The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 3

by Satoshi Wagahara

  “…Nothing?”

  Ashiya strode in through the front door.

  “You did return Chiho safely, yes?” Suzuno inquired immediately.

  “Of course. She was rife with concern for my liege until the moment we parted.”

  “Indeed. But we certainly cannot afford to bring her into this affair.”

  “Absolutely. If anything were to happen to Ms. Sasaki, we’d be unable to continue our current arrangement. I told her not to set foot near our Devil’s Castle until some sort of closure has been reached.”

  “…Well. A wise decision, there.”

  Ashiya idly sat himself down in the center of the room.

  “Alciel, I need to ask you something.”

  “What? If you’re expecting rent, forget it.”

  “Who would ever dream of saying such miserly things? I am not you, after all. I wish to ask of you, and your demonic forces.”

  Suzuno lifted her head from resting on her folded legs.

  “What drove you to attempt to conquer the world?”

  It was an unusual question to lob at two young men who looked like they hailed from Anytown, Japan.

  “Because I…have grown less and less able to understand why the thought even occurred to you to invade our land,” she finished.

  “…I have to say, I envy your refrigerator.”

  “Um?”

  Ashiya’s reply seemed completely unrelated. But, as he appraised the top-of-the-line, enviro-friendly fridge Suzuno had bought on Emi’s recommendation the other day, his face was deadly serious, and so too his voice.

  “Open the door, and I am sure you will find the meat, the milk, the vegetables you bought yesterday. Anything missing from today’s menu, you can run to the store to purchase. You can make wonderful dishes, and eat them at your leisure. …I, and His Demonic Highness, too, I imagine, invaded Ente Isla in search of such things.”

  “…?”

  “I am not asking you to understand me. Regardless, it is my lot to work as hard as I can until the day we can return to Ente Isla… Do you understand me, Urushihara?”

  “Hey, I’ll work, dude. Once I can.”

  “Listen, you…”

  In consideration for Room 201 and its current occupants, Ashiya and Urushihara’s verbal scuffling proceeded at a hushed tone.

  Suzuno, listening to them, placed her head back down toward her folded knees.

  “…oof…”

  Emi rose, awoken by the one-two punch of the early morning sun and the rapidly rising temperature. She squinted at the cracks and blotches of an unfamiliar ceiling.

  “…!! Uh…?”

  The sudden recollection of a reluctant night spent in Devil’s Castle flooded back to her mind, making her attempt to leap upward.

  “…Whoops.”

  The attempt was foiled by Alas Ramus, sleeping peacefully as her body was straddled against Emi’s.

  She noticed just in time. If she had bolted upward as planned, she would’ve woken up Alas Ramus along the way.

  With a sigh of relief, Emi craned her head upward to look at Maou on the other side.

  He was looking less than graceful.

  Apparently succumbing to the heat, he had tossed away his T-shirt, snoring loudly in the morning sun. Emi was almost expecting a snot bubble to blow in and out of his nose with each breath.

  “Nnnnh…”

  Slowly, Emi removed her arm so as not to disturb Alas Ramus. She thought any touch might wake her up, but she remained still, apparently deep in sleep.

  The clock on the wall still hadn’t passed five AM. It was easy to see how deeply into summer they were.

  Thanks to sleeping on bare tatami with a blanket over her, she was sore from head to toe. Stretching out her head and shoulders, Emi yawned, thinking about how they needed to purchase at least a futon for the child.

  Nothing could be heard from Suzuno’s room. They must have been asleep. The main concern at the moment was whether Chiho had actually heeded her advice and stayed home.

  Giving the adjacent Alas Ramus a light brush on her hair, Emi grabbed her bag, took out the bottle of 5-Holy Energy β she brought along, and chugged it in one swallow.

  There was no telling when Gabriel would arrive, nor if he would (which hopefully he would not), but if it came to a fight, she needed all the force she could muster.

  It was because Alas Ramus needed her protection. It was definitely not because the Devil King had smooth-talked her into it.

