“Because I’m from this planet.”
“…Yeah, you got me there.” Amane scratched her head, eyebrows furrowed. “You’re a lot more than just a faithful spouse after all, huh? Eesh, and I thought you were just an average girl with a little more nerve than most your age. Guess not, huh?”
Her words were ambivalent, but her expression was one of sheer joy.
“Hell, you’re such a real monster, Maou and Yusa couldn’t take you in a million years.”
The only other witnesses to this human exchange between worlds were the two Dantes—one above the gate door, the other perched quietly across from The Gates of Hell.
THE DEVIL, ONCE UPON A TIME
Emi was having a dream.
She’d woken up in a panic and turned her eyes to her desk clock. Eight in the morning. She’d completely overslept.
She flung herself out of bed to prepare for work but wound up kicking the clock off the desk instead. A dull, stubbing pain danced across her toes.
“What’s up with you, Emi?”
She looked up, only to find Rika sitting next to her, peering at her cube. Now Emi was in her uniform, crouched under the desk, blushing and trying to laugh it off.
“Uh, my pen got stuck between the partition and the floor, so I’m having trouble getting it out…”
“Ohhh. Oh, hey, speaking of which, I found this ramen joint that’s supposed to be pretty good. Wanna hit it up for lunch?”
“Sure. I haven’t had ramen in a while anyways… Oh, hang on, I got a call. Hello?”
“Good afternoon, Yusa!”
The voice was Chiho’s. Emi, in her everyday sweats, sat down on her sofa at home to focus on the conversation. Chiho called her a few times a week at this point, reporting on Maou at work and chatting about this and that. Emi knew that the girl’s adoration was causing her to filter a lot of the juicier details out, but she was nonetheless saving Emi a lot of stake-out time around the MgRonald. This was fully understood on Chiho’s part. They were good friends by now, anyway.
“Listen, I’m sorry I’m late on this, but there’s this club meeting I can’t get out of, so I’m gonna have to skip dinner at Maou’s tonight.”
“Oh, no? Well, that’s too bad, but school’s school. You can always stop by after that, though, if your mom says it’s okay… Sure. Lemme know if you can. Okay… Hey, Bell? Chiho said she might not be able to make it today.”
When she hung up, Emi was in Room 202 of Villa Rosa Sasazuka, talking to Suzuno as her friend busily attended to kitchen duties.
“Oh? A pity. I was hoping she would try the rice omelet she taught me how to make…” Suzuno opened the refrigerator door. “…Hmm.”
“What?”
“Heavens… Look at me, I’ve gone and forgotten to purchase any ketchup.”
“Oh, I could run out and get some for you if you want. Um, ketchup, ketchup…”
Emi turned around, peering at the signs down each aisle of the Safepath supermarket off Sasazuka rail station. Walking down one of them, she ran smack-dab into Ashiya and Urushihara.
“…Alciel? Lucifer? What’re you doing with all those eggs?”
“I was thinking I would try to make a…a ‘quiche,’ was it? Ms. Sasaki gave me a recipe.”
“Dude, why’d you drag me here just because they were on sale? Mannn, I wanna go home. What’re you doing here?”
“Just picking up something for Bell. Oh, by the way, Chiho might have to miss dinner today.”
“Is that true? Ugh… Who am I going to have judge this quiche for me, then?”
“Aw man, so no fried chicken? Mehhh…”
Emi was taken aback a little. She wasn’t expecting Chiho to have such a huge impact on the night’s dinner. It was shaping up to be a rather eggy one.
Soon, the three found themselves wandering around the supermarket together. “It oughta be fine, though,” Emi advised. “Alas Ramus likes eggs. Don’t you, Alas Ramus?”
“Mommy,” Alas Ramus exclaimed as she toddled along next to her, “I wanna see Daddy!”
“In a little while, okay?”
Now the stairway in front of Villa Rosa Sasazuka was right in front of them, Alas Ramus in her arms. Even after the renovations, climbing these stairs was still a dicey prospect, so she watched her step as she ascended and opened the door to Devil’s Castle up top. The letters “MAOU” written in Sharpie on the bare wooden nameplate had faded a fair amount by now; Emi wondered why he had never bothered changing it out.
