Hataraku Maou-sama! - Volume 21 - Chapter Pr

PROLOGUE: THE DEVIL HEADS FOR WORK

The moment she stepped away from the Gate, Emeralda Etuva smiled and immediately began spewing sarcasm.

“How to puuut it, you knooow…this place is kinda naaaauseating.”

“Yeah, hold back, why don’t you?” Urushihara winced. Emeralda didn’t let it faze her. She couldn’t be blamed—this was Devil’s Castle and, by extension, the demon realms. This was the lair of her sworn enemy, more or less.

“What are you even here for? Aren’t you busy? ’Cause I sure am.”

This demonic headquarters had, just a few hours ago, returned to the demon realms for the first time in several years. It contained Maou and his crew, all busy with preparations for their upcoming assault on heaven, and at its base were crowds of local demons, elated to witness their triumphant return. Between this, that, and other things, Urushihara and everyone else had their hands full.

“Oh myyy, yes, I am busy. Thanks to a certain king, I’m so preoccupied that I’ve hardly had time to sleep these past three years, how about that, hmm?”

Emeralda shrugged, all but blaring out that she was well aware of that. Since before the summit, she had grown noticeably sharper around the demons, and she wasn’t about to let up here, either.

“N-now now, Lady Emeralda. What has happened, if I may ask?” Camio stepped in, attempting to intervene. “Devil’s Castle has only just returned. It will still be some time before we storm the heavens.”

Emeralda’s sarcastic smile instantly disappeared.

“Lord Camio, the Devil’s Regent,” she said, suddenly serious. “I know the human world is not your primary concern right now, but there is something I must confer with Emilia about right this minute. Would you be able to find a quiet place for us to chat?”

“Ahh. In that case, her chamber may work. It is not large, but it does have a table and chairs sized for human beings. Come with me.”

“Thank you.” Emeralda nodded, suddenly polite—whether it was because she had no direct beef with Camio, or she simply wanted to show respect for the elderly, none could say. Just then, Emi—no longer sporting her holy sword or Cloth of the Dispeller—ran in from a Devil’s Castle corridor.

“Sorry, Eme! I was all sweaty, so I changed my outfit. I didn’t think you’d be coming so quickly. What’s up? Something going wrong?”

When they launched Devil’s Castle up from the Central Continent, Emi had propelled herself into the air in pursuit of it, a streak in the sky fast enough to escape Ente Isla’s gravitational pull. If it resulted in nothing but a few sweat stains, that showed how praiseworthy—or how scary—her strength was. But Emeralda declined to comment on it, instead taking some folded papers out from her robes.

“Wellll, things are ultra-chaotic around the world right now, so I’d like to get the paperwork squared away as soon as I can, you know? Our account ledgers would be easier to fudge right now as well, soooo…”

Emeralda flashed a wicked grin while Emi casually took the papers, skimmed through them, and nodded.

“Eme, this is…”

“While we have the chaaance, you see? Oh, and Lucifer? I think you’ll be seeing Amane here before too much lonnnger, okay?”

“Huh? That’s rare. Is she coming over here of her own accord?”

“Yes, she contacted Bell about it. And she’s taking someone from Chiho’s place, too, you know.”

“From Chiho Sasaki’s place? What’s that mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know for sure; that was just what I heard from Bell. Maybe a third Yesod child showed up or something perhaps, hmm?”

Emeralda had little interest in addressing Urushihara’s query.

“Now, my dear Regent Camio, can you guide us to her chamber, by chance? And Emilia, if you could sign that there without thinking too deeply about it for me, pleeease…?”

“Um, all right…?”

“Very well. This way, please.”

Guided by Camio, Emeralda, like a con man on the street, pushed Emi along.

“Eesh,” Urushihara grumbled. “Try to keep me more informed on this stuff, okay, guys? Who’s she taking up here? If it’s another Earth Sephirah, that’ll be such a pain…”

About an hour after that whining, Amane Ohguro arrived at Devil’s Castle. She had two people with her, in fact. One was Sadao Maou, looking pale and not at all in full health. The other was…

“Uh, who’re you?”

Urushihara immediately blurted this out when he saw…this person. One who looked exactly like him, just standing there, smiling.

