“So it’s a decade-old computer with no Internet connection? What good is it then, dudette?”
“What’s the big problem? If you’re just browsing the Net, it’s a lot easier with a smartphone anyway!”
Laila took her phone out from the bag she had placed in a corner of the room.
“Wow,” marveled Chiho. “Like mother like daughter, huh?”
“Huh? How so, Chiho?”
“Oh, um, nothing…”
It seemed to her that the yawning abyss between Emi and Laila had narrowed just a bit in the days since the subway attack. Even so, Emi couldn’t will herself to confront her mother, and Laila seemed lost about how to deal with her daughter, making both an agreement and any kind of parsable conversation an uphill battle. Calling them “mother and daughter” would be a joy for Laila to hear and a pain for Emi.
“It’s just, you know, you really don’t seem different from anybody else in the world, Laila.”
“Really? Well, personally speaking, I’m happy to hear that. It’s not like I set out to become an angel. I’ve always wished people could treat me more familiarly than that.”
Laila seemed to treat Chiho’s observation as a compliment. Urushihara did not.
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t be that happy. By that, y’know, she also means I thought you lived up to your rep more, but you ain’t nothing like what I thought, so…”
“Urushihara!”
“What, am I wrong? You’ve never given a crap about being around angels and demons. You seriously asked me and Sariel if we were angels. Like, incredulously, to our faces.”
“I—I didn’t… Well, all right, maybe I did…”
“Yeah, but she’s right to have done so.”
“You too, Maou?!”
Urushihara was one thing, but having Maou join the choir gave Chiho a slight shock. Had she always been that sneering or sarcastic with them and maybe never realized it? The thought depressed her—but Maou’s thoughts were slightly different from his fellow demon’s.
“Well, I mean, Chiho’s a lot stronger deep down than just in terms of her heart, or her feelings, or whatever. Demons like us, or angels like Sariel or Gabriel, aren’t enough to make her fall to her knees in reverence or anything.”
“Um, the angels are one thing, but I have a lot of respect for you guys, Maou!”
Despite her panic, Chiho still made it a point to exclude the angels from her appraisal. Maou couldn’t help but laugh.
“Yeah, I appreciate the thought. Basically, what I’m saying is, you’re perfectly fine being yourself, Chi.”
“Ah—ah—ahhhhhhh…”
She was still panicked, unsure whether she understood Maou’s intended meaning or not. Laila gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder as she half rose to her feet in a dither.
“It’s all right. It’s all right.”
“Wha—wha—wha—wha—what’s all right?”
“I know you don’t think anything ill of me, Chiho, so…you know, you should read that report.”
“That… Oh, right, this…”
Urushihara’s passing remark had thrown the conversation far off course, but it all began because Laila had written this very nonangelic report on everything going on. Despite the distinct lack of critical danger the cover seemed to present, Chiho steeled her resolve and turned to the first page.
Once, there was a tree of life—a Tree of Sephirot—on Earth, along with the Sephirah born from it. As the Tree of Life nickname suggests, it was a gigantic growth, and it is fair to say that the Sephirah are its seeds, which eventually grow into similar trees. It is impossible to know for sure whether the Sephirots of Earth and Ente Isla are of the same species.
These trees only appear on planets whose animal life has sufficiently advanced into the realm of oxygen-breathing apes and other vertebrates. It sets up shop, parasite-like, on the moons or other celestial bodies closest to these planets, so as to have the maximum effect, and nurtures the creation of a civilization-bearing humanity from the hominids that call it home. A Sephirot does not have a cadre of chosen ones it decides to favor; instead, it basically facilitates the evolution of those people who have gained an unshakable position through the planet’s long history of natural selection. There were other hominid races on Earth unrelated to modern mankind, but it wasn’t that Earth’s Sephirot eradicated them from the planet—if these other species had outclassed Homo sapiens and spread their influence planetwide, the Sephirot would have recognized them as “civilized” and not modern humans.
So what exactly is this tree, then, that attempts to cultivate civilized races? That, sadly, neither Laila nor anyone else from the heavens had an answer for. One thing they could provide, however, was a phenomenon observed from heaven once in the past. There had been a Sephirot that produced its so-called “last Sephirah,” then released itself from its planet of its own biological will, vanishing into the nether regions of outer space. This was why nobody was sure whether Earth’s and Ente Isla’s Sephirot were the same in nature. Laila stated that evidence has been found for the remains of three past Sephirots at this point, but the only one currently active (as far as they knew) was the single one on Ente Isla.
Regardless, once a Sephirot picked the species it deemed worthy of further evolution, it gave birth to “children” to aid in their progress. These children of Ente Isla are the ten Sephirah: Kefer, presiding over thought and creativity; Chokhmah, over knowledge; Binah, over understanding; Chesed, over compassion; Gevurah, over strictness; Tiferet, over beauty; Netzach, over victory; Hod, over glory; Yesod, over foundations and spirits; and Malkuth, over the heavens and physical matter.
