The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 6

by Satoshi Wagahara

  Farfarello, meanwhile, had only one word to say:

  “Erone!!”

  “?!”

  The child immediately took action, attempting an unplanned, off-balance bull rush at Emilia.

  “H-halt!” Suzuno shouted, trying to stop him from the side. Then:

  “?!”

  She was blown back, left floating up into the air.

  “Suzuno!!”

  Stepping between Emilia and this child of no more than nine resulted in her getting tossed back like a bus had just hit her.

  “Wh-what…?!”

  It did nothing to stop Erone as he continued his advance. Suzuno was a powerful enough warrior to dispatch the Heavenly Regiment if she wanted to. She might have let her guard down, yes, but seeing her so casually blown away was enough to give Emilia severe misgivings. But she couldn’t afford to take her foot off Farfarello, either. She opted to form her Cloth of the Dispeller into a shield to ward off whatever force this child was wielding.

  Not hesitating for a moment, Erone smashed right into the shield.

  “Gah!!”

  With a grunt, Emilia found her weight shifted back, forcing her to stagger off of Farfarello’s body. This was Emilia in Hero-transformed shape, her Better Half sword and Cloth of the Dispeller both deployed at full power. A Hero who, after seeing Suzuno falter, knew to stay focused on the fight. The shock wave coursed across her body, and out of defensive instinct, she swung her sword at Erone.

  Then, something that truly no one in the barrier could have expected, happened:

  “Wha?!”

  Erone’s arm stopped the holy sword’s blade cold.

  Not the armor Farfarello had formed out of dark energy for him. The sword effortlessly sliced through one of his gauntlets, as well as the cloth sleeve he was wearing under it. The skin below, however, was completely unscathed.

  A voice that was not Emilia’s coursed across her head.

  Erone?!

  Alas Ramus voiced her objections at a wholly unexpected time.

  Mommy! Erone! Don’t! No fighting! Don’t hurt Erone!

  Emilia, quite against her wishes, found her holy sword disappearing from her hand.

  “Huh? What? What’re you—?!”

  Don’t hurt Erone! Please!

  “Wh-what do you mean?!”

  Outside of her fight against Sariel, Emilia had never seen her holy sword disappear out of its own volition before. Erone, as if cognizant of the voice inside Emilia’s mind, retreated a long distance back from the Hero…

  “…! Alas Ramus?!”

  And even said the name of the child inside her sword to boot.

  “Who…are you…?”

  Then a voice descended from above.

  “Enough of this nonsense!”

  It was Sariel’s.

  “Evil Eye of the Fallen!”

  With barely any hesitation, Sariel unleashed his holy-force-draining powers directly upon Erone.

  “Nnh!!”

  The force of Sariel’s strike made Erone fall to his knees on the spot. Still, perhaps because of the demonic armor he wore, it didn’t seem to affect him as much as it had Emilia, way back when.

  Erone glared at Sariel, his face filled with an anger he never betrayed when engaging any of his previous three opponents.

  “E-Erone…we must go.”

  “!”

  A single murmur from Farfarello was enough to make his rage vanish. Emilia could feel the barrier they broke through disappear entirely, only to be replaced with the presence of the larger barrier Sariel erected earlier.

  “M-my liege… We will pay you another visit, sooner or later.”

  “Pretty bold words, considering you need a child to cart you outta here.”

  It was exactly the case. Farfarello, leaning heavily upon Erone’s shoulder, bore none of the bravado of a moment ago. As they painfully limped their way away, it was Sariel who had the final word.

  “Do you bastards think you can escape my barr—oh, what the hell?!”

  He probably meant it to sound more arrogant and triumphant than that. It kind of fizzled out when the pair apparently walked right through the edge of his barrier. Once through, Erone, with surprising stamina, took a single leap and carried both himself and his charity case beyond anyone’s view.

  “…You are so useless,” Maou whispered.

  “Oh, come on!” Sariel replied, the quivering in his voice revealing that not even he was expecting someone to just waltz through the boundary like that.

  “Still,” Maou continued, “you pretty much saved us, so thanks for that. You okay, Suzuno?”

  “Mmh… Whew. All my bones are intact…but that did hit home, yes.”