“Now, Emilia, listen to me, pretty please. Even if you refuse to accept this, I’m still going to do it, all riiight?”

“But isn’t this too much?”

“No, it’s not toooo much at all! If you consider that Saint Aile participated in the summit, unofficially or not, this is almost too little, you know.”

“…This is so weird.”

“No, it’s not weird at all! This is the just reward that you deserve, Emilia, my dear—”

“I don’t mean that.” Emi peered at the papers then into the eyes of her valued, diminutive friend seated next to her at the table. “I mean, it’s weird that we’re having this talk here, of all places.”

Emeralda nodded, quickly picking up on what Emi had left unsaid. “…Well, all it means is that our opponents this time were the demons and the Devil King’s Army, you know?”

“You think so? If I was fighting one nation or another in Ente Isla, do you think we ever would’ve been friends?”

Emi and Emeralda exchanged another look. Then they sighed in tandem, the smiles gone from their faces. Grinning would be an affront to all the people who’d lost their lives as part of the “war” Emilia and her friends had fought in. So she turned back toward the papers, eyebrows down.

“But,” the Hero groaned, “if I’m getting this much, what will I even use it on? I have no idea.”

“You’re free to decide, my dear.”

“Free…?” Emi skimmed the text once more, puzzled. Something in her was compelling her to refuse this, no matter how rude she had to be.

“Eme…”

“Yessum?”

“So, much of this was beyond my control. I mean, really, there’s no way I could have received this, you know? Not if we were fighting anyone besides the Devil King’s Army.”

“I imagine you’re onto something, yes, but then, nobody expected that you would be coming to terms, more or less, with the Devil King at the end, you know?”

“Well, no, I mean…I can’t help but feel like I’m just putting out the fire I set myself. And if everyone in the summit found out about this, do you think they would all accept it? I don’t.”

Emeralda, again reading between the lines, scowled. “…Yes, my dear, I’m sure Lord Cervantes and that old biddy up north would try to take advantage later.”

“Don’t call her an ‘old biddy.’ And besides, there’s at least some chance Dhin Dhem Wurs will find out from the Malebranche—that, or she’ll extract it from Chiho somehow. So, Eme…”

Emi spread the papers out on the table once more.

“I think…this could end up becoming a weapon.”

“A weapon…?”

“Yes. And he said it right in front of me, too, didn’t he? Like, this could become a ‘new power.’”

Emi smiled—a little strained but backed by conviction.

“So look, Eme. Even if the world changes… Even if, after this battle, we lose our holy force and my sword leaves me…I will still be the Hero. No matter how much the world changes, that truth never will.”

The summit: This was the meeting where all the major players of the world worked out a plan to integrate demons into the human world of Ente Isla. A gathering arranged not by the Ente Islans, not by the demons, and certainly not by the angels, but by a single teenage girl from the faraway land of Japan. This was Chiho Sasaki, the only person in this world who could deal with Ente Islans, demons, and angels as equals. A girl who loved the Devil King and Hero on fair and equal terms…and who, despite irresponsibly wielding a godlike perspective over it all, still remained a faithful third party.

Her (in a way) selfish refusal to step away from the Ente Isla she loved allowed her to unite the prevailing regions of the planet, although it was still limited to just a certain number of regions and leaders. The Ente Islans had accepted that. Although Chiho was just a thoughtless teen who wanted everyone to get along, they still accepted her wish. On paper, at least, they accepted this world they had never thought to step into before, because, while they knew it was the right thing to do, it would inevitably involve a terrifying amount of difficulty and sacrifice to make happen.

A lot of this had to do with the presence of the Devil King and the Hero, who were both as powerful as an entire nation’s military force. They should have been crossing swords to decide the fate of the globe and its people, but instead they were raising a child in another world—a wild truth that, for better or worse, had helped push this world’s leaders into cooperating with the assault on heaven.

Thus, the summit members had worked with the Devil King’s Army to put on a performance convincing enough to deceive everyone. Then, later, they decided that they would spread three pieces of news across the planet.

One: Devil’s Castle, a foreboding symbol of the demons’ legacy, had blasted off and disappeared into the skies.

