“Alan…Miner Alan…use the Ring of the Archangel… Give me my orders!”
“What?”
“If you command me…to get inside of the Angel Furnace…I can control…agh!” The tentacle sucked at Lucy’s essence. Her chest burned hot, as did her mind. Her entire body was being absorbed. No! I’m not going to hold out long…but I have to!
Catria tried to wrench the tentacle off Lucy, but to no avail. It was now a part of her. Every time it convulsed, an eldritch jolt ran through Lucy’s body.
“Ngaah…AAAAAAAHHHHH!”
The foreign object pushed into her, but she couldn’t resist it. She had to let it in. The only way to control the Angel Furnace was to become a part of it. She would lose consciousness, but a ringbearer could still force her to take action according to their will.
“Damnit! What is with this thing?! Lucy, stop it! Stop this stupidity at once!”
“Aaaggghhh…Great Hero Catria…it’s okay… If I can use this…life to save you… AAAAHHH!!!”
“You don’t have to throw your life away! We can still be saved!”
“Huh?”
“We can. For sure. Like, it’s not even a big deal.”
Finally, Alan stepped in. “Perfect. Preparations complete. We’re all getting out of here.”
Alan scooped up Lucy and the Angel Furnace with one hand (transportation was a miner’s specialty), then exited from the hole he had created when he annihilated Pazuzu into the rushing wind. Aboard his Shovel Glider, the entire party fled Rahzelfo.
They shot into the sky, buffeted by powerful gusts, but soon they were gliding easily down to the surface. Once on solid ground, they realized to their horror that the floating city was on a collision course with the fields of Rostir, plummeting like an incoming comet.
If it were to make contact with the earth, it would turn the entire nation of Rostir into one big old crater.
Alan had only one option.
“DIG!”
KA-CHOOOOOOOOM!
The beam of light he fired from the land below pierced the sky itself, almost like a reverse-flowing comet. It was Alan’s Hyper-Wide Wave Motion Shovel Blast.
Alan fired the hyper-wide beam at about 20 percent of its normal power, but it was more than enough to engulf and evaporate Rahzelfo. Just like that, Farshinal’s arcane lair and the pride of the ancient magic kingdom was as nothing. If mages seeking the knowledge of old were to bear witness to this moment, they would undoubtedly burst into tears, but all of that was kind of beside the point.
This all wrapped up in the twenty seconds after Lucy let herself get caught by the Angel Furnace.
“Um, what?” The tentacle attached to Lucy’s chest wriggled as she stared up at the empty sky, her existence continuing to be slowly absorbed by the Angel Furnace. Um, where’s Rahzelfo? I was supposed to use my life to stop it from falling.
“Didn’t I tell you we’d be okay, Lucy?” said Catria.
“Um, but, er… Whaaaa?!”
“Now then, how do we get this thing off of you…? Whoa! It’s fusing with you!”
It was too late. Lucy was a part of the Angel Furnace.
No, wait, come on! Really?! After all of this?!
As Lucy pleaded within her fading consciousness, a hoarse voice rang out from above.
“How dare you… That light… Do you possess a Heavenly Artifact?!”
There in the sky was Pazuzu, who had supposedly been blown away by Alan. However, the demon’s appearance was…wrong. For one, it was many multiple times larger than its original appearance in the floating city. For another, it roared as it circled the skies in an enormous draconic body.
Alan peered up and observed its movements with a careful eye. “Huh, so the thing from before was just a splinter, then? I’m assuming this one’s the real deal.”
Most great demons had some sort of resistance to death. As such, even if you beat one of its splinters, the main body would remain unharmed.
“Haaah, haaah… In that case…!” Lucy managed to raise her voice despite the ongoing diminishment of her entire being. I’m going to be useful this time! I’m going to defeat the demon… I’m going to help!
Lucy did her best to suppress the quivering of her body as she stood before Alan.
“Don’t worry… With the power of the Angel Furnace, I can, urgh, seal its resistance to death…argh…!”
Lucy would use the furnace’s pent-up power to defeat the demon and save Catria once and for all. For the second time in one minute, she steeled her resolve.
I have no reason not to sacrifice my life for her, right?
“Lucy.”
“Miner Alan, aaaagggghhhh!!! Command…me…!”
Alan frowned at Lucy as she pleaded with him, her face covered in tears. “Stand aside,” he said.
“Huh?”
Alan wrote the words “Pazuzu’s Death Resistance” into the ground and buried it. Boom. Resistance sealed.
He then fired off his Hyper-Wide Wave Motion Shovel Blast again, this time at 50 percent maximum strength.
KA-CHOOOOM!
This half-measure was more than enough to engulf Pazuzu’s entire body in light and vanquish him forever. The second reverse comet of the day.
“…”
The Angel Furnace tentacle absorbed the last dregs of Lucy’s existence. She was now mostly transparent. As her consciousness disappeared within the white egg of the purified Angel Furnace, she remembered Catria’s words: “You must never let your guard down around Alan.”
Tears poured from Lucy’s eyes. Why…why did I not listen to her?
The last thing she remembered was Gabriella’s face during the final fleeting moments of her sanity.
“I truly am blessed…I get to die as an angel…”
Yes… Lucy smiled through her tears. In that case, I too am fortunate…
She had constantly let her guard down. She was a fool, an idiot, even. But at least she’d get to leave this world without being further corrupted by the shovel.
✦ ✦ ✦
Ten seconds later on the fields of Rostir, Alan held the Golden Orb, which had fallen from Pazuzu’s enormous body.
“Welp. Now that we’ve finished off Pazuzu and have the orb, let’s save Lucy from the Angel Furnace,” Alan said.
“Here it comes! Sir Miner’s classic Angel Scoop! Time to go retrieve an angel from certain doom, shovel!”
“You make it sound like he’s scooping up goldfish or something…” Alice said.
“I knew it. So you can save her?” Catria asked.
Alan remained completely unfazed as Lucy vanished, so Catria figured as much.
“At the end of the day, it’s a furnace, just like a blast furnace. This means you can scoop up its insides with a shovel.”
“Please don’t do that to a poor blast furnace.”
Catria was well aware her sentence made no sense. Well, whatever, it was impossible to measure this man’s shovel with common sense or real world knowledge.
“Think about it this way. Melting in a furnace is a good experience for angels.”
“H-how so? I feel so bad for Lucy…”
Catria did feel bad, but she also knew this was their best course of action. She looked up at the empty blue sky as it crept toward night. For a moment, she saw the smiling face of Lucy among the glittering stars.
Lucy, I know you think you’ve gone to the next life, but…unfortunately for you, the true shovel corruption is about to begin.