Hataraku Maou-sama! - Volume 16 - Chapter Ep

EPILOGUE 
“Uggghhhh, I’m exhausted!” 
Flinging her large Boston bag to the floor, Chiho let out all her tension and threw herself onto her bed. 
Traveling between worlds for five days in a row had left her feeling run-down. Her mother was unfortunately at home for all those days, with no plans for extended outings, so she needed to schedule things so as not to arouse her suspicion. It made navigating the zirga a major hassle. Through it all, though, she successfully gave Maou his chocolate and helped secure Adramelech’s spear for the Devil King’s Army. Even better, she received heaps of praise from the fellow fighters she looked up to—people who treated her with nothing but kindness, but were in another world in terms of mental makeup. 
“Hee-hee… Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee!” 
Chiho, her face buried in a pillow, recalled how Maou had embraced her when she had collapsed after finishing the Bowman’s Offering. 
“Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee…” 
For the first time, he had called her by her first name. She was “Sasaki” for the first little while at MgRonald, then always “Chi” after that. Then, out of nowhere, he had called her “Chiho”—“Chiho Sasaki,” to be exact, but same difference. 
“Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee!” 
Excitement, embarrassment, and pride filled her as she rolled around in bed for a bit. Then, coming back to her senses, she got up. 
“Right. Better unpack my stuff.” 
Chiho opened up the Boston bag. She never overnighted in Ente Isla, but it was still a trip to an unfamiliar land for her, so she had brought along a coat, some changes of clothes, and a few other things she thought would be necessary. 
“I never really used any of this except for my digital camera…” 
She giggled at the towel and clothing inside, still neatly folded. Suzuno and Nord, well versed in Japanese life, had provided her with most of the things she needed, and Wurs and Albert handled everything else. 
“Ah well. The camera sure came in handy. I took a ton of photos.” 
Chiho had never traveled outside Japan before. In the Central Continent, she made sure not to go farther than around a quarter mile from Devil’s Castle, to avoid causing too much trouble for the people and demons there. For her, getting to see the culture, customs, climate, language, races, animals, and more all over Phiyenci was an incredibly fresh experience. 
“What should I do with them, though? Can I get away with printing out a few pics from Phiyenci?” 
By this point, she was intimately familiar with demons and angels, even in Japan. While the castle on Isla Centurum and the many different demons she saw were a surprise, it didn’t really feel like another world to her. Only when she ventured into Phiyenci did that feeling hit home—the realization that this was a wholly different realm, filled with millions of people living out their lives. 
Her unpacking completed, Chiho went through the photos on her camera. 
“It should be fine as long as I avoid the animals you don’t see on Earth, huh?” 
The people she met could all pass for regular human beings. The elephant-sized goat she instinctively shot a pic of was out of the question, but as long as she wasn’t showing these photos off to everyone she knew, she figured it’d be all right. 
“Hee-hee! That old lady was so surprised.” 
Chiho smiled as she looked at the photo she had Laila take of her with Dhin Dhem Wurs. They first met in the speaker’s office in Phiyenci’s National Congress building, overlooked by the Spear of Adramelechinus. To her, Chiho was a “visitor from another planet,” which she naturally had trouble believing at first—after all, Chiho looked like anybody else on Ente Isla. Being surrounded by holy force allowed her to send off Idea Links at will without the aid of 5-Holy Energy ? or her cell phone, which meant she could speak with Ente Islans like a native. 
To win her over, Chiho whipped out her camera. In a land like Ente Isla, which lacked even daguerreotype-style photography, carrying a device that captured a perfect image of your surroundings in an instant was more than convincing enough for Wurs. She scrutinized the camera and its LCD screen carefully, and in the end, she had to admit it: Chiho wasn’t from around there. 
 
“Well, well! Live as long as I have, and you certainly do see a thing or two. Imagine, a girl from another world competing in the zirga!” 
Dhin Dhem Wurs let out a deep sigh as she returned the camera to Chiho, then sized up the four people accompanying her in the Northern Island. 
“Laila… Ranga… Stumpy Scythe… Hazel. I would like to speak with this girl in private. Can you leave us alone for a bit?” 
“Huh?” 
“But…” 
“Chief Wurs, that…” 
Laila, Rumack, and Suzuno were surprised, while Albert merely stood there silently. 
“I’ll be fine, guys.” 
