“… …”
“You call that letting your guard down?”
As the Devil King commented from afar to no one in particular, Alciel went on the offensive, confronting Olba at close range.
“Away from me, foul demon!”
“… …”
“Whoa, Olba’s digging himself a major hole with his mouth.”
Alciel was in the habit of never speaking unless necessary, leaving the Devil King to provide running commentary instead.
“But this is turning into a kind of weird battle. Are those guys really aware of who’s on whose side any longer?”
Out of a corner of his eye, he spotted Chiho’s eyes darting to and fro, her body still protected by Emilia’s power. She made eye contact with the Devil King several times, a puzzled, indecisive look on her face whenever she did.
“Dahh… Guess there’s no making excuses for this.”
The Devil King bitterly resigned himself to a long explanation afterward.
“Heavenly Ice Dance!”
Emilia’s sword clashed against Lucifer’s magical barrier, the competing forces producing a frigid tempest.
“Nn…gh…”
Something resembling frost began to rain down upon Lucifer’s wings.
“That ice has the power to freeze out magic, blocking its effects. Your speed has abandoned you!”
Emilia’s sword boldly tore through Lucifer’s barrier, leaving a slash wound that ran across his chest.
“Grraaaahhhh!!”
Lucifer attempted to keep away from his foe.
“Not so fast!”
Emilia closed the gap, using the debris kept in the air by the Devil King and Alciel as footholds.
“Ngh!”
Lucifer shot out bolts of black flame to keep her in check, but Emilia let them hit her, not attempting to dodge. They were all dashed to embers by her Cloth of the Dispeller before they could strike home.
Alciel, meanwhile, was closing in on Olba.
Olba’s specialty in battle was maintaining the rear ranks, providing the support that saw the Hero Emilia’s band of fighters to victory. He alone against a Great Demon General was nothing even resembling a fair match.
Forced to devote himself entirely to defense, he looked toward Lucifer for support. But Lucifer himself was facing long odds before the Hero’s strength.
Just when Emilia and Alciel closed in on their opponents:
“…?!”
“…?”
A loud roar echoed across the ground. Everyone stopped. They had felt the sudden release of magical power that accompanied the rumble.
“Satan…”
“Your Demonic Highness…”
Emilia and Alciel focused their gazes upon the Devil King.
The lord of demons responded with a contrived laugh, looking every bit the human being he was before.
“Ugh. That was so, so heavy. But I got it all down gently! So we’re all okay now! I rock!”
The rumble was the sound of the rubble from the collapsing Shuto Expressway landing on the ground, guided in slowly by the Devil King.
“So! I think now’s a good time for me to get involved.”
As he spoke, the cars, rubble, and people locked inside the magical barrier landed softly on the ground around him. For the Devil King, that much work required only a trivial effort now.
“Let’s get this over with, okay? Besides…”
The Devil King’s magical force shimmered like a dark haze, the force of an erupting volcano behind it. Alciel flashed a faint smile, and once again, Olba collapsed in fear while keeping himself aloft.
As for Lucifer, the look on his face was one of pure frustration.
Only Emilia understood what the Devil King was most concerned about at the moment.
The sun was at its highest point in the sky. It was almost lunchtime.
“I’m gonna be late for work at this rate. I promised Chi I’d teach her how to do maintenance on the ice cream machine.”
“… …”
A passing glance from the Devil King would be enough in itself to knock a normal human being unconscious. To Chiho inside the barrier, the look instead made her blush despite herself.
Alciel’s eyes turned upward as he groaned to himself. Emilia noted how strangely charming the Devil King looked as he grinned, then slapped herself for entertaining the thought for even an instant.
“Right. Anyway. You guys. I had this wondrous plan for taking over the world, and you made me just stand by the side this whole battle like an idiot!”
That was what riled him the most. Apparently.
But before anyone had a chance to bash him for it, the Devil King brought the full brunt of his glare upon the still-collapsed Olba.
