“Okay, sorry, just one sec…”
Rika walked around the side of the futon freshly laid out on the floor.
“What’re you doing?!”
“Hang on, this’ll take just one moment.”
“What are you…?”
“Aghh?!”
Maou froze, hearing the hysterical scream from Emi out in the hallway. But before he could ask what happened, Acieth was upon her, picking her up in her arms.
“Oooh, good timing, Acieth!”
“Whoo-hoo!”
Rika gave her a thumbs-up. Acieth replied with a wink.
“Acieth, what are you doing?! You too, Rika! What’s going on?!”
“Hey! What the hell, guys? What are you up to?!”
“Okay, I don’t wanna bother flipping this over, so sorry, guys…”
Ignoring Emi’s and Maou’s shouts, Rika took something unbelievable out from her jacket.
“Here we are!”
With a little grunt of effort, she plunged it into a space between the tatami mats.
“Rika?!”
Emi’s surprise was understandable. Rika had an angel’s feather pen, allowing anyone to create a Gate to another world.
A well of light bubbled up from where the pen stood as they watched. The mat in the very center of the cramped room burst into radiant light, as bright as the sun, enveloping a bit of the comforter on one side of the futon.
“Whoa, I did that?! Wow! I’m some kind of sorceress. This is so exciting! Oh, right, your shoes, Maou…”
As if forgetting about them until now, she picked Maou’s shoes up from the front door…and, with them and her suitcase, plunged into the Gate.
“Ah! Hey?!”
Maou and Emi stood motionless for a moment, dumbfounded at Rika’s brazen behavior.
“Wh…what’re we gonna do?!”
“What are…? I dunno! Acieth, put me down a sec! We gotta go after Rika…!”
“Don’t worry, Emi! We will certainly chase her, no questions!”
“Huh? What? W-Wait, Acieth, are… Ahhhh?!”
Incapable of putting up any resistance, Emi found herself dragged into the Gate by Acieth. Maou froze again, this time for a few seconds, as he took this in.
“Wh-what—what the hell? Uh, uh, the door, I gotta lock the door… Hey, hang on!”
Snapping out of it, he latched the front door, then darted around the room for a little bit, making sure he had his wallet and phone even though he knew the Gate was connected to Ente Isla. Then, with a nervous nod, he jumped in.
“Guys, wait up!”
He swam across the dimensional trail, trying to catch the three small figures far ahead of him.
“Goddammit! Why can’t I use one of those?!”
The Gate that Rika opened up with her feather pen tried to allow Maou in, but as a demon, he was forced to overlap the path with his own magic in order to navigate. It was vastly different from the Gate he personally used to travel between planets. There was no way Rika, who boasted zero holy force, could build a Gate this stable by herself.
“…Hmm?”
But then, an odd thought crossed his mind. A question that struck at the core, one that seemed even stranger than Rika’s odd activity. A feather pen like that was made from an archangel’s wing, making it impossible for demons to use. Laila taught a young Maou that herself, and when other demons tried sticking the pen into the ground, nothing ever happened.
Rika had now proven that any Earthling could use the thing, as long as they weren’t demonic. If the sorcerers on Ente Isla—messing around with the Stairs to Heaven and other fiddly Gate spells, as they had to have been doing—heard about this, they’d probably be livid.
But they would need to wait, because another question just entered Maou’s mind. If it was this easy to open a Gate connecting planets to planets…
“…Why didn’t the people back on those guys’ home world open any Gates?”
“Oof…nnnnngh.”
“And down!”
“Ahh!”
“Ow!”
After an interdimensional journey of some forty minutes, Rika, Acieth, Emi, and Maou landed in order…
“…Where are we?”
…in a spot that definitely wasn’t Devil’s Castle on the Central Continent.
“What the hell?”
Neither Emi nor Maou recognized the spot at all. But they could tell what kind of place it was.
“A church… Wait, a full Church cathedral?!”
“What?!”
