The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 9

by Satoshi Wagahara

  “I know, Alas Ramus. Once we return home…why don’t you ask Daddy?”

  “Daddy?”

  “Yeah. Try asking Daddy what a demon is. He’s really smart, so I’m sure he’ll tell you all about them.”

  “Okeh!”

  It was positively devious of her. But it didn’t seem fair, either, that Emi had to be the only one preoccupied about the relationship between Maou and Alas Ramus. It was about time Maou gave a little thought to her future, too. Imagining him falling into a panic at Alas Ramus’s innocent query made a smile naturally emerge on her face.

  “I better give him an earful once I get back.”

  “When can I see Daddy again?”

  “Oh, in a little while. We’ve got Chiho’s birthday party coming up, so I’m sure Daddy’ll be around for that.”

  He would be. Emi didn’t mean anything deep by it. She was just laying out her plans for next week.

  “Well, it’s still a bit early, but we’d better clean this up and get to sleep. I’ll have to be up early tomorrow.”

  Emi inserted all her possessions except for her sleeping bag and flashlight into her knapsack, took Alas Ramus into her arms, and unzipped the bag.

  “Mmm, fluffy!” the child exclaimed as she patted at the thick down lining.

  “Hey, stop playing with it!”

  She pouted a bit at this admonishment, but within Emi’s arms, she quickly began to prepare for a good night’s sleep.

  “Mommy, tell me a story!”

  “A story? Hmm…”

  It wasn’t that Alas Ramus had never asked for a bedtime story before, but it was far from common. Emi thought up a few fairy tales and fables from Earth, but then shook her head and turned the flashlight down to its dimmest setting.

  “Well, how about I tell you an old story from Ente Isla? It’s about a young prince who came to rescue a princess after she was kidnapped by a scary demon…”

  She placed a hand on Alas Ramus’s stomach inside the sleeping bag, moving it up and down like she was beating out a rhythm. Slowly, the night shared between “mother” and “child” advanced, inside the dead village where no moonlight reached.

  Emi’s eyes were open before the sun rose. Alas Ramus’s eyes weren’t, but it didn’t matter—she could always just bring her back into her own body. This she did, as the first rays of light began to dance upon the ruined village.

  It was just as silent as before, without even a single forest creature nearby. The last time Emi was here, she had stopped by in the midst of her quest, ridding the grounds of the wilder and/or more magical beasts that had taken up residence inside. If anything, the place had weathered the time in between pretty well.

  But it was weird—nothing was familiar about the sight of this destruction, but she still instinctively knew where everything was. The Justina residence was eastward, toward the sun that even now was starting to rise above a faraway mountain. As if attracted to it, Emi left the “main street” and traveled to a point some distance from the village center.

  Then she stopped. Something was there that she hadn’t anticipated. It was a familiar tree, at the far end of the village. She’d eaten lunch there most days with her father as he took a break from his fieldwork. Which meant the now-wild fields that spread out before her…

  “This is…my father’s wheat…?”

  As if summoned by Emi’s words, dawn extended out from the mountains, brightly spreading its shine upon the land. The tears came all too naturally from Emi’s eyes. The land was covered in deep, lush greenery, gently rustling in the morning breeze.

  “It’s still around…”

  The green plants extended out across the entire land. Wheat plants. She knew it was that—growing wild and out of control, but still the same plants. They were being choked out by long, tall weeds dotted here and there, and their stalks held little in the way of harvestable grain. Some of the plants, Emi could tell, would likely collapse under their own weight before autumn arrived. But the sight was still enough to make Emi shout to the sunlit heavens.

  “It’s still alive! My father’s wheat is still alive!!”

  After being trampled upon by demons, after losing their sole master, after all these years, the wheat was still strong enough to stay alive, ready to give way to the next generation.

  “Are you really still alive, somewhere? Can we live here together again…?”

  All the proof Emi needed was right in front of her. Something she thought was lost in terror and despair was here, before her eyes. She didn’t want to taste that despair ever again. No matter what, she had to risk her life to protect this.

  “Mmh… Mommy? What are you—waph!”

  Emi’s scream shook at her very heart. It was enough to make Alas Ramus blink into existence in an instant. She held her small form, forgetting to wipe her tears.

  “Alas Ramus, I…I think I can still do this… I have to…!”

  “Mommy? …Affh…”

  She tightened her grasp on the still-not-quite-awake Alas Ramus once more, then hurriedly ran down the road she’d taken. Picking up her things from Kopher’s house, she immediately headed for the house she had lived in with her father.

  That would be the base she used to reach the goal she had traveled to Ente Isla to fulfill. She knew something had to be there, under the roof she called home. Some fragment of the truth she could use to unravel the mysteries that surrounded both Ente Isla and Earth. After the unexpected miracle she had just witnessed, Emi felt all but assured of it.

  “Ahhhh… There’s nothing at all in here…”

  Emi, her concentration now a thing of the past, flung herself down in the area that used to be the kitchen. It was the afternoon of the third day she had spent exploring her home.

