THE DEVIL AND THE HERO STAND STRONG IN SASAZUKA
“Not you again. This early in the morning? Look, I have work today, so could you let me sleep some more?”
It was hardly that early. Emi, after all, had left the same time Rika went off to work.
Rika tried to stop her, suggesting she take another day to rest. But she didn’t want to cause too much trouble for her friend, and the thoughts she dwelled upon over the previous night had driven her to room 201 of the Villa Rosa Sasazuka apartments as quickly as she could manage.
Since her own clothes were bloodied, she borrowed a blouse from Rika. She wore the same suit and shoes from the night of the accident as she clambered the Villa Rosa staircase and mashed a finger on the doorbell.
She expected that Maou might not exactly heave the door wide open for her, so she had an excuse in hand—a brown paper envelope she purchased from the convenience store. It was enough to capture Maou’s notice as he cracked the door open, still not ready to remove the chain.
“Don’t worry. There isn’t poison or a razor blade inside or anything.”
“I don’t think I’ve received anything from you I didn’t regret.”
“Oh, well, in that case, I think I’ll just keep this thousand yen—”
Maou snatched the envelope away.
“Okay, we’re even now.”
“Hey! I thought we promised you’d stop interfering with us for a while.”
“I think me rescuing you from the cops more than makes up for that.”
“Ugh, you stupid little—”
Emi interjected before Maou could finish his evaluation.
“Yesterday!”
“Uh?”
“Was Ashiya…I mean Alciel all right?”
A look of clear suspicion crossed Maou’s face.
“Did you get clocked in the head or something last night?”
“We’re talking about him, not me. He wasn’t hurt or anything?”
She knew this was an inelegant way of picking his mind. But there was no other way to broach the topic.
“No, no injuries. Major blow to his ego, though.”
The look of suspicion remained on his face.
“And he didn’t turn back into his demon form or anything, either.”
“Ah…!”
“What? Isn’t that what you were asking about?” Maou snorted at Emi, who was unable to hide the shock. The confrontational tone drained from her voice.
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“Well, what if I said he was a demon? Would you bust in here and kill us?”
“I…”
Maou continued, not expecting a useful response.
“He could tell I reverted back, too, for a little while. He spent all night crying about ‘Ooooh, I failed to serve my liege at his hour of need,’ et cetera, et cetera, and now he’s sleeping in this morning. What the hell am I gonna do for breakfast now?”
Ashiya had remained staunchly human. Internally, this disturbed Emi.
Rika’s monologue suggested to her that Maou regained his demon form temporarily because his body had consumed the terror and anguish from the nearby survivors, converting it into magical force.
If that theory proved true, Maou could have used the power he had before yesterday to summon any manner of disaster. Say, an earthquake strong enough to make an underground corridor collapse. And he could repeat the process, continually feeding off the negative emotions of his victims, until the Devil King Satan finally resurrected himself. And if this was Maou’s plan, there was no reason for him to hesitate any longer.
Satan, in his conquest of Ente Isla, was a cruel, merciless tyrant, one who thought of a human being’s life as no more consequential as that of a blade of grass. It was easy to picture him immediately moving to take action.
So she flew to his squalid apartment in a state of half panic…and found the same dopey-looking face peeking out behind the crack in the door, whining about how he needed to be on time for his shift. What was this Devil King thinking, going on with his human life? It was beyond Emi’s comprehension.
His next question brought Emi into an even higher plane of bewilderment.
“But, hey, were you all right? I saw your forehead. And you used some of your power when you put Chi to sleep, didn’t you?”
“…What?”
Emi froze on the spot.
“What are you…saying?”
“What do you mean, what am I saying? I’m just asking if you’re okay. Your power isn’t back, right?”
The easy explanation would be that she had suddenly, inexplicably, failed to comprehend the Japanese language. If only it were that easy.
“Are you being…serious?”
“What? Am I not allowed to be concerned about people?”
Maou acted honestly peeved as he fired back.
Emi could feel the blood drain from her face. She felt sick. What could this man possibly be saying to her?
She was gripped by an intense loathing, one far stronger than what rose up upon her first encounter with Maou and Ashiya in Japan. It was almost the same hatred as she felt the day she learned of her father’s death.
“I am not so weak…that my enemy should be concerned for me.”
That was all she could say, at the end of it.
“Oh?…Yeah, I guess so, huh?”
That was all the response Maou had to offer.
“Anyway. If that’s all you needed, you mind leaving me alone?”
“With pleasure.”
Emi quickly turned to make her exit. She wanted to feel out Maou a bit more, in hopes he’d drop a clue to the riddle behind his transformation. But if she stayed here any longer, she honestly wasn’t sure what the disgust bubbling within her chest would make her do.
Maou looked on, concerned, as she left. Whether he understood her feelings or not, he plainly found her behavior puzzling. Suddenly, something sprang to his mind.
“H-hey! Emi!”
But Emi showed no sign of stopping, in a hurry to leave as quickly as possible.
“You’re gonna slip if you—”
He wasn’t quite able to relay the intended message before the moment came. The sound of corrugated iron panels loudly scraping against each other greeted his ears.
“Ah!”
That was all the reaction Maou heard from Emi.
The corrugated-iron stairway structure, replete with peeling paint and visible rust, had long been tilting to the side, the result of long years of supporting itself against the wind, rain, and weight of time. It had achieved an odd concave shape, just barely skirting legal regulations.
A soundless scream was heard as the weight so cruelly placed upon these stairs consumed its potential energy and tumbled to the ground.
“—if you go downstairs in those heels.”
Maou finally completed the sentence once the noise died down.
A sulky-looking Ashiya, wearing a jersey he had lying around on the floor, opened the cabinet that held their first-aid kit.
Atop a stack of job-search magazines bound with twine in the corner, Emi sat staring into space, unable to figure out where to direct her emotions any longer.
Considering she had slipped the moment she set foot on the first step, her injuries were miraculously light. Unfortunately, her suit, which had survived intact up to this point, was now a ragged mess of dirt and tearing. One of the pumps that flew off her feet landed right on a concrete-block flagstone, adding a patchwork of scratches to the external leather.
As for Emi herself: One sprained finger, caused by reaching out and jamming it against the handrail. Bruising on her buttocks, which was the first to hit the stairs. A scrape to the bridge of her nose, as she landed facedown below.
Overall, far more serious than the damage she took from an entire underground corridor collapsing upon her.
“My… The Hero Emilia had the Devil King—in a different form, yes, but still the Devil King!—cornered in his lair once, and now she’s been roughed up by falling down the stairs of our apartment? A black mark on His Demonic Highness more than anyone, perhaps, but…”
The impact on her forehead also reopened the wound from the previous night. Blood was beginning to show on the bandage, making its way past the gauze below. The dressing itself had turned brown from the dirt and would need a change shortly. Ashiya, however, looked dejected as he showed the emergency kit to the Devil King.
“Nothing in here but adhesive tape. We did buy gauze and so forth somewhere else, no?”
“Maybe. We weren’t planning on anything as rough as this. We’ll probably have to go buy some stuff. Hey, Ashiya, you mind going out to the pharmacy by the rail station and buying bandages and gauze? They oughtta be open by now. I don’t want this girl yelling at me even more.”
“Yes, my liege. May I be permitted to borrow Dullahan from you? I have other shopping to take care of as well.”
“Permission granted. Hey, if you got that much money on you, why don’t you cook something better for me?”
“I am afraid, Your Demonic Highness, that your spending habits are such that I have to build my own stash and save my money carefully. I will return soon.”
Maou snorted derisively as he heard Ashiya, still wearing the morning’s jersey, pedal off.
“You better get that disinfected for now, at least. I have some stuff over here, so let’s get that washed and…”
Maou sat down in front of Emi, wet towel in hand. Emi, snapping out of her torpor, snatched it from his hand.
“D-don’t touch me! I’m not a child! I can do it myself!”
“Sure, sure, sorry. Tissues are over there.”
The box of tissues that Emi had flung at Maou still laid where it fell. She wiped the dirt from her nose and forehead, then used another tissue to apply the disinfectant. Then, she was struck by a crushing wave of sadness.
“What, does it sting?”
“No!”
Emi answered Maou’s simple question by throwing the bottle of disinfectant, lid still open, full bore at him.
“Whoa! What was that for?”
“Shut up! What is with you, anyway?! You’re the Devil King, you idiot! Why don’t you act like one and start wrecking this world already?!”
“Huh? Where’d all that come from?”
Maou was honestly surprised, unsure what Emi was trying to say. Emi continued shouting.
“What?! Who the hell ever heard of a dirt-poor, junk-food-eating, rising-star-in-the-workplace, loved-by-teenage-girls Devil King?!”
“Ngh…”
Maou was taken off guard by this astute observation, but quickly rallied. “Well, I’ve never heard of a Hero who started crying after falling down the stairs and had a demon fix her up!”
“And what kind of Devil King sends his minion off to the pharmacy for the Hero’s sake?! And what kind of Great Demon General actually says yes to that?!”
“Ergh…”
Emi began shouting like a toddler, unable to process her raging emotions.
“Why are you so damn kind to me?!”
The screamed question hit Maou where it hurt.