  “This is for Alas Ramus…for Alas Ramus…”

  She muttered the mantra to herself as she winced at the energy shot’s medicinelike aftertaste.

  “Better wash my face…”

  Emi made a step toward the kitchen sink.

  “Mornin’, child!”

  Until that moment, Emi had completely failed to notice the other presence in the room.

  “Gnhhh!!!”

  The man, in Emi’s blind spot opposite the kitchen before now, placed a hand over Emi’s lips before she could react.

  “Now, now, no fussing! I’m not gonna do anything rough, mm-kay?”

  “Mnh! Mrnngh!”

  Emi tried to kick Maou awake. He was just barely out of range.

  “Oh, stop! They’re both livin’ it up in dreamland…and they’ll be stayin’ in there awhile, too.”

  Emi glared back at the smarmy voice’s owner, her entire consciousness focused upon him.

  “Oop, look out.”

  Then, almost too easily, the man removed his hand from Emi’s mouth and edged away.

  Given the size of the apartment, however, there wasn’t much edging away to do without going out a window. He would still be within easy range of Emi’s holy sword.

  “You angels sure have forgotten your manners, huh? Kidnapping people, putting bugging devices in people’s bags, trespassing into people’s apartments without permission…”

  The man laughed heartily in his utterly nondivine, high-pitched voice.

  “Aww, but this is the Devil’s Castle! Hopefully I can get a pass on that at least, hmm? I mean, we’re talking the bad guys’ headquarters here!”

  “You’re here kind of early, aren’t you? Or did you think it’s okay to take this girl away just because the date on the calendar’s changed?”

  Emi’s right hand was pointed squarely at Gabriel’s throat.

  In the blink of an eye, the Better Half sword appeared in her hand, its point aimed straight for his neck.

  “Hang on, hang on! I mean, didn’t I say I wanted to talk this out yesterday? Because you’re kind of being awful judgmental with me right now!”

  “Alas Ramus or not, you wanted my holy sword, didn’t you? If someone’s trying to prevent me from my goal, I won’t hesitate to take him down.”

  “Oh, you are such a party pooper. Women these days are soooo self-minded, aren’t they? No wonder so many people aren’t getting married anymore. You girls are scary!”

  Whether due to his off-kilter personality or the natural confidence that came from being an archangel, the holy sword wasn’t enough to make Gabriel so much as flinch.

  “Oh, and just so we’re on the same page here, it’s not like I cast a spell or put a barrier up to keep the Devil King and the folks next door from waking up, mm-kay?”

  “…What do you mean?”

  “Well, and I’m just guessing here, but you guys probably didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, am I right? The folks next door were up all night keeping watch over you, I guess, but they all conked out about an hour ago. Plus which, you were totally conked out, too, yes? I mean, since I stepped in here, I heated up the bento box I bought at the convenience store, ate it, went to the john, and did a little morning constitutional around the front yard, but you people were sleeping like logs, I tell you. I mean, not like I expected a red carpet, but come on!”

  “……”

  Come to think of it, Maou worked until midnight the previous evening, only to be jostled awake by Alas Ramus early in the mo
rning.

  “And as someone who prides himself on being the most gentlemanly archangel in heaven, I’d never attack a family while they’re asleep. So I figured I’d wait until you or the Devil King woke up. We could talk a little more, and maybe I could help you see the light this time, mm-kay? So, uh, could you put that blade away for a sec?”

  With pleading eyes, Gabriel pinched the edge of the sword with two fingers, attempting to push it away. Emi held firm.

  Neither this world nor the one above needed an archangel so willing to fall into mortal vices like microwave cooking and jogs around the block.

  “Hey, look, unlike your pal Sariel, I don’t have any natural defense against holy power, sooo…y’know, really, I’d like to settle this like grown-ups.”

  “…Like you have any right to say that.”

  “Uhm?”

  “You probably have those goons from yesterday surrounding the apartment by now, don’t you? The Heavenly Regiment or whatever?”

  Emi’s charged question visibly disquieted Gabriel.