Two: Emilia Justina, Hero and savior, had pursued the structure into the stratosphere, seeking to eradicate it for good.

Three: The Crusade launched by the Church had succeeded, supported by comrades and Heroes across the Land of the Holy Cross.

This spate of good news—not the whole truth, but not an embellishment, either—excited the world. This, in turn, caused the people of Ente Isla to show their willingness to unite as one.

And then—from the Yesod fragment in Chiho Sasaki’s possession, the trigger behind all this—a new “life” was born. This life, one that all of Earth’s Sephirah tried to send off to Ente Isla the moment he was born, looked exactly like the fallen angel Lucifer—aka Hanzou Urushihara.

It all happened that night, a night when everything seemed to be coming to a close; a night in June, when the summer heat was just beginning to make its presence known.

A cheerful, smiling presenter on the TV weather forecast that morning called for boiling heat and sunny skies across Japan. But if you lived in the roasting neighborhood of Sasazuka that day, feeling the light through the window, you didn’t need the reminder.

“What’s with this sunlight? I’m indoors, but my eyes still hurt.”

Yes, it was the end of July, but “midsummer” didn’t seem like an oppressive enough word to describe the rays stabbing down from the sky. But there was no point complaining about it; this had been an especially hot summer, and the news kept talking about people taken to the hospital for heatstroke.

Squinting, Sadao Maou lumbered to his feet to take his breakfast plate back to the sink.

“This kinda weather all the time seriously hurts my appetite.”

His morning meal had consisted of a piece of toast and some leftover miso soup from yesterday he found in the fridge—a pretty out-there combination. But with this heat, no matter what kind of food they put in the fridge, it would start showing signs of rotting the following day. He had gotten into the habit of sniffing his meals before taking a bite.

“…They said they sold a ton of iced coffee yesterday, didn’t they?”

With a sigh, Maou took his phone out of his pocket. Smiling a bit at the sight of his beloved daughter on his lock screen, he went back to a frown as he brought up another app and called the number at the top of his history.

“Hey there. Sorry to call you so early. You think we could stock up on one-liter take-home bottles from you? Yeah, we had a ton out the door yesterday. If I wait for the regular deliveries, I think we risk running out. Sure. Thanks. I’ll punch in the numbers over here. Right, have a good one.”

Ending the conversation, Maou looked at the clock hanging on the wall. It was six in the morning.

“Great, six already? I wasted too much time on breakfast.”

He picked up the pace of his morning prep. Taking out a baseball T-shirt from the folded laundry (his way of preventing sunburn), he put on some soft, functional jeans, and in his backpack, he stowed the dress shirt, tie, and work slacks he’d picked up from the dry cleaner the day before. Then he grabbed the remote on the low table in the middle of the room.

“I’ll be back to change after work, so six hours ought to be okay.”

Quickly and deftly, he set the timer on his air conditioner for later and turned it off. The moment the cool breeze came to a halt, Maou could already feel the sweat form under the hair on his skin. It made him roll his eyes, but the clock was still ticking. It was time for work.

“And this is even hotter…”

Picking up the pack, he took the open-faced motorcycle helmet from the shoebox by the front door, strapped it on, and lowered the visor. Then, he put on a pair of brown leather shoes, stepped outside, locked the door, and jiggled the knob to make sure the latch was engaged.

Lifting his head back up, he leaned over to the neighboring door and gave it a knock.

“Hey, I might be late today, so give me a call if something comes up, okay?”

There was no reply. Maou shrugged, expecting this, and pushed through the heat as he jogged down the outdoor stairwell.

His next stop was to approach the silver object broiling under the sun in the bike lot. Removing the silver cover, he was greeted by the sight of a scooter, deep yellow in color. He neatly folded up the cover, slid it into the seat-rack storage, and climbed aboard.

“Ugh, this is burning my butt…”

Pushing the scooter off the gravel and into the street, he felt the seat sear the denim, already cooking in the early morning heat, as he held the brake and turned the key.

“Well, MgScooto, time for another day of work.”

The engine revved up as Maou listlessly spoke to his ride, slicing through the hot air as he set off into Sasazuka.

So began a midsummer morning, three years after the battle in heaven.