“Why are you kind to me, to other people, to the whole world?! How can… How can you be so nice all the time?!”
Maou was at a loss to answer. The unexpected sharpness of the query stabbed directly into his heart.
“And if you can be so nice…then why… Why…”
Emi shouted through the tears.
“Why did you kill my father?!”
The scream made the apartment’s wooden frame shudder. The moment of silence afterward seemed even more deafening.
Emi sobbed, out of breath. Maou stood there, unable to give any response.
“The…the Devil King I pursued was a malicious monster! He treated people like they were nothing more than insects! He loved nothing more than the despair, the blood that ran across the world!”
“I—”
“You turned our fields into gigantic firestorms! You crushed our castles with your lightning! You washed away entire towns with your floods! You allowed your horde of demons to perform any kind of savage brutality they wanted! Devil King Satan! Even when you die, I will never forgive you! You took my home, my father’s fields, my father’s life, my peaceful, quiet childhood…! Everything! And I’ll never forgive you!”
“Emi, I—”
“But why… Why are you…being so nice to me…?”
It was clear that Maou’s mental makeup had veered considerably away from his time on Ente Isla.
He was a tyrant back then. Even now, he remembered how he treated the world as his personal plaything and resolved to eradicate the human race from all the land. That desire, at least, was still there. So why was he presenting no resistance to the idea of living a comfortable life in a human-dominated world?
“I…I haven’t really thought deeply about it.”
Maou, unable to formulate a clear answer in his mind, forced the words out anyway.
“But…well, sorry, I guess.”
“… …”
Emi did not reply. Instead she looked up with her red, tear-moistened face at the man in front of her, mouth open as she stared.
His approach was casual, but Maou was apologizing from the heart.
“I mean, I didn’t know anything about any Hero at first. I was busy taking over the Central Continent and controlling my demon forces, so I guess I didn’t really pay full attention to what was going on, over on the surrounding islands… Well, I don’t mean to shift the blame to Lucifer, either, though. But what could I have done? Demons and humans… Well, we’re always in conflict with each other.”
He was clearly frustrated with himself. His eyes swiveled from one point in the air to the next, gesturing as he tried his hardest to formulate a decent excuse.
“Plus, you know, at the time, I guess I didn’t really understand humans all that well, so…”
Emi was not expecting Maou to come up with much, but this reaction was wholly unexpected. She turned her reddened face to the side, the realization that she had exploded in front of Maou filling her with shame.
“Hello, I was—”
That was the scene so suddenly interrupted by a familiar voice. Emi and Maou quickly turned toward the door. Ashiya walked in, as if guided inside, and behind him was Chiho, frozen as she noticed the state Emi and Maou were in.
Ashiya was just as lost himself, forgetting to close the door as he witnessed the scene.
Chiho, in her scarlet-tinged school outfit, was holding a paper bag printed with the logo of a Japan-style sweet shop located inside a Shinjuku department store.
“Uh, I…I ran into Miss Sasaki there, and she stated she wanted to meet with you, and so…”
Ashiya stammered out his explanation, pharmacy bag still in hand. After a moment standing there in shock, Chiho dropped the bag she was holding. Judging by the heavy clank, one could figure the bag contained a can of senbei rice crackers, not that it mattered right now.
Maou could guess what was running through Chiho’s mind.
Probably, she still felt bad about last night. Not only did she get Maou caught up in a disaster, but her selfish request had also led to repercussions in his personal life.
So to make up for it, she dressed up in her finest outfit and decided to stop by with something to snack on as a gift. By modern teenager standards, it was a tremendously polite gesture.
And then she ran into Ashiya, his roommate, near his apartment. Chiho hadn’t exactly had a deep conversation with Ashiya yesterday, but he knew who she was, and she knew he was at the disaster site. And Ashiya, ever the gentleman, must have kindly escorted her up the stairs.
As attentive to detail as Ashiya always was, he had doubtlessly told her of Emi’s morning visit. Chiho must have accepted the news well enough, given that she was here now.
So he came in expecting an injured Emi. Not a sobbing, red-faced Emi, along with a panicked-looking Maou trying his hardest to make excuses. It was simple to picture how she would gauge that situation. What’s more, thanks to her trip down the stairs, Emi’s suit was more than a little ripped and damaged. All of this raced across Maou’s mind in the course of a single second.
The nervous step backward Chiho gingerly took turned all of this guesswork into confirmed belief.
“Uh… Ha-ha! M-maybe, uh, this isn’t the best time…” she stammered.
“Ch-Chiho…”
Emi, no doubt reaching the same conclusion as Maou, rose up in a panic, realizing that Chiho was misunderstanding the scene in dramatic fashion.
“I guess it’s true…that…Maou and…Yusa… They really are.…”
Chiho’s knees were shaking. Her eyes were emotionless, but the smile on her face was taut and fraying at the edges.
This was turning into a serious misunderstanding.
“N-no, Chiho, that’s not it at all! This is…”
“Chi, listen, just calm down for a…”
“I-I’m sorry!”
Not willing to lend an ear to Emi’s and Maou’s wholly ungrounded excuses, Chiho spun herself around and galloped out. Her school-uniform loafers kept her safe as her footsteps clanged their way downstairs. The three of them listened on, still frozen.
“That was…bad, wasn’t it?”
Emi muttered the words flatly, the soul removed from her body. Maou turned his face upward, a hand covering his eyes.
“P-perhaps we should pursue her and get this straightened out?”
Ashiya took a look around the area beneath the stairwell. There was already no sign of Chiho.
Snatching the pharmacy bag from the nervous, twitching Ashiya, Maou threw it at Emi. She caught it instinctively.
“Look, just go home, okay? Nothing good ever happens when you’re near me!”
There was no responding to his verbal and physical abuse.
The unexpected Chiho factor had drained all the tenseness from the apartment.
“Oh, dear, Mr. Maou, that wasn’t very mature.”
That was why even Ashiya, still frozen near the open door, didn’t notice at first.
“Picking on a woman like that! This isn’t grade-school recess, you know.”
“Aaaghh!!”
He had failed to realize until that instant that a pillar of gold was standing behind him.
“M-Ms. Shiba!”
Her long, medieval-styled, marigold-print dress shone in the morning light. A peacock feather, painted a bright golden color, stuck out of her wide-brimmed hat, the same color as the dress. Her golden hair, reminiscent of French nobility, reflected the sun’s rays atop her body. She carried a bright yellow handbag with elegant handles that resembled strings of pearls, and she completed the package with a shawl replete with lime-green lamé strands, white enamel heels, and false eyelashes that resembled a field of grass growing on the seabed, so long that even the most egregious shojo manga artist would run for the hills if asked to draw them that length. She was Miki Shiba, the owner of the apartment, and she had appeared without a sound.
It was Ashiya’s outcry that finally made Maou and Emi notice the corn-on-the-cob-shaped landlord behind him. The golden light around her seemed to form an enormous yellow halo as they basked in her presence.
“This your girlfriend I assume, Mr. Maou?”
The gravelly voice seemed to belong to a woman fairly on in years, but Shiba’s wine-barrel-sized frame readily foiled any attempts to guess her true age.
“My name is Miki Shiba, and I’m the landlord here at Villa Rosa Sasazuka. It’s good to meet you!”
Emi squinted, as if trying to see through the glorious sunlight in front of her. Nodding back was the best she could manage.
“Feel free to call me Mikitty, by the way.”
“Uh, sure…”
There was no other response to give.
“I had come to visit, Mr. Maou, Mr. Ashiya, in order to inform my tenants of certain upcoming matters…but I see you are both rather occupied at the moment?”
With these overly prying words, she handed a piece of paper over to Ashiya, offering a whiff of her elegant perfume as her arm extended forward.
“But regardless. We have had quite a spate of earthquakes as of late, no? I’ve felt it necessary to perform seismic reinforcement on this residence, so I came to inform you of some construction work in the future.”
While this had been the case since they first met, for some reason, Maou had trouble dealing with his landlord. He didn’t mind the sassy, cheesy extravagance at all, but for some reason, his internal demonic sixth sense always told him that Shiba was a lady not to be defied at any cost.
The piece of paper contained a schedule for the reinforcement work, a notice that residents would need to vacate the property for a one-day period, and another notice that this would not change their monthly rent. The landlord’s seal was on the bottom, alongside a glossy, golden kiss mark. Maou made a conscious effort not to let his reaction to this show.
“But, there has certainly been quite a few earthquakes, hmm? Especially lately.”
Shiba made the casual observation as she sidled up to Maou.
“Y-yeah…”
“In fact, I wonder if we’ll have another one today, even.”
“I…I couldn’t say.”
“And speaking of that, on my way here, I happened across a charming young woman running down the road. Crying the whole way, I may add!”
She smiled as she leered at all three of the apartment’s residents simultaneously. It was a fairly impressive physical feat. “I believe she was heading for Sasazuka station as well…”
It was that instant.
“Did it…shake just now?”
Only the ever-elegant Miki Shiba chose not to nod her head in response.
“Mr. Maou?”
“Uh.”
“If you’ve involved her in this, I would hope a young man would see matters through to the end, hmm?”
“Wh-what do you…”
Maou was thrown into confusion, unable to comprehend his landlord. But as he stood there, the shaking grew stronger and stronger.
