The rumbling they heard right after the explosion couldn’t have been caused by anything other than the influence of something magical.
Judging by the landlord’s warning, it was clear she was, to say the least, no ordinary person. But there was no time to get to the bottom of that.
“Hang in there, Chi!”
Maou kept running.
“Look!” Emi pointed ahead.
“…What in the world?!” Ashiya groaned to himself.
The rail line had fallen. The elevation bridge had collapsed to the ground, crushing the shopping mall adjacent to Sasazuka station. They could detect residual magic in the area, but this was nothing like the barriers Maou had impulsively built to rescue people.
Beyond the mess, on the Koshu-Kaido road, Maou could see two figures in the air, the Shuto Expressway spanning across the sky above.
The enemy no longer had any reason to hide themselves. The bystanders that had escaped harm stood off in the distance, staring at the rubble and the figures in the air.
“Them…!”
“Who…are they? How could they have…”
“How do you think?!”
Maou began to climb up the rubble, dodging the broken power lines and making his way past a mountain of detritus that was liable to collapse again at any moment. Emi and Ashiya followed behind.
There were two of them: a man flapping his giant wings as he carried something at his side; and another, this one floating in the air, the hood on his ghostlike robe covering his face.
As they surmounted the rubble, Maou detected something. Something returning to him once again. Why? He should have been overjoyed, but instead he found it disturbing. It wasn’t something he planned to regain this way.
A nagging thought like that never would have occurred to him during his demon-realm days. But now—
“Good to see you, Lucifer! Brought a new playmate with you?”
The winged figure in the air replied with a spate of dark laughter. “Well, well! The Devil King Satan! Or should I be referring to you as Sadao Maou instead? And how nice to see Alciel safe and sound!”
“Lucifer…? It couldn’t be…”
“N-no… Why are you here now…?”
Emi was at a total loss for words. Ashiya shook his head, unable to believe the sight before him.
Only Maou remained strong, his stern expression unchanged as he glared at the two floating figures.
Lucifer was the Great Demon General whom Emilia the Hero had slain first. The fallen angel who arose a demon. The general who governed the invasion and capture of Ente Isla’s Western Continent.
“How long has it been, Emilia the Hero…that is, Emi Yusa!”
“No… No way…”
“Oh, yes! Your sword may have pierced through my body, and yet I am here now, before you!”
The Great Demon General Lucifer sneered, the ominous black wings befitting his fallen-angel title. At his side, like a mother carrying around its kitten, he held an unconscious Chiho.
She did not appear to be injured. But why did he decide to capture her?
“All thanks to your new friend, isn’t it?” Maou nodded toward the hooded figure as he spoke. “When I retreated and sent a squadron over to the Western Continent to investigate, I still had no faith that you were dead. I never imagined in a thousand years the humans could defeat a Great Demon General, so the investigation was likely less thorough than it should have been…”
“And thanks to that, I survived.”
“Yeah. You weren’t a pure demon. Not like Alciel, Malacoda, and Adramelech. But with your heaven-born blood, I figured that capturing the Western Continent would have been a cinch, even if it was a Church stronghold. Too bad I was wrong.”
“Too bad indeed! I devoted my all to eradicating the humans on the island, to fulfill the mission granted to me. But…”
Lucifer turned his glare toward Emi. “But the Hero’s armies overwhelmed me. That much, you already know.”
“Would your friend mind telling me the rest?” Maou asked.
“Well?” Lucifer turned toward the floating robed figure next to him.
He laughed, as he seemed to give his partner a nod. “Certainly. I am—”
“—Olba Meiyer, one of the six archbishops of the Church?”
The man stopped cold at Maou’s prompt guess.
“…!” Emi’s mind was in utter disarray. The name was too familiar to her. “Olba? That’s a lie! Olba is my—”
“—your companion, who sent you to this world, then tried to eradicate both you and me. Right?”
“…You knew of that?”
