The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 16

by Satoshi Wagahara

  Chiho, meanwhile, lacked the physical strength to overpower anyone else. An outside instructor once told her she had good focus, but focus didn’t matter much in sports if it didn’t connect to results. Plus, this habit of turning her face back before firing was one fusei habit Chiho had a difficult time shaking. It often put her in the hole during interschool competitions.

  In short, no matter how much adulation Laila had for her, that was really the long and short of her latent abilities. Ninety-five percent of why she was setting this zirga meet on fire came down to the Yesod fragment—but unlike Emi’s sword, the fragment in Chiho’s ring didn’t work directly on her. The superhuman exploits she showed off in Tokyo Tower against Gabriel and Raguel were the result of Laila’s magic coursing through the fragment, basically making her a puppet.

  Here, though, at this archery competition posing as an exhibition, it was difficult for Laila to control Chiho without at least someone in the Northern Island noticing. If people picked up on the holy force Laila used for the job, Chiho would be instantly booted out of the zirga and deemed unworthy of serving as chief. Instead, Laila had given Chiho a crash course in how to use the fragment, instructing her to use her own holy force to draw power from it and support her archery skills. Simply activating the fragment, however, would drain Chiho’s holy magic by the second half of the event, so instead, Laila activated her own and Chiho’s launched off that.

  In other words, Chiho’s current kyudo performance would never have happened without Laila’s power.

  To someone like Chiho, who had never systematically learned magic and wasn’t even from Ente Isla, being placed on this planet didn’t make her any better a magician. She had only the barest minimum of natural recovery skills. As Nord put it, borrowing the fragment’s force to boost her stamina and skills put a major toll on Chiho’s body. She had very little holy force left to work with. It was common knowledge in Ente Isla that all fighters had a store of holy force inside them, large or small; using that force to improve your archery skills wasn’t seen as cheating or otherwise improper. Tapping on some external force, however, was more akin to doping, so she needed to save up as much holy force as possible for today’s events.

  “…No, that’s not it.”

  But even that was only one of many reasons Chiho thought about.

  If all she wanted to do was carry out Suzuno’s mission, she wouldn’t have bothered with all the pomp and circumstance of kyudo. She could just fire away, instead of going through the whole power-draining kai procession with each shot, and nail every target. But to her, that option was never on the table.

  So she softly said the name of someone important to her.

  “Maou…”

  She wanted to show a part of herself that Maou had never seen before. She wanted to show that her friends were looking to her for help, that she was standing here under her own power. She wanted to show that she had the strength to help him out. That’s why she didn’t want to cheat.

  “Looks like you’re still first up. Come on.”

  After a while, the notice for the fourth round was announced. She took up her bow, like she always did. She wasn’t using the Yesod fragment. Or any holy force.

  “……”

  Her steps were good.

  Her chest positioning was good.

  Her string pulling was good.

  Her hands were stable.

  Her sighting was a little tense, but she felt like she wasn’t pulling back too much this time.

  From the draw to the extension, she felt her right shoulder going up a bit, but she calmly returned to the correct stance. The time had come to engage.

  In her head, she recalled a moment just after she got into high school, gauging which clubs to join. She recalled the beautiful stance of one of the upperclassmen, drawing a white, bamboo bow on the stage in front of her. Now, she was facing a target, like a full moon, straight in front of the yasurido band above her grip.

  “!”

  The arrow, fired away from the bow, made what was probably the most comforting sound she had ever experienced in her short kyudo career before hitting the target.

  “…Mm?”

  Ahead of her lowered bow, she saw the arrow was a tad left of dead center, but still within the star.

  Returning to standby for her final shot, she breathed a heavy sigh for the first time all evening.

  “Well shot. You must be feeling better.”

  Chiho’s face softened a little at Nord’s applause. She smiled at him. “Normally, I’d be jumping for joy right now.” She looked at the targets, face filled with emotion. “I hit the star for the first time in competition…with my own ability.”

  Right here, at the biggest stage of her life, she had done something she never accomplished before.