“Y-Your Demonic Highness! Th-this shaking!”
Ashiya was shouting.
“Chiho!”
“Did you honestly think that charming young woman receiving an idea link and being subject to that sonar strike was a complete coincidence, then?”
A single sentence was all it took from the landlord to turn the others into stone.
“I would think that you, of all people, would understand the power behind people’s thoughts and wills. Perhaps you had best hurry, before it is too late?”
There was something lurking underneath that thick makeup. But what?
“See? You can hear it, no?”
A loud rumble coursed across town.
“Argh, I feel horrible! I think I’m gonna get Gate-sick!”
“Please try not to vomit if you caaaaan…”
“No guarantees, man! Erp…”
“Hang in there, pleeease! I doubt we’ll have time to relax once we reach the other side.”
“Uh? You catchin’ something over there? Grhh…”
“A man-made magical reaction, picked up by our sonar readings. It’s far too large to be purely the latent magic of ‘Japan.’”
“So Emilia’s in trouble?”
“Possss-ible! We may need to prepare for battle!”
“Right! Let’s hurry! I can take this!”
“Yes, sir! On our waaaaaay!”
“Oooogh! Stop making it shake so much!”
Chiho sprinted at full speed, crying. Whatever Maou and Emi had to say, that was not the kind of situation she had the wherewithal to calmly pick her way through.
I really do like Maou.
But I’m just a new girl on the job, someone he’s only just met. I can’t do anything about the history Maou and Emi Yusa have between them.
It had to have been my first love. With Maou, I was full of spirit; I had a drive, a goal I could push to achieve with him. The high school boys, all mooching off their parents and partying all night; they’re nothing compared to him.
He wasn’t particularly tall or handsome, but Chiho had still fallen in love with him.
Now that was gone, her heart ripped into a million pieces, and she had no idea what to do. So she ran as hard as she could, plunging into the crowd around Sasazuka station, running into an electric pole, tripping over a parked bicycle, colliding head-on with a pedestrian.
“S-sorry!”
She apologized, too ashamed to bring her head upward.
“Oooh, this looks like a good one.”
The voice, coming from a head or so taller than Chiho, was ringed with a bitter coldness wholly unfamiliar to Chiho’s ears.
“I had been following you since that last mistake, but I didn’t think you would be caught up in despair for them so easily.”
It was a young man, on the small side. He looked normal enough—long, flowing hair, T-shirt, and jeans. He couldn’t have been much older than Chiho, either.
But what about those eyes? Those purple eyes, with pupils that seemed to shine a rainbow of ominous colors that Chiho had never seen before?
“Chiho Sasaki. Allow me to take that hatred and despair the Devil King and the Hero brought to you, and make it a reality!”
They were in the middle of the midmorning Sasazuka bustle. Two people stopped in the middle of it caused a traffic situation in and of itself.
“Hey, get outta the way!”
A young, fashionably dressed man drowsily warned the stranger, placing a hand on his shoulder.
“…!”
Suddenly, the T-shirt ripped itself apart in the area the hand touched him. The young man was blown away by the thing that popped out of his shoulder, plowing into a line of parked bikes.
“Ahh…!”
Chiho let out a scream, deep within her throat. Other passersby stared at the man, unable to fathom what had just happened.
It was a wing. A set of large, jet-black wings, jutting out from this person’s back.
“The hunt has begun. Today, I will surpass the Devil King for good.”
At that moment, an elevated Keio rail line collapsed, the victim of a mysterious explosion.
Maou and Emi ran, Ashiya a small distance behind them.
The rumbling they heard right after the explosion couldn’t have been caused by anything other than the influence of something magical.
Judging by the landlord’s warning, it was clear she was, to say the least, no ordinary person. But there was no time to get to the bottom of that.
“Hang in there, Chi!”
Maou kept running.
“Look!” Emi pointed ahead.
“…What in the world?!” Ashiya groaned to himself.
The rail line had fallen. The elevation bridge had collapsed to the ground, crushing the shopping mall adjacent to Sasazuka station. They could detect residual magic in the area, but this was nothing like the barriers Maou had impulsively built to rescue people.
Beyond the mess, on the Koshu-Kaido road, Maou could see two figures in the air, the Shuto Expressway spanning across the sky above.
The enemy no longer had any reason to hide themselves. The bystanders that had escaped harm stood off in the distance, staring at the rubble and the figures in the air.
“Them…!”
“Who…are they? How could they have…”
“How do you think?!”
Maou began to climb up the rubble, dodging the broken power lines and making his way past a mountain of detritus that was liable to collapse again at any moment. Emi and Ashiya followed behind.
There were two of them: a man flapping his giant wings as he carried something at his side; and another, this one floating in the air, the hood on his ghostlike robe covering his face.
As they surmounted the rubble, Maou detected something. Something returning to him once again. Why? He should have been overjoyed, but instead he found it disturbing. It wasn’t something he planned to regain this way.
A nagging thought like that never would have occurred to him during his demon-realm days. But now—
“Good to see you, Lucifer! Brought a new playmate with you?”
The winged figure in the air replied with a spate of dark laughter. “Well, well! The Devil King Satan! Or should I be referring to you as Sadao Maou instead? And how nice to see Alciel safe and sound!”
“Lucifer…? It couldn’t be…”
“N-no… Why are you here now…?”
Emi was at a total loss for words. Ashiya shook his head, unable to believe the sight before him.
Only Maou remained strong, his stern expression unchanged as he glared at the two floating figures.
Lucifer was the Great Demon General whom Emilia the Hero had slain first. The fallen angel who arose a demon. The general who governed the invasion and capture of Ente Isla’s Western Continent.
“How long has it been, Emilia the Hero…that is, Emi Yusa!”
“No… No way…”
“Oh, yes! Your sword may have pierced through my body, and yet I am here now, before you!”
The Great Demon General Lucifer sneered, the ominous black wings befitting his fallen-angel title. At his side, like a mother carrying around its kitten, he held an unconscious Chiho.
She did not appear to be injured. But why did he decide to capture her?
“All thanks to your new friend, isn’t it?” Maou nodded toward the hooded figure as he spoke. “When I retreated and sent a squadron over to the Western Continent to investigate, I still had no faith that you were dead. I never imagined in a thousand years the humans could defeat a Great Demon General, so the investigation was likely less thorough than it should have been…”
“And thanks to that, I survived.”
“Yeah. You weren’t a pure demon. Not like Alciel, Malacoda, and Adramelech. But with your heaven-born blood, I figured that capturing the Western Continent would have been a cinch, even if it was a Church stronghold. Too bad I was wrong.”
“Too bad indeed! I devoted my all to eradicating the humans on the island, to fulfill the mission granted to me. But…”
Lucifer turned his glare toward Emi. “But the Hero’s armies overwhelmed me. That much, you already know.”
“Would your friend mind telling me the rest?” Maou asked.
“Well?” Lucifer turned toward the floating robed figure next to him.
He laughed, as he seemed to give his partner a nod. “Certainly. I am—”
“—Olba Meiyer, one of the six archbishops of the Church?”
The man stopped cold at Maou’s prompt guess.
“…!” Emi’s mind was in utter disarray. The name was too familiar to her. “Olba? That’s a lie! Olba is my—”
“—your companion, who sent you to this world, then tried to eradicate both you and me. Right?”
“…You knew of that?”
The figure interjected, a tad crestfallen that the thunder was stolen from him as he raised his hood. It revealed a calm, benign-looking man, aged fifty or so. His tonsured head, the symbol of a high-level Church bishop, shone in the morning sun.
His pure white archbishop’s robe, embroidered with blue and silver thread, flapped in the strong wind blowing between the nearby buildings.
“Us demons, we practically invented evil, you know. I can always tell what a villain is thinking, start to finish. You’re the guy who was behind Emi when she entered the Gate, right? Once I heard that, I pretty much guessed the rest. No one else had the chance to take a shot at me and Emi.”
“No… No! Olba, why are you with Lucifer? You didn’t—”
“Everything began after Lucifer lost to you, Emilia.”
The archbishop Olba cracked a thin smile, his voice rising to crescendo as he prepared the epic tale he was about to spin.
“After you destroyed the demon forces, you didn’t want the Hero lording it over you, so you tossed her into another world and consulted with Lucifer while she was still powerless to do anything about it. Then you secretly wiped out the rest of the Hero’s crew in order to protect the vested interests of the Church. The end. Any corrections I need to make?”
Once again, Maou stole the limelight.
What’s more, judging by the way Olba’s mouth opened and closed in stunned silence, he had it right. Maou laughed a hideously mocking laugh.
“That scenario’s been done a thousand times before, baldy! You think this girl was gonna try becoming goddess of the universe or something? Even a low-budget B movie would come up with a better script than that.”
Maou nudged Emi as he spoke.
“Hey, stop that!”
Emi was still in a state of shock, but the nudge was all it took to bring her back to reality.
“…Baldy? B movie?”
Olba was shocked for different reasons.
“Um… Your Demonic Highness? I would hardly call him naturally bald.”
For some reason, Ashiya found it apt to defend him. Ignoring it, Maou defiantly stood before his two enemies.
