The Shovel System

The ground quakes while the clouds swirl. Hundreds of towering shovel lights continuously erupt and slam into the titan boar. The ground swells as thousands of earth spears grow and pierce in all directions, crevices and canyons ripping the firmament apart in all directions with the titan's every stomp. The air shudders as the apocalyptic clash between the two powerhouses begin.

A tiny mercurial light flashes around the boar, flitting about at blistering speed, ripping the air apart in continuous sonic explosions that crater the soft ground, shredding the purple grass into smoke, before additional shock waves intertwine and ignite the remnants, detonating even further. A trail of roaring fiery destruction follows Jackie Lewin around the boar as the world goes silent, even sound can't keep up with his rushing herculean bulk.

Unease swells in Jackie's gut as he continues dodging the earth infused spells of the titan boar. He rains down more and more towering shovel lights onto the massive creature's body. The sharp, silver glowing condense shovel lights slam into the boar, rippling its thick hide and towering spear length hair, then disperse harmlessly into silver motes.

The boar's hide hasn't so much as reddened under Jackie's constant assault. It's tanking everything the old man is throwing at it, a glint of vicious mockery in its ancient pig eyes.

Human sc.u.m that murdered this granddaddy boar's favorite grand-son, this granddaddy boar is going to smash you into a meat paste!

Jackie evades away from a sudden earth spear larger than the Washington monument that bolted from the ground ahead of him, the incidental air pressure from his supersonic maneuver crackles and compresses around the old man, blasting several long trenches in the ground and severing thousands of the monumental earth spikes as he pulls away. He watches them tumble ever so slowly in his high-speed vision. He lifts his assault spade and bites onto the handle, holding it with his pearly white teeth, to get some better balance as he avoids the continuous spell.

The old boar's tyrannical eyes narrow, the red glow brightening, leaving ghastly trails in the air as it moves its head at nearly the same speed as the little rushing man, tracking the little murderer with only a small bit of trouble.

Jackie rockets around the boar, leaving just a silvery trail of afterimages that flash through the complicated and ever erupting maze of the countless titanic earth spears. He suddenly feels a premonition of death, like frigid fingers tracing up his spine and circling his heart. He leaps, summing the illusory image of his shovel stomp shovel, desperately stomping at it.

The boar's eyes flash in murderous, blinding red radiance, showering beastly power across the death-dealing forest of earth spears. The spears instantly develop cracks at lighting pace, while Jackie's foot descends towards activating his Shovel Stomp.

Time seems to stop, Jackie's high-speed vision accelerating as the premonition of death floods his body. It feels like he suddenly got dropped into liquid nitrogen, seizing up his respiration, causing him to clench his teeth into the seemingly indestructible spade handle, denting it. His foot brushes the very tip of the illusory Shovel.

Countless smaller and denser earth spears blast out of the surfaces of the forest of titanic earth spears, more and more, splitting and dividing, crisscrossing and spearing in all directions faster than a flash of lightning, giving no living creature a chance to escape.

The old boar's eyes dim back into a muddy, beastly red. A satisfied, gloating expression spreads across its massive head as the forest of stone begins crumpling into sand around the battlefield.

Jackie feels light-headed. The sky and ground keep tumbling across his vision. He watches the boar come closer as he flips through the air, feeling numb below his neck. His vision starts growing whiter and fogging. The old man extends his shovel senses and looks at himself to check his injuries, stunned shock filling him.

His body is gone! Only the shredded bloody stump at the bottom of his skull remains.

Thump. Jackie's wide-eyed head thuds on the ground, sliding a few feet before stopping. His eyes move around soundlessly as he peers up at the approaching victorious old titan boar that blocks out the sky with its black shadow, a pair of balefully glowing red eyes staring down into his from the darkness.

'..No...I...have...tha..t."

One of the feint runes on the shovel clenched in his mouth lights up with a dark, abyssal light, hidden in the darkness of the titan boar's tyrannical shadow. The disgusting, slimy light slides across the shovel and cloys up Jackie's face, leaving black lines and mysterious symbols as it pools around his eyes like bad runny black eyeliner from a girl who cries a lot. The inky light punches into his eyes, causing them to turn completely black, a spinning, hungry, depraved and gluttonous darkness.

The boar pauses, leaning its massive head closer to the puny murderer's decapitated head, focusing on the strange happening to the old man's eyes, locking gazes with the abyss within.

The old man's face's veins suddenly turn black and bulge disgustingly. It looks like thousands of wriggling black worms are struggling beneath his skin. His hair blackens and then fades away into dust, following his skin, muscles, tendons, and leaving only a silvery skull biting its spade with two swirling, abyssal eyes locked on the boar.

The boar's eyes dim, flicker, dim, flicker, its muscles swell, heat can be seen distorting the air around the creature. Earth spikes blossom and fall, the sky overhead thunders and cracks, the old boar's tusks light up and flicker. It tugs this way and that way, kicking up tornadoes as it attempts to pull it's gaze away from the horrifying skull of the murdering human, but it only moves closer and closer with every twist and painful attempt to escape.

It's movements gradually slow, weaken, the light in its eyes dim until they turn lost and glassy. At this moment, its building-sized snout is pressing on the face of the spade while its eyes have permanently stared into the abyss of the skull, forever lost in darkness.

The dead boar's body distorts, a strange s.u.c.k.i.n.g sound echoes out as first its snout, then the entire rest of the body is pulled forward, into the swirling silvery circle at the front of the spade, vanishing bit by bit, moment by moment, until there is nothing left except for the silvery skull, decorated with many mysterious mercurial symbols resting on the ground, empty eye sockets pointing up at the sky.

[Ding! The system has decided to upgrade.]

Consciousness returns to Jackie a while later. He's greeted with no feelings at all around himself, blind, deaf, and mute.

---------

Sometime later...

A cute young lady wearing a black witch robe and a tall black pointy witch hat hops along in the plains, a small brown toad sitting imperiously in her robe's front pocket, it's chubby toad arms gesturing here and there while speaking to her about her studies. She arrives at the edge of a field of golden sand that seems to extend towards the horizon.

The girl hesitates, and whispers to her toad, "Uh oh, what happened here?"

The toad taps its chin, tilting its bumpy head so it can get a better look. The toad crosses its fat arms and then points in the distance, "Look there."

The young witch blinks her eyes a couple of times, causing a magic circle to appear in one eye, amplifying her vision. She scans across the empty golden sand, then spots sparkling silver, shimmering prismatically under the sun. "Yay me! A treasure!"

She blinks, causing the circle to change and enlarge, zooming directly on to the object. She sees a huge, three-meter long shovel with a silvery ornate skull embedded in the center of the shaft. Several different types of jade-colored seals are glowing lightly on the hefty shovel.

The witch cackles in glee, greed igniting in her eyes, "Hihihi, Toadington, a treasure!" She treads carefully towards the skull-shovel in the distance.