Maou opened his eyes wide at Emi’s exclamation. Then, he stared at Rika, the woman who brought them here. The decor did resemble the Church cathedrals he had seen in the cities of the Central Continent, back when he was sacking them.
“A-Acieth! Rika Suzuki! What the hell are you…?”
But before Rika could answer, another voice came up from below.
“Oh, you’re here?”
“…Um, who’s that with you?”
It was Albert, along with a large, muscular man whom Maou and Emi didn’t recognize and who was a measure larger than Albert himself. His eyes looked weirdly sinister, but his hair was waxed up and combed into a straight split down the middle.
“We did it!”
“Sorry we’re late!”
With Maou and Emi too flummoxed by this cavalcade of events to respond, Acieth and Rika gave the pair a hearty hello.
“Hey,” Albert replied. “I’m glad it worked. Bell ’n’ I spent hours debating over whether you’d pull it off.”
“Oh, I was so nervous! I didn’t know whether this feather pen would work for me or not, so my heart was racing the whole time!”
“No, you did a real good job, lady. You even nailed the landing out of the Gate.”
“Ohh, man, I need a rest…”
“Ahh, Rika! I love you! Big drive to do this! Me, I cannot believe it is first time for you!”
“Wha, who, why, what, wait…”
“What?! Who?! Why?! What?! Wait!!”
Both Maou and Emi had generally the same reaction.
The unknown man stepped up to them, solemnly taking a knee.
“I must apologize, Your Demonic Highness.”
““Huh?””
The man, who resembled a football or rugby player, was now bowing his head toward Maou. He was a demon.
“Y-you…”
“This is the form I have taken, but you are speaking to Libicocco.”
“L-Libicocco?!”
Maou was floored at being greeted by a Malebranche chieftain in a cathedral. But looking back, Farfarello had taken a human form on Earth as well. Libicocco was enormous by Malebranche standards; maybe this was the shape he’d naturally take as a regular guy.
“My liege, the Great Demon General of the East and Lady Bell have granted me the honorable role of accompanying you.”
“Ashiya and Suzuno?!”
“Alciel and Bell?!”
Albert, Libicocco, Rika, and Acieth certainly made for a ragtag bunch, but if it was Ashiya and Suzuno planning all this, it made even less sense than before. Albert, perhaps realizing this, grinned at them.
“You two are lookin’ great, guys! First off, I guess I oughta tell you, you’re in the Northern Island. This is the Church cathedral in the Goat Pasture, better known as Phiyenci.”
“The—the Northern Island?!”
“Phiyenci… That’s the united capital, isn’t it?! Why would Rika Suzuki take us someplace like this?!”
“Ah, well, we figured you’d be livid if me or Eme or Bell took ya. I wanted someone who’d never spill the beans to you if asked, and Bell said this lady Rika ought to fill the bill. So she introduced her to me.”
“Well, I’m just glad I had Acieth to help me out! Man, I thought I was gonna have a heart attack those whole forty minutes. Not as bad as when I first heard about all this stuff, but still. Man, it’s cold!”
Rika opened up her wheeled suitcase. It contained a toiletry bag and a f
ew outfits geared for cold weather, the perfect overnight-stay package.
“Stop lying there in the heap forever, Maou and Emi! We have the free time for now, but the food stalls, they not open forever! And Laila, she save the good seats for us, so let’s be quick!”
“W-Wait! Wait a second! Laila did what?! Please, guys, stop having fun confusing me like this! What’s going on? What is all this? What are you bastards scheming?!”
With nobody coming forward with a coherent explanation, things grew more confusing by the minute for Maou and Emi. But what Rika had for them next made everything else seem trivial.
“So they’re having this archery exhibition today, right? It’s, like, the biggest event in the whole zirga, and Chiho’s entered into it, so we’re all gonna go cheer her on!”
“Uh…………”
“Wha…………”
This was exactly what being at a loss for words meant.
Chiho was entered in the archery exhibition? One of the events in the zirga, a large conference convened to pick the next chief herder? Maou had no clue why any of this was happening.
“But hey,” Albert told the stunned pair, “seeing is believing, right? She’s been shootin’ up a storm.”