“Yeah, we can’t be frank with each other with you guys all watching her. She’s no fighter, right? You’ve convinced me she’s from that other world, but I can certainly picture you browbeating her into coming here.” 
“Lidem!” 
Laila objected to the sentiment, but without Wurs’s cooperation, they were headed nowhere. Suzuno resigned herself to it and dragged Laila out with Albert. In another moment, Chiho was alone in front of a desk, the leader of one of Ente Isla’s five continents facing her, the crackling of a fire in the fireplace the only sound. It was a little nerve-racking. 
“Well, I’d tell you to relax, but that’s probably tough for you right now. Your name was Chiho, you said?” 
“Yes.” 
“How much of what they’re telling me about you is the truth?” 
“Huh?” 
“Because no offense meant, of course, but you really don’t seem like the sort of person who could lead Satan and the Hero Emilia by the nose, no matter what Laila and Stumpy Scythe tell me. I’d be more ready to believe it if they called you a spoiled rich kid who knows nothing about the world.” 
Leading them around by the nose? How had Suzuno described Chiho to Wurs anyway? 
“Hazel and Ranga, on the other hand; I can trust in their word. They wouldn’t be singing the praises of somebody unless they really meant it. So I’m just not sure.” 
Wurs stood up. In her old age, she was now shorter than even Chiho, but in Chiho’s eyes, she was like a mighty mountain shifting. 
“I suppose what I’m asking is this: What are you to Emilia and all the rest?” 
“I…” 
Chiho felt like she was being interviewed for a part-time job. She didn’t know what Wurs was driving at with this question, but she wasn’t the type to try to lie or bluff her way out of situations like this. So she told the truth. 
“I’m their friend.” 
“Huh? Their friend?” 
“Right. Their friend. There’s no other way to describe it.” 
Wurs blinked, as if this was a mighty shock to her. Chiho, sensing suspicion, panicked a bit. 
“I’m well aware of what was going on in Ente Isla until two years ago. I guess putting it this way might offend you, Chief Wurs, but if you ask me why I got involved with things in this world, all I can say is it’s because I was friends with Emilia and the Devil King.” 
“Friends…with Emilia…and the Devil King. You sure you know what the word friend means, girl?” 
“If it means eating together, going out together, working and cooking and chatting about whatever, that’s the kind of thing I’ve always been doing with them.” 
“Well, well, well…” 
Wurs adjusted her monocle, having trouble taking this in. 
“But I guess I’m always causing trouble for Emilia and Satan, too. They have to protect me all the time, and I didn’t have the power to repay them ever. So I really want to make the most of this opportunity Suz…um, Crestia Bell and Laila gave me!” 
“…Hold on just one moment. This stuff you’re telling me is all too new and unfamiliar to an old woman like me. I’m having trouble comprehending it.” 
Wurs tossed a few more questions Chiho’s way. She truthfully answered all of them. The queries had a probing aspect at first, as if testing Chiho out, but midway, they switched to how Emi, Suzuno, and Maou were doing over in Japan, the main subject of Wurs’s curiosity. Chiho started calling them “Yusa” and “Maou” again, and toward the end, they were chatting about how Laila’s inability to keep her place tidy was still an issue on Earth. 
“Well, I take back what I said earlier about you being a spoiled rich girl. You’ve been through a lot, haven’t ya? More than an entire band of knights could handle, I bet.” 
“I never overcame any of it by myself. I had Yusa and Maou and Suzuno helping me out the whole time.” 
“You can be as modest as you want about it, but that isn’t gonna win you the zirga over the attention sponges you’ll be competing against. Stumpy Scythe and Laila are treating the archery exhibition as the main event here, and I’m gonna be the one nominating you, so I want you to push yourself as hard as you do for the demon you’re head over heels for.” 
“That… That’s enough of that! Wait, do you mean…?!” 
Being picked on for her love of Maou in the midst of the conversation distracted Chiho from it at first, but Wurs had apparently just agreed to get her into the competition. 
“I can personally trust someone a lot more if they’re in it to help out their lover or their best friend, instead of wanting to save all humanity or whatever. So why not? I’d be happy to recommend you for the exhibition.” 
“Th-thank you…” 
Only Kaori and Chiho’s mother would be so direct as to call Maou her “lover.” Wurs seemed to be rapidly taking a shine to her. But then, she frowned, growing more serious. 
