Shovels In Spades

'What do you think it will be this time?' Reika asked her ghostly companion.

With his arms crossed over his chest, Mofolo answered, 'Well, the last three rolls were all lightning strikes that were unavoidable even with his well-placed metallic rods. I'm surprised he only lost one use of his halo for that. Hmm... This time, I'll wager he gets struck by a meteor.'

Reika nodded in a sagely manner. 'We personally think the earth beneath him will cave in to reveal a massive tunnel with spikes at the end, but we shall see.'

'That's not how luck works, dear Reika. Luck does not bend and alter reality, it simply adjusts things and moves them to follow its will,' Mofolo tried to explain. 'You are thinking of fate. They are very different.'

Reika stuck her tongue out at her fellow spirit. 'Splitting hairs.'

"I'm about to split my hairs here if you two keep hemming and hawing," Daz grumbled. "Whatever bet you're trying to set up, call it off. I'm done here with these stupid fucking dice."

He leaned over and pushed his hand through the thick charred black grass to pick up the few dice he'd been rolling. "I need to stop seeking additional confirmations from these things..." he muttered under his breath.

Daz had rolled the dice of Altros' Unlucky Dice Set a total of eight times. Each time with different ideals and intentions in mind regarding his Skill Empowering Tokens.

The first dice made it so he couldn't move without 'accidentally' hitting himself at full power.

The second dice seemed to have a sense of humour since it forced his pants to slip down to his ankles repeatedly. It didn't matter how many times he pulled them back up or how tight he set his belt. Even holding them at his hips didn't work since they'd just slip through his fingers.

The third dice made his wrist twitch uncomfortably, resulting in him rolling the fourth dice prematurely and without any thoughts behind it, essentially wasting the roll.

That fourth wasted roll somehow led a leaderless pack of angry and very strong monsters to his rural and isolated location. It had taken him a good 10-minutes to slaughter them and he came close to using up one of the Halo of Judgement's chances to save his life then and there.

Daz considered going home after that but he needed to do just a few more rolls to solidify his decision.

That had resulted in the three unavoidable lightning strikes, each more powerful than the last with the seventh dice's one activating his halo to move his body out of the way of fatal harm.

"Rimmy it is," he said as he dusted off his clothes.

Daz then summoned his Ridomochi Final Model and drove back to Fort Skip after picking up his useless lightning rods. On the way home, he used his Skill Empowering Tokens on Rimmy.

Now, while still being only in his basic form, the big lumbering friendly giant of crystal was immune to being turned to ash.

However, Rimmy was only immune so long as whatever was trying to make it ash was unnatural in nature.

Unlike Daz's Ashborne skill, the Skill Empowering Tokens didn't grant incredible resistance to heat and room for growth, sadly.

In regards to his rewards from completing semester one's goal, Daz still had the 25,000 goal exemptions to think about, but all in all, he was free now to focus on his personal training while his generals and most trusted allies figured out what was going on with the recent disappearances.

A month later, Daz was under the tree atop his castle focusing himself entirely on his shovel, Hamson, as he swung it around with purpose and vigour.

Trails of energy seemed to follow his every swipe as the crimson-red and jagged blade of the root slayer shovel seamlessly flowed through the air.

Were someone to be watching him they may have mistook his movements for dancing. They wouldn't be entirely wrong either.

Right now, Daz and Hamson were as one and the reaper had lost all sense of self many minutes ago.

Power emanated and fluctuated from and all around him as he scooped at seemingly nothing. Minutes turned into hours and hours into days while he moved as if by instinct.

Eventually, his breath has turned ragged and sweat oozed out of his every pore. With one final scoop of Hamson's blade into the soft earth beneath his feet, his eyes opened for the first time in half a week.

"I did it..." he murmured to himself as a change happened to his Ember of Digging.