“Oh! Hey, over here, you two!”
Lost in a vast crowd, Maou and Emi heard a voice calling them.
They were in the central square of Phiyenci, and right in the middle of it, the Spear of Adramelechinus loomed higher than any watchtower, basking in the afternoon sun and casting a vast shadow over the peaceful world it lorded over. Truly, a weapon worthy of Adramelech himself, head of the Bluehorn clan. A sort of ad hoc arena had been built nearby, allowing you to look straight up at the Spear, and inside it was a gaudily decorated wooden stage, where the archery exhibition took place.
The grandstand, built parallel along the paths the arrows took from the stage to their targets, were packed almost to the brim—but one section was built like box seats, allowing you to sit any way you wanted inside them. Laila was waving at them from one such box, so Emi pressed on through the crowd, Maou following behind.
The archery exhibition had already started. Many young people filled the stage, showing off their shooting skills with the hunting bows unique to the Northern Island. Bets were apparently being taken in one corner of the stands, judging by the large board full of names and inscrutable numbers that changed with every arrow unfurled, and how the crowd was filled with calls of joy or despair in turns. Considering this event would help decide the next head of state, it felt more like a raucous town festival.
Emi and Maou picked their way through the stands, rubbing their shoulders against the crowd. “I’m glad you made it in time,” Laila said with a smile as they approached the box. “Chiho’s group should be up in about half an hour, so ngh…?!”
Emi marched straight into the box, shoes and all, and immediately grabbed Laila by the collar.
“Could you tell me what’s going on?”
“Um, ah, the mmph?”
Maou, arriving a beat later, then grabbed Laila by the head.
“You’ve gone over the line one time too many.”
“Ah, w-wait, guys! You’re scaring me! People are watching! They’re gonna see us!”
“I don’t care.”
“So what?”
“W-Wait! Wait, I know this sounds like an excuse, but I was against it at first, too, I said it was just too crazy to work, I did, I stopped them, I said we can’t get Chiho involved in this, but Bell suggested it, and when she brought it up with Chiho, she was all for it, raring to go, and she said we needed to keep it secret from you both until today, so I couldn’t say anything, and honestly, I didn’t think Chiho would remain such a zirga contender all the way to today, so if we got this far, you know, she said if she made it to the end of the exhibition, she wanted you to see it, so I really didn’t do anything this time, in fact, I tried to put a stop to it, believe me, please, ow, ow, ow, you’re hurting me, everyone else agreed to it, but I was against it until the end, I heard you were angry when she did the same thing at Tokyo Tower before, so I was the only one to say no until the very end, and it was Chiho herself who convinced Alciel to do it, so please, let me go, I can’t breathe, I can’t breeeeathe!”
Being lifted into the air by Emi, Laila thought it prudent to use what could potentially be her last breath to fully outline her defense. Her head grew visibly paler with every syllable, so the two of them finally felt it prudent to let her down. They were still less than convinced.
“What do you mean, Bell suggested it?”
Not even Maou had heard Emi’s voice go this murderously low very often. It made Laila go even paler before she could catch her breath.
“Haaah, haaah, that—that, you know… Huff… If we just asked them to hand over the Spear, haaah, the Northern Island wouldn’t go for that, mmph…”
It was Emi and her band, after all, who left the Spear here. They didn’t leave any instructions on what to do with it, and given that this was the only relic of the Devil Overlord everyone knew the exact location of, Emi knew the wrong approach could lead to headaches later on. That was why, once Emi and Maou had learned about the relics, they had informed everyone that they’d be ready to do anything asked of them in order to retrieve it. Emi, in particular, intended to make a personal plea to the chief herder to borrow the Spear, if all other options were exhausted. She had decided as much long before they had any concrete plan for the relic, because she knew their group likely wouldn’t stumble upon any other bright ideas.
Thus, she had been thinking this whole time about how to proceed on this topic with Chief Herder Dhin Dhem Wurs and the other clan chieftains, without letting word about the true nature of their expedition to heaven get out, and without causing any political strife afterward. So how did this wind up with Chiho down there on the zirga stage?