The role of these Sephirah is to come to the aid of mankind in the case of a danger to the entire race, in order to prevent a final, lethal destruction of the species. Thought, creativity, knowledge, understanding, and beauty all help in the quest to protect people from the illness and disasters that befall so many of them; victory and glory instill competitive spirit in them to help further polish their civilization; strictness and compassion both create and put an end to the wars that drive this competition; and the foundation, spirits, heavens, and physical matter help take all these individual members of a species and encourage them to behave as a cohesive unit.
The Sephirah are neither the guardians of mankind, nor some malevolent force interfering with their history. But when mankind faces the potential danger of extinction, something their civilization offers no way for them to avoid, they use their powers in all ways, shapes, and forms to keep them alive.
On Ente Isla, however, both the Sephirot and its Sephirah have had these abilities robbed of them. The angels in heaven have gained full control of the Sephirot, keeping its Sephirah exclusively for themselves. Having the heavens intervene between the people of Ente Isla and their Sephirah is what allows them to act as miracle makers, literal “servants of heaven,” to mankind on that planet.
This has led to several adverse side effects. First, it has greatly slowed the advance of science and technology across all Ente Isla’s intelligent people. It also led to them discovering the natural resources of demonic and holy energy. As can be seen from the vast similarities between humans on Earth and Ente Isla, Sephirots tend to latch on to planets that look a great deal alike. If Ente Isla had taken the path it was meant to take, it would have developed medicine to treat the ill, weapons to wage wars with, and science and technology to make people’s lives easier, at a rate more or less close to Earth’s. But with the heavens butting into the process, Ente Isla was losing the chances it had to discover or develop that tech for itself.
Instead, the angels used the powers they were originally gifted with to directly rescue Ente Isla’s humanity from danger. Seeing these powers in action, the Ente Islans sought not to cultivate a process that would open perpetual growth and advancement to them but a way to copy these miraculous powers the servants of heaven showered upon them. This led to magic powered by holy force—and around the same time as
the Ente Islans discovered the existence of holy force, the angels stopped paying regular visits to the planet’s surface. This made mankind deify the angels, forming the cornerstone around which the Holy Church built itself.
Thus, the planet chose to advance its civilization by analyzing the nature of holy energy and weaving new magic that took advantage of it. But that led to serious problems. First off, unlike the Sephirah, the angels—and the heavens they dwelled in—had no inherent drive to keep the human race protected. The Sephirot/Sephirah system was built as a way to foster new civilizations; it would never ignore any potential threat to the species it had its eyes on. As had been seen over a long period of observing the heavens, the angels had no interest in taking on this role. Physically and deliberately, they have shown over the long string of years that their behavior did not match the Sephirah at all. To Sephirah eyes, it must have felt like a miracle that Ente Isla’s humanity hadn’t faced extinction yet.
The biggest issue of all, however, lay in how holy energy was not at all an unlimited resource. A Sephirot has the power to cultivate civilized species, but both it and its Sephirah are organic creatures and thus need to take in some form of energy to survive. This energy, to a Sephirot, was none other than the spiritual force housed within the species it chose. Much in the way a little water and nutrients in the soil can lead to astonishing crop growth in the right conditions, a Sephirot and its species existed in a form of symbiosis, extracting the energy both sides needed from each other.
That so-called holy energy, however, was now being expended across Ente Isla at an alarming rate. With magic at the very center of civilization, the rate of consumption was now far above the amount the planet’s Sephirot would ever tap into.
“Spiritual force serving as energy…”
Chiho gasped a bit once she reached this point in the dossier.
The demonic energy Maou and his cohorts lived on, she knew, was driven from feelings of fear and despair in the minds of humanity. If this new revelation was to be believed, then the holy energy in Emi’s and Suzuno’s bodies—and her own as well—was the spiritual energy possessed by every man, woman, and child on Ente Isla.
What would happen if this was deliberately condensed and consumed in the form of holy energy? The answer was on the following page.
The predicted result of excessive holy energy usage is the withering of the planet’s Sephirot and the subsequent death of its Sephirah. Ente Isla’s humanity would lose its get-out-of-jail-free card for any lethal threats, and before long, its civilization would wane. They would no longer have the Sephirah protecting them from such threats, and the astonishing amount of holy energy driving their magic would irrevocably deplete the supply, tapping it fully and eventually making magic a thing of the past.
When that day came, it would mark the end of Ente Isla as a functional civilization. Even people like Emeralda, Albert, and Olba, capable of storing and accessing large amounts of holy energy, would eventually lose their stockpile and become…well, regular people. And with little scientific advancement to shore themselves up, the Ente Islans would have nothing to defend themselves within times of danger.
Even worse, holy energy was derived from the spiritual force within all humans; consuming too much of it would have effects that went far beyond a typical energy crisis. Following careful observation, Laila stated that birth rates across all five great continents that formed the “holy cross” of life on Ente Isla had gradually fallen over the past several centuries. Excessive holy energy consumption, she posited, may even hinder healthy births. This statistic formed much of the basis for Shiba’s warning that Ente Isla could face a mortal crisis within another hundred years.
The planet, sadly, lacked the culture needed to create and keep worldwide statistics for itself. The Federated Order of the Five Continents, formed following the Devil King’s Army invasion, still wasn’t advanced enough to be capable of that. If anything, it was easy to imagine that the planet would come to rely even further on magic for rebuilding, developing, and prospering now.
