“…?!” Emi asked.
“M-Maou?!” Chiho cried.
Right in front of them, without any warning, Maou and his bicycle disappeared.
“Wh-wha…?”
Emi, the other side of the argument, was at a loss for words. Right there, at that moment, Maou was about to shout back at her. His mouth was open, he had just taken a deep breath, and he was clearly just about to fire back at Emi with everything he had. He showed no sign of unleashing any dark force, but the group still looked into the sky, then on the ground around them, picturing Maou using some kind of supernatural skill to flee. They knew very quickly that he hadn’t.
“Um…Maou…?”
With uneasy steps, Chiho approached the spot where Maou was previously located. Not a single sign of his presence remained on the pavement. Even with Chiho mimicking Maou’s exact position, nothing occurred.
“What…just happened?”
The city around them ran along its familiar evening rhythm. They could hear the unending string of cars on the Koshu-Kaido road above, and as the trio grew increasingly frantic, they heard another new customer enter the MgRonald to the side. Only Maou and Dullahan II were gone, as if they were mere phantoms the whole time.
“Maou…”
Chiho instinctively brought a hand to the shoulder Maou had patted just before he vanished.
“E-Emilia… This surely could not be…”
“I thought it could’ve been for a moment…but how is this even possible?”
Both Emi and Suzuno feared the worst—a Devil King–napping engineered by Barbariccia. But both then and now, there was not a drop of detectable holy or dark force.
“…Is Devil’s Castle safe?”
Emi gulped nervously. Suzuno was right. Perhaps the same anomaly had just befallen Ashiya and Urushihara. Maybe not “anomaly,” though—if Emi’s theory was correct, this was exactly what they had expected from that demon faction. But this was just too confusing. She took out her smartphone and started tapping.
“I have Lucifer’s SkyPhone number. Assuming he’s screwing around with his computer as usual…”
But no matter how long she waited, there was no ringtone. She looked at the screen, only to find the words “No Service” on the top header.
“Huh? What do you mean, no service?”
“Show me the number! I will try on my—”
Suzuno seized the smartphone from Emi’s hand and opened up her own flip model. But:
“I have no service…?”
Watching this unfold, Chiho whipped out her own phone, only to find the same result. She swallowed nervously.
“But…this is crazy. I always call my parents right in front of this building to tell them I’m heading home!”
They each stared at their phones for a few moments. All of them refused to change their stance. No service. Then:
“Huh? Hello? Hell—agh!”
A young woman passing right by the trio made a face at the phone in her hand.
“Aw, my reception got cut off…”
They saw the woman wave the phone in the air as she walked off, only to bring it back to her ear after a certain distance.
“Is there reception over there?”
It was around 150 feet away. Emi and Suzuno sprinted over, only to find the bars spring back into life on their phone screens.
“That was weird,” a relieved Emi said as she called Urushihara, “but at least we can call people again.”
“…?”
Suzuno, for some reason, was looking down at her feet, taking a step back as if she had just stepped on something ominous.
“This is strange.”
“Huh?” Emi asked Suzuno, a little annoyed that Urushihara didn’t seem to be picking up. Suzuno crouched down and began searching the ground.
“Bell, what’re you doing?”
Suzuno didn’t answer, taking a pebble from the pavement and placing it on her palm.
“Hngh!”
The stone began to shine dimly, infused with her holy power. She flicked it with a finger.
“Huh?!”
Emi’s eyes bulged. The magic-infused pebble bounced off some invisible obstacle, just as something resembling an azure-blue flame flickered in the air before Suzuno’s eyes.
“…A barrier.”
“A-a barrier?!”
Emi couldn’t hide her shock. Suzuno was notably more somber.
“And not a demonic one, either. This…this is holy force! The Devil King’s been encased in a barrier of holy force!”
Emi hung up on her still-unanswered call.
“Wait, so that’s the edge of it?! Then why can we go in and out of it at will?!”
But before Suzuno could answer:
“………ahhhh.”
“Did you say something, Bell?”
“I thought that was you, Emilia.”
“……mn……nnnnngh!”
“Huh?!”
The voice was in the air, behind their backs.
“My goddesssssssssss!!!!”
Another voice, the last one they wanted to hear, dropped in from above.
“Eeep!”
It went without saying that it belonged to Sariel, his gaunt, ghoulish face framed by his bloodshot eyes and gnashing teeth.
“I have come to rescue brghhh!!”
Suzuno did not hesitate to strike him with the Light of Iron.
“Bn… Gnh… Baagghh!!”
She rained down blows with her giant hammer, sending him down to the ground in a single bounce.
“Bepph!”
He only stopped rolling after he hit the curb.
“……He’s not dead, is he?”
Emi couldn’t help but ask. That was a textbook display of using an amplifier to enhance one’s holy force. The Light of Iron was distinct, powerful looking in Suzuno’s hands, even as her breathing was ragged.
“Nragh!”
“He’s up!”
Sariel himself, however, did not seem terribly affected as he sprang back to his feet. “What…what is the meaning of this?!” he said as he waved at Emi and Suzuno.
