Hataraku Maou-sama! - Volume 20 - Chapter 5

THE DEVIL IS TAKEN BY SURPRISE

The participants in the summit all solemnly carried out their parts of the plan.

Rajid had already taken the six tails he’d sliced off Kinanna back to his victory parade in Saza Quartus, calling them “dragon’s tails” and presenting them as proof he had slayed the evil infesting the Central Continent.

Just as rumors about the great and honorable feats of Vashrahma and the southern Federated Order were spreading worldwide, the Church Crusade and Eight Scarves armies agreed to send token forces from the North and East to Isla Centurum, promising each other they would avoid war.

As they did, they were greeted by a constant barrage of “miracles” and “nightmares,” ultimately forced to flee to Noza and Ea Quartus before even reaching Isla Centurum. The most common sight was an image of Emilia the Hero, followed by the back of an angel and the ghosts of Isla Centurum natives killed by the Devil King’s Army. That last one was the product of illusory magic and necromancy, both Malebranche specialties. Between this and the “dragons” Vashrahma vanquished, fearsome rumors began to spread not only among the knights stationed in the Central Continent, but all over the world.

Taking advantage of these rumors, the Eight Scarves began to gradually shift toward allowing the Church knights to advance their soldiers. Not completely, however—in the end, an impromptu “expedition team” was formed to examine these rumors, a combined effort from the Church and Efzahan.

Vashrahma, meanwhile, basked in the honor of arriving first, coupled with the honor of defeating the giant demonic dragons that lurked around. They had demonstrated the threat the Continent posed, and now, the Church and Eight Scarves forces were joining hands to root it out—with, of course, the support of the Mountain Corps and General Rumack’s Federated Order.

In essence, this meant the Crusade could continue, but thanks to their agreement with the Eight Scarves, they had to spread their forces across a broad swath of land, making it all but impossible to colonize the Continent and make it look like a mercy mission. The same could be said of Efzahan’s forces as well, and the Order and the Mountain Corps acted as intermediaries between them, professing neutrality.

So, while everybody was in this state of not pushing their own ambitions too much, the Devil King’s Army planned to launch their castle. They’d have the eyes and ears of the world on them, and all the knights deployed from every corner of Ente Isla would get to witness the moment, rendering them further unable to seize the island for themselves.

Of course, after the battle against heaven was over, the leaders of all these factions would receive a vast amount of helpful information and personnel for their own international and political needs. This included an influx of demon immigrants—a program Efzahan, Phiyenci, and Vashrahma had been expecting from before—but there was also something else, something Cervantes, the Church, and the entire Western Island were willing to give up conquering the Central Continent to obtain.

“I gotta say, that was a blind spot for me.”

The short summit schedule was behind them. After the world leaders filed out of the conference hall, Sadao Maou—dressed in a T-shirt and shorts that didn’t match the room’s ambience at all—was groaning.

“Or, like, we didn’t think about it much, huh? Or at all, really?”

Emi, Alas Ramus in hand, was in a similar mood. “Well, we weren’t talking about annihilating them all at the start. Beyond that, I didn’t really care what happened.”

“Me neither. But having it all put together like this… It’s heavy.”

The stack of papers wasn’t very big. But now it held the signatures of every participant in the summit. It was a world summit, one the world might never learn of, and in it they had made their final decisions about the heaven invasion.

“So…”

Chiho, the chairman and only member of the summit still in the hall, sat slumped at her desk, looking uncharacteristically exhausted.

“So now we have a date for the Devil’s Castle launch, but is it gonna be all right, you guys?”

“All right or not, we gotta do it,” Maou gravely said, twirling around a slightly fancy ballpoint pen he’d purchased for his MgRonald managerial exam. “It’ll help a lot more to keep our promise than to have the Devil King and Hero not sign this thing.”