“See, this is why I hate heaven. You people all say one thing and think the exact opposite. It’d be much more humane for everyone if we demons ruled the roost instead. I can probably guess how you got Lucifer on your side, too. Did you bait him with the chance to return to heaven?”
“H-how did you—!”
“Don’t ‘How did you’ me. Could you at least try to be a little original? I guess you were just B-movie caliber, too, Lucifer. Seeing you fall for this idiot makes me want to cry.”
“Y-you accursed devil!!” Olba’s voice cracked as he flew into a rage.
“If you’re gonna float up there, baldy, and start crying just ’cause I’m telling the truth, you really should have come up with a better script!”
The sheer abusiveness behind Maou’s seemingly never-ending invective left not just Olba and Lucifer open-mouthed, but Emi as well.
“And now you’re gonna be all like ‘Oh, nooooo, you have angered Lucifer! And you will not be able to flee like last time! Die where you stand alongside the Hero!’ That is so lame, man! Even the villain from some kid’s sentai show would come up with better lines than that!”
“What is a ‘sentai show’?! What are you going on about, you stupid idiot?! Plus, they kind of took Chiho hostage, remember?!”
Unable to take any more, Emi slapped Maou in the back of the head.
“You could at least know your place right now! They were both ready to confess all their evil deeds! So stop heckling them already!”
“Your Demonic Highness! When on earth did you have the chance to watch any movies?! Such a waste of money…”
Emi and Ashiya laid out upon Maou in tandem, albeit for somewhat unfocused reasons. Tears of frustration came to Maou’s eyes.
“Man, that hurt, you bastard! If I let them go first, you probably would’ve fainted from the shock, all right?! So I made a little effort to cushion the bad news for you instead! That, and come on, what’s a movie now and then gonna hurt?! I’m the one bringing home the bacon!”
Neither Emi nor Ashiya were willing to give in.
“I don’t need you fawning all over me like that!”
“I’ve wanted to stop playing househusband all day and enjoy a little entertainment too, you! But I held myself back!”
“Stop this! All of you!”
It took Olba shouting at the top of his lungs to halt the argument.
“I deigned to listen to you, and my reward is all this nonsensical blubbering? You will pay for this, Devil King Satan!!”
“That is so amateur hour, man. Couldn’t be more unoriginal if you tried.”
“Grrrnnnnhhhh…”
Olba’s face had reddened to the point where one could fry an egg on it.
“Hey, mind if I ask you a question, Archbishop Cueball?”
Maou picked at an ear as he spoke, flicking the results out to his side. “How many people did you attack in order to prop Lucifer’s magic levels up?”
“…!”
“Huh?!”
“Whaa?!”
“…You are perceptive indeed, Your Demonic Highness!”
Maou lowered his tone as he continued over the startled reactions of the other four.
“Lemme ask you, Emi… Where do all the gods and devils live in this land? In Japan?”
“What? I don’t know…”
“They’re inside the hearts of the people. Tell me you at least thought about that by now.”
“The hearts of…the people?”
“Yeah. The people of this nation aren’t ruled by their gods. They roll over to the evil side, or the holy side, with a snap of the fingers. Look at the divinity, and the evilness, you see in a person whenever they’re forced into extreme circumstances. That’s our source of power! The way we can gain power in this world!”
“It…is? Then…”
Maou nodded back, then turned his gaze back toward Lucifer.
“Seeing a demon in all his glory like that would make most people wet their pants. They’d be too scared to do anything. These are probably the guys behind that string of robberies.”
Emi turned to Olba, all but asking him to deny it. But Olba said nothing. How long had they been here? They couldn’t have gone without food or drink that entire time. How did they stay fed?
“That was why I reverted back to my old form a little bit yesterday. People were despairing their impending death all around me, and that forced its way into my body.”
There was still a part of Emi that begged for Olba to say it was all untrue. But, even so, she still couldn’t understand why Lucifer and Olba were working together.
“They sucked in all the negative energy, all the fear and sadness. All that power that drove the first magic sniper attack, and yesterday’s earthquake… How did they get all of that, hmm?”
Just then, Emi recalled the morning after the magic-blast attack, as well as the news she saw in Rika’s room. Her face wrinkled.
“So if you want to gain enough magical force to return to Ente Isla…”
“You have to cause a huge disaster! Sucking power out of one or two people isn’t gonna cut it.”
“No…”
“I kind of like this world, you know? It’s been a real fresh experience for me, being human. It’s been a good world to me, and I don’t want to screw it up like that. I want to take a different approach. So…”
With a grin on his face, Maou looked up at the two figures above him. “What next? Wanna do it here?”
He could tell that even this was enough to faze them.
“B-but, Devil King! Don’t you care about this girl at all? We’re fully aware of your relationship! We know you’ve been intimate!”
Maou had to laugh, resigned, at how plainly villainous Olba was acting. “Hey. Emilia the Hero. I really hate bishops, but I’ll tell you what I hate more, and that’s traitors.”
Emi’s gaze shot between Maou and Olba for a moment, but soon it was fixed entirely upon the archbishop.
“Yeah… I hate demons and traitors, too.”
“You sure about this? You’ve been saving that power for a while. If we fight here, you might never be able to get back.”
“Good things come to those who work earnestly.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
Emi flashed a bitter smile.
Maou smiled as well, as he gestured upward. “C’mon, let’s do this! I’ll pulverize both of you! And I’m gettin’ Chi back, too!”
The majestic, larger-than-life air he presented reminded his observers of a Devil King from another time.
“B-but, Your Demonic Highness!”
Ashiya, naturally, stepped in from behind to ruin the moment.
“We need to fully gauge our opponents. Unless we thoroughly understand why they chose this moment to suddenly unfurl this trap for us, it’ll be too dangerous to move things forward recklessly…”
“Sound advice, Alciel. Let me show you,” Lucifer said, his wings seeming to glow for an instant as he spoke.
There was a whoosh, followed by a short, cut-off groan. Maou and Emi turned around.
Ashiya was on the ground, blood spurting out of a wound on his left breast, as if he had been shot.
“A-Ashiya!” Maou screamed.
“My! Look at the force she belted out for his roommate Alciel as well! You must have plunged this girl into the depths of despair for me!” Lucifer’s smile was a sneer, his words pitying.
Seeing Ashiya bleeding on the ground caused panic to spread across the area in an instant. Even with the previous bridge collapse, a large audience was still looking up at Lucifer, demonstrating the uniquely Japanese lack of ability to sense danger. Lucifer muttered downward, not paying a moment’s notice to the fleeing throngs.
“Your immaturity will be your downfall. Imagine, such a small thing causing such vast, ballooning clouds of despair and sadness!”
“You…you’re going into Chi’s heart…”
Maou blinked helplessly.
“Negative feelings are so easy to control when they’re directed toward a unique target. I’ve grown able to fire bolts of magical power that will have a more punishing effect on the both of you, and only the both of you, than ever before. Watch!”
Lucifer’s wings glowed darkly for another moment. Countless streaks of light coursed toward the ground.
“Dammit…”
The sheer number, and their speed, was too much for a human’s weak legs to completely avoid. Clicking his tongue in frustration, Maou raised his arms, then brought them apart from each other. The streaks of light followed his hands’ direction, redirecting themselves toward a nearby building.
With an explosive rumble, every window in the multifloor edifice shattered, the people inside flying out like wasps from a fumigated nest.
“Devil King! Alciel’s…!”
Emi picked up the head of the completely immobile Ashiya. The blood showed no sign of stopping, and his skin was rapidly turning the shade of a sheet of paper. Bringing her hands to his neck and wrist, she found only a weak, rapid pulse.
“…Careless!”
“That’s the pot calling the kettle black, don’t you think?”
“Ngh!”
The second volley launched outward. Maou brought his hands upward in the same motion, but:
“Crap, I don’t have enough!”
“Whaaa?!”
There was still a small amount of magical power, borne from the nearby fear they encountered as they crossed the bridge rubble. But Maou had not actively tried to absorb it within himself. Diverting a single round of Lucifer’s mind-controlled magical bullets had made him run out of gas already.
Emi instinctively covered her head, unable to launch an antimagic protective wall with her holy force while covering for Ashiya at the same time.
The blasts Maou failed to divert thudded against the concrete.
“Whooaahhh!”
Maou’s scream was swallowed up by the asphalt dust thrown into the air by the explosion. The shock wave from the magical blast coursed across electric lines, poles, and buildings, and in an instant, Sasazuka station had transformed into something resembling a battlefield.
“Ha-ha-ha! I had no idea my first taste of destruction after my defeat at Emilia the Hero’s hands would feel so wonderful!” Lucifer’s howling laughter echoed across the area. Sasazuka station, its air choked with toxic dust, seemed like hell on earth.
The neighborhood had ceased to function as it once did, what with all the fleeing people, the people who had failed to flee in time, the impossible-to-imagine explosions, and the sheer, otherworldly bizarreness of the scene.
“Don’t get distracted, Lucifer! Our mission is to destroy Emilia and the Devil King!”
Lucifer sneered to his side at Olba, who was bellowing at him as he gauged the fight.
“You dare to butt in on my business?”