The figure interjected, a tad crestfallen that the thunder was stolen from him as he raised his hood. It revealed a calm, benign-looking man, aged fifty or so. His tonsured head, the symbol of a high-level Church bishop, shone in the morning sun.
His pure white archbishop’s robe, embroidered with blue and silver thread, flapped in the strong wind blowing between the nearby buildings.
“Us demons, we practically invented evil, you know. I can always tell what a villain is thinking, start to finish. You’re the guy who was behind Emi when she entered the Gate, right? Once I heard that, I pretty much guessed the rest. No one else had the chance to take a shot at me and Emi.”
“No… No! Olba, why are you with Lucifer? You didn’t—”
“Everything began after Lucifer lost to you, Emilia.”
The archbishop Olba cracked a thin smile, his voice rising to crescendo as he prepared the epic tale he was about to spin.
“After you destroyed the demon forces, you didn’t want the Hero lording it over you, so you tossed her into another world and consulted with Lucifer while she was still powerless to do anything about it. Then you secretly wiped out the rest of the Hero’s crew in order to protect the vested interests of the Church. The end. Any corrections I need to make?”
Once again, Maou stole the limelight.
What’s more, judging by the way Olba’s mouth opened and closed in stunned silence, he had it right. Maou laughed a hideously mocking laugh.
“That scenario’s been done a thousand times before, baldy! You think this girl was gonna try becoming goddess of the universe or something? Even a low-budget B movie would come up with a better script than that.”
Maou nudged Emi as he spoke.
“Hey, stop that!”
Emi was still in a state of shock, but the nudge was all it took to bring her back to reality.
“…Baldy? B movie?”
Olba was shocked for different reasons.
“Um… Your Demonic Highness? I would hardly call him naturally bald.”
For some reason, Ashiya found it apt to defend him. Ignoring it, Maou defiantly stood before his two enemies.
“See, this is why I hate heaven. You people all say one thing and think the exact opposite. It’d be much more humane for everyone if we demons ruled the roost instead. I can probably guess how you got Lucifer on your side, too. Did you bait him with the chance to return to heaven?”
“H-how did you—!”
“Don’t ‘How did you’ me. Could you at least try to be a little original? I guess you were just B-movie caliber, too, Lucifer. Seeing you fall for this idiot makes me want to cry.”
“Y-you accursed devil!!” Olba’s voice cracked as he flew into a rage.
“If you’re gonna float up there, baldy, and start crying just ’cause I’m telling the truth, you really should have come up with a better script!”
The sheer abusiveness behind Maou’s seemingly never-ending invective left not just Olba and Lucifer open-mouthed, but Emi as well.
“And now you’re gonna be all like ‘Oh, nooooo, you have angered Lucifer! And you will not be able to flee like last time! Die where you stand alongside the Hero!’ That is so lame, man! Even the villain from some kid’s sentai show would come up with better lines than that!”
“What is a ‘sentai show’?! What are you going on about, you s
tupid idiot?! Plus, they kind of took Chiho hostage, remember?!”
Unable to take any more, Emi slapped Maou in the back of the head.
“You could at least know your place right now! They were both ready to confess all their evil deeds! So stop heckling them already!”
“Your Demonic Highness! When on earth did you have the chance to watch any movies?! Such a waste of money…”
Emi and Ashiya laid out upon Maou in tandem, albeit for somewhat unfocused reasons. Tears of frustration came to Maou’s eyes.
“Man, that hurt, you bastard! If I let them go first, you probably would’ve fainted from the shock, all right?! So I made a little effort to cushion the bad news for you instead! That, and come on, what’s a movie now and then gonna hurt?! I’m the one bringing home the bacon!”
Neither Emi nor Ashiya were willing to give in.
“I don’t need you fawning all over me like that!”
“I’ve wanted to stop playing househusband all day and enjoy a little entertainment too, you! But I held myself back!”
“Stop this! All of you!”
It took Olba shouting at the top of his lungs to halt the argument.