The record of proceedings for this summit contained the signatures of all the participants, as well as those of three witnesses: Satan Jacob, aka Sadao Maou; Emilia Justina, aka Emi Yusa; and then some kind of scribbly chicken scratch underneath them. That one was written by the one person in attendance the audience was unlikely to forget anytime soon—the name of Alas Ramus, child of the Devil King and Hero.

“No, we’re certainly not powerless enough to let Chiho’s and the others’ names go to waste. It puts even more on our plate, but…”

“My shifts are pretty rough as it is, so I don’t wanna take too much time off. It’s mean to Ms. Iwaki.”

“Well, have Libicocco work hard for a while, and once you’re free, you can work shifts for a month straight or something. Ms. Iwaki understands, and so does everyone else. That’s one side effect from Chiho revealing it all, huh?”

“One month with no breaks ain’t a joke,” he snapped before turning to Chiho. “But great job, Chi. I had no idea what to expect when you first suggested it, but it really did turn out okay.”

Chiho lifted her face up from the desk to stare at him. “…Well, I tried. I’m still doing all this in between school and exam prep, and I was also going around gathering info without Lidem’s help. In my spare time, I was also training to have the holy force in my Yesod fragment sync up so it could cancel out your demonic force, so it was really tiring. And you’re making me do all this during exam season, you know, so you guys better work hard, too, okay?”

“Y-yeah. I’m really sorry. But wow, Chi…you were, like, totally different from usual, or…like, using all this difficult vocabulary and stuff…”

“You’re right! I was just standing there, but you were flooring me…,” Emi said.

“I tried really hard.”

““Huh?””

Chiho’s eyes were moist. Even now, she was overwhelming the two of them.

“I asked my friend in the student council to teach me how to organize a conference. We talked about model governments, group discussions, that kind of thing,” she explained. “With all the meetings we had, I wound up treating him to about ten-thousand-yen worth of food at the diner.”

“Oh…”

“I also recorded the proceedings of the National Diet on TV and watched them every day. Mom knew what I was up to so she didn’t say anything, but Dad gave me a few weird looks.”

“He did…?”

“I even studied how to write up documents like that, because I said there’d be an essay section to the exams. I read three books about business meetings and three other ones on how useless business meetings were. They cost six thousand yen.”

““…””

“But I was still way too anxious, so I had Ms. Shiba and Amane edit and check my script for the proceedings. By the way, you, Suzuno, and Laila need to add an extra ten percent to your rent this month.”

“Whaaa?!”

Maou looked at Emi, looking for an out from that final fact Chiho revealed. But Emi was too astonished by Chiho’s behind-the-scenes effort to look back at him.

“So I’m really…really tired. I had to say a lot of things to people I didn’t want to; I had to act really strong to them. And it was important to keep things fair and secret with this, so I couldn’t really talk about any of the important parts with you guys, or Suzuno or Ashiya or Emeralda—and Urushihara’s actually working hard for a change, so I didn’t want to bother him.”

““……””

Once Chiho was done, she let out a light sigh, then put her face back down on her desk.

Maou and Emi exchanged a glance. It must’ve been scary for Chiho. Nerve-racking. Even now, she couldn’t shed her anxiety, no doubt. As responsible as she was, she had no choice but to go all the way on this. But unlike the zirga, where everything she did was rated on a point system, the only way to evaluate how a conference went was to just sort of read the room.

Despite it all, all these power brokers in Ente Isla had just entrusted their futures to a powerless girl from another world. Maou and Emi suddenly felt intensely guilty. They thought their presence had helped support her, but they wound up making her conduct the conference all by herself.

“C’mon, Chi-Sis!”

Perhaps detecting this anxiety, Alas Ramus jumped out from Emi’s arms and lifted her hand way up, rubbing Chiho’s back.