  “Well, color me impressed,” Emilia said, rubbing her shield arm. “That was one rough head-on strike there.”

  And if the Hero was willing to admit it, Maou thought, that showed how overwhelming Erone’s strength must have been.

  “…But look, Alas Ramus, you really shouldn’t be putting away my sword like…”

  Then Emilia gasped, still in midconversation with her child.

  “Wh-what is it?” Chiho asked.

  “He’s… ‘Gebba’? You mean that Erone kid?”

  “What’s up?” Maou asked. Emilia turned to him, the surprise evident on her face.

  “I think…Erone might be the same kind of thing as Alas Ramus.”

  “Eh?”

  Maou wasn’t alone in his shock. Suzuno, Chiho, even Sariel—they were all gasping for breath.

  “Alas Ramus isn’t being too specific, so I can’t be sure…”

  Despite the summer heat inside Sariel’s otherwise isolated barrier, the group could feel a cold wind rush across all of their shoulders.

  “But I think Erone…was born from Gevurah, one of the Sephirah.”

  THE HERO AND THE DEVIL TAKE A STEP TOWARD A NEW DREAM

  “Okay, one more time!”

  “Um, S-Sariel, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m strong enough…”

  “Don’t be silly! Time isn’t going to wait for us! Bell! The phone!”

  “Ugh… I do hope this will work out…”

  “Whoa, whoa, hang on, guys. Chiho just said this is too tough for her. We’ve been at this for two hours straight! Give her some rest already!”

  “Silence, you limp-wristed Devil King! It is not up to her to decide what her limits are!”

  “Dude, if she can’t figure those out for herself, then what can she do, huh?”

  “Enough! I am finding the limits of my own composure tested frequently by your lily-livered whining!”

  “Al-cell! No pickin’ on Looshifer!”

  “Don’t spoil Lucifer, Alas Ramus.”

  “Uh, dude, shouldn’t that be the other way around? I’m the one being spoiled?”

  “Now, Chiho Sasaki! I want you to summon your voice from the bottommost depths of your stomach! Here we go!”

  “At, at least let me have some water first…”

  “Knock it off, you stupid angel! Are you tryin’ to kill Chi?!”

  “She may be killed indeed if we cannot succeed at this! The pains of today will bear the fruits of tomorrow, before ultimately blossoming into the return of my goddess! Come on! Focus for me!”

  “Nobody’s talking about killing her, man!”

  “Erm… Lord Sariel, I think a small break might be advisable…”

  Inside the large gymnasium, Chiho was about to falter at the hands of Sariel’s Spartan-style training.

  They were at the Hatagaya Sports Center, a public gym not far from Sariel’s condo—around a fifteen-minute walk from the Hatagaya MgRonald. It boasted a standard-sized indoor track, a heated pool in the basement, and facilities for martial arts, as well as rental space for local events and sports education. Maou and crew had reserved the biggest of the center’s public spaces, large enough for two full-sized basketball courts, for six straight hours. Their goal: to beat the full powers of the Idea Link into Chiho’s brain, co
me hell or high water.

  “Yaaaaaaaggggggg…koff! Hakkh…”

  “So be it!” Sariel grumbled dolefully. “Ten-minute break!”

  “That’s too short! Give her half an hour, at least!”

  “Silence, Devil King! What are you, this girl’s parental guardian or something?!”

  “Well, yeah, I kinda am right now! I have a duty to make sure Chi stays safe!”

  “If the two of you are going to mindlessly squabble with each other, can you do it over in the corner?” Emi asked. “All right, good… You doing okay, Chiho?”

  “Um… I think I… Hakkk!”

  Chiho had a courageous smile on her face, but it wasn’t enough to keep her from choking on the words.

  “That is a fine effort, Ms. Sasaki,” Ashiya said from next to Emi, offering Chiho a towel and a bottle of water. Chiho accepted them with a groan.

  “Hmph. I am running low. Emilia, let me borrow the charger, please.”

  “Hooph… Oh… Let me borrow it, too koff koff!”

  With things simmering down, Suzuno and Chiho began charging their phones.

  “Hey! You can’t charge your phones in ten minutes!”