“I deigned to listen to you, and my reward is all this nonsensical blubbering? You will pay for this, Devil King Satan!!”
“That is so amateur hour, man. Couldn’t be more unoriginal if you tried.”
“Grrrnnnnhhhh…”
Olba’s face had reddened to the point where one could fry an egg on it.
“Hey, mind if I ask you a question, Archbishop Cueball?”
Maou picked at an ear as he spoke, flicking the results out to his side. “How many people did you attack in order to prop Lucifer’s magic levels up?”
“…!”
“Huh?!”
“Whaa?!”
“…You are perceptive indeed, Your Demonic Highness!”
Maou lowered his tone as he continued over the startled reactions of the other four.
“Lemme ask you, Emi… Where do all the gods and devils live in this land? In Japan?”
“What? I don’t know…”
“They’re inside the hearts of the people. Tell me you at least thought about that by now.”
“The hearts of…the people?”
“Yeah. The people of this nation aren’t ruled by their gods. They roll over to the evil side, or the holy side, with a snap of the fingers. Look at the divinity, and the evilness, you see in a person whenever they’re forced into extreme circumstances. That’s our source of power! The way we can gain power in this world!”
“It…is? Then…”
Maou nodded back, then turned his gaze back toward Lucifer.
“Seeing a demon in all his glory like that would make most people wet their pants. They’d be too scared to do anything. These are probably the guys behind that string of robberies.”
Emi turned to Olba, all but asking him to deny it. But Olba said nothing. How long had they been here? They couldn’t have gone without food or drink that entire time. How did they stay fed?
“That was why I reverted back to my old form a little bit yesterday. People were despairing their impending death all around me, and that forced its way into my body.”
There was still a part of Emi that begged for Olba to say it was all untrue. But, even so, she still couldn’t understand why Lucifer and Olba were working together.
“They sucked in all the negative energy, all the fear and sadness. All that power that drove the first magic sniper attack, and yesterday’s earthquake… How did they get all of that, hmm?”
Just then, Emi recalled the morning after the magic-blast attack, as well as the news she saw in Rika’s room. Her face wrinkled.
“So if you want to gain enough magical force to return to Ente Isla…”
“You have to cause a huge disaster! Sucking power out of one or two people isn’t gonna cut it.”
“No…”
“I kind of like this world, you know? It’s been a real fresh experience for me, being human. It’s been a good world to me, and I don’t want to screw it up like that. I want to take a different approach. So…”
With a grin on his face, Maou looked up at the two figures above him. “What next? Wanna do it here?”
He could tell that even this was enough to faze them.
“B-but, Devil King! Don’t you care about this girl at all? We’re fully aware of your relationship! We know you’ve been intimate!”
Maou had to laugh, resigned, at how plainly villainous Olba was acting. “Hey. Emilia the Hero. I really hate bishops, but I’ll tell you what I hate more, and that’s traitors.”
Emi’s gaze shot between Maou and Olba for a moment, but soon it was fixed entirely upon the archbishop.
“Yeah… I hate demons and traitors, too.”
“You sure about this? You’ve been saving that power for a while. If we fight here, you might never be able to get back.”
“Good things come to those who work earnestly.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
Emi flashed a bitter smile.
Maou smiled as well, as he gestured upward. “C’mon, let’s do this! I’ll pulverize both of you! And I’m gettin’ Chi back, too!”
The majestic, larger-than-life air he presented reminded his observers of a Devil King from another time.
“B-but, Your Demonic Highness!”
Ashiya, naturally, stepped in from behind to ruin the moment.
“We need to fully gauge our opponents. Unless we thoroughly understand why they chose this moment to suddenly unfurl this trap for us, it’ll be too dangerous to move things forward recklessly…”
“Sound advice, Alciel. Let me show you,” Lucifer said, his wings seeming to glow for an instant as he spoke.
There was a whoosh, followed by a short, cut-off groan. Maou and Emi turned around.