Olba flinched for a moment at the impact of Lucifer’s threat, but he kept his emphatic tone as he continued, sweat beading on his brow.
“Y-you haven’t forgotten that I am the one who controls the Gate which shall serve as your bridge to heaven?”
“…Damn you.”
Lucifer rolled his eyes in frustration, then turned them upon Chiho, still under one arm.
“You have nothing to worry about. As long as I have this girl, the Devil King and Emilia the Hero will never flee from us.”
Once the dust settled, the only thing left on the ground was Ashiya’s blood. Maou, Emi, and Ashiya were gone.
“Lucifer!”
“Calm yourself. They can store up as much power as they want, but they will never have enough to resist us. After them!”
The pair glided across the Sasazuka sky.
“What? That was all a bluff?!”
Maou and Emi were using the cover offered by an alley to escape from their airborne pursuers. But Ashiya was leaving a trail of blood dots as they carried him on their shoulders. It would be followed, no doubt.
“Well, what do you want from me? I used up pretty much all of my magic force, too.”
The potted plant in the garden they faced suddenly shattered with an enormous cracking sound.
“Did they shoot that?!”
“What do you think?!”
Unable to even turn around to see behind them, Emi dove behind an electric pole, while Maou hid in the eaves around a private residence. But, since they were carrying along the larger Ashiya behind them, it was akin to a bear hiding behind a laundry basket.
“Come on! Where’s all the bravado from before?!”
An enormous ball of magic crashed into the home Maou hid near, accompanied by Lucifer’s thundering voice.
“Uwaahh!” Maou and Ashiya were easily blown aside by the blast, not even able to attempt a clean landing.
“H-how could this be…?”
Emi was appalled at the sight of Lucifer, a demon with no qualms at all about collateral damage. If there was anyone inside the home that blast just leveled, there was no time to check.
“Let’s go!”
Maou still tried his hardest to flee, picking up Ashiya by himself, no longer even pretending to fight.
“Oh no you don’t!”
Lucifer made a gun with his hand, aiming it straight for Maou’s back.
“Look out!”
Emi’s shout came too late. The shot struck Maou at the edge of his shoulder, sending him to the ground with Ashiya.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow, owwww,” Maou hissed in pain. “This body’s so damn fragile! I always knew it was, but ugghhh, it totally is! Dammit! I don’t want to die!”
“What are you wailing about? You call yourself Satan, the Devil King?!”
Emi jumped out of her hiding place, putting Maou and Ashiya behind her as she glared at Lucifer.
“…Hmmm? Emilia? Are you trying to protect the lord of all demons?”
Lucifer laughed a chiding laugh. Emi ignored the bait.
“This isn’t what you’re fully capable of, is it, Lucifer?”
She had to buy time. They needed a grip on the battle situation. Ashiya was near death, and it was doubtful Maou could help the cause any longer.
More than anything, as long as Chiho remained ensconced under Lucifer’s arm, she couldn’t just strike wildly at him.
“…So?”
Lucifer didn’t deny Emi’s words.
“Those finger blasts, and these balls of magic… This isn’t the Lucifer I remember fighting.”
“…It is more than enough to bury the three of you now.”
Lucifer had opened the window a crack. Emi lunged at it.
“Any demon who acts like he has it in the bag always loses, in the end.”
“Yeah!” Maou interjected. “That’s the biggest lame trope in the—arrghh!”
Emi, not looking back at the wailing Maou, gave him a swift kick. He groaned in response.
“So, basically, you’re the same as I am. Neither of us can unleash their true force right now. And…”
Olba, for reasons known only to him, slowly followed behind Lucifer.
“…you can’t afford to waste energy, either, am I right? You are still a bishop, after all. Unlike Lucifer, you can’t just do something evil to restore your powers. You wish you had it so easy.”
Olba certainly could have heard her, but refused to respond.
“But even I lose my patience sooner or later. Emilia the Hero didn’t build that name getting beaten up over and over.”
“Wait! Don’t do it now—ooof!”
Emi’s back heel stopped Maou midsentence once again.
“You touched my foot, you perv!!”
“Is grabbing your foot because I wanted you to notice my bloodied husk on the street a crime punishable by a boot to the stomach?”
Maou staggered to his feet, but he was plainly not well. Ashiya, still balanced on his shoulders, was liable to make him collapse at any moment.
“…If you die, I’m leaving you here.”
“Don’t worry about that. If I let one of my own minions kill me, it’d be an embarrassment to my entire bloodline.”
With that, Maou suddenly grabbed Emi’s hand, pulled at it, and began staggering his way away.
“Wh-whoa! What’re you doing?!”
Maou’s arm was unexpectedly strong as it pulled Emi along. But this was no opponent he could flee from by tottering around with uneasy steps.
“What are you trying to do now? You cannot escape me.”
With an easy smile on his face, Lucifer shot Maou again. He fell as the blast tore through his leg.
There were screams around them as the bloodied trio vaulted into a wide-open intersection.
“Oww…”
“What are you doing?! Are you trying to die?!”
“Heh-heh… Does it look like I’m about to…?”
Emi tried to support the collapsed Maou, but Lucifer and Olba followed along, like a pair of vultures looming over their weakened prey.
“Heh-heh…”
“Stop laughing! Ugh, you make me sick! This isn’t a joke! If anyone’s killing the Devil King, it’s me! Why do I have to sit here and get killed right next to you?!”
Maou and Ashiya were sprawled out in a car lane on the street, neither moving a muscle.
By sheer luck, it was the exact intersection, restaurant and all, where Maou and Emi first encountered each other in Japan.
A finger blast from Lucifer scraped past Emi’s nose before smashing through Maou’s shoulder. The force of the shot sent both of them to the ground.
“Pathetic! This is the Devil King that stood tall above me? That had Ente Isla in the palm of his hand?!”
The pity in Lucifer’s smug laugh was almost palpable.
“…Hurry up! We can kill the both of them at once! I have to retain my powers for the Gate!”
Once Olba stopped speaking, he reached into his robe and pulled out…a pistol. Emi’s eyes opened wide at the sight.
Firearms, of course, were unheard of on Ente Isla. Either Olba or Lucifer must have come across one in this world.
Olba must have been an active participant in the string of street robberies, not to mention the first sniper attacks upon Maou and Emi.
During her journeys across Ente Isla, he was a humble servant of the Church, one who held the title of archbishop in high esteem and easily won the respect of his peers. With his heavenly powers and fatherly smile, he had provided Emilia and her friends with solace and comfort across their voyage. Now there was some other force behind that façade, one brandishing a deadly weapon at her. Emi—Emilia—gnashed her teeth in sadness and frustration.
What could have changed Olba so much?
The corrupted clergyman, paying no heed to Emi’s emotions, pointed the gun barrel toward the fallen pair.
Just then, Emi heard several sirens approaching from afar. The police and fire department must have started casing the area. Thousands of people must have witnessed Maou and Lucifer by the time they reached this intersection. Of course the authorities were called. But trying to take on Lucifer right now would only add to the victim count.
Maou took in the scene, as much as his rapidly fading mind could amid the blood loss and fatigue.
“…Good. Good. Now they’re probably gonna…”
His voice was too soft to be heard by anyone. Then:
“Emi, hold on.” He took the hand of the girl who had fallen, defeated, next to him.
“Mmm?”
A soft, white light enveloped Maou and Emi. By the time Lucifer’s magical blast and Olba’s bullet reached them:
“…He had enough power left to teleport them all?”
All that remained was the blood Maou and Ashiya shed. The three of them were gone.
“Lucifer!”
“…He waited for just this situation. He couldn’t have enough power left to go far. It’ll be easy to track him.”
“…Gah! You scared me!”
Emi was shocked that Maou used his teleportation magic without warning, but now was no time to chide him. They needed a grip on their situation.
They hadn’t gone far. In fact, they had simply returned to the area they first saw Lucifer, so his magical trail would no doubt be followed shortly.
What differed from before was the masses of typical Japanese onlookers (still no sense of danger at all!) and the police and fire vehicles tending to the victims caught up in Lucifer’s magical blasts.
“But…but what’re you trying to do, taking us here?”
This time, they truly had nowhere to go. They lacked the strength for it. Judging how their foes made quick work of that residence earlier, Maou and Emi knew they hadn’t hesitated for a moment to consider the innocent victims.
“…Hey! Don’t die on me! You okay?”
“… …”
Maou was breathing, but his face was completely white, likely due to the bleeding. Ashiya, meanwhile, was beyond white and into the realm of light blue, teetering on the brink of death.
“You didn’t come here for the ambulances, did you?”
“You…kidding me…?”
“Well, what, then?! If you just stay here, you’re both gonna die!”
“I…know.”
Borrowing Emi’s hand, Maou somehow forced himself to sit up.
“Just a little…more, I think.”
“Oh, you still have some kind of trick up your sleeve, now?”
A forlorn voice loomed over them. Looking up, they were greeted by the same sight as before: Lucifer and Olba floating below the towering Shuto Expressway. Teleporting this short distance away was nowhere near enough to lose them. They were at the end of their rope.
“Lucifer! We’re only attracting more witnesses with these delays!”
“Ah, you’re always so flinchy, Olba. If there are too many, I can always cull them down a bit.”