“But let me ask you one more thing. I’m not sure Laila and Stumpy Scythe have really thought this through, but I’m sure Hazel and Ranga have and just haven’t voiced it yet. Considering that, I want you to hear me out before you decide what to do. If you decide you want out, be honest with me about it. I’ll simply tell ’em I turned you down or something, so don’t get all weirdly obstinate about it, all right?” 
“O-okay.” 
“Right. So I’ve heard you’re going up to the moon to slay a god or whatever, and that if you do that, all the holy force in the world might disappear. Without holy force, none of us in Ente Isla will be able to cast magic. You get me so far?” 
“…Yes.” 
“So you’re going to borrow Laila’s force to obtain the Spear with your archery skills. Your skills with a bow and arrow are going to be watched by a huge crowd at the zirga.” 
“Right.” 
“And the better those skills are, the more people are likely to lose their lives from other people’s bows and arrows in the not-too-distant future. Are you all right with that?” 
Chiho’s expression was unchanged, something Wurs interpreted to mean she didn’t understand what she was driving at. 
“What I’m saying is that if we lose magic as a useful long-range weapon, it’s gonna be replaced with the kind of archery skills you’re about to show off, no doubt about it. This zirga might change the whole direction of Ente Islan warfare. Do you—” 
“That’s not related,” Chiho interjected. 
“It’s not?” 
“No, it’s not.” She squared up against the quizzical chief herder. “Me using a bow at the zirga and archery becoming a part of warfare in the far future are two totally different things. Besides, Chief Wurs, you already know everything, so whether I do this or not, you’re going to promote archery more than ever for the sake of the Wurs clan’s and the Northern Island’s future, aren’t you?” 
“…” 
“General Rumack and the people from the Eastern Island are the same way. They’re actively joining this campaign, taking on all these burdens that people elsewhere don’t comprehend, so they can take action before their rivals. I’m not arrogant enough to think I have enough power to change the world singlehandedly. Even if I wound up being the source for the next generation of battle tactics or whatever, it’s up to the people involved to figure out how to use their powers, not me.” 
She smiled. 
“Besides, in this zirga, I need to step up and help out Maou, Yusa, and Alas Ramus. Now’s no time to hesitate and worry about whether I change the world or not. You said it yourself, Chief Wurs. That you trust people who want to support their loved ones more than people who want to save the world.” 
She sat up in her chair, determined. 
“That’s why I’m joining the zirga.” 
“…Well, well.” 
Wurs sat silent for a few moments, then broke into a breezy smile. 
“Perhaps I’ve been relying on my own fragment too much. My ability to judge character’s going on me.” 
Then, for the first time, she removed her monocle before Chiho’s eyes, pointing out the purple fragment on it. 

“The fragment on this monocle uses colors to show me whether someone is telling the truth or not. It doesn’t tell me if someone’s telling a falsehood which they believe is true, which has certainly given me trouble on more than one occasion, let me tell you. But if someone’s hiding their fear and talking big with nothing to back it up, I can tell that right out. Perhaps, though, relying on such a useful tool made me fail to notice the courageous light you’ve been showing me from the beginning.” 
Wurs kept smiling as she returned to her desk and took out a sheet of paper. 
“A spoiled little rich girl? Why, just listen to the junk coming out of my mouth. Stumpy Scythe has certainly played her trump card here. I’d say you’ve got more hero potential inside you than Emilia ever did.” 
She tossed the monocle in her pocket, staring straight at Chiho with both eyes. 
“It’s a pity you aren’t my real granddaughter, Chiho Sasaki Wurs.” 
“Thank you very much, Grandma Lidem.” 
Chiho bowed her head deeply to this great leader, a woman who loomed larger than the Devil King’s Army as she kept an entire continent together. 
 
She had managed to make a grand statement earlier, but the thought of her actions impacting the future of Ente Isla unnerved Chiho. Perhaps, she thought, Dhin Dhem Wurs was picking up on that. But still, it was that exchange that convinced Wurs to put her in the zirga, after all. She hoped they could have an even franker conversation next time; she wanted to hear more about what “working for those you love” meant to her, or the idea of a single person changing the world, given her broad view of history and being a wide-eyed ruler for so many years. 
“How strange.” 
Compared to angels and demons, whose lives go on for centuries or millennia, Wurs hadn’t even made it a hundred years—but in Chiho’s eyes, it seemed like she knew more about the world than any of them. Was that because Chiho herself was unlikely to make it to a hundred? Because the way they felt time was different? 
