel was amazing. It would save humanity.

Maybe I should just learn to accept this… No, I have to.

As Odessa did combat with her reservations, she turned to speak to Alan, who stood next to her. “Alan, as the leader of the r-resistance, I offer you my deepest gratitude…”

It was at least true that she was grateful to him. Without this man’s power, the revolution would have failed. Regardless of how absurd his power was, it was still power.

“Odessa, it’s way too early to be offering me thanks. Save it for after we’ve freed the remaining eleven mountains.”

“O-of course, you’re right. In that case, we should start planning…”

“But before we go on the attack, let’s strengthen our defenses in the capital. The stream of demons coming from Hell is pretty much endless.”

“Strengthen our defenses? How so?”

“We’ll create a barrier to block their invasion into the underground. In other words, we’re going to make a dungeon.”

Odessa took a moment to think before shaking her head. “We tried that already; it didn’t work…”

The Kingdom of Darkness was originally a country of miners. Building a maze to keep invaders out was a practice with which they were both familiar and adept. In fact, they had created a twenty-eight-floor dungeon surrounding the capital city: the “Unending Maze.” Though filled with traps, it hadn’t been enough to stop the demon invasion. The evil bastards broke through the maze and made quick work of the traps, overwhelming what they couldn’t solve with sheer force of numbers.

Odessa tried to explain as much to Alan, but his confidence didn’t dim in the slightest.

“Odessa, that only happened because you folks didn’t know how to properly build a dungeon.”

“What do you mean?”

“As a citizen of the underground, it’s in your best interest to memorize this. A true dungeon…” Alan pierced the dirt wall with his shovel and a roar filled the air as the wall morphed into a shining green metal. Alan had buried the molecular structure of the dirt wall and turned it into adamantine using atomic arrangement. Shovel atomic conversion. This was an absolutely necessary technique when it came to building advanced dungeons. “…Can keep out anyone, even the gods themselves.”

The wall is made of adamantine now…?

“Urgh!”

Odessa did her best to suppress the urge to dive into a river of magma. Only the profound willpower she’d built up through countless torture sessions allowed her to retain her sanity.

You’re okay. Calm down, me. Your mind’s been corrupted by shovels, but your body hasn’t. Get a hold of yourself and take a good long look at yourself in the mirror. See? You’re still you. You’re still…human…? Huh?

“A bikini…?”

Indeed, she was still human. In fact, she was basically a human in her birthday suit, only worse. Odessa was still wearing a white micro bikini. The impact of the shovel revolution had caused her to completely forget the shameful state of her attire.

I might already be a lost cause.

***

Alan examined a 3D map of the twenty-eight-floor Unending Maze surrounding the capital that he was projecting from the metal tip of his shovel.

“I-It doesn’t matter how sturdy the walls are, it won’t be enough,” said Odessa.

Adamantine walls could largely stand against the strength of individual demons, but they weren’t an absolute defense. If the demons came at adamantine with all of their power, it inevitably failed.

“Hrm. Odessa, there are three basic qualities a dungeon must have.”

“And they are?”

“The first is… All right, perfect timing. Some demons just got through.”

As Alan pointed at the map, ten little red lights began to flash. The lights broke through the first floor of the dungeon with a quickness, infiltrating the second floor in mere minutes.

“It took only three minutes to get past the first floor. Odessa, do you know what needs to happen now?”

“I don’t.”

“We need to use a shovel.”

“I still don’t.”

Alan channeled power into his shovel. The tool shone and Alan dug his way into the dungeon.

Shoop, shoop, shoop!

In about five seconds, Alan had returned and there was now a twenty-ninth floor on top of the twenty-eighth floor on the map.

There was another…floor?

Meanwhile, the demons were still wandering the halls of the second floor.

“We have to outpace the intruders by building more floors,” said Alan.

“Wait.”

“There’s no time for waiting. The first basic quality of a dungeon is that it is ‘infinite.’”

“No, seriously. Wait.”

“Are you worried about space issues? Don’t worry. By tapping something with the head of my shovel, I can ‘expand’ space-time in the ground. We can build as large a dungeon as we want.”

Odessa felt like airholes were being punched into her brain. But she did her best to persist. “Um, Alan, only you’re capable of doing that. Humans can’t. Get me?”

“Don’t worry about that, either. Our Shovel Squad can handle this.”

The miner called over Kuronono and her twenty-person Shovel Squad, and explained to them the first basic quality of a dungeon was its “infinitude.” The members of the squad of course complained that this was impossible and that Alan was weird in the head.

Thank goodness, they still have common sense.

But just as Odessa felt relief, Kuronono made her move.