“…Mmm, thank you, Alas Ramus…but I really am tired…”

Maou stood up at this painful sight. He felt a sudden urge to apologize for his cowardice. “H-hey… Chi… Um, I’m sorry. We…”

Demon or human, it didn’t matter here. As someone who came from this world to Japan, he felt the need to apologize for all the cowardice in Ente Isla. It was his way of taking the punishment for making this girl from another planet take up the cross of this world.

“Hmm?”

But then he yelped as he felt something gripping his wrist along the desk.

“Maou?”

Chiho, grabbing his wrist, looked utterly spent. But there was still a daring smile on her face as she looked up at him.

“Reward me.”

“R-reward?”

“Yes.”

Maou hurriedly tried to adjust his position, but for some reason, Chiho wouldn’t let go of his wrist.

“For this job, I’d say Great Demon General Chiho Sasaki worked the hardest out of all of us. Even if you take off points for me causing that furor at MgRonald, I don’t think it’d kill the Devil King to offer a reward of some kind.”

“Uh… Umm, well, certainly, all this work you did, behind the scenes and stuff… I’m really amazed, so I want to repay that in kind… Umm, what do you want?”

“Yusa, do you think we got everyone on board pretty well with this meeting today?”

“Huh? Me? W-well, yeah, I think so, but…”

“Then if everything goes fine after this, doesn’t it mean I helped take the first step toward saving Ente Isla?”

“I—I can see that…” Emi felt flustered, unable to keep up with Chiho’s energy.

“In that case, Maou, I’m not gonna be satisfied with just any old reward.”

“H-huh?”

Before, when Farfarello first came to Japan, Chiho had made a similar demand to Maou. At that time, she managed to eat three large slices of this cake with tons of strawberries on it—but Chiho had gone through much more this time. And, really, the cost of the reward didn’t seem like the important thing here…

“S-so what should I do?” he asked.

“…”

Maou still couldn’t leave the desk, his arm all but nailed to it. Then Chiho gave a quick look to Emi.

“Yusa… Alas Ramus…”

“Huh?”

“Yehh?”

“I actually have a workroom upstairs, but I left my bag with my notebook and phone in there. Would you mind getting that for me? It’s a dark blue backpack. Can you help, too, Alas Ramus?”

“S-sure. All right.”

“Yehh! I kin help!”

“Sorry… Thank you.”

“Whoa, Emi…!” Maou said.

Emi, pushed away by Chiho’s tension, took this opportunity to pick up Alas Ramus and heave the conference hall. Now Maou was left along with Chiho. He turned toward Chiho again, trembling as he wondered what kind of “reward” she’d ask for without Emi or Ashiya around.

“Hey, Chi…”

But Maou couldn’t form the remaining words.

“Chiho, is this your bag? It’s not your usual one, so I wasn’t sure— Whoa, what’s going on?”

Five minutes later, when Emi returned to the chamber, she found Maou sitting on a chair (or more just being supported by it as he draped), staring into space in a complete stupor. Chiho was on her feet, blushing a little, similarly draping herself behind Maou’s chair.

“Chi-Sis?”

“…Right, that’s the one. Thank you, Yusa. Thank you, Alas Ramus.”

“Oh, okay…but what happened to the Devil King?”

Chiho left Maou behind, taking the bag from Emi.

“All right, Maou, I’m going back to Japan today,” she said—and then she left the conference room.

“Huh? Hey…Devil King? Chiho’s leaving… Chiho?!”

Maou didn’t reply, Chiho was leaving the building, and Emi had no idea what to do. For now, she decided to chase Chiho out of the chamber.

Maou, left alone, suddenly leaped up from his seat, only now flying into a panic.

“Wha… Ah, uh… Ahhh?!”

He froze again, unable to parse these recent events.

“Maou?”

He could hear the echoes of Chiho’s voice from beyond the fog, bouncing around his ears.

“That’s half of it there.”

Then he looked at the desk Chiho sat at, as if she were still there. And at that desk, as she kept Maou’s arm glued to it, she said this just before Emi returned:

“…The other half, I want from you, Maou.”