Ashiya was on the ground, blood spurting out of a wound on his left breast, as if he had been shot.
“A-Ashiya!” Maou screamed.
“My! Look at the force she belted out for his roommate Alciel as well! You must have plunged this girl into the depths of despair for me!” Lucifer’s smile was a sneer, his words pitying.
Seeing Ashiya bleeding on the ground caused panic to spread across the area in an instant. Even with the previous bridge collapse, a large audience was still looking up at Lucifer, demonstrating the uniquely Japanese lack of ability to sense danger. Lucifer muttered downward, not paying a moment’s notice to the fleeing throngs.
“Your immaturity will be your downfall. Imagine, such a small thing causing such vast, ballooning clouds of despair and sadness!”
“You…you’re going into Chi’s heart…”
Maou blinked helplessly.
“Negative feelings are so easy to control when they’re directed toward a unique target. I’ve grown able to fire bolts of magical power that will have a more punishing effect on the both of you, and only the both of you, than ever before. Watch!”
Lucifer’s wings glowed darkly for another moment. Countless streaks of light coursed toward the ground.
“Dammit…”
The sheer number, and their speed, was too much for a human’s weak legs to completely avoid. Clicking his tongue in frustration, Maou raised his arms, then brought them apart from each other. The streaks of light followed his hands’ direction, redirecting themselves toward a nearby building.
With an explosive rumble, every window in the multifloor edifice shattered, the people inside flying out like wasps from a fumigated nest.
“Devil King! Alciel’s…!”
Emi picked up the head of the completely immobile Ashiya. The blood showed no sign of stopping, and his skin was rapidly turning the shade of a sheet of paper. Bringing her hands to his neck and wrist, she found only a weak, rapid pulse.
“…Careless!”
“That’s the pot calling the kettle black, don’t you think?”
“Ngh!”
The second volley launched outward. Maou brought his hands upward in the same motion, but:
“Crap, I don’t have enough!”
“Whaaa?!”
There was still a small amount of magical power, borne from the nearby fear they encountered as they crossed the bridge rubble. But Maou had not actively tried to absorb it within himself. Diverting a single round of Lucifer’s mind-controlled magical bullets had made him run out of gas already.
Emi instinctively covered her head, unable to launch an antimagic protective wall with her holy force while covering for Ashiya at the same time.
The blasts Maou failed to divert thudded against the concrete.
“Whooaahhh!”
Maou’s scream was swallowed up by the asphalt dust thrown into the air by the explosion. The shock wave from the magical blast coursed across electric lines, poles, and buildings, and in an instant, Sasazuka station had transformed into something resembling a battlefield.
“Ha-ha-ha! I had no idea my first taste of destruction after my defeat at Emilia the Hero’s hands would feel so wonderful!” Lucifer’s howling laughter echoed across the area. Sasazuka station, its air choked with toxic dust, seemed like hell on earth.
The neighborhood had ceased to function as it once did, what with all the fleeing people, the people who had failed to flee in time, the impossible-to-imagine explosions, and the sheer, otherworldly bizarreness of the scene.
“Don’t get distracted, Lucifer! Our mission is to destroy Emilia and the Devil King!”
Lucifer sneered to his side at Olba, who was bellowing at him as he gauged the fight.
“You dare to butt in on my business?”
Olba flinched for a moment at the impact of Lucifer’s threat, but he kept his emphatic tone as he continued, sweat beading on his brow.
“Y-you haven’t forgotten that I am the one who controls the Gate which shall serve as your bridge to heaven?”
“…Damn you.”
Lucifer rolled his eyes in frustration, then turned them upon Chiho, still under one arm.
“You have nothing to worry about. As long as I have this girl, the Devil King and Emilia the Hero will never flee from us.”
Once the dust settled, the only thing left on the ground was Ashiya’s blood. Maou, Emi, and Ashiya were gone.
“Lucifer!”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 1 Page 16