“U-um, everyone!” Kuronono stood pigeon-toed, her knees closed together. She bent backward, her small chest thrust out, and held her shovel to hide her mouth, overcome with shyness. “Um, I really, really love when you all try to do the impossible… Y’know?”

“LOVE! LOVE! LOVE!”

Flaming shovels lit up in the squad’s eyes and with that, they instantly dug to the dungeon. They weren’t as fast as Alan, but they were a sight to behold. A new, thirtieth floor of the dungeon began to appear on the map and in about two minutes, it was finished.

“Thank you all so much! Make sure you practice really hard so you can do it even scoopily faster!”

“LOVE! KURONONO IS LOVE! MUST PRACTICE SCOOPS!”

Odessa gripped her head in her hands, but Alan continued.

“The second basic quality of a dungeon is its ‘economic efficiency.’”

Alan flourished his shovel to create tens of Shovel Soldiers. However, these were different from his usual oeuvre. They each held an abacus, and also had tens of shovels strapped to their backs with price tags attached.

“Welcome! What’re you buyin’?” one of them said.

These Shovel Soldiers would serve as store clerks.

“Dungeon excavation is hard work, which means people need to be paid. We’re going to extract that money from the invading demons.”

“Wait just a second.”

“There’s no time for waiting! Time is money!” said Alan.

“No, seriously. Wait just a second.”

But Alan did not wait. He snapped his fingers and the Shovel Soldiers spread throughout the dungeon. Some set up shop by the entrance, selling the demons shovels in exchange for jewels, souls, or even demon currency known as “macca.” All this money would go to paying the miners as well as for food. With this setup, the dungeon would be able to function infinitely.

“Economic efficiency is key to getting an infinite dungeon up and running…hm? What’s the matter, Odessa?”

A headache. Her head throbbed as if someone had bashed it with a shovel as hard as they could.

“Anyway, onward. The last basic quality of a dungeon. Odessa, do you know what it is?”

“I know nothing.”

“Precisely.”

“Huh?”

“The most important thing about a dungeon is that the invader keeps getting turned around so often that they have no clue what’s going on.”

Alan focused energy into his shovel and began to dig. A great rumbling erupted from the earth, as if the capital itself were shaking. This was Alan “randomizing” the dungeon. By doing so, he was rearranging the traps, shops, and general layout of the maze.

Crustal movement via earthquake. By using a shovel, one could initiate this artificially. The shovel was king of the underground, capable of complete manipulative supremacy.

“A dungeon with the same layout won’t last forever. That’s why you randomize.’”

A dungeon had to be everchanging, otherwise it would fall to anyone who could map it. Randomization was the most important quality a dungeon could have.

“Randomizing a dungeon is a fairly high-level technique, but with Kuronono at the head of operations… What’s wrong, Odessa?”

Odessa’s brain was moving a mile a minute, on the verge of dishing out a million descriptions of how insane this all was.

This is nothing like the dungeons I’m familiar with.

She wanted to say as much, but she couldn’t grasp the degree of insanity with words. Her head had been dug out entirely.

“Phew…”

It really is too late for me. I’m sorry, Kuronono, Odessa said in her heart. Just as she was about to collapse, Kuronono skipped over in her micro bikini.

“Ah! Sir Alan! Um, excuse me!” She seemed apologetic. “Um, I’m sorry. The folks in the Shovel Squad have been complaining… ‘An earthquake? Is he out of his mind?’ ‘I love Lady Kuronono, but that’s impossible.’ ‘Even with my love for princesses in micro bikinis, that’s impossible.’ Stuff like that…”

“Hrm, I see. I’m not sure I understand, but the long and short of it is you’re struggling, yeah?”

Odessa felt newly at ease. So the Shovel Squad retained some semblance of human common sense.

Thank goodness. The Kingdom of Darkness is still a country of humans, not demons or worse, shovels.

“Odessa, that’s why…” Kuronono turned to her friend and threw a bomb right in her face. “I want you to perform a shovelive with me.”

In the background, someone heard a shovel fall off a cliff. Odessa’s consciousness fell off a cliff as well.

“And then everyone’ll say things like ‘All scoop the super serious Lady Odessa!’ ‘Resistance is love!’ ‘Red-haired pony-tailed C-cup white bikini is love!’ ‘My shovel is quivering!’ If you perform, they’ll be able to do it! Pleeease?”

Odessa’s consciousness was fading.

I understand nothing. I know nothing. Well, there is a single thing I understand.

“Hrm, you don’t appear to be doing so well. Let me use Shovel Healing on you.”

“Thank you so much, Sir Alan!”

As of today, the Kingdom of Darkness is now the Kingdom of Shovels.