“The Devil King and I didn’t want to expose Chiho to any more danger. What do all you people think you’re even doing…?”
“Of all the mean things to say about Chiho! You can see how aware she is of what’s going on. Why not let her do what she wants a little?”
“Huh?”
“Wh-who’re you?”
Just when Emi was gritting her teeth hard enough to require dental work, a voice interrupted her. It belonged to an old woman who had appeared in a nearby box seat at some point, intently watching the exhibition.
“Hmm, what a surprise…”
The woman, monocle covering one eye, looked up at Maou.
“So you’re Satan, the Devil King?”
““!””
Maou and Emi gasped.
“This’ll be our first direct encounter, won’t it? I was surprised enough about Stumpy Scythe, but you’re pretty young, too, eh? You don’t cut too impressive a figure for someone goin’ around callin’ himself a king. You getting three square meals a day?”
The compact old woman’s weirdly overwhelming presence was too much for Maou to bear at first. But Emi, having met her once, couldn’t hide the shock of seeing someone she never expected here.
“…Are you Chief Dhin Dhem Wurs?”
“Been a while, hasn’t it? And hopefully, you won’t mind if I don’t call you by name. Never know who might be listening in on us!”
Dhin Dhem Wurs, chief herder and leader of the Northern Island, kept her back turned to the Hero Emilia. She didn’t hesitate to bandy the “Satan” name around, oddly enough, but their seats were a fair distance away, and her voice was all but drowned in the clamor and excitement as the next archery contestant approached. Any attention generated by Emi assaulting Laila was now squarely focused on the festival.
Taking another look around, Emi found Albert, Libicocco, Acieth, and Rika seated in the box to the left. The one on their right was empty.
“Dhin Dhem Wurs? Hey, isn’t that the chief herder’s name?!”
Maou, taking a moment to come to that conclusion, was sent reeling by it. The woman herself gave him
a peeved sneer.
“Well, look at that high-pitched voice you got! Why don’t you quit your whining and sit down? This is the archery exhibition, the biggest event of the zirga! We have wannabe stars from every clan in the land, and people islandwide betting on them. I pulled a few strings to get the best seats in the house for you; the least you could do is watch!”
Emi confronted the woman just a tad more politely than how she usually treated Laila: “Chief Wurs, what is going on here?!”
“What’s going on? It’s you all who want the Spear, is it not? And the North can’t exactly give it away for free, can we? But now we’re on the cusp of a war that could determine the fate of the human race, right? So I’ve arranged things so you can get your hands on it about as quick as you’re ever gonna.”
“A-Arranged things…?”
“I have a vague idea of what you’ve been up to over the past two years. You and the Devil King were goofing around on another planet, and now you’re going to try fighting a god so you can reunite that daughter you two made and her friends?”
That was a little less than “vague,” and “making” a daughter sounded kind of suspect, but it was clear Wurs was aware of Maou’s and Emi’s lives in Japan.
“So you know, normally, I’d take anyone asking for the Spear and throw them out on their ear, but this was my childhood friend asking, so I said ‘all right, I guess I’ll pitch in a little.’ I’m sure you guys don’t appreciate being left out of the loop, but not even the Hero can play the, um, hero all the time. So deal with it!”
Wurs took a moment to survey the entire arena, from one end to the other.
“Zirgas like this attract a scary number of candidates, and the funniest thing is, they’re all volunteering to actually do something as annoying as be chief herder. We even get rubberneckers from other continents. That’s why we’ve kept security tighter than usual, and my youngest granddaughter’s one of the entrants in the archery exhibition, so this whole joint is on lockdown. So if you don’t wanna be ashamed of your fancy title, lady, then sit down and cheer on my granddaughter, won’t you?”
“Whoa, ma’am, please don’t act like our talk is over,” Maou interjected. “You haven’t told us anything we asked about. Who the hell proceeded with this whole thing without telling either of us?”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 16 Page 12