  “Now listen, lady, I have no interest in hurting anyone, mm-kay? I just want to get what I’m getting, then get out. But cut me a break! The Devil King was ready to duke it out right in the kitchen yesterday. So, all right, yeah, I have ’em on lookout. Ooh, but listen, we had to expend a ton of energy just gettin’ me through a Gate, so they’re all kinda pooped right now, y’know? And, whew, it’s gonna be even worse once we have that girl with us on the way back. So, c’mon, be an angel and listen to one for a change, mm-kay?”

  “…!”

  “Aaaghh! You just poked my Adam’s apple a bit with that thing on purpose, didn’t you?! For a Hero, you’re pretty darn good at terrorizing people, you know that? Oww!”

  The point Emi silently thrust forward made contact with his neck. It didn’t penetrate skin, but Gabriel at least acted like it threw him into panic.

  The clamor was enough to finally make the rest of the room stir.

  “…Ngh, stop making all that noise… Jeez, it’s still only five… Hey, whoa, come on!!”

  No matter how much sleep he had missed the previous night, this would be enough to wake up anybody.

  Maou was greeted with the sight of Emi facing off with an unfamiliar man, Better Half at the ready, in his already cramped apartment.

  “Ooohh… Daddyyy?”

  Alas Ramus came-to soon afterward, as Maou struggled to get his head around these rather sudden events.

  “Gabriel… You didn’t have to come this early, you know…”

  “Ooh, hey, sleepyhead! Sorry I had to call upon you like this, mm-kay? My schedule for today is just packed, let me tell you.”

  Maou picked up Alas Ramus, putting her off behind his shadow. But with so little demonic power remaining, and his foe already so close to him, the battle was virtually over before it began.

  “Y-you shouldn’t be brandishing a sword like that, y’know. Not around the little one! It’ll be a bad influence! So just put it away, mm-kay?”

  Gabriel, however, was his usual ebullient self.

  The fact he was willing to weaken his own Heavenly Regiment in order to come here seemed to indicate supreme confidence. With a name like Gabriel backing him up, it seemed certain that this man was not the frivolous, scatter-brained ditz he acted like.

  “It’s not like I’m out here looking for a fight against heaven or the angels. But they just keep coming for me, you know? That’s why I have to fight them.”

  “Yikes! …That’s some mean logic to argue against.”

  Gabriel shrugged in despair, his face embittered.

  “Okay, well, hopefully you don’t mind if I talk first, then… Ooh, but try to make sure that point doesn’t hit my hayoid again, mm-kay? …Y-y’know, if I could offer a compromise here, at the very least, if I can get home with either the holy sword or that girl, then I don’t have a complaint in the world right now. I’ll explain everything to you, and I mean it. But after that I’m giving you two choices. Hand it over, or no?”

  Gabriel retained his composure as he spoke, his raised hands waving around to back up his point.

  “I’m the guard of Yesod, a Sephirah from the Tree of Sephirot that forms the foundation of the world. And Yesod got stolen a long time ago, mm-kay? And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the thief split the Yesod Sephirah into a bunch of fragments and tossed ’em all over the place. And you know, Emilia, the Better Half sword in your hand and that girl behind the Devil King were both born from those fragments. And…and, you know, having stuff like that outside of heaven for long is real, real bad news!”

  “My sword…from a fragment of Yesod?”

  Gabriel raised a finger in the air, breezily continuing on as if discussing something he read in the news that morning.

  “You betcha, lady! You see that? The purple crystal embedded in it?”

  He used his finger and his eyes to point out the handle of Emi’s sword.

  The Better Half’s handle was emblazoned with a wing motif, the center of which was decorated with, yes, a jewel that shone purple. Emi had assumed it was just some nonessential piece of design work.

  “That Better Half’s one pretty dangerous dealie-o, you know? Pretty high-priority to get back for us. But then you, Satan—y’know, before you invaded Ente Isla, we had no idea where the heck you were! I’ve been going around for centuries, picking up a shard here, a fragment there, but I just had the worst time finding the fragments the girl and that sword came from, mm-kay? And, you know, I was trying to keep this search a secret ’cause I didn’t want any of the grand pooh-bahs to know I messed up, if you know what I mean, but going off by myself all the time to look…well, let’s just say that raised some eyebrows. Folks thought I was plotting against the gods, can you believe that? So Sariel figured out what I was really up to first. I almost got booted off the island, if you know what I’m gettin’ at! Ha-ha-ha!”