“Uhngh…hhh…!”
The sheer force behind the demon’s sharpened stare was enough to send Olba flying, as if batted away with a giant hammer. His body slammed against one of the fallen expressway panels, knocking him out cold as he made a depression in the concrete.
“Pathetic! Pathetic, Olba!”
Howling with laughter, the Devil King spent not a single moment looking back at the archbishop. In the next instant, it was Lucifer he stood before.
Neither Lucifer, nor Emilia as she watched from afar, could follow his movements with the naked eye.
“You… Your Demonic…”
All Lucifer could do was nervously back away from his former commander.
“You think calling me that will please me at this point?”
In demonic society, defying those in the upper echelons was generally a serious taboo. And even half angel as he was, Lucifer had long since fallen to the darkness.
“Yo, Emi. What should we do with this guy?”
The Devil King turned toward his mortal enemy, face livid with sadistic glee.
The Hero seemed almost bored as she answered her own mortal enemy in return.
“Hmm, let me think… How about we make him take responsibility for messing up the city?”
“Good idea. Also, if I’m late for work, that’s on you, Lucifer, you got that? If this screws up my perfect-attendance record, what’re you gonna do about that? Huh? What the hell are you gonna do about that?!”
“Wh-what?! I don’t understand!!”
As Lucifer screamed, bewildered, Alciel muttered to himself, “Something the likes of us will never be able to understand, I fear…”
“In any event, I’ll be helping myself to your magic power.” The grin on the king of all demons’ face was gleeful.
“We’ll take care of your punishment after that,” the Hero whispered, her voice emotionless as she clanged her knuckles against the midpoint of her blade.
“Ahh…hhh…”
Lucifer, faced with the glorious light of heaven and the deepest pit of darkness, could do nothing but gurgle helplessly.
“If you call yourself a Great Demon General, at least try to take it with some dignity!!”
With the Devil King’s shout, light and darkness thundered across Sasazuka.
“So, how do you plan to make up for all this?”
Lucifer, no longer in possession of his fallen-angel form, could do nothing but be silent at the Devil King’s—or Maou’s, to be exact—question.
He was on his knees. On his knees, as a fragile, weak human being, atop the asphalt road, rubble, and chunks of concrete scattered to and fro, the postbattle scene one of total ruination.
Lucifer, the Great Demon General who had turned the Western Continent of Ente Isla into an inferno of punishing hellfire, was now upon his knees in front of the Hero and the Devil King.
In Sasazuka. In Tokyo. In Japan.
“I can hear the news guy now: ‘Due to a disaster of unprecedented proportions, the Shuto Expressway and Tokyo-Gaikan Expressway are impassible from Hatsudai to Chofu,’ et cetera, et cetera. Oh, and the Koshu-Kaido road. And the Keio rail line; that’s totally blocked just before Shinjuku. And, you know, I tried to be careful, but we might
be dealing with some deaths here.”
“It would be a bit of a miracle if there weren’t any, Your Demonic Highness.”
Ashiya, back to human form and completely unscathed, was doggedly attempting to keep his Great Demon General robes from falling off his body.
“But if it weren’t for your great powers, anyone in the cars caught up in the Shuto Expressway collapse wouldn’t have had a chance. The cars on the Koshu-Kaido road, too. And it’s nothing short of a miracle that the nearby houses and such weren’t more badly damaged.”
“Yeah, well, people like us usually don’t start goin’ at it in this world. I bet at least a few people didn’t evacuate in time. I tried to make the magic barrier as large as I could manage, but who knows if I got everything covered under it…”
Lucifer remained silent.
“I have an idea.” Emi, dressed in a business suit that had all but fallen to tatters due to her falling down the stairs at Maou’s apartment then joining a life-or-death clash of ponderously enormous magical forces, spoke up as she looked down upon Lucifer.
“Why don’t we just hand this guy over to the cops? We could say he was some kind of terrorist bomber or something.”