“…” 
Did that mean she couldn’t walk together, her and Maou, along the same timeline? Even if they were destined to be united, Chiho would grow old sooner or later, while Maou would remain as young as ever. Would they share the same feelings, as living, breathing people, when that happened? No. Maybe it was impossible from the start. 
Coming to this conclusion, Chiho felt her blood run cold. Just as a year’s worth of time meant different things to a person and an animal, time from Chiho’s perspective didn’t work like time from Maou’s. The thought was a constant presence in Laila’s and Nord’s minds, and they still hadn’t come to terms with it. As Wurs hinted at, time flowed for Laila at an incomparably slower pace than it did for normal people. For her, it was downright languid. 
But what about Maou? There was that answer he kept delaying. There was a future no one could see. And she was doomed to depart this world before the one she loved. 
She didn’t want that. 
“Ahhh.” 
Chiho collapsed back into bed, spotting the moon out the window as she looked upward. 
“I guess this is how it feels to want eternal youth.” 
She could already feel something deep, and dark, gouging a hole in a corner of her mind, something that went beyond the base concept of “right” and “wrong.” But as it did: 
“?!” 
Suddenly, there was a loud thud of something hitting the window. Chiho, surprised, leaped out of bed. Something soft, spherical, but heavy had bounced off the glass, making a terrific noise before falling toward the ground below. And at the same time: 
“Just now…something…” 
The holy force within her picked up on something stirring. Something nearby her. But before she could investigate, she had to see if the window was broken, and what that object was. 
“Chiho!” her mother shouted from downstairs. “What was that noise?” 
“I don’t know! Some kind of ball bounced off the window… Lemme see what it is!” 
Carefully, she opened the window that had been struck. It hadn’t shattered, luckily, but whatever hit it had left an obvious smudge on the glass. 
“Wow, what is this… Huh?” 
Then, she noticed something sticking to the window frame. It astonished her. 
“A feather?” 
It was a black bird’s feather. 
“Oh, weird. Maybe a crow or something flew into the window by accident.” 
There wasn’t enough light to fly by outside, but Chiho looked out the window anyway, squinting at the ground below. There, in the compact front yard, she saw a black lump of some sort, the size of a basketball. She didn’t recognize it at first, but as the “night-blinded crow” theory solidified in her mind, she heard a sound…or, really, a voice. 
“Nnngh…… cheep …” 
This was familiar to her. That low, hoarse voice, unbefitting the reverberation behind it. A bird with black feathers. 
“—?!” 
Chiho gasped, extending her lungs to their limits, then tore down the stairs, not even pausing to shut the window. 
“Chiho? What’s up?” 
Ignoring the calls of her mother emerging from the living room, Chiho flew out the door and into the yard. There, squirming in the middle of the lawn: 
“C-Camio?!” 
It wasn’t a black chicken—just a demon who looked kind of like one. 
“Who…goes there… cheep … cheep …” 
Camio, the Devil’s Regent, the Pájaro Danino demon who helped raise a young Satan and was one of the first members of his force, was here for the first time since that trip to Choshi. But why was he in chicken form, and how did he get bashed against the window? 
“Hey, hang in there! What happened to you?! Let’s get you up to my room… Huh?!” 
Chiho tried to pick up the curled-up ball of feathers at her feet, but the moment she did, her face tensed up at the feeling of a warm, thick liquid in her hands. She brought one of them up to a dim streetlight nearby. It was covered in blood. He was badly hurt. 
“You—you need treatment… Camio, please, stay awake for me!” 
“Rr…ngh… I know not who you are, but I thank yeep …” 
The voice was weak, ready to evaporate away at any moment. Did he not remember her? Was he blinded by the darkness around him? Or did his injuries make him delirious? Chiho was starting to panic. Plus, as she now realized, a grown chicken was a bit larger than she thought—could she get him into her room without her mom noticing? 
The bigger question, though, was how to treat him. Based on experience, she knew that demonic force was the best way to heal a wounded demon, but Maou, Ashiya, and Urushihara were all at Ente Isla’s Devil’s Castle, unable to immediately return. Was this something she could tackle with the family first aid kit? She was pretty sure she had heard something recently about demons formerly being humans, but she was starting to wonder if he was really a bird-man, or just a chicken all along. Wild, disorganized thoughts ran through her mind. 