  “Too bad this wasn’t the final shot…”

  There was one more to go. And after she had just fired the best arrow of her life, she could easily let her guard down for the last one. She took a deep breath, trying to dispel the tension and self-satisfaction. Then, another roar came from the crowd. She looked up from the stage, wondering what it was about.

  “What…?”

  Nord, picking up on things before she could, looked up and down the scoreboard, which, featured the competitors’ names and points, on the stage.

  “Oh my goodness, Chiho!”

  “Yes?”

  Nord stroked his beard hard enough to practically scrape it off, more excited than he normally ever was.

  “You won!”

  “Huh?” she yelped, any focus she had instantly vanishing.

  “The second-place archer missed the target!”

  Shock filled her mind.

  The large man from before, the only competitor at all close to her in points, was apparently from the Welland clan in the southern flatlands. He had just whiffed his fourth shot. Thanks to that, even if Chiho missed the target on the fifth and everyone else hit dead-center with the rest of their turns, nobody could catch up to her in points.

  “Wh-what happened?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know, but… Hmm? Look at that…!”

  The Welland archer’s bow sat limply in his hand, the string broken and hanging limply below. He stared at it dumbfoundedly for a moment, then shrugged, waved broadly to the crowd, and went to the back of the stage.

  Then, he came right up to Chiho.

  “Uh, umm…”

  “…”

  The man, who stood a good head above Nord, unnerved Chiho at first. But:

  “Your bow skills are excellent.”

  He looked on, admiring her.

  “If I fought you in battle and lost, I would ask for nothing more. I tried to follow in your footsteps, but I pushed myself too hard. I am simply not worthy.”

  He chuckled at his broken bowstring, then took a knee in front of Chiho.

  “Scion of the great Wurs clan, I ask a favor of you.”

  Given his participation in this zirga, the man naturally knew Chiho’s name.

  “Y-yes?”

  “Would you allow me to touch your bow?”

  “My bow?”

  Chiho looked at it. It was glass fiber with a bamboo core, purchased by her father when she began kyudo; maybe a bit high-end for high school sports.

  “I know it is unbecoming of me. Asking a fellow warrior, the descendant of Chief Wurs, to reveal the—”

  “Sure.”

  “—very tools that keep her alive in… Really?!”

  The man, not expecting Chiho to give it up so easily, shivered across the entire mass of his body.

  “Go ahead. It’s no big deal.”

  “Th-thank you.”

  He bowed at Nord, likely mistaking him for a Wurs clansman, and accepted the bow from Chiho.

  “So light! And this smooth feel, on the surface… It looks like bamboo, but there is something else, as well…”

  Saying it was glass fiber was unlikely to mean anything to him, and Chiho didn’t really kn
ow what “glass fiber” was anyway. So she decided to repeat what the guy at the store said when she went to buy the equipment with her dad.

  “It’s a combination of bamboo and this special core material. It allows beginners like me to fire fast-moving arrows with relatively little recoil.”

  This was the bow the shop recommended after she said she’d like to have a bamboo bow in the future. It felt close to bamboo, bending softly on the draw, but still packing a punch on the release. At the same time, the recoil was on the lighter side (a trademark of the series), which made it feel stiffer and stronger than its specifications showed. Thanks to that, the clerk had said, she’d need to get some muscle on her to take full advantage of it.

  Whenever she fired a good shot from it, it tended to make this higher-pitched sound, as if informing her whenever she got her stance right. It was said the average glass fiber or carbon fiber bow didn’t last as long as pure bamboo, but she intended to stick with this one as long as she could.

  “Beginner? You?”

  The man couldn’t hide his shock. Chiho had landed all but one shot perfectly today, and she called herself a beginner?

  “Yes, I’ve only been at this for around two years. Honestly, all I can say is I felt really good and had a lot of luck today.”

  “Unbelievable…”

  There was also the Yesod fragment, but no need to complicate matters.