Emi shuddered. Lucifer’s magical power skyrocketed as he spoke those disquieting words.
“Wh-what’re you gonna do?!”
“Who can say? A terror bombing? Destroying the Shuto Expressway? Countless victims? I think it a good fit for this nation.”
Lucifer flashed an evil grin.
“But I don’t need the Devil King returning to life…the way he did underneath Shinjuku.”
A light zoomed past Emi.
“Ngh! Ah…”
The groan came from within Emi’s arms.
“Satan!!”
Lucifer’s blast of light had shot through Maou’s chest. A black hole opened up in his midsection, and the light flickered out of his pupils in an instant. The strength drained from the hand supporting Ashiya, collapsing his body to the ground.
“No! You’re the Devil King! Stay here for me!”
Maou leaned heavily upon Emi’s arms. She slapped his cheek several times, with no response.
“No! You’re kidding me! Come on, Satan!”
She tried to lay him down to perform CPR, but seeing the hole in his chest made her gasp and freeze on the spot. The area of the body where his heart was located had been cleanly pierced through. There was no way to revive him.
Lucifer watched the pair, a satisfied smile on her face.
“My work is done. You can have the girl back.”
He flung Chiho away from his arm like a wadded-up piece of paper.
“Chiho!”
Emi raised her tear-stained face, lunging toward her landing point, but:
“Ngh…”
Her fragile human body was capable of being crushed simply by having a girl land on it from several meters above. Emi’s leg, which was poised beneath the falling Chiho, was now twisted in assorted unlikely directions.
Lucifer, watching this unfold from up high, let a sadistic smile unfold over his face.
“It is time to complete my contract with you, Olba. I hope you will hold your end of the bargain.”
He opened his arms wide, to both sides of his body. Massive amounts of magical power, far more than the force that pulverized the house from before, flowed into his palms in a torrent.
“Wh-what’re…?!”
Emi, holding back the pain, looked up at Lucifer. But Lucifer wasn’t looking back. His eyes were on the Shuto Expressway above.
“Lucifer! Lucifer, stop!”
She shouted it from beneath Chiho, fully understanding his intentions. But it was nothing that could stop a Great Demon General.
“…Such a beautiful voice. Go ahead. Sing a beautiful chorus for me, alongside the roar of destruction and the screams of despair, until the end finally arrives!”
He unleashed his balls of magic toward an expressway bridge support.
“Farewell, Emilia the Hero! You will follow in the path of Alciel and the Devil King!”
A pair of explosions completely vaporized the support.
Every man and woman in the area looked toward the sky. The black concrete roadway above them rumbled its way downward, like some otherworldly being emitting an alien roar as its jaw descended upon them.
There was no way anyone could stop the tilting expressway from collapsing any longer.
The road panels began to come apart, cars plunging downward amid the chaos.
Emi hugged Chiho’s head tightly as the expressway fell, snuffing out even the crowd’s crazed screaming.
Their faces and bodies were covered in darkness, their souls filled with despair and helplessness, as their consciousness and vision were cut off.
“Total B movie. Just like…I thought.”
No one noticed the smile that had come across Maou’s face.
Emi opened her eyes.
She remembered resigning herself to her fate, but if she was awake, she must have avoided death.
But she couldn’t have emerged safe from having the Shuto Expressway fall on her. What happened to…?
“…Ngh!”
She moved her body. Something was draped on top of her. She remembered it was Chiho, thrown down upon her by Lucifer.
“Chiho!… Oof!”
Trying to get up, Emi noticed the state of her leg for the first time. As she did, a swell of pain rushed across her body, like her blood was boiling. But she didn’t mind. It was all the more proof she was alive.
“Ngh…ergh…”
Chiho groaned. Slowly, Emi extracted her body from below, keeping a close eye on her leg as she placed the other girl on the ground.
“Chiho! Chiho!”
“…Ah.”
Slapping her cheek, she found Chiho waking up far more readily than she guessed. She was less knocked unconscious, it seemed, and more put to sleep by Lucifer’s force.
“Yusa… Nnh…!”
She had recognized Emi, but Chiho still grimaced, apparently in pain.
“Those wings… That scary guy…”
Emi looked upward, her memory jogged by Chiho’s rambling. Yes. If they were safe right now, then Lucifer was the one menace they had to watch out for. But the sky above them was cut off by a vast, uniformly black presence. What was blocking it out?
The Shuto Expressway had collapsed, making a hideous groan that portended doom as it did. I was almost directly below it. So why am I still here?
“Heh-heh-heh…”
Emi shuddered as he heard the low, guttural laugh.
He was darker than the most profound of darkness, his body emitting a light blacker than ink. The horn that Emi had smashed to pieces once upon a time was still missing, but there was no way to wipe away the magic force, the foreboding strength, the sheer presence looming over her.
His eyes were as red as a river of blood, but his skin was white, cold, as if not a drop of blood flowed through it. He was over two meters in height, his wings emitting an aura of sheer murky blackness.
What stood before here was not Sadao Maou, shift supervisor at the Hatagaya MgRonald branch, the man Lucifer had just murdered with a shot through the heart.
“You have my gratitude, Lucifer… Thanks to your hard work, I have finally regained this form.”
His form was as magic itself—enough magic to support the entirety of the expressway.
“Satan… The Devil King…”
Before her eyes was the Devil King himself, the demon lord who had plunged Ente Isla into a hellhole of misery and gloom.
The long, slitted eyes of the terrifying demon tyrant were now fixated squarely upon Emi—Emilia the Hero.
At that moment, Emi was stuck with an indescribable wave of despair.
“Wh-why…?”
Lucifer stood there, panic-stricken, hand covering his face in disbelief. He knew he had just struck Sadao Maou dead. Even if he was the Devil King, no mere corpse could have drawn in magical force from the desperation that reigned around it.
But here he was now, the Devil King Satan, standing before his eyes.
The jaw-droppingly massive power he wielded, enough to keep the Shuto Expressway up with a single hand, was on a completely different level from what he wielded in the corridor in Shinjuku. This was the Devil King himself; that much was irrefutable. How much power did he take in? How many human beings were within his range for that?
To Lucifer’s credit, he felt no sense of fear or despair at the sight. The despair had all been sucked out of him by Satan. As Devil King, Satan was on a plane of existence he could never surmount. The difference between a Great Demon General and his master was like a sheer wall of strength, insurmountable by any force.
Then, things began to move.
“Emilia the Hero…”
The Devil King opened his mouth.
The mere timbre of his voice was enough to make the crowd of uninjured onlookers still nearby quiver in fear.
“Ah…ah…”
Chiho spoke for all of the human beings watching the Devil King. His existence itself was pure fear, the mere sight one of anguished pain.
Olba, for his part, was scared stiff at this unexpected turn of events. He did, however, still remain in the air, which must have required quite a bit of dexterity.
That was the amount of power, of will, of sheer magic instilled within the Devil King’s voice. There was no longer any trace of the bloody pulp that Lucifer had toyed with so malevolently just a moment ago.
“… …”
Emi could not respond.
Satan, the Devil King, had regained his original powers. In which case, no matter how one interpreted this, he was now the enemy. Lucifer and Olba were formidable enough as foes, but with the Devil King joining the fray, Emi alone had no way to compete.
There was no question what would come next. The Devil King would use his regained magic to throw this world into utter chaos, just as he had cruelly done to Ente Isla.
The mental image flashed across her mind in an instant.
The fear of death was quickly followed by a sense of utter despair, the despair of a world about to breathe its last.
Or it was supposed to, until the next moment.
“…Jeez, Emi, you don’t have to ignore me!”
“Uh. Huh?”
Even Lucifer, to say nothing of Emi, required several moments to realize it had come from the king of demons, the embodiment of evil that stood before them. Chiho, who was visibly shaking in fear, stopped cold.
“Um…me?”
“Who the hell do you think I mean?! Snap out of it! You gotta do something about him!”
Satan used his free hand to point out Lucifer.
“Uh…guh?”
Emi was flabbergasted, her brain having difficulty parsing his words.
“Hurry up! This is heavy, man!”
Looking up, she saw the battered remains of the expressway, held in the air by the Devil King’s magic power, begin to ever-so-softly float downward.
“I’m out of practice with this magic… Like, seriously, this really sucks.”
All Lucifer, Emi, even Olba could do was gape silently at the Devil King, who was whining like a sullen teen as something resembling a bead of sweat began to flow down his head.
Only Chiho was able to speak, her voice soft and detached at this strange creature before her.
“Is…that you, Maou?”
“How do you get…out of practice with magic?” Emi finally came to. This was not how the Devil King spoke back in her homeland.
“I just…am, okay? Please…hurry…”
Apparently his one-handed magic performance was meant entirely just to show off. Once his strength reached its limits, the Devil King began to crouch down heavily, as if bearing a great weight with both arms. His magic was keeping up not only the heavy panels that comprised the Shuto Expressway, but the other cars and people caught up in the collapse, all of them stopped cold in the air.
“Ngh… Oof!”
Satan repositioned himself, standing squarely on the ground to spread the weight evenly. Emi realized that the effort had actually boosted his magic power for a few moments.
“This is so stupid.”
Emi smiled as she chided him, then scrunched her face as the pain from her broken leg came back to the forefront.
