“What is this?!” Goosebumps covered Catria from head to toe. Whatever approached surpassed the power of Alan’s immaculate conception beam. Driven entirely by instinct, Catria looked up at the sky, though she immediately doubted her own eyes. “The sky…the sun?!”
The giant sun loomed directly overhead, but there was no sky to speak of. To put it more accurately, the entire sky was blocked out by an enormous flock of what looked like birds from afar—70 percent birds, 30 percent sky. But they weren’t birds; birds didn’t possess shining holy auras.
As Lucy trembled, she whispered quietly, desperately. “Ah… Ah… Lord El…”
“El?” Catria followed Lucy’s line of sight, back to what she thought was the sun. She soon realized the error in her judgment. Though still miles away, its form seemed to directly pierce her consciousness.
A perfect, golden-haired girl. Her eyes were closed, making it difficult to assess her expression. In human years, she appeared to be around sixteen. But it was obvious that she was no human. Her face, ears, chest, wings—her entire existence shone. Her golden locks extended all the way down to her feet, giving off golden light almost like a solar flare.
“That’s…a god?”
There was but a single imperfection in her image. Her shining white robe had been torn, nearly revealing a bit of her chest. In fact, the manner in which it was torn reminded one of the fake Lithisia that Alan had impregnated.
How had that come to pass? The moment she had the thought, Catria began to sweat profusely. Don’t tell me…
Sun God El’s voice boomed through the air. “Mortals, you have committed grave sins.”
The air itself shook.
“First, in all of your impertinence, you dared turn my world into Hell.”
The voice in itself proved Catria’s theory correct. The god’s clothes had been torn by Alan’s Wave Motion Shovel Blast, which had scraped the very sun.
“Second, you dared impale my sun with something so filthy. Third, you have made light of the most holy way a life can be brought into this world. Fourth, you have violently damaged the great Sun God El’s favorite outfit. For these grave four sins, I shall pass judgment upon you in the name of the Sun God El.” Finally, her expression changed. The perfect god puffed out her cheeks like a child. “I’ll never, ever, ever, ever forgive you!”
As she yelled, the army of angels descended from the sky with screeching violence.
“Ha ha…” Catria laughed. She took up her sword. They were in terrible danger. Alan’s Wave Motion Shovel Blast had only been strong enough to damage the Sun God’s clothes, and said deity now intended to crush them.
But Catria laughed nonetheless. After all, she yet again had proof that she wasn’t crazy. Even the gods hated to see what had come of this world.
“See?! You did this, Alan!”
He had performed such a bizarre shoveling that he had infuriated the powers that be.
“That is indeed…a god.”
Next to Catria, Elise was on her hands and knees, staring up at the sky. A real god was going to wreak divine retribution upon them. Why? Elise already knew the answer to that question, though she didn’t want to.
Alan and Lithisia were not gods; they were nothing. Catria had been right.
“It…can’t…”
Elise had been unable to accept her shoveled fate.
“It can’t be…”
And now she would die at the hands of the furious heavens.
“It…can’t…be…”
Tears welled in her eyes.
Why? This can’t be happening to me. This wasn’t supposed to happen! I should be a God-class entity who exceeds the might of even the Demogorgon. A being nobody can scorn. The ultimate existence.
But the reality was that Elise was naught but a frail creature to be insulted and destroyed.
“I… No… I… This can’t happen… NOOOO!!!” The tears flowed freely from her eyes.
Swoosh!
Lithisia stood between Elise and the angels. With her red shovel, she deflected an angel’s sword slashes while clad only in her underwear.
“Huh…?”
“Elise, step back,” said the princess, almost entirely in the buff. She held her red shovel tightly with an expression that seemed ready to take on the world.
Elise blinked wildly. The appearance of the princess shocked her to the core.
“I’ll protect you,” Lithisia declared with a smile more confident than that of divinity itself.
Elise sat bewildered for several seconds before finally collecting herself. “There’s no way! You can’t do that! That’s the army of God! They’re not like you guys. They’re the real deal!”
“That means nothing, shovel.”
“Nothing, shovel?!”
Lithisia smiled once more. Her smile was laced with a dash of loneliness, yet joy still peeked through. It might have been due to a misfire, but Sir Miner’s successor still existed.
My request led him to use all his power to make a miracle. In that case, there’s only one thing for me to do.
Lithisia remembered the words he had once spoken to her.
“My shovel can pierce everything that ever has been or will be.”
Faced with the heavenly host staring her down, Lithisia couldn’t stop shaking. Yet she did her best to use the inhuman levels of willpower she had developed on her journey to keep her fear in check.
I made Sir Miner do something absurd. That’s why I need to take responsibility for my actions. I have to do this.
“Even if I face a dragon…” Lithisia declared as she pointed her shovel at the Sun God. “Even if I face a god, shovel!”
This would, in the future, become the preface to the Founding Constitution of The Holy Shovel Empire.
To be continued…
(What the hell am I going to do with this? ~Author)