“You in there, Devil King? I’m coming in.”
She pushed the chime button (like she always did) and was just about to push the door open without waiting for a response (like she always did) when:
“Huh?”
Nobody was inside. In fact, all the appliances, and furniture, and everything else were gone. There was no evidence that anyone lived there at all.
“Alciel? Lucifer? Where are you, Devil King…? Alciel?”
The two demons were with her all the way home, but now they were missing. Maybe they got split up on the way. Flustered, Emi knocked on the next adjacent door.
“Bell? Hey, Bell? The Devil King isn’t in there. Do you know where he…”
But Room 202, where Suzuno was briskly cooking up dinner not a moment ago, was just as bare.
“Wha…? Uh… What’s…?”
Emi fumbled for her cell phone and made a call to Chiho. She should’ve been free from school by now. But:
“We’re sorry. The number you have dialed is out of service. Please check the number and…”
It didn’t work. She had Chiho’s number on her phone, but it didn’t work. Disconnected. She called Rika; she called Suzuno; she called Urushihara’s PC account—none of them worked.
A tidal wave of anxiety crashed over her. She decided to go back to Devil’s Castle—but it didn’t work. The door wouldn’t budge. It had been unlocked two seconds ago, but now, push and pull as she did, Room 201 was tightly shut away.
“Devil King!” Emi screamed as she knocked on the door. “I know you’re in there! Open up!” Nothing happened. “What’re you doing in there?! Give it up and open the door! Did something happen to you? Are you all right?!”
The anxiety inside her grew, whether she wanted it to or not. What could have happened? Chiho, Rika, Suzuno, Ashiya, Urushihara… What could have happened to them?
“They’re all gone! Do you know what happened to them? This is serious, Devil King! Listen to me!”
Suddenly, the doorknob turned. The door rotated inward, sending Emi tumbling inside.
“?!” She looked up, then gasped.
There, she found Devil’s Castle—the one on Ente Isla’s Central Continent. The final redoubt of the demons, the site of the fateful battle that Emi failed to consummate by a mere hairsbreadth.
A large, indistinct black shade loomed in the background. It wielded a sword shaped exactly like the one Emi had, and it was floating toward her. Reflexively, Emi readied her blade—or tried to. But, for some reason, Alas Ramus, in her arms the entire time over at Villa Rosa, was gone. The Better Half refused to materialize.
An empty dread fell upon Emi. No doubt about it: This was the Devil King. The Devil King she had to kill. And yet—somehow, at the very pit of her stomach, the sight came as a relief to her.
“Oh, thank heavens… There you are. You could’ve at least said something.”
The dark shade loomed like the ominous dawn of death. Emi continued addressing it anyway. “I can’t get Chiho on the phone,” she reported. “Or Bell. She sent me out to pick up some ketchup for her, and then she just left. And I was with Alciel and Lucifer on the way home, too, and they just vanished… Don’t you think that’s so rude?”
The shade did not reply, sword still at the ready as it came closer to Emi.
“And, and I let Alas Ramus out of sight for just a moment, and she went away, too… And if you were gone, too…I, I don’t know what I’d do with myself. What were you doing, anyway?”
Emi lowered her face, staring at the ground as the dark shadow shimmered in front of her.
“Look, I…I know Chiho called and said she couldn’t make it over, but…Bell and Alciel, they were really working hard on dinner, it looked like. Couldn’t we wait Chiho out a little bit, together? I… Not that I mind either way, but I think that’d make Alas Ramus happier, so…”
The shade lifted its sword into the air. The blade, purple light trailing behind it as it whirled, reflected the red light coming in from the windows, making the shadow’s face seem to rise above the darkness.
“So…”
The face of Sadao Maou that floated into sight was, for reasons only he could understand, exhibiting a gentle smile.
“So…let’s eat together again…”
“—!!”