“N-now what? I hope Mom’s back in the living room…” 
“Hnn…gh… chirrrrr …” 
“Well, whatever! If worse comes to worst, I’ll have her call a nearby vet…!” 
No time left to hesitate. Even the peeping was starting to draw out. Steeling her resolve, Chiho decided to bring him inside—but waiting at the front door for her was someone completely unexpected. 
“Sorry. I had to have your mom take a nap for me. Get some hot water going and bring me as many towels as you can—ones you don’t mind getting dirty.” 
“A-Amane…?!” 
Standing there was a sleepy-eyed Amane Ohguro, her hair let down and a bit of it stuck to her cheek, wearing wrinkled socks and gray sweats under a body-length black coat. Clearly, she had been enjoying a lazy night in until mere moments earlier. 
“H-How?! When did you get here? How’d you get inside?!” 
“I detected something weird with the network Gabe set up to keep the house safe, so I went through your open window half a minute ago.” 
She took Camio from Chiho’s hands as she explained. 
“Wash your hands, okay? This is blood from someone bearing demonic force; it might affect your body in bad ways. You should probably have one of those energy shots, just in case.” 
“Um, okay.” 
Without another word, Amane trundled Camio upstairs. Chiho stared blankly at her for a moment but quickly snapped out of it, ran to the bathroom, and got the red blood off her hands. 
“…She’s sleeping.” 
Her mother was on the living-room sofa, sleeping in front of the blaring TV like her father tended to do after work. Chiho brought her ear close to her mother’s face, anxious for a moment, but soon confirmed she was resting soundly. So off she went into the bathroom again, fetching some towels, and then to the kitchen to put a kettle on the stove. And as she was nervously waiting for the water to boil: 
“Agh?!” 
From upstairs, she heard the ominously loud sound of something falling to the floor. It made her jump into the air. Not even a toppled chest of drawers would produce that much of a shuddering impact. Forgetting about the kettle, she jogged upstairs. 
“A-Amane…huh?” 
At the door to her room, she froze, transfixed by the scene greeting her. Amane had used her hand to stop the tip of…something coming in from the open window. It was a three-pronged spear. Blood was pouring from her hand as she sneered at whatever was on the other side of it. 
“Don’t worry. He’s already fled.” 
“Gnhh… chirrrr …” 
Camio was hanging from her other hand, meaning both of her arms were covered in blood like a scene from a horror film. 
“Uh, all right… Is your hand okay?” 
“If you could get some bandages later…” 
The job looked far too big for bandages to handle, but Amane’s attention was already focused on the weapon, blood dripping from it. 
“Well, this ain’t good. If they come for us this way, I’ll never make it in time, no matter what. I think they were targeting this chicken, Chiho, and not you, but we’re gonna have to reconsider our security measures around here.” 
Amane tried pulling the trident inside but gave up once it became clear it was longer than the diagonal length of the room. 
“Hmm. Pretty old-fashioned weapon to break out. Probably something from the heavens. Look familiar to you?” 
“Yes,” Chiho said, solemnly nodding. A giant, three-pronged spear, with images of flames ensconced on it. It belonged to Camael, the Sephirah guardian angel, who used it in his attack on Sasahata North High School. 
“But I thought Maou and Acieth broke this spear in Ente Isla.” 
“You already know the guy’s just a normal dude like the rest of us. They go on about these ‘sacred relics’ or whatever, but if they have the original maker or his plans, plus some materials and instructions and tools, they can fix it or make a new one any time… Hey, what’s that sound?” 
“Oh, noooo, I left the kettle on the stove!” 
Chiho spun around at the high-pitched whistle and bounded back down the stairs. 
“That’s what panics her…?” 
Amane chuckled at the sight of a teen casually examining a massive weapon coming through her window, then freaking out at the sound of a kettle. Then, she looked at the two things in her hands and scowled. 
“Something tells me there’s some stuff goin’ down in the demon realm.” 
Amane already knew that this black chicken was a major authority figure in demondom. If someone like that showed up in Japan looking like this, it was natural to assume an urgent emergency. 
“Ugh, I hate this! It’s driving me nuts! This has nothing to do with me! Go somewhere else! Stay away from here!” 
In one hand, a bloodied chicken-demon. In the other, a gigantic weapon of murder. And Camio, tasked with finding the Astral Gem and completing the Noah Gear search, was the only one around to listen to the Sephirah descendant’s whining. 
“…My liege… I am sorry… peep …”