Just then, a blast of holy magic from his arms tore across the area, equally as effective as Suzuno’s. It caromed off the barrier, making its boundaries clear to all. It was a dome of holy magic, one that extended across the entire street.
“I’d kind of like to know why you’re here personally, but…”
“Where is my goddess? Is she unhurt?!”
“Uh, nothing’s happened to the MgRonald, so…”
Emi and Suzuno turned back toward Maou’s last known location. It remained perfectly empty, normal, and after a quick check, they—
“Wait…”
“Chi…ho?”
Chiho was gone.
She must have been with them, at least up to the point where their phones were out of range.
“Nngh!”
Emi hurriedly ran to where Chiho had been, not bothering to care whether or not she hit Sariel in the back of the head with her shoulder bag. For some reason, only Sariel was blocked by the barrier—neither Emi nor Suzuno were affected.
Just as before, there was not a trace of Chiho left to be found. Emi’s phone remained out of service on that spot, but looking inside MgRonald, the scene was serenely normal—crewmembers walking to and fro, customers dipping French fries in little cups of ketchup.
“What is going on?! It’s just a regular old barrier! Why are people disappearing on us?!”
“I-I don’t know! Maybe they’re still here, but invisible inside the barrier… But the fact we can travel through this barrier at will is beyond all comprehension!”
“This can’t be any regular barrier!”
Sariel, still sprawled out on the ground after that latest strike, glanced to his side. A group of businessmen on their way home from work crossed to the other side of the street to avoid coming near him.
“It’s a dimensional-phase barrier! Like the one I used on top of Tokyo�
�s city hall!”
“Dimensional…phase?”
When Sariel had kidnapped Emi and Chiho, he had used a barrier to envelop the entirety of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, one of the tallest skyscrapers in the city. Suzuno saw that for herself. But unlike the barriers Maou built from dark force, Sariel’s had no clear boundaries. All it did was ensure other people in the area weren’t affected by what happened inside.
“I-I thought this was a plot from heaven to expunge the goddess preventing me from returning to my world. I thought I had to save her very life!”
Emi and Suzuno, shutting out Sariel’s half-dazed ravings, placed themselves back to back as they scanned the area.
“We’ve got…company…”
They were here. But they couldn’t be seen.
The MgRonald, the Hatagaya skyline, and the Dullahan II supporting his weight were all the same. But the sound was gone. He could feel the presence of no one else.
Emi, who was just about ready to go trampling all over his heart with her tear-laden eyes, was gone.
Maou had been enraged a moment ago. But the disquiet that now replaced that wasn’t out of surprise over the bizarre scene that faced him. It was because, as much as he hated to admit it, her final words had pushed him over the brink.
His palms were sweaty—not because he was hot—and the negative energy pouring out of him made it feel like the blood that surged to his head would form horns for him on the spot.
“I… Look, I’m having trouble making decisions right now.”
“……”
“We were having a pretty important chat just now, okay? But I kind of lost my cool for a moment. I think I may’ve said something that I regret.”
Maou dropped the kickstand on Dullahan II and removed his hands from the handlebars.
“I think I avoided screwing it up too badly, but after all that crap she said to me, it was really getting hard for me to digest.”
Wiping the sweat from his brow and drying his hands off with the hem of his T-shirt, Maou turned around from his position in the middle of traffic and returned the gaze of the two people looking at him.
“Who’re you? Just give me your names and addresses and get outta here, okay? ’Cause I think I still got some steam to blow off.”
There were two figures, both human looking. Maou didn’t know either of them.
One was a young man in a stuffy-looking business suit, his shiny black hair done with a Clark Kent–style part—the kind of extreme-hold wet look that no young man would be caught dead in today. He wore large and equally out-of-date silver-frame glasses, but even from his vantage point, Maou could tell they were just for show, the lenses just two flat pieces of glass. The young man’s suit was a humdrum (if oddly bright) shade of navy blue, and between that and his unadorned black-leather briefcase, he looked like the quintessential Japanese salaryman from the 1970s or so.
That still beat his partner, though. That guy was off by a good two hundred years or so, what with his full-body samurai armor. That, and he was a kid. Not just small-sized, like Urushihara or Suzuno—the balance between his shoulders, legs, bone structure, and head all indicated he was still a child. That didn’t prevent him from encasing himself in a crimson-red suit of armor, complete with a frightening-looking hannya mask to seal the deal. The whole outfit looked hot, heavy, and somewhat lacking in visibility for the wearer.
“Jeez, thanks for going all formal with me, guys. So what is it? You angels, demons, North, South, East, West, what?”
“You seem less than surprised,” said the Beatles-era businessman.
“I am surprised—at your wacky outfits. Did that get you a free gift certificate at some restaurant for winning their Halloween party, or what?”
“I thought it ample enough to keep from arousing suspicion.”
“Uh… You, maaaaaybe, but you know that kid ain’t doing himself any favors.”
“I am afraid we do not always operate in tandem.”
Maou glared at the simpering businessman. There was something gratingly gracious to his speech.
“Demons, huh?”
“I will admit this is the first time we have personally met, Devil King Satan. My name is Farfarello. I occupy the junior position in the Malebranche’s council of chieftains.”