  “Then perhaps we could do some basic concentration training until they are charged…”

  “Dude, come on!”

  Remarkably, it had been Sariel who’d suggested a gym for this project. Once he learned about Chiho’s training efforts, he suggested the site would be the most ideal for them, given how shouting and roughhousing was fairly normal behavior in gyms, and it would give the spellcasters the space to fully devote themselves to their practice. Maou didn’t believe him at first, but reluctantly agreed once Suzuno called Sariel’s training regimen “sound in principle.”

  Still, this was late summer. The non-air-conditioned gym was akin to a sauna. Just standing in it made the humans and demons break out in a sweat. Between that and all the physical effort Chiho had to devote to refining her holy force, even a club athlete like her couldn’t hide her fatigue.

  In a nutshell, Sariel suggested a little mobile-phone–based image training. The core concept of the Idea Link was summed up in its name—the sharing of concepts in one’s mind, via a link between two people. For it to work, the caster had to understand, both in body and in soul, that it was actually possible to transmit one’s thoughts to another person without opening one’s mouth.

  The human soul instinctively understood that any regular person could not accurately convey their will to others without the power of speech, or at least some pretty determined gesturing. Breaking down that mental barrier proved surprisingly difficult. Just because you wanted to eliminate a core concept etched into your mind didn’t mean you could simply wish it away.

  In Ente Isla, overcoming this block began with two casters touching foreheads in order to plant the image of communicating across minds into them. Sariel substituted cell phones for that mnemonic instead. This was because conversing with someone over the phone—with someone whose face you couldn’t read—often presented very real obstacles to making one’s intentions clear. It shared that in common with the Idea Link, a spell where you linked with any given person too far away to be visible and exchanged information with them. A very compatible core concept, in other words, one every modern Japanese person had etched in their minds.

  Thus, they began with Chiho calling Suzuno. Then, they drew farther and farther away until they could no longer physically hear each other’s voices. Once they were far enough, they’d attempt to communicate with their minds over the phones, picturing themselves physically linked through the cell signal. The exact way Emi harnessed the Idea Link to converse with Emeralda, in other words.

  Chiho was proving to be an apt pupil, one whose holy-force activation skills astonished even Sariel, but using that skill for spellcasting purposes was another challenge entirely. Plain Jane telepathy was one thing, but casting one’s own voice into the spell was an even more difficult task. That was why, even with all her activation skills, Chiho struggled to convey her thoughts through an open connection just from one wall of the gym to the other.

  “I-I’m fine, Maou. I need to keep working on this…”

  “There! See? You heard it from the girl herself! Do not rob this young human of her chance to improve, Devil King. Now, sit over there in the corner and contemplate the depths of your sins for me!”

  “Why the hell do I have to sit here and listen to you—agghh?!”

  “All right, all right, that’s enough from you. For once in his life, Sariel’s got a point.”

  “Daddy, Chi-Sis is tryin’ real hard! Don’t be mean!”

  “No, I’m…I’m not angry at Chi or anything… G-get your hands off my collar! You’re gonna choke me!”

  Chiho inhaled deeply as she watched Emi and Alas Ramus drag Maou away for her. Then, she began to sing.

  “Welcome to a new morrrrrniiiiing!! A morning filled with hope for alllllll!!”

  “Oh?”

  “Hmm… I like it.”

  Urushihara and Sariel both looked at Chiho, duly impressed.

  “Guess it doesn’t matter how you release your mind, long as you do it, huh?”

  “I suppose not. This is quite a surprise.”

  As she sang, Chiho released a bolt of holy force, one not at all inferior to her physical voice just before. In fact, if anything, the magic seemed a bit more refined than if she had just shouted it out.

  “I practiced it with Church hymns, myself,” Emi said, fingers still clasped around Maou’s collar. “But you didn’t teach her that yet, right?”

  Suzuno nodded in agreement. “But,” she said, her lowered eyebrows tempering her obvious pride in Chiho’s creative skills, “why’re you singing the song from the morning-calisthenics bit they play on the radio?”

  “Oh, you know that one, Suzuno?” came the surprised reply from Chiho.

  “I recall hearing it on MHK when I rise in the morning. They have an extended piece in the summer, if I recall.”