That was why Laila believed that all the Sephirah have to be released as soon as possible. There was no taking back the past, but if they acted now and returned the Sephirot and Sephirah to their rightful positions, they might still be able to rescue Ente Isla’s humanity from this crisis, albeit at a heavy cost likely.
In the way of this future, however, lay the heavens and its angels, forming a massive wall to block any progress. These angels hadn’t captured the Sephirah just so they could act all high-and-mighty around the Ente Islans. Doing so provided them with several key advantages, in part thanks to the extremely long life spans and prominent force they wielded—but whether Laila would go into detail on this depended on whether Maou and Emi, now fully aware of the situation, agreed to help or not.
To sum up, Laila’s mission was to release the Sephirot and Sephirah from heavenly rule, ensure the tree could give birth to its “final Sephirah,” and guarantee Ente Isla’s safety into the future. Achieving this meant resigning herself to a long, arduous string of battles. It meant making enemies out of a large chunk of heaven. But still, over a ponderously long time, Laila had been searching for someone or something powerful enough to take them all on.
“…All right. I see.”
“And what do you think?”
Chiho, hearing the anticipation in Laila’s voice, was unsure how to reply. She had no questions about what was written in the report. She was in pretty deep by now, having learned a great deal from her own experiences and what Amane and Shiba told her, and from that, there was a lot in Laila’s testimony that made sense to her.
But if Ente Isla was in that much danger, it meant that within this cheaply bound printout, the fates of countless human beings hung in the balance. Considering that, the report certainly didn’t seem very…urgent to her. She had at least a vague idea of Laila’s concern and the issues facing Ente Isla, but it still all felt like someone else’s problem. It was a bit dizzying to Chiho, like she was being shown a translated picture book detailing the myths and folklore of some foreign nation.
Laila had made an effort to keep the report accessible, even adding some schematics and other diagrams, but that wasn’t what Chiho wanted. Chiho and likely Maou, too. It was important, yes, but none of this was enough for either of them to make a decision off. It hadn’t really affected them emotionally at all.
“Um, may I ask something a bit odd?”
“…”
But rather than Laila, it was Maou that Chiho turned to. He gave her a silent nod—
“Oh, anything!”
—only to have Laila turn straight toward her, ready to take on the world if necessary.
“Well, then.”
Chiho took a breath and returned her gaze.
“Laila…”
“Mm-hmm?”
“Are you working here in Japan at all?”
“………………………………………Huh?”
It was not a question anyone in the room could have predicted. Laila was the cleanup hitter, all crouched over in the batter’s box and ready to swing for the fences, only to have the opponent’s ace pitcher throw an intentional walk.
“Um…working?”
“Yeah.”
“…Why do you ask?” Laila countered, her smile still painted on her face.
“Why? You said ‘anything,’ so…”
“I…suppose I did, yes…but why?”
“You’re startin’ to act really weird on us, Laila.”
The angel was clearly disturbed by this line of inquiry, to the point that she ignored Maou’s jab completely.
“No, um, I just started wondering as I was reading through this.”
Her pupils now the size of dots, Laila’s eyes moved toward Chiho, Maou, the back of Urushihara’s head, then back toward Chiho.
“Well, not to answer your question with another question…”
“Oh?”
“But was that paper kind of
hard to follow? Like, did it make you think about my work or my life here or…?”
“No,” came the short reply. “That’s exactly it. It didn’t say anything about your own life, Laila, as far as I saw. That’s why I started wondering.”
“Ah…” Maou grinned a bit at this, understanding Chiho’s point before Laila could. “You sure are kind to her, Chi. I wasn’t planning to say anything about that until she noticed it for herself.”
“Oh! Um, was that bad of me?”
Chiho, recalling Maou’s lack of enthusiasm for this whole discussion, gave him a concerned look. Maou grinned and shook his head.
“Nah. I doubt she’ll pick up on it anytime soon unless someone spells it out, so now’s as good a time as any.”
As the stupefied Laila looked on, Maou went up to his cheap plastic shelving and took out a piece of paper and a card case that not even Chiho had seen before.
“So here’s the draft version of the contract you gave me.”
“R-right.” Laila distractedly nodded as he presented the familiar sheet to her.
“If you were giving me something like this, I figured you were at least kind of aware, but seeing it, I doubt I’m gonna be interested in seriously hearing you out for a while to come.”
“Was—was there some kind of issue with it? Because I looked at a bunch of templates and bought a book about contracts and stuff…”
“It’s not about the content. Down here.”
He pointed at the bottom of the draft. It spelled out the names of Laila, executor of the contract, and Maou and Emi, its targets, including a little space to affix their seals to make it official.
“Isn’t something missing?”
Peering at the draft from the side, Chiho took a quick skim, immediately noticing what Maou was referring to.
“Laila, this… The addresses.”
“Um?”
“The addresses. There’s no place to write them.”
“Ad…dress?” She made a face like this wasn’t in her vocabulary. “Did—did you need that?”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 13 Page 4
