Part 56:
The Miner Builds Shoveland
AT THE END of the first day of their campaign, the Holy Shovel Knights ended their military exercises for the day and made camp by a local farming village.
On Lithisia’s orders, their route on the first day took them on a rectangular path. In other words, immediately after setting off, they simply did a tour of all the villages in the area. From the perspective of a strategist, this route made no sense whatsoever, but at this point, the Holy Shovel Knights only employed shovetegists. In other words, the only opinion on the subject was, “Shovel!”
In other-other words, a squad of shovels whose heads had been messed with by shovels shoveled in a shovel in order to shovel the shovel.
However, oddly enough, Catria’s head hurt like the devil for reasons other than this.
“All hail Princess Lithisia!”
“All hail the Rostir Liberation Front!”
The problem was that this strategy had actually proved pretty solid.
As night set in, Catria screamed in the center of the village. “How do we have more soldiers?!”
“If you put shovels in the hands of youngsters, they’re basically already soldiers, shovel.”
Zeleburg’s minions lurked in every village, which meant the villagers were always on the verge of being sacrificed. But thanks to Alan and Catria’s Wave Motion Shovel Blasts, those minions had been obliterated in an instant. In this way, they’d liberated eight villages today alone. The folks they freed were then handed shovels, raising the Liberation Front’s Shovel Power.
Basically, this route had allowed them to liberate the nation piece by piece while simultaneously amassing more military might.
“Well done, Lithisia. Way to think ahead,” Alan said, nodding.
After all, Lithisia had come up with this plan.
“No, there’s no way she was thinking ahead. She was definitely just thinking about shovels…” Catria moaned. But she didn’t have the energy to argue the point. The facts were the facts. Lithisia’s madness had panned out, intentionally or not, and the knight was in no place to complain.
As for the princess in question, she was in the village square chatting with some children.
Crap, there’s no way she isn’t brainwashing them with her shovel nonsense, Catria thought.
As they approached, Lithisia turned around.
“Um, Sir Miner, er…” Her long golden hair blew in the wind and she looked quite concerned. “Sir Miner, are you at all familiar with growing shrops?”
“Crops?”
“Please don’t translate her.” Catria didn’t realize she herself had also understood Lithisia’s words.
Nonetheless, the princess explained. The children she was talking to were the sons and daughters of farmers, and lately the fields had given forth no crops to speak of. Even though the Holy Shovel Knights had driven out the demons, if nothing changed, everyone would soon die of starvation.
Alan gave it a moment of thought, then shook his head. “I’m a miner, not a farmer. I’m afraid I’m not the specialist you need.”
“Is that shovel? Aw, I really want to do something for the people here…” Wearing a grave expression, Lithisia lost herself in thought.
Needless to say, Catria was stunned; every time the princess displayed some remotely human emotion, she was taken aback.
“I’ve got it!” shouted Lithisia, and a radiant smile spread across her face.
At the same time, Catria felt a chill. She had that same bad feeling she always got, and she could already imagine what was about to happen.
“Sir Miner, you designed and built the World Tree Castle, which means you’re extra good at construction!”
There was little doubt in Catria’s mind that Lithisia was about to ask Alan to craft a shovel statue.
“What do you want to make?”
“Well, you see, there’s a nice, open field right here.” Lithisia clapped her hands together. “Let’s build Shoveland right here! A tourist attraction!”
Catria was only off in terms of scale, and in terms of that, she was off by a lot.