“I was thinking that too, but… Like, maybe that’d cause a big furor to start out, but there’s no actual evidence at all, and plus, it’d be kinda pointless anyway. I bet the cops wouldn’t mind closing the book on that string of robberies, though.”
The pants and shirt on Maou, stretched to the very limit of their fibers following their owner’s recent transformation, were now hanging loosely off his body, as if draped on a deck chair.
“Yeah, I’m sure, but…I mean, what’re we gonna do about all this?”
“Beats me. Not like a Great Demon General drained of all his magic power is gonna help us much.”
Said draining and absorption of Lucifer’s magical force was the one and only reason why the suddenly-human demon officer was so meek and docile now.
Ashiya himself still retained some magic, obtained the same way Maou had obtained his just now, and Emi had yet to exhaust her supply of holy force either. For Lucifer, whose stores had been fully tapped, there was no chance of even scratching them.
“Um…”
Chiho was the one who sheepishly interjected. She had no obvious injuries, and except for a light case of exhaustion after having Lucifer suck all the negative emotion out of her, she was fine. Compared to Maou, she looked oddly refreshed and ready for the day.
“I-I guess this is kind of a silly thing to ask at this point…”
“What’s up, Chi?”
The response, and the voice that delivered it, was unmistakably Sadao Maou. But Chiho still clearly recalled the enormous creature that had taken his form just minutes ago.
“Well, what…what are all of you?”
It was the obvious question of the hour. Maou, Ashiya, and Emi exchanged glances.
“Well…like, it’s kind of embarrassing to just put it out like this, but I’m the Devil King over in another world.”
Maou honestly did look embarrassed, distractedly scratching the side of his face with a finger, as if someone had just revealed one of his hidden nerd hobbies to his coworkers. It was enough to make Chiho burst into laughter even before she could process his words.
“Yeah, not that you believe it, huh?”
Chiho waved her hands in the air nervously. “Oh, no, no, no! I mean, I saw all of that…stuff you did, so. And that’s how you did all that, too, right?”
Her finger was pointed at the crowds of onlookers, overturned cars, and other debris scattered around the area, still frozen in time underneath the magical barrier.
“Yeah, more or less. But, you know, that much is pretty easy, so…”
“Your Demonic Highness, I know humility is considered a virtue in Japanese society, but you really shouldn’t be afraid to take more credit here.”
Ashiya was already back to his usual griping-househusband tone of voice.
“These guys are all demons, keep in mind. Myself, I’m all human. Okay, half angel, but—”
The utter seriousness of Emi’s interjection made Chiho spasm in laughter once more.
“Oh, come on, Chiho!”
“I-I’m sorry! It’s just so…goofy!”
“Wait, you’re half angel? ’Cause that’s news to me.”
“What? How could you not know? You’re the Devil King! Who did you think I was this whole time?”
Emi snapping back at Maou’s half-baked response was all it took for Chiho’s laughing to grow louder.
“I just thought that… Ha-ha-ha-ha! That angels and demons and stuff… They were all just these big made-up things, but…seeing you all…right here…”
The effort to speak while laughing eventually caused Chiho to choke on her own words. Emi worriedly slapped her on the back a few times.
“Well, look, Emi, you weren’t exactly sharing your personal info with me over there, right? I just thought you were, like, a really strong human, is all.”
“Oh, so you thought a regular human could just walk around with enough Holy Silver in her body to summon her sword?”
“…Guess not, huh? Well, that sure explains a lot. I wondered how you could transform like that.”
“If you think that was a shock, imagine finding you guys looking like humans for the first time!… Breathing okay now, Chiho?”
“Y-yeah. Sorry.”
Emi brought her lips to Chiho’s ears as she composed herself after her laughing fit.
“You see now? There’s nothing special at all between me and Maou, so quit worrying, okay?”
“Y-Yusa…”
All this laughing and blushing was keeping Chiho’s circulatory system fairly well occupied. Emi breathed a sigh of relief, yesterday’s misunderstandings now a thing of the past. Maou and Ashiya, looking on, couldn’t help to smile to themselves.