  Of course Gabriel was the sort of angel to laugh at his own jokes. The cold stares surrounding him were nothing he concerned himself about.

  “What’s so dangerous? We need the holy sword to defeat the Devil King. There’s nothing dangerous about it.”

  “There kinda is to me…”

  Maou was ignored.

  “Well, that’s what you humans say… I mean, that’s what the Church said, anyway, way back when they got hold of those fragments. And if I told you why they’re dangerous…well, all that time I spent looking for them would go to waste, y’know? I can’t very well go around doing that!”

  “What the Church said…?”

  “That, and gee whiz, lady, use your head! Like, did you think you can just go to the big-box store and buy magical swords that only affect demons and Devil Kings? The Better Half’s power is amplified by holy force, mm-kay? Just like the Light of Iron magic your Church knights use. The only difference is the form it takes! You can search the entire universe for all I care; there’s no such thing as a special antidemon weapon!”

  “But…but this sword brought me straight to the Devil King inside his fortress…”

  The glowing of Emilia’s holy sword had led her party of invaders down the correct path to the Devil King during their assault on his Ente Isla headquarters. That was what had allowed them to navigate the castle’s labyrinthine corridors in such quick order.

  “Lady, I don’t think it was leading you to the Devil King. It was directing you to where that child was.”

  Gabriel’s reply was nonplussed.

  “The separate Yesod fragments were attracted to each other. That’s all there was to it! And thanks to that, I had to waste a lot more time running around like a chicken with its head cut off searching, mm-kay?”

  And after the fragments resonated with each other, the Hero dove into her final battle against the Devil King. A battle where she used her sword’s holy force to bring the demons’ leader to his knees.

  “Y’see, you probably used up so much holy force during that fight, that child’s fragment likely sto
pped reacting to anything else for a while. And then you took a little weekender over to Nowheresville, Japan, so that trail went cold on me, too, until I figured out where the heck you were. I had no idea the fragment had become part of the Devil King’s gardening hobby, either!”

  The last time Maou saw the tree that sprouted up from the crystal he was given, it had only begun to form two trunks snaking around each other. Only a few hardy leaves had budded on it, and it would be long before it would bear any flowers or fruit.

  He had completely forgotten about it by that point. He wasn’t expecting that crystal to amount to much in the first place. If anything, he was impressed that it had actually grown into something.

  But then, as Maou recalled all of this, Gabriel suddenly grabbed hold of Emi’s holy sword.

  Surprised, Emi attempted to pull it back. The weapon refused to budge.

  “Nuh-uh-uh! That hurt me on kind of a paper-cut level, but unless something really goofy happens, that holy sword isn’t enough to beat me, as things stand.”

  He turned an easygoing eye toward Maou.

  “So are we all working with the same playbook now? Great. Now let’s just all act like adults here and listen to what I’m asking you, mm-kay?”

  This was, in other words, his final notice. His aim was to show what he saw as the obvious result if Emi demonstrated any hostility toward Gabriel at this point.

  Without any stockpile of demonic power backing him up, Maou had absolutely no chance of victory himself. And that conclusion wasn’t about to change with the presence of Suzuno or the other demons.

  Which meant that Maou had only one card up his sleeve.

  Maou took a deep breath and faced up to Gabriel.

  Emi and Gabriel tensed up for a moment, expecting Maou to make a suicidal lunge toward the archangel.

  “…Huh?”

  “Hey, hang on, what’re you doing?!”

  Their expectations were unfounded.

  “Please.”

  Maou had prostrated himself on the floor.

  The human personification of Satan, the Devil King who once stood at the apex of all demons and still publicly avowed his ambition to conquer the world, was now rubbing his forehead against the floor in front of an archangel.