The sound of her own voice awakened Emi, making her practically fly out of bed. Her entire body was covered in sweat, but before she did anything else, she brought a hand to her chest.
“What…was that…?”
Her pulse refused to slow, her breathing ragged. She had woken up right when the purple-glowing holy sword, wielded by the shadow with Maou’s face, plunged right through her chest. It was a raw dream, one that filled her with fear and the kind of painful exhaustion only a nightmare could produce.
They had all showed up in it—her, and Rika, and Chiho, and Suzuno, and Ashiya, and Urushihara, and Alas Ramus, and at the end… They were all yelling at each other, sweating it out with each other, annoying each other—and yet, just a few weeks ago, this was Emi’s everyday life, one that long ago made her dismantle the armor covering her heart. That was the dream.
“How,” she glibly whispered to herself, “could I be so stupid this whole time? So oblivious?”
She dreamed of Ente Isla and her father all the time back in Japan—but, looking back, she realized she had been visiting Japan every night for the past few days during her sleep.
“I’ve just got to have my cake and eat it, too, huh…?”
Now, Emi’s reality involved the sound of the waves pushing against the port of Phaigan, the sword and armor laid by her betrayer in a corner of her room, and herself, bound by invisible ropes around the heart.
“Pphhh…phhh…”
Next to her, Emi caressed Alas Ramus as she babbled in her sleep, before she herself lay down once more. Another listless day in captivity awaited her tomorrow. Now was no time to let her distracting dreams keep her from a good night’s sleep.
Somehow, though, Emi couldn’t bring herself to wipe away the tracks of the tears that had run down her cheeks before she’d woken up. The tears of relief she’d shed upon discovering the shade of the Devil King.
The next morning, Emi’s mind was filled more with suspicion than hatred.
“…What in the world is he doing?”
Olba had brought into her room a gaggle of commissioned officers, the leaders who guided the entire body of Efzahan’s Knights of the Eight Scarves. Their legions were led by the Regal Azure Scarves, responsible for protecting Heavensky and the Azure Emperor who called it home; they were joined by armies known respectively as the Inlain Azure Scarves, Regal Jade Scarves, Inlain Jade Scarves, Regal Citral Scarves, Inlain Citral Scarves, Regal Crimson Scarves, and Inlain Crimson Scarves. Each squadron had its own governmental duties, region of activity, and armaments.
Not everyone affiliated with these diverse forces were fighting men; some served as police officers or civil servants. But the people inside the room now were all high-ranking officials—deputy generals, regional commanders: the kind of lineup that would regularly greet noble visitors from foreign and exotic lands.
“Did you find fault with the armor?”
Emi didn’t answer Olba’s question. She stared at the armor and sword, still resting where they had been placed.
“I have the Cloth of the Dispeller,” she replied. “Thanks for the fancy-looking outfit you gave me, but I’m not stupid enough to just put on something without knowing what’s been done to it.”
“Ah, was that it?” Olba smiled, not giving much apparent thought to the response. “I must apologize, Emilia, but I truly don’t want you to exhaust yourself here quite yet. Would you be willing to put it on, for your own sake?”
“…” Emi paused, lips twisting into a scowl. She gritted her teeth at her helplessness. She had, in other words, no right of denial, and she had no idea what Olba’s motives were. Olba wasn’t going to reveal them, either.
After a moment, Olba nodded, content that Emi had acquiesced. “Right, then, could we have the maids come in and equip her? Once Emilia is ready, I and and my handpicked group of elite Eight Scarves officers will travel eastward to Heavensky from here. Let’s go, Emilia. Do you have the…?”
He paused for a moment, taking his eyes off Emi and scanning the room before giving a satisfied nod.
“…Ah, good, the holy sword is safe. Perfect.”
“Ugh…”
The lack of Alas Ramus in the room meant that she was fused into Emi’s body. Again, no right of refusal. She glared at Olba’s back even as she marched out of the room, urged by the Eight Scarves officials to change.
“Mommy…”
Her anxious voice echoed in Emi’s head.
“It’s all right. It’s all right,” she whispered, as empty as it sounded to her.