“Ah, I nailed it.”
A high-level demon after all. On the same rung of the ladder as Ciriatto, Maou’s attacker in the seas off Choshi. The name was unfamiliar, however—and Maou was pretty sure he remembered the names of all of Malacoda’s warlords.
“Farfarello… I’m sorry, I haven’t heard of you.”
“Of course not,” the dapper demon said, unoffended. “I attained my chieftain’s position after you led your army to the glorious invasion of Ente Isla, my liege.”
“Aha. So who’s the little action figure with you?”
“You may feel free to ignore him. He was merely a pilot of sorts from Ente Isla, and nothing that you need to—”
“I was talking to him. Not you.” Maou glared at the armored child.
From one slit or another in the armor, a surprisingly meek-sounding voice made itself known.
“…Erone.”
“Erone? Okay. Human, demon, or angel?”
“…Human.”
“Why are you working together with a demon?”
“…Orders.”
“Ah.”
Maou decided to pursue other matters for the time being. There was no point worrying over what this boy was doing with his life, and there was no telling what Erone thought of his “orders,” or what motivation was driving them.
“Right. So what do you character actors want from me? Uh…Farfarello, right? I’m not sensing any demonic force from you. Has your body devolved into human form like mine?”
“It has, Your Demonic Highness. Ciriatto and the others believe that one reason for their failed invasion of this land was because they were not used to the changes it wreaks upon the body. And I will add…” The eyes beyond Farfarello’s spectacles beheld the Hatagaya cityscape. “I have orders from Barbariccia not to cause any damage upon this land unless absolutely necessary.”
“Huh. I thought the Malebranche’s crew was wilder than that.”
“Oh, very much so, my liege. The other chieftains had their…misgivings over whether such an order was necessary, but the one who suggested it to Barbariccia managed to bring them over to his side. He said that the Devil King Satan has a certain affinity for this land… That you may not be so forgiving upon those who attempt to desecrate it.”
“Olba?” Maou wrinkled his nose as he intoned the name.
“Yes, my liege.”
The only people back on Ente Isla who could correctly surmise the Devil King’s feelings were Emeralda, Albert, and Olba. And there was no way the first two would contribute to the cause of Emi’s foes.
“Kind of ’im.”
“My orders are to provide full disclosure for any and all questions the Devil King asks of me.”
Maou’s eyes narrowed, a threatening glare. “Good. Honesty is the best policy. Let’s cut to the chase. What do you want?”
The response Farfarello subsequently offered to Maou’s question was expected, at least. He’d seen it coming ever since Camio showed up on Choshi and told him Barbariccia had split the demon realms in two. The demon knelt before him, the fabric of his stuffy suit crinkling in protest.
“I come here both to express our eternal gratitude that our leader, Satan the Devil King, remains alive and well, and to report that we who serve the Malebranche have risked life and limb to successfully secure a beachhead, a new front for a second invasion of Ente Isla. We also humbly request that our Devil King return and guide—”
“Nooooooope.”
“—us to newfound glories as we—huh?”
Farfarello’s penchant for going on too long was made all too clear in how he handled Maou’s response. Once his brain finally caught up with the denial, he completel
y lost his steam.
“Don’t huh me. I said, nope. Forget it. Gone. Outta here.”
“…………”
The creepy armored kid remained silent. Doesn’t speak until spoken to, perhaps. The mask made it impossible to gauge his expression.
“But…but why, Your Demonic Highness?! The Azure Emperor of the Eastern Island has sworn his allegiances to us. I understand, my liege, that you have never given up your great ambition of conquering the entire world—and, indeed, that you plan to place this world under your rule as well, someday.”
“Yuh-huh.”
“Then please, my liege, come back to us and use us once more as your invincible force! All of us of the Malebranche promise to do whatever it takes to support this great and noble mission!”
“Huh.”
“…You are choosing your words carefully because the Hero of the Holy Sword is near, perhaps?”
“Near? She’s, like, right there, isn’t she? It’s not like she’s… Okay, maybe she’s a little involved in this, but not so much that I care what she thinks.”
“Then, Your Demonic Highness…”
“Then what? Hey, you know this expression they have in this country? ‘Strike the face of the Buddha three times, and even his anger will be roused’? Well, I’m not giving you a third time. I’m out. Beat it.”
“But why, I ask you?” Farfarello looked up at Maou, face ashen. “My liege! Please give me a reason!”
“Look,” Maou replied, exasperated that his point still hadn’t come across. “Do I, Satan, your one and only Devil King, look like the kinda guy who’d be happy to see my team win the World Series after sitting on the bench all season and letting everyone else do the hard work?”
“……”
Maou may have looked all of twenty in human form, but the oppressive sneer on his face made Farfarello instinctively gulp.
“If…if I may, Your Demonic Highness…”
“Yeah?”
“What is this…‘World Series’ you speak of…?”
“Oh, come on!” The question drained the energy from Maou’s mind. “Didn’t you study anything about Earth?!”
“I apologize, my liege, but I remain less than fluent in the realm of analogy. I only had so much time to work with—”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 6 Page 12