“You have to be the dumbest Devil King in the universe. I thought you were dead! Why are you standing there?”
The pain wasn’t enough to stop her.
“How should I know? They said on TV that you don’t die right when your heart stops. Like, your brain’s supposedly still alive for a few minutes after, you know?”
Satan smirked at Emi as he spoke. Emi was dumbfounded.
“So…that’s what you did? Because we were in so much trouble?”
“Pretty much. I mean, if Lucifer started just fighting you normally, you would’ve been dead in two seconds. But the weird thing about bad guys… We’re lazy, so we try to finish people off with one shot. That’s what I was betting on. Kinda cut it close there, though, huh? Good thing they were working off a B-movie script.”
The Devil King acted like he couldn’t care less as he continued, but his tactics seemed impossibly reckless to Emi. If Lucifer hadn’t triggered a disaster of epic proportions for him, Sadao Maou would have been dead by now.
“But quit derailing. Can you help me out? This stuff’s heavy! Like, seriously, I’m begging you here!”
He had put Emi through an emotional roller coaster, and this was the thanks she earned. She was beyond relief, beyond exasperation, and comfortably settling into a quiet, intense state of anger.
“Not gonna happen. I’m the Hero! Heroes don’t lend a hand to the Devil King!”
“Mmh…!”
Lucifer grunted as he saw Emi stand up, gingerly handling her injured leg.
The Devil King’s words were completely beyond his understanding. But he could still see what was unfolding. Even after regaining all of his demonic powers, he still wanted to join arms with the Hero to save the people of Earth.
“So stay where you are for just a few more moments.”
Emi brought her right hand up to her forehead.
“That’s all I need to finally end this!”
“Y-Yusa…?”
Emi smiled at the completely awestruck Chiho.
“Just sit back and watch, okay?”
Emi raised her hand over Chiho’s head. In an instant, Chiho’s body was covered in a transparent sphere, shining its golden light against the ground, an antimagic barrier powered by her holy force.
“Yusa! What’s going on?”
Emi flashed Chiho a brighter smile than before.
“I don’t know, Chiho… I think I just want you to know.”
With that, Emi quickly brought her hand downward.
The transformation happened in milliseconds.
Emi’s jet-black hair flowed in the wind as it emitted a pure, healing light. A blinding shine, like a bolt of pure sunlight, imbued itself within her right palm.
“O great power, I summon thee, to smite the forces of evil!”
“Wh… Whoa…!”
Lucifer edged backward. A gale began to blow, Emi at its center. No simple wind would be strong enough to physically affect Lucifer. The power Emi summoned was something quite different.
“Holy…magic…”
“I am the Hero. Worlds may change, but the truth will never waver!”
A pillar of sunlight shot upward from the ground, out from the darkness beneath the cloud of twisted rubble above them.
Her hair now shone like silvery strands of silk, and her scarlet eyes were fiery enough to crush any evil they perceived.
A flash of light ran across Emi’s right hand, forming the shape of a sword. Her body was infused with Holy Silver, the heavenly metal guarded by the Church of Ente Isla since ancient times, and now it resonated at the call of her holy force.
The name of the sword that Emilia Justina forged with this Holy Silver was the Better Half, an evolved blade whose scintillating powers were charged by the holy force of its owner.
The golden light that protected her body was the Cloth of the Dispeller, woven with the wings of the mighty Seraphs, a garment worn only by the Hero. Its power depended greatly upon the holy force of the one who bore it.
Now this holy force filled her body, healing all of the wounds “Emi” had sustained. Her broken leg, and the scar on her forehead, all disappeared without a trace, as if they had never existed.
“Hmm… I can’t manifest my sword past the first level. This might get a bit hairy.”
The pillar of sunlight mumbled to itself, frustrated.
The thin-bladed sword, really more of a rapier, and the Cloth of the Dispeller that only covered her forehead, chest, and legs, were both a disappointment. The fact this had all manifested itself over her business attire also made for a less than flattering patchwork look.
“Well, so be it. They’re on just as unfamiliar ground as I am. No point worrying about my appearance right now.”
The blaze of sunlight that Emi’s form had become drew its sword, and leveled the coil of light straight toward its foes.
“Lucifer, the Great Demon General! Olba, the fallen archbishop! I hereby condemn you for the sins you have committed against this world!”
She was now Emilia Justina in body and soul, the Hero who had driven the evil from Ente Isla.
“Oooh, nice one!”
The Devil King marveled appreciatively at the celestial figure she cut.
“Shut up! You’re up next once I beat these guys, so hurry up and say your prayers!”
“Yeah, yeah. Try to be quick, could you?… Oh, but before that.”
Suddenly recalling something, the Devil King raised his right hand upward once more.
“Take a nap for me, people!”
He snapped his fingers as he spoke the very unmystical incantation. With that, all the onlookers staring from afar at the otherworldly demons beneath the expressway froze, covered in a dull green light. And that wasn’t all. Suddenly, silence reigned. Everything seemed to stop—not just the people, but time itself across the area.
“Hey! What’d you just do?!”
Emilia glared at the Devil King, who shook his head as he lowered his hand.
“Magic barrier. I don’t want people seeing too much of this, and besides, I don’t want to get too many more of them involved in the fight. That, and the media, too; forget those guys. So I shut away the local area.”
He acted like there was nothing to it, but it was impossible to guess how much magic force such a feat required. It was also impossible to imagine a Devil King who even cared about trivialities like being watched.
“So try not to let those guys escape the barrier, all right? ’Cause if they do, that’s gonna be a pain for both of us… Oof!”
Apparently the Shuto Expressway was a heavy burden, even for a Devil King with seemingly limitless power in his hands. Smirking a bit at the plainly encumbered demon master, Emilia readied her holy sword as she faced Lucifer.
“So! It seems I had best leave nothing on the table myself, then!”
Lucifer had all but resigned himself to his fate. As unbelievable as it seemed, the Devil King and the Hero had forged a pact in this world. And now they both had their sights upon him, the full brunt of their demonic—and holy—magic backing them up. Magic they had no simple way to replenish.
Were they even thinking of returning home?
“…Hah!”
Lucifer flew high into the air, then unleashed a countless barrage of magic bolts, a seemingly endless river of light from his jet-black wings.
Emilia brushed away the barrage with a single swipe, but the bolts of magic changed trajectory. Every one of them struck the Devil King in the back.
“Owwwwwwww! What the hell, man?!”
“Sorry! Just an accident!”
Emilia shrugged off his protests as she drove her foot to the ground. It did not seem that powerful of a stomp, but it was all she needed to propel herself toward Lucifer, like a great arrow of gold.
“Haaaaaahh!”
Lucifer only barely dodged the divine streak of light.
With a flap of his dark wings, the demon began to dart across the air, faster than even Emilia’s sudden burst of speed.
“Think you can catch me?!”
The side of Lucifer’s hands glowed black, unleashing a barrage of dark blades as he himself struck at close range. It was an expertly timed wave attack.
Emilia did not even attempt to dodge. Her Cloth of the Dispeller shone even more brightly as she balled herself up in the air.
The dark blades, and Lucifer’s fist, all bounced harmlessly off of the bright light.
“Nice try. But not good enough.”
Lucifer snorted.
“Hah! Talk all you want! Your defense is far from impervious. And you failed to dodge my attack at all! In your state, your blade would never reach me!”
As if to confirm Lucifer’s assertion, a drop of blood began to fall from Emilia’s forehead. It trickled from the exact same location where “Emi” sustained her injury in the food court.
“Your agility in the air was never a match for mine, even in times past. I can still gain magic force in this world! Time is on my side!”
He had a point. If Emilia, who had no way to replenish her holy force, was caught in a marathon struggle, she would inevitably peter out sooner or later.
“Sorry, but I will not allow that to happen.”
An unfamiliar voice came from above the two of them.
A large mass of rock flew downward, zooming between Lucifer and Emilia.
“You!”
She jabbed the edge of Maou’s nose several times with the handle end of the umbrella as she half-shouted her diatribe.
“So just take it! This thing’s getting heavy!”
“Uh…sure.”
He took the handle, and Emi dropped her end, all but throwing it at him. It was a firm, weighted wooden grip, one like nothing Maou ever touched. The fabric was thick and shiny, and the ribs felt reinforced and durable beneath it. Its simple charcoal-gray color was a decent match for any outfit, and it was large enough to comfortably protect a couple when open.
“Hey, isn’t this expensive?”
“You are such a thick Devil King. Is that all you can think of? Five thousand yen or so isn’t something someone your age should be sweating about!”
Maou was shocked into silence. The price was completely beyond comprehension for him, yet Emi just tossed it out like yesterday’s trash.
“F-five…?! You…you spent five thousand on some stupid umbrella?! I mean, I just gave you this old thing I found hanging off a mailbox!”
“I don’t care! Shut up! I just couldn’t stand seeing my eternal nemesis going around with some half-broken piece of crap all day! If you call yourself Devil King, you could at least try to act the part a little!”
“Uh…yeah. Good point. But…still, five thousand, huh? Wow. Funny to think this is even in the same category as the junk I was using. Mind if I take off the wrapping?”