  “Well, I figured it’d be good for this. It always makes me feel better, hearing it. And plus, being on radio’s kind of a match for what we’re trying to accomplish, right?”

  “Oh, is that what it is? I never seriously thought much about the lyrics before.”

  “A new morning, huh…?” the still-bedraggled Maou muttered to himself as he shot a look at Emi.

  “Is that all there is to it?”

  “No, there’s a second verse, I think! Umm…”

  Chiho paused as she checked her memory, then began to sing anew. The past two hours of voice training were worth it, after all. Chiho’s singing voice echoed attractively across the gym. Shining trees rustling under the new morning. Stretch your arms and legs high, then stamp down on the ground. Keep your legs limber every morning with MHK Radio 1. Now, touch your toes against the ground, one, two, three… Something about the joy Chiho put into it made the benign exercise song seem like a love-laden ballad.

  “Hmm,” Maou reflected. “I like it.”

  “I know, right?!” Chiho beamed, excited at her new powers. “My friends all say it’s lame and embarrassing and stuff, but…”

  The thing was, Chiho’s acquiring the Idea Link spell was about all that linked Emi and her friends with the Maou contingent. All this was happening only because there was a nonzero chance that the one supreme unwritten law between them—“don’t get Chiho involved in Ente Isla drama”—was in danger of being broken. Engaging in this training, and getting Sariel involved in it, was wandering into unexplored and treacherous territory.

  But it was also the destination at the end of the path Maou and Emi had chosen for themselves. It clashed against the thanks they had for Chiho, and all the regret and desire to help she felt in her heart, and it made their own hearts waver.

  The night of the encounter with Farfarello and Erone, an emergency conference—one that even Sariel received an invite to—was held in Devil’s Castle. Having this gaggle of uninvited guests show u
p at his door late at night all but terrified Ashiya, but he nonetheless reluctantly prepared tea for the whole gang under orders from Maou. His choice of beverages for everyone—cold green tea for Maou and Chiho, blazing hot tea for everyone else, Urushihara included—symbolized, perhaps, his approach to Great Demon General diplomacy.

  “Ooh, this is nice!” Chiho said, enjoying the chill of her drink. It was a nice thought, but a token one. Between the heat and the population density around Maou’s table, the atmosphere was beyond oppressive. In a space of just over one hundred square feet, after all, there were two demons, one archangel, one fallen angel, a Hero, a Church cleric, and a teenage girl.

  In terms of the faces in attendance alone, this was a historical (albeit cramped) summit of intergalactic proportions. In practice, Ashiya, too tall to find space to sit, was forced to lean against the kitchen counter instead.

  Maou decided to begin by summarizing the late events around Hatagaya station to Ashiya and Urushihara. Among the highlights, the most noteworthy was undoubtedly the fact that the boy Erone might be born from a Sephirah, albeit a different one from Alas Ramus. What made things so confusing was that this Erone was accompanied by the demon Farfarello—practically his servant, even. This marked the first time in history that a Sephirah, not just a Yesod fragment, was directly involved with events in Ente Isla. Amane Ohguro mentioned something about being a “Binah” of Earth, but despite how much of a total mystery she still remained, it seemed doubtful she was at all involved with this twisty web of Ente Islan intrigue.

  The suggestion soon came up that it was all a case of mistaken identity on Alas Ramus’s part. “But there’s no way she’d make a mistake about something so important to her,” Emi shot back, as the girl herself rapidly nodded off in her arms. “I mean, she pulled my holy sword back into her body, like, completely by herself. And besides, if he wasn’t something like that, then no way could he stop a blade that cut right through Durandal with his bare skin, no matter how weak my swipe was.”

  “True,” Suzuno added, one hand placing pressure on the elbow she wrenched on the rebound from Erone’s battering-ram blow. “I hesitate to believe it, but if Erone is the Sephirah known as Gevurah, that would explain several things I observed during the battle… Ahh, this will ache for quite a while. Gevurah is associated with the number five, rubies, iron ore, the color red, and the planet of the god of war. It wields the power of the gods, and its guardian angel is known as Camael. Even its hair resembles Alas Ramus’s—dull gray, the same color as its associated metal ore, with a single lock of red.”