Hataraku Maou-sama! - Volume 9 - Chapter Aft

THE AUTHOR, THE AFTERWORD, AND YOU! 
Have you ever asked someone (or been asked) what you’d bring with you to a desert island if you were only allowed to pick one thing? I, Wagahara, have always had an issue with this question. 
When most people hear the term “desert island,” they probably picture a small, sandy little thing with a single palm tree growing in the middle. Maybe a little jungle, maybe a few animals or whatnot, but that’s it. But wait—what if the island has a volcano? That would limit the plant and animal ecosystem pretty drastically. If the island was on a reef, securing a steady water supply could prove to be challenging. And they have desert islands up (or down, I suppose) in the polar regions, too. They’re just as deserted as what you’d be picturing from the Equator, but the conditions are completely different. 
All these question marks, and I’m only allowed to bring one thing with me? That’s kind of an unreasonable thing to ask, isn’t it? 
You might say that I shouldn’t be such a nitpicker over what’s really nothing more than a fun way to strike up a conversation. But if you seriously think about this desert-island issue, it winds up morphing into a question more along the lines of “If I’m tossed into an unknown land, what should my priorities be?” 
What I’m getting at is this: If all of you, my readers, were thrown into another world, one different from your own, what would be the most important things to you? It’s a topic I had to give some honest thought to when writing this volume. 
If the conditions of this world—the atmospherical makeup, the nonhuman creatures that lived on it, the composition of the ground soil—weren’t suited for the tastes of Earth-dwellers like us, we wouldn’t have much to look forward to apart from death. Let’s assume, then, that there were no major obstacles to people like you and me from surviving in this strange land, and go from there. 
The first thing you’d want to do is find out where you’re located. It’s surprisingly difficult for people to travel in a straight line, in any direction, if they have no landmarks to count on. In white-out conditions on snowy mountains, we’ll famously travel in circles without any idea we’re doing so. Gaining a grasp of directions and climate grants us a basic indicator of where we are, and where we should go. 

Once we have this grasp of north, south, east, and west, the next item on the agenda is sustenance. Not every body of water is guaranteed to give you something drinkable—you’d prefer to have a spring or clear stream handy, or at least some kind of flowing water. Rivers provide another guidepost for directions, and people tend to live around them, giving you a chance at finding someone to help you. And that’s not even counting the plants and animals that gather toward them, providing potential food sources (and the chances of encountering predators, but let’s not make this too complicated). 
So assuming you manage to live long enough in this world to seek help from others, that’s where the adventure really begins. Much like the term “desert island” can be defined in a lot of ways, your starting point in this “other world” can be on the tundra, in the desert, or up in some alpine region. Even if you find a path to take in these areas, that’s gonna make your survival rate plummet bigtime. 
The level of civilization in the people you encounter in this world matters a lot, too. Even if you run into a large, concentrated area of humanity, if we don’t share a common simian ancestor, dark clouds might start forming on the horizon. 
So if your daily lifestyle commonly opens you up to the chance of being whisked to an alien planet, don’t be so focused on bringing only the one thing. Wear pants and long-sleeved shirts at all times (with a coat if possible), have a compass handy so you can gain your bearings, and always have bug spray and some mineral water in one of your pockets. That alone puts the odds overwhelmingly in your favor. Long sleeves protect your body against both the freezing cold and the searing desert sun; the compass and water are self-explanatory; and there’s no telling what kind of instantly lethal diseases the local insects might be carrying in your new home. 
Having these basic tools on hand helps ensure that, even if you’re in a world with a civilization of creatures evolved from otters or iguanas or whatnot, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll recognize you as an intelligent being. Note that Wagahara takes no responsibility for any curious stares you receive for carrying this stuff around in our world all the time. My clients are responsible for their own extraterrestrial-travel preparations. 
Considering how my daily thoughts are filled with questions like these, it was only natural that the story of The Devil Is a Part-Timer! would eventually take me to the setting of Ente Isla, the Land of the Holy Cross and birthplace of Emi and Suzuno. Or, to be more accurate, I had to get there sooner or later. This volume tells the story of a litany of humans, demons, and angels, all struggling to live through their daily lives but often having a rough go of it as of late. 
I do have to apologize to readers hoping to see what ultimately happens to Sadao Maou, Emi Yusa, and Chiho Sasaki as the Devil story delves into a new stage of development. Sorry to make you wait once more. This volume is still just a checkpoint along the way, and the next volume, the tenth, is a major turning point for the series—both because it’s a nice round number and because our heroes still have this new world to fully explore. I hope you’ll be kind enough to join the Hero, the Devil King, and all their companions for the trip. 
Here’s hoping I see you in the next volume. Until then!!