“I gave it to you. Do whatever you want!”
Emi no longer even looked at Maou. Her back was turned, brows furrowed as she crossed her arms disgustedly.
Carefully removing the tape, Maou neatly folded up the wrapping paper and placed it in his pocket before opening his new umbrella.
“Whoa! It’s huge! Looks really sturdy, too! Now this is what I call an umbrella!”
Maou’s excitement was sincere as he looked on in wonderment. Emi, catching this from the corner of her eye for just a moment, raised the edges of her lips, her look one of ever-so-slight satisfaction.
“…Well, that’s all I needed to do.”
With that, Emi turned away from Maou. He called back to her.
“Oh? Well, thanks! Sorry for the trouble.”
For some strange reason, the expression of thanks that escaped the Devil King’s lips planted themselves deep into Emi’s heart. They made her turn back around, just one more time.
“I almost forgot.”
“Hmm? Forgot what?”
No one will likely ever know what lay behind the smile that crossed her lips.
“Try to patch things up with Chiho, all right?”
That was the last thing he was expecting from her. His eyes lit up in surprise, leaving him unable to answer. Apparently satisfied by this display, Emi smiled, then turned around once more.
“See you later.”
Then the Hero and Devil King turned their backs to each other, both of them heading for home.
“Oh, good evening, Your Demonic Highness! I’ve prepared some egg pancakes for dinner.”
“You could at least call it an omelet. I don’t care if you lie to me.”
Ashiya, his strength (if nothing else) recovered, was waiting for him at the apartment, eyebrows twitched upward at the sight of the new umbrella in his hand. Maou preempted his question.
“It’s a gift, okay? A gift! I didn’t use any money!”
“A gift? My liege, you have a benefactor willing to give you such a fancy umbrella?
“If you’re being sarcastic, Ashiya, then zip it! It’s one of those… you know, ‘what goes around comes around’ things, right?”
Maou propped the umbrella against the wall on the front foyer. This wasn’t some cheap umbrella he could toss around with abandon. He’d need to buy an umbrella stand soon, he thought unconsciously.
Suddenly Maou looked upward, feeling sullen eyes upon him. It was Lucifer, in the form of a typical short, long-haired Japanese man, kneeling in the corner and gnawing on some fried eggs.
Their eyes met, but he didn’t say a word. Maou was nonplussed.
“You got any place to go, or…?”
“…If I did, I wouldn’t be eating fried eggs in this dump, would I?”
“Probably not. Come to think of it, you’re a wanted man in Japan, aren’t you?”
He had yet to hear anything about Olba, but if he were ever arrested for armed robbery, the archbishop would no doubt be ready to spill the beans about his accomplice Lucifer.
It was doubtful that the Tokyo police would accept the story at face value, but either way, Lucifer was in a dangerous spot.
“Hey, let me ask you something. How did you find your way into Emi’s workplace? Like, into her phone line?”
“…What?”
Lucifer blinked in puzzlement.
“’Cause depending on how you did it, we might be able to use that for something. You help me get my power back, I’ll help you in return. How ’bout it?”
Soon, the not-so-normal routine of Maou’s daily life in Sasazuka, part of the Shibuya ward of Tokyo, Japan, returned.
The morning after Maou and Ashiya’s battle, they visited the home of Miki Shiba, their landlord. They felt the need to get to the bottom of this woman, one who had to know the truth about both of them; a landlord who, in multiple meanings of the term, seemed superhuman.
If she had her pulse on everything that happened to them, there was an extremely good chance she was the mystery texter who sent that earthquake warning alongside Chiho’s.
They were fully prepared for a heart-to-heart chat as they gingerly pushed the call button, but no matter how much they tried, the landlord never answered. After a while, Ashiya noticed a slip of paper tacked to the gate.
From: Mikitty
To: Villa Rosa Sasazuka residents
Due to personal business, I will be based overseas for an extended period of time. Please contact the property management company below with any issues.
That wasn’t what made Maou and Ashiya wince. What did was the crimson-red kiss mark she had closed the note with.
If she went overseas, she likely wouldn’t be back for a while. For a moment, they wondered if she’d be held up at the security line. Her body and looks, after all, were patently lethal weapons.
Maou was on the afternoon swing shift that day as well. Things were still a touch awkward between him and Chiho when she reported in that evening, but by and large, she was back to her usual self.
And once he wrapped up the cleaning and laundry around the apartment, Ashiya was off on a grand tour of the museum, then the supermarket.
“Mornin’, Emi! Hope nothing bad happens today, huh?”
From the moment Emi reported to work, Rika was joking with her. Emi looked straight at her.
“Listen, Rika, I…”
In as apologetic a tone as she could muster, Emi explained that she got in an accident after leaving Rika yesterday, ruining the blouse she borrowed in the process. Rika let out a wry laugh, completely unfazed.
“Ooh, you’re right. I can still see a couple bruises on you. I tell you, Emi, it’s a miracle you aren’t dead yet!”
Emi had deliberately kept herself unhealed after the battle against Lucifer. It would raise too many eyebrows if she had completely healed up just two days after being scarred in the underground corridor.
“Well, that blouse was pretty worn out anyway, so you don’t have to worry about it. Although, if you really wanted to make it up to me, you could keep me company while I stand in line for lunch, huh?”
With a laugh, Rika patted Emi on the shoulder. Emi agreed, honestly relieved on the inside, and as they continued to chat about this, that, and the other thing, their work shift began.
An incoming call suddenly arrived at Emi’s station, giving her barely enough time to skim the regular morning mail. She picked it up, mentally switching her brain to work mode.
“Thank you for your patience! This is Yusa from the Dokodemo customer—”
“Whoa! Dang! It actually connected!”
“…Uh?”
The voice on the other end was familiar to Emi, no matter how much she wished otherwise.
“Yo! Emi! Can you hear me?”
“Kkhhh—”
The blood flowed into Emi’s head as she painfully groaned through her teeth.
“Man, I had no idea you could really aim at people like that. This is gonna be a lot more useful than I thought!”
“Look, what are you doing?! I’m at work right now!”
“Aww, calm down. It’s just an experiment.”
“What kind of experiment?!”
“Hackin’.”
“Ha… What?”
“I mean, like, Urushihara got himself directly connected to your booth ’cause he went to an Internet café and hacked into your company’s main computer. So I figured if we had a PC at home, we could do a lot more than that…so I made the first big purchase of my life! Monthly installments on my credit card, baby!”
Emi could feel her heartbeat thud against both of her temples. She was unable to stop it.
“Well, there’s a lot I’d like to ask you, but first, who the hell is Urushihara?!”
“Oh, I mean Lucifer. He’s, like, a total whiz with computers.”
“Well, great! Fine! So what do you want?!”
“Oh, I just thought it be safer if I tried it with someone I was pretty familiar with, so… Sorry to bother you!”
Maou could not have sounded less apologetic. Emi irritably slammed her hand down on her desk.
“Someone you’re pretty familiar with?! Don’t give me that BS! Why do I have to be your—”
“Oh, chill out! You’re the only girl who could ever take me on! I’d call that ‘familiar’ enough, y’know? Sorry! Anyway, later!”
Having said his fill, Maou hung up.
Emi groaned, there being no place nearby to let her raging emotions explode.
“Uh… What’s wrong, Emi?”
Rika’s voice was anxious from the other booth.
“Nothing!!”
The screech was enough to unnerve the entire office.
“Man, that was awesome! Anyway, I gotta go to work, so try to get used to that PC a little more in the meantime, okay, Urushihara?” Maou beamed as he removed his headset.
“…This piece of crap?” Hanzou Urushihara—aka Lucifer, newly readmitted into Maou’s Devil’s Castle after agreeing to head up his new IT department—was plainly dissatisfied with the laptop Maou had purchased on the cheap in Akihabara; its OS was a good two versions behind the times. The computer he had at the Internet café was newer in every possible way.
“Hey, I bought that for you, okay? You should be glad I got same-day activation on that Internet line, too! How much do you think that cost me?”
“I thought they gave you a discount on net service once you bought the hardware! They didn’t give you any of that?”
“Hey, you can stop whining once you’re not wanted for robbery, okay? If you want a brand-new PC, then how ’bout finding a way to recharge my magic power first? Then you’ll have the time to clear your name and work for one.”
“This is ridiculous. Why must I be bound to the laws of these mere humans?”
Maou and Ashiya glanced at each other, then laughed as Urushihara’s whining continued.
“Remember when we said stuff like that?”
“Indeed. Seems like such an oddly long time ago, doesn’t it?”
Suddenly, Ashiya’s eyes darted toward the five-hundred-yen wall clock he had purchased at the hundred-yen shop.
“Your Demonic Highness! It’s time for work!”
He bowed deferentially as he opened the door.
“Hey, I’m getting sick of those black-pepper fries, okay? Bring something different home with you!”
“I will be preparing egg-drop soup for dinner tonight. Be safe on your bicycle!”
Maou set off for work amid Urushihara’s selfish whining and Ashiya’s househusbandlike farewell. His resignation toward the role had risen to the point where it formed his overall philosophy in life.
It would be another peaceful day for the hundred-square-foot Devil’s Castle, a mere five minutes’ walk from Sasazuka station.
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