Broccoli Bunch’s spade

Broccoli Bunch’s spade is an improvised weapon, practical tool, and emotional keepsake whose importance grows with its owner. It accompanies Broccoli Bunch from the earliest logic of cleaning and class-based progression into dangerous expeditions, where it can interrupt an attack, preserve a personal history, and embody a friendship. Its significance lies in the tension between its lowly appearance and the loyalty Broccoli assigns to it: others see an inadequate weapon, while Broccoli sees a trusted object that has helped define the journey.

Origin in Cleaning and Improvisation

The spade belongs to the same material world as Broccoli Bunch’s first survival tasks. After unlocking the Cleaning skill by performing a Special Action aligned with the Cinnamon Bun class, Broccoli takes up a broom and shovel to clear dead leaves from the ruined room. The tool is therefore introduced not through heroic combat but through labor: Broccoli makes an unsafe, obstructed space usable by moving debris and restoring order. This beginning connects the spade to the class’s stated ideal of cleansing the world of impurities, while also giving that ideal a physical, repetitive form.

Cleaning soon becomes more than a household chore. Broccoli uses water from a showerhead and a bucket to scrub the floor, and the resulting skill development establishes cleaning as a practical discipline supported by mana, persistence, and instinct. The spade’s later use as a weapon does not erase this origin. Instead, its functions overlap: the same object associated with clearing dirt and refuse can be carried into places where Broccoli must confront ghosts, roots, and other threats. Its improvised status reflects a protagonist whose abilities and equipment develop through circumstance rather than through a conventional warrior’s preparation.

From Tool to Weapon

The spade’s combat role becomes unmistakable when Broccoli is attacked by a Cervid Lancer. Broccoli does not begin from confidence or a desire to fight; the immediate stakes are defense, the protection of Amaryllis, and the fear of failing a friend. After gripping the spade, Broccoli bats aside the Lancer’s spear, jumps from the railing to close the distance, fires cleaning magic into the attacker’s face, and then brings the spade’s head down onto the Lancer’s helmet. The weapon’s decisive contribution is not elegant technique but a chain of improvised actions in which movement, magic, and weight compensate for Broccoli’s admitted lack of fighting ability.

The sound of steel striking steel gives the scene a moment of concrete confirmation. The spade does not merely symbolize Broccoli’s unconventionality; it physically changes the encounter by staggering the Lancer and creating the opening Broccoli needs. Its blunt, workmanlike identity remains visible even in violence. The object retains the memory of labor while becoming an instrument of defense, allowing Broccoli’s ethics of cleansing and friendship to operate through an item that was never designed as a traditional weapon.

A Memento and a Gift

Broccoli later explains that carrying both a spear and a shovel has become inconvenient, yet still refuses to discard either. The spade is specifically identified as a memento of Broccoli’s time in the Wonderland Dungeon, while the spear is a gift from a friend. This contrast clarifies the spade’s personal status: it is not simply retained because it happens to be available. It preserves a formative passage and gives physical continuity to an earlier stage of the adventure.

The spade also participates in Broccoli’s expanding network of attachment. Broccoli imagines eventually finding a permanent place to stay or purchasing a first airship where high-level gear could be stored, but the desire to keep the spade is already firm. The object is carried forward rather than retired, suggesting that Broccoli’s relationship with equipment is governed by memory and companionship as much as by statistics or battlefield efficiency. Its worn or humble category does not make it disposable; its history makes it irreplaceable.

Conflict over Conventional Equipment

Amaryllis challenges the spade’s continued use when she argues that Broccoli needs better equipment. She calls the spear merely usable and points out that carrying a shovel as a weapon is not a sensible arrangement, then proposes replacing it with a sword, dagger, or war hammer. Her practical concern is tied to the dangers Broccoli and Amaryllis face, and she frames proper equipment as a matter of safety rather than taste.

Broccoli answers by defending the spade directly. Broccoli states that friends should not make one another do things unless those things are vitally important, and that the spade can remain so long as it does not place either companion at risk. The exchange turns an equipment dispute into a definition of friendship. Amaryllis eventually allows Broccoli to keep it, although she continues to criticize the armor. The spade thus becomes a small but revealing test of whether Broccoli’s unconventional choices can survive within a partnership shaped by experience, caution, and unequal confidence.

Broccoli’s own description of combat further explains the attachment. Broccoli admits to fighting poorly, identifies Makeshift Weapon Proficiency as a relevant ability, relies heavily on Cleaning magic against undead creatures, and names jumping as one of the best skills. The spade fits this repertoire because it is not presented as a polished weapon requiring a perfected martial identity. It is the object of a mobile, improvised fighter who combines jumping, magical force, and whatever useful implement is already in hand.

Persistence Beyond Its Practical Use

The spade remains part of Broccoli’s traveling identity even when it creates logistical problems. Its continued presence contrasts with the pressure to acquire equipment that looks more appropriate to an adventurer. Broccoli wants to keep it, protect it, and make room for it rather than accept that efficiency alone should determine what belongs in the pack.

That persistence gives the spade a wider narrative function. Broccoli’s journey repeatedly converts ordinary acts into consequential ones: cleaning unlocks a skill, repeated social effort unlocks Friendmaking, and apparently modest choices contribute to survival and progress. The spade participates in the same pattern. It begins as a tool for clearing a room, becomes a weapon in a crisis, and endures as a memento and relational object. Its value is cumulative rather than spectacular. The spade matters because Broccoli keeps choosing to carry the evidence of where the adventure has already been.