  The sight of her father’s surviving wheat fields on the first day had moved her to tears. She took it as an omen that she was bound to find a hint that would reveal everything she needed to know about this world, so she had moved her base of operations to her former house. Now it was Day 3, and she had nothing at all to show for it.

  The Justina residence was just a typical farmhouse—nothing overly large or grandiose about the building or the plot of land it was on. It bore the same signs of damage that every other house in the village did, but by and large it still looked roughly the way Emi remembered it: the kitchen, where she used to cook for her father; the dining room, where she used to eat with him; the living room, where she used to stare at the burning fireplace to lull herself to sleep.

  The sight of the bed she slept in as a child made her tear up all over again, but there was no time to lose herself in memories. This was Emi and Nord’s home, but it was also the home of Laila, her mother, the woman who seemed to lurk behind the scenes in everything that linked Earth with Ente Isla. There had to be something she didn’t pick up on as a young girl, something they didn’t let her touch, someplace she hadn’t been allowed into before now.

  But for all the effort she made, the Hero’s fervent searching provided nothing but further confirmation that her father was a strong, sincere, and unaffecting man.

  They hardly had much in the way of shelves or chests to hide things in, for one. The village could have been subject to bandit raids after it was abandoned, but she figured they’d aim for jewelry and gold, not entire pieces of furniture. So she began by searching the attic and basement for anything hidden, but all the attic held was some seasonal furniture, some empty barrels and jars, a few nails and screws, and other typical household goods. And there wasn’t even a basement in the first place.

  It’d be nice if there were a secret basement or something at a time like this, she thought. But there was no point griping about something that didn’t exist.

  She continued her search into the tool shed, behind the fireplace, under and inside the cooking hearth, and countless other places she never haunted as a child. She was rewarded with a face full of soot and dust, as well as Alas Ramus asking why she looked so “mean” over dinner. It
was, to say the least, a disappointment.

  “I guess if you hid something in a chimney or whatever, you wouldn’t be able to take it out again anyway, huh?”

  So much for that. But if you wanted to hide a tree, the best place to do that would always be in the forest. So on the second day, Emi decided to go through the few remaining books and papers that were left on the home’s shelves. Bound paper books still being a luxury item in Ente Isla, even important documents were still often written with block printing on parchment, papyrus, and other rough materials.

  There wasn’t a lot left in the house, so she figured reading through it all wouldn’t take too much time. But:

  “…All this detail…”

  She had started reading in the morning. She was still at it by the time the sun began to set.

  The familiar sight of her father’s handwriting made the waterworks start up all over again at first. He had used a valuable bound accounting book to record a journal of his agricultural life that went into meticulous detail. Most of its content involved his wheat and other duties, and he covered his daily routine in such minute terms that she couldn’t bear to skip any of it, fearing that some kind of deeper meaning might be locked inside of it all.

  After she tired of reading this agricultural record, she decided to take a look at the parchment and woodblock-print material. It was largely things like tax payment receipts, records related to the small amount of livestock Nord kept as a side pursuit, request forms, and the like, extending over twenty years into the past.

  “…Oh, the inspector’s seal changed.”

  After two hours, the first major change Emi noticed was a different brand on a wooden receipt. She decided to take that cue to stop her research and get a meal going.

  “Hey, Alas Ramus?”

  “Yehh?” she replied as she dug into her reheated corn soup.

  “Do you feel any Yesod fragments or anything like that nearby?”

  “Nope!” came the immediate answer. Emi hung her shoulders. She had only half-jokingly asked the question, but it made the reality of the situation even more distressing. Of course she didn’t. If she did, Alas Ramus would’ve raised a massive hue and cry about it the moment they entered the village.

  In the end, despite there not being all that many records left unscathed, Emi still couldn’t thumb through them all before the day was through. Day 3, she decided, would have to be split between cleaning up the place and wrapping up her research.

  “Hmm… Nothing from here, maybe…?”

  Emi sat down on a surviving creaky chair and moved on to a sheaf of documents related to land rights among Nord’s business contacts.

  “Or maybe Olba or Gabriel or someone thought the same thing and took anything incriminating out of here?”

  She tossed an area map depicting farmland boundaries into the “done” pile and reached back for another bound volume.

  “I can’t believe this is the only diary he kept. It’s weird.”

  This was Nord’s personal diary, the only real fruit to stem from Emi’s search so far. Compared to his farming journal, it was nowhere near as thickly written and impenetrable. He made sure to add an entry in that journal every day of his life, but with this diary, he kept a pace of once a week at best. It was more of a weekly summary of events than a diary.

  While it did describe assorted events of daily life, including Emi’s formative years, it didn’t even mention Laila’s name once. The final entry was dated several years before the Devil King’s Army invaded.

  “The exact era I didn’t need to know about…”

  A bit of a harsh assessment, she knew, given that she was reading someone’s diary without permission, but it was the honest truth. She respected the memories of her father, of course, but there was nothing from this era of Emi’s life that would help her right now.

  “Well, two days until Eme stops by, I guess…”

  Dark clouds of doubt began to gather over her search. She let out a weak sigh.

