#107 Dwarves of the Fields

We ended up capturing around thirty little girls.

...

Wait.

That sounds wrong.

They may be little girls, but they came crawling out of the ground.

This must be another one of those fantasy setups. I sure do hope so, because otherwise, I don’t think I can mentally handle it.

“...So, what exactly are you?” I asked the little girls sitting in front of me.

Meanwhile, Gobukichi is dozing off in the background.

He’s probably tired from working anyway, so I didn’t disturb him.

“We are earth spirits.”

“I see...”

Earth spirits, huh?

Thank goodness! It really was another fantasy setup!

“Spirits? I’ve never seen them in such a defined form.”

“That sounds a little too hard to believe.”

Woah! Who was that?!

When did Platy and the others get here?!

Weren’t all of you supposed to be asleep?!

“It sounded rowdy, so we came to look...Oh wow, it really is a spirit. First time I’m seeing one, though.”

“Me too. I’ve heard of stories of spirits materializing, but I was always dubious about it...until today!”

Huh? What?

You guys know about them?

If you do, please tell me all that you know.

Also, Gobukichi has completely fallen asleep now, so someone please carry him to his futon.

“Spirit is a general term for spiritual beings who have direct relations with nature, and their work is to preserve its healthy state. They are Hades’ underlings.”

Ah, the Moustache God.

“They say earth spirits are Hades’ underlings while sea spirits are Poseidon’s, and both of them are indispensable for the functioning of nature. On normal occasions, they merge with mana so you wouldn’t be able to touch them, let alone see them...”

“But we can do both of those right now,” I said as I gave the girls head pats.

And then, for some reason, I received a blow from Platy.

“You’re being too casual with your skinship!”

I’m sorry.

I’ll practice more self-control.

“So, once they become a spirit, they won’t have a physical body? But if that’s really the case, then there must be some reason as to why they’re like this.”

And why they decided to materialize and help us with fieldwork is an even bigger mystery.

In order to understand that, we need to hear the testimonies from the spirits themselves.

“We...”

After persistently encouraging them, one of them finally spoke up.

“We were able to materialize thanks to Hades’ divine protection.”

Hades’ divine protection?

“Ah! That!”

Platy looks like she realized something.

“Didn’t Hades bless this land the last time we summoned him? You know, something like a blessing for an abundant harvest!”

“Oh, now that you mention it, I think he did do something like that!”

So, that’s why the earth spirits were able to materialize and appear in front of us like this.

“We powered up after receiving Hades and Mother Earth Goddess’ blessings,” said another spirit.

“We slowly got the hang of our powers, and were able to materialize after the passing of winter. We are very delighted that all of you came to cultivate in this once-empty land, now it’s brimming with so much life!”

“That’s why we wanted to express our gratitude by helping you with your work.”

They did all of that just because they wanted to thank us?

Their purity is enough to move me to tears.

“Why didn’t you just say so from the beginning? Even just the thought would have made us happy!”

“We were afraid.”

“Afraid of meeting you face-to-face.”

But why?

“You don’t have to worry about that. You help plants grow and fertilize the soil, right? That’s more than enough,” I said as I held one of the spirits in my arms.

“Again, you’re being too casual with your skinship!!!” screamed Platy as I got another hit from her.

“That won’t do, yaba-daba-do!”

“Hades gave divine protection to aid you, so we must also do our part and work too, diddly-doo!”

“Because we, materialized by the god’s power, are part of that blessing, ring-a-ding!”

What is up with their sentence-enders?

But this is troublesome.

As much as I would like to leave the field work to them, it would clash with the goblin teams’ portion of work, so we need to arrive at a common ground.

Honestly, I’m not even sure whether they’re clever enough to understand that, and it might just burden Gobukichi all the more...

The spirits are directly looking at me with sparkly eyes as if they want to live up to my expectations.

It was super effective.

I don’t have it in me to turn down these innocent souls!!!

All right!

Let’s just leave this to Gobukichi to handle the rest!

“Wait,” interrupted Platy.

“I thought up of something.”

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I localized the sentence-enders of the earth spirits into yaba-daba-do, diddly-do, ring-a-ding, but the original was a boomer meme that originated from a Japanese commercial in 2001 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgXVM5a5bbk, at 0:10).