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 ask 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 spiwits.”
“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 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 say as I give 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 of the spirits themselves.

“We…”

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

“We were able to materiawize thanks to Hades’ bwessing.”

Hades’ blessing?

“Ah! That!”

Platy looks like she has 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 weceiving Hades and Mother Earth Goddess’ blessings,” says another spirit.
“We swowly got the hang of our powers and were able to materiawize after the passing of winter. We are vewy dewighted that all of you came to cultivate this once-empty wand, now it’s bwimming with so much wife!”
“That’s why we wanted to expwess our gwatitude 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 afwaid.”
“Afwaid of meeting you face-to-face.”

But why?

“You don’t have to worry about that. You help the crops grow and fertilize the soil, right? That’s more than enough,” I say as I hold one of the spirits in my arms.
“Again, you’re being too casual with your skinship!!!” screams Platy as I get another hit from her.
“That won’t do, yaba-daba-do!”
“Hades gave divine pwotection to aid you, so we must also do our part and work too, diddly-doo!”
“Because we, materiawized by the god’s power, are part of that bwessing, ring-a-ding!”

What is up with their sentence-enders?

But this is troublesome.
As much as I would like to leave the fieldwork 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,” interrupts Platy. “I thought up something.”

I localized the sentence-enders of the earth spirits into yaba-daba-do, diddly-do, ring-a-ding, but the original was from a boomer meme that came from an old Japanese commercial.

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