  “Land-division maintenance certifications… This is a guide to field boundaries, this is a record of fields left fallow for tax-deduction purposes…”

  Emi delved back into the “to do” pile, reading through the wood-board certifications and dividing them up by category.

  “Payments for town-maintenance deposits… Oh? Wow, the village mayor’s new-year greeting got stuck in here. And over in these parchments… These are all permits and titles, huh?”

  She was getting used to this now, sorting through the documents like a seasoned secretary.

  “Fixed-period lumber rights for the common wooded areas… An ax-possession permit? Wow, I had no idea you needed that. After that… Our baron’s home-building permit, construction permits, expansion permits—this is all house stuff, I guess. Farming tool shed building permit… Here’s a permit to clear out a new field… Hmm?”

  Emi’s hand stopped on a certain sheet of parchment.

  “I thought all the land-related stuff was in this pile. Did this get misfiled?”

  The field permit was filed at about the same time as the house Emi was in right now was built. Nord must not have been fully categorizing his business documents, yet perhaps it was forgotten about over time. Emi was just about to replace the field-building permit with the others when something caught her eye.

  “…Wait, what?”

  She gasped a little and peered at the lettering on the parchment.

  “Where is this?”

  The permit granted the cosigned the right to establish a new field for farming purposes, provided by the local baron and village chief based on previous tax revenues and harvesting figures. It was a cheap way for farmers to obtain more arable land, assuming they were willing to clear it out themselves, but it also increased their tax burden, whether the new land produced viable crops or not. It wasn’t the kind of request a farmer would make unless they had the financial freedom to take the risk. Especially not this request.

  “Why here, of all places? That’s so far away.”

  The location described in the permit was within the mountains toward the east of the village, wholly separate from any of the other plots the Justina family tilled. Comparing the permit with the map Emeralda gave her, it would be a half-day’s journey from here on foot.

  “Hmmm?”

  It thoroughly confused Emi. She rifled back through the pages she read before. There, among a sheaf of irrigation-facility titles, she discovered another permit mixed in—this one for a shed. It was located right where this new, unknown field was.

  “I…I never once heard of this place.”

  As far as her childhood memories told her, all the Justina family’s lands were within a fifteen-minute walk of this house—fifteen minutes for a child, even. As far as she knew, Nord was strictly a wheat farmer—that, plus a few chickens he raised in a nearby coop so he could sell the eggs. So what’s with this field located outside the village entirely? What did he have this shed built for?

  Emi leaped to her feet, grabbed the agricultural journal she had spent yesterday reading cover to cover, and flipped back to the dates written on the permits. Slowly, she pored through that time period again.

  “He harvested nothing… He didn’t even plant anything. But…”

  On a page dated three days after the shed permit, she spotted something she had overlooked at first—something in tiny, tiny text.

  “Nine… The number nine?”

  She thought at first it was just a mistake or a quick memo jotted down. Now the full meaning of this number dawned on her. It couldn’t have been a coincidence. The Yesod Sephirah, the core of Alas Ramus and the Better Half, was the ninth Sephirah that grew on the Tree of Life.

  Emi touched her chest with her hand, unable to restrain her rapid pulse.

  “Alas Ramus?”

  “Mph…”

  Alas Ramus was apparently taking an afternoon nap inside her. But she couldn’t wait. She had to know what this meant now.

  Suddenly
, Emi turned toward the sky, even now streaked with the color of evening. She had two days until Emeralda would come calling. The field was half a day’s journey away. If she’d have to engage in another wide-range search over there, she might not make it back in time for their rendezvous. But waiting for Emeralda and taking her along seemed out of the question—not with the cover story her friend was bound by.

  “…Guess I’ll have to fly over.”

  As long as she didn’t go too quickly, she didn’t think mere flight would arouse the attention of her “enemies.”

  “This isn’t Japan, anyway. Here, holy magic’s getting used all over the place.”

  It was used to power the lights at night in Saint Aile’s cities, for one. It also saw use in a vast array of categories, from magic-driven weapon forging to the sanctified crops Suzuno brought into Devil’s Castle in Sasazuka. The culture of magic was much more advanced on the Western Island than elsewhere, too—it consumed 30 percent more of it yearly than the rest of the islands combined.

  Considering the time she’d be aloft and the position Emeralda was in, extending her stay here posed far more problems than quibbling over whether to use magic or not.

  “…I kind of promised Chiho, too,” Emi said to herself as she looked at the beloved Relax-a-Bear wristwatch on her left arm. She had left it on for the trip so she could compare the passage of time on Ente Isla with that on Earth.

  It was a miracle, perhaps, but it seemed to her that the two planets operated roughly on the same day-night schedule, accounting for time-zone differences. And Chiho and Emi’s birthday party was scheduled for September 12, Earth time.

  “No point breaking that promise.”

  Emi tucked the two permits into her knapsack, then began packing up the rest of her open equipment.

  “Hope I can stop by again real quick before I go,” she said before stepping out the front door. She gave her home another look. By and large, it looked just as it did in more peaceful times. Her lips tensed up.

  Maybe she could have Emeralda build the Gate back home in the sky above her house. They were due to meet up here anyway.