“You know, though…” Maou furrowed his brows, his face betraying his embarrassment.
“I guess it’s pointless asking now, but Emi, if you had that much power left, why didn’t you attack me before now? Like, until yesterday, you could’ve reduced me to a pile of ash any time you wanted.”
“Oh, that?”
Emi shrugged, as if the idea meant nothing to her.
“Well, a Devil King as cowardly as you are, you might have been pretending to be a weak, helpless human being until the moment you decided to bare your fangs, right? Plus, like I told you, if I fought at full power like that, even if I managed to defeat you, there’s no guarantee I’d have enough power left to control the Gate. That’s pretty much it.”
“Oh. Makes sense.”
Maou nodded his agreement. Then his face turned white as he grasped the meaning behind her words.
To put it another way, if Emi had decided to give up on returning home, she could have utterly destroyed him at any moment. She had every chance in the world to pull it off before now.
Emi, perhaps noticing this, sulkily turned her back to Maou.
“I know I don’t act like it sometimes, but I’m a Hero. A leader. My people respected me. I can’t just prey on the weak and defenseless like that.”
“The weak and…? That’s kind of mean.”
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, well, what about now, huh? I got all my power back, and you used all of yours up! I could crush you like a bug! How about them apples?”
Maou struck a semiserious battle pose.
“Oh, suuuuuure.”
But Emi was totally unfazed. Grabbing Chiho at her side, she held her close, while Maou’s potential love interest hid behind her shadow.
“Hey, Chiho, that guy’s using his ‘I have my power back’ crutch to try and pick on me.”
The tactic was as barefaced as it was effective.
“…Really, Maou?”
And what’s more, Chiho looked honestly crestfallen as she looked toward Maou. He cringed, shielding his face against her shee
r innocence.
“D-don’t look at me like that! I… There’s no way I’d actually do it! I am the proud, noble king of the demons! When it’s time to fight, I fight fair and square! So stop looking all sad like that, Chi, okay? Also, that was low, Emi!”
Ashiya sighed, looking even sadder than Chiho as he watched Maou frantically make excuses from the rear.
Lucifer, for his part, seemed utterly lost, as if viewing a scene from another dimension.
“What has happened to all of you?”
The question brought Emi and Maou back to reality. In tandem, they planted a foot upon Lucifer’s head for speaking without permission.
“Nnrgh!”
“Yeah, that reminds me, this guy comes before any of that. That and Sasazuka. What’re we gonna do?”
Maou looked around his surroundings as Ashiya crossed his arms in intense thought.
“As they say, Your Demonic Highness, if you make a mess, it’s your job to clean it up. This world’s been very kind to us. Leaving it in chaos before returning home would make even a demon’s conscience feel guilty.”
Ashiya’s response could not have been less demonlike. But it was the reference to “returning home” that made Emi’s face stiffen.
“…So you are going back?”
“Of course we are. With my liege’s powers restored, we no longer have anything chaining us to Earth. Ente Isla is always our first and foremost target.”
The words from Ashiya’s mouth were cold and frank.
“Going back? Back to your family, or…?”
Chiho’s question, a justifiable one for a girl with an incomplete knowledge of Maou’s world, went ignored.
“Well, hang on. I’m signed up for a bunch of shifts this month, and grnh!”
“Your Demonic Highness, is your part-time job at MgRonald more important to you than the conquest of Ente Isla?!”
A swift swat with Ashiya’s flattened hand was enough to momentarily rearrange Maou’s face.
“Listen to me, my liege. I will grant you that without your hard work for Ms. Kisaki and the Hatagaya rail-station MgRonald, our time in Japan would have been far more difficult than it was. But what possible value does a contract with the human race hold, one written without the benefit of demonic force behind it? I know we will both miss the thousand-yen hourly pay you were receiving—”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 1 Page 19
