Laila and Rumack went pale, each for different reasons.
“Still, this is a thorny problem…” Her eyebrows bunched downward as she looked at Albert. “The amount of holy force contained in Sankt Ignoreido’s holy water has gone down by half in