  “I am sure all the clans are reconsidering their opinions of you Wurses, now that this wunderkind has made herself known. You may be selected as Chief Dhin Dhem’s successor, you know.”

  “Oh, I doubt that. I may be all right with a bow, but I’m terrible on a horse, and I don’t know nearly enough about politics, and economics, and the other clans, and stuff. But that lady—um, I mean, Chief Dhin Dhem—she insisted I take my place up here, so…”

  She was really here to retrieve the Spear, and she was also the one who insisted on doing this, but she felt at least a few pangs of guilt over butting into one of the most venerated events in the Northern Island. Never in her life did she think she was chief herder material.

  “Oh, no need for modesty. The fact that you didn’t even let the other clans finish their rounds will certainly earn yours respect today. Tell Chief Dhin Dhem I wished her hello. And also…”

  The man cheerfully smiled, handed the bow back to Chiho, and clapped her on the shoulder.

  “I cannot wait to see what you’ll do in the Bowman’s Offering.”

  “…I’ll try my best.”

  The Bowman’s Offering was the final event of the day, where the stage was taken away and the exhibition’s winner would demonstrate his or her best trick shot, dedicating it to their clan, the powers of nature, or the assorted gods worshipped in the Northern Island. This could involve, for example, expressing one’s appreciation for the vast earth by hitting a succession of targets on horseback, or shooting down flying targets (representing the birds that contribute to nature, vegetation, fruits, and meat supplies) like in clay pigeon shooting. Once, a stout archer loaded his bow with three arrows and hit three separate targets at the same time—which, while a bit lacking in religious (or practical) significance, was certainly a shot to remember.

  By this point, however, most of the ways one could fire an arrow in a flashy fashion had been exhausted, so the more talented competitors were usually asked what they’d bring to the Bowman’s Offering in advance should they win. Chiho had submitted hers, then discussed and worked it out with Suzuno in advance.

  Once the Welland archer left, Nord went up to her.

  “Now for the real excitement, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  “The championship finished early, so we’ll have more time to prepare for it. It doesn’t sound like they’ll move the Bowman’s Offering up in the schedule, so go ahead and rest up ’til then.”

  Chiho nodded, stood up from her kneeling position, bowed to the stage and the targets, and finally felt the tension flow out of her.

  “Oh, it’s over?”

  Maou sounded a little disappointed as workers began to dismantle the stage and people began to shuffle around them.

  “Huh?” Wurs whirled around at him. “Weren’t you complaining about it this whole time?”

  “N-no, um…”

  “Oh, but I get what Maou’s talking about,” said Rika, still clapping at the stage from her box seat. “Chiho got so far ahead that they called the game, huh?”

  Over to the side, the oddsmaker’s booth was a scene of alternating joy and chaos, the dark-horse Chiho’s stunning victory wrecking the entire script of the evening.

  “But man, Chiho is sooo talented! I’ve never heard about that part of her before. I bet she’s doing pretty great in her high school team, too. This was so exciting! Maybe I should get back into swimming myself!”

  Rika basked in the excitement, nearly driven to tears by the scene, before looking around, distracted.

  “Huh? Emi, what’s with your mom?”

  “…Oh?”

  Emi, who had watched the exhibition at rapt attention and was already swept up in the flurry of emotions leading up to the Bowman’s Offering, only now realized that the seat next to her no longer had Laila in it.

  “Mm? Whoa, and what happened to Libicocco over there?”

  Maou, for his part, then spotted a distinct lack of the enormous Libicocco in Rika’s box.

  “The two of them,” Wurs said, “need to prepare for the Bowman’s Offering.”

  “Laila and Libicocco? Prepare how?”

  Maou knew that the Offering was a memorial event, a way to honor the winner of the archery contest, but why did they need three people for it?

  “Guys, we’ve gone over this. Are you deliberately acting dumb, or what? Is Japan peaceful enough that the Devil King’s and the Hero’s brains have shrunk to a worm’s size? You know what they left to pick up.”

  She motioned with her chin up at the Spear, even now towering over the arena.