Ten minutes later, she was clad in a shining set of gold armor with a sword to match, feeling the weight of the heavy helm in her arms. It made her blush as she advanced down a corridor of the Phaigan naval base, surrounded by Olba and his Eight Scarves knights. This shouldn’t have been a weight that would give her any trouble, and yet it felt like twice as much had been laden upon her heart.
“Hm?”
Then she realized something felt off to her.
“Is this…?”
She could feel a power inside her—a small one, but one that was threatening to overflow. After spending several weeks in Ente Isla, her holy force was pretty well topped off by this point—but there was something else, something warm flowing into her, bringing it a level higher than that.
“Wh-what is this?”
“You noticed?” Olba asked, not bothering to turn around as he walked ahead. “Can you hear them? Those voices, filled with hope?”
“…?”
Ahead lay a gate separating the base’s front yard with the rest of the city. Olba was taking the group that way.
“We’re going into the city?”
“We are.”
“I hear them…”
She could hear the murmur of a large crowd. Emi’s face twisted again. This was repulsive to her.
At the front yard, she found a legion of fully armored Eight Scarves soldiers waiting for her, accompanied by wagons filled to the brim with assorted supplies. Among the throng was a noble, refined white mare, patiently awaiting her master.
“That’s your mount, Emilia. You haven’t lost your riding skills, I wager?”
She was clearly a fine, well-trained steed. The mount of a general, to be certain, not some rank-and-file pikeman. Emi had never ridden one nearly as exquisite during her quest to slay the Devil King.
“Keep your helm under your arm,” Olba commanded her as he climbed his own horse, a chestnut almost, but not quite, as fine as Emi’s. “Show your face to the world!” Then, after two or three words to the Eight Scarves legion, with a grin he said:
“Are you ready? It is time for the Hero Emilia to take back Heavensky once more.”
“T-take back…?!”
Before she could gain an explanation, the front gate of the base was whirled open. With it came the unmistakable cheer of an enthusiastic throng of onlookers.
“What…what is all this?!”
The high-street road that pierced through town from the gate was completely filled in on both sides with people, each one of them bearing eyes full of furtive hope. The calvaryman at the lead made a signal, and with that, the march began, greeted by another ru
sh of jubilant applause.
“There she is! The Hero of the Holy Sword!”
“The stories were true! She was alive all along!”
“’Tis truly her! Just as I saw her when last she was in Phaigan!”
Emi’s pulse raced. The people of Phaigan knew who they had before them. They knew, and they were placing some kind of unknown hope at her feet.
“Truly, the heavens haven’t abandoned us after all!”
“So the Hero steps up again! To save Efzahan, and to save the Eastern Island!!”
Then Emi noticed something that almost made her laugh.
The last time she spoke with Emeralda, she mentioned that—whether Efzahan was a willing participant or not—Barbariccia and his horde now held power over this empire, and they had declared war against the other four islands in hopes of obtaining the Better Half. She didn’t know how large the demon forces were, but unless it was likely about ten or so times larger than the platoon Ciriatto brought with him to Choshi, it wouldn’t be able to function as an army on the ground.
Phaigan boasted one of the largest naval ports in all of Efzahan. It was a city of strategic importance, one lined with diplomatic offices and trading firms. And yet, from the moment she was brought here, she had neither caught sight of a Malebranche nor sniffed out any demonic force in the city.
“Olba…can I ask you something?”
“What is it?”
“Efzahan… It’s joined hands with Barbariccia and his Malebranche forces, right? For whatever reason. And it declared war on the rest of the world, no?”
“…”
“You’re the one who guided them to do that, aren’t you? So are Barbariccia and the Malebranche aware of…of all this? What’s the point of it all?”
Olba Meiyer, formerly one of the six archbishops who served as the most powerful clerics of the land, shook his head, smiling like a father whose daughter had just asked where babies came from.
“Emilia.”
Among all the voices of joy and laughter that lined both sides of the procession…
“History is going to repeat itself.”
…his was the blackest in the entire city.
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 9 Page 15