  “So Chiho’s gonna team up with Laila to perform an Offering that I guarantee you’ve never seen before. Meanwhile, the Malebranche is going to attract people’s attention with a little trick of his. While all eyes are on him, Stumpy Scythe’s gonna open a Gate and ram the Spear through it.”

  “She—she can do that?”

  Maou and Emi had no idea how they were going to retrieve this huge spear during the evening, or how Laila and Libicocco were involved.

  “Hey, lady, I’ve been meaning to ask you something…”

  Maou took this opportunity to ask Wurs about a term she had been bandying around all day.

  “By ‘Stumpy Scythe,’ you don’t mean…”

  “A nickname as fancy-pants as ‘Death Scythe’ goes to waste on her,” she bluntly replied. “‘Stumpy Scythe’ is good enough.”

  ““Bpph!!””

  Maou and Emi had suspected an answer like that. They weren’t disappointed. It made both of them crack up at once.

  “What’s with you Westerners anyway? Giving a nickname as scary as that to such a cute little lady? Just go with Stumpy Scythe! It’s perfect!”

  Every time Wurs used the name, Maou and Emi shuddered a bit, trying their hardest not to burst out in massive, sidesplitting laughter. It was so rude to Suzuno, in so many ways, but Maou had already decided: This was how he’d get back at her for leaving him out of the loop.

  “From this point forward, she’s Stumpy Scythe until I get bored of it.”

  Just then, a gong sounded to signify that the Bowman’s Offering was ready to start. Maou and the rest of the crowd turned their attention to the arena—then, another clamor rose. In the arena was…nothing particularly special. Chiho assumed a firing pose, and there was a simple archery target and the shadow of the Spear cast over the grounds.

  “Uh… Is this gonna work?”

  Maou, despite knowing little about the archery scene on two different planets, couldn’t help but be concerned. The distance between Chiho and the target seemed impossi
bly long. By Maou’s estimation, if the range during the competition was about thirty-three yards, this was a good three times that or so. The sight of Chiho focusing, sizing up this target over a football field’s length away, would’ve stupefied anyone.

  In Japan’s feudal days, it was said that even the greatest of archers could not capture a target beyond 30 ken (about 60 yards) in length. The official rules of kyudo offer an enteki (far-target) version where they could be placed up to about 66 yards away from the shooter. The Toshi-ya archery competition, held in Kyoto’s Sanjusangen-do Temple for over two centuries in old times, once featured a samurai who fired an arrow about 131 yards—but that was strictly a length competition, not aimed at a target. These days, Sanjusangen-do held a yearly competition called O-mato Taikai, or “Festival of the Great Target,” modeled after Toshi-ya, but that ran under the 66-yard enteki rules. In other words, attempting to hit a target that was about 109 yards away with a regular bow and arrow, both on Earth and in Ente Isla, was unthinkable.

  Before the commotion could die down, the event continued with the announcement of the contender’s name, what she was devoting the offering to, and what was about to be attempted. The crowd roared once again. As it was proclaimed, Chiho Sasaki Wurs, winner of the archery exhibition, wished to express her respects for the spear Adramelech left behind by executing a tsugiya to imitate its shape.

  A tsugiya, in kyudo parlance, referred to an arrow lodging inside the nock (the notch at the back end of an arrow, for engaging the bowstring) of a previously fired arrow on the target. This was a rarity, but not unheard of in the world of high school archery, and pulling it off earned you the previous arrow’s score added onto the current one. But this occurred almost exclusively in close-range contests, and even then, through sheer coincidence; it was nothing you could really aim for. It was a bit more common for an arrow to bounce off one lodged in the target and fall away; this was called hazu-uchi, and the arrow was deemed off target for no points. (If a person ever did pull off a tsugiya, it was prudent to temper the celebrating—after all, the contestant just damaged one of their opponent’s arrows beyond repair, which could hit the amateur archer’s wallet hard.)

  So the boast of Chiho performing this move on a 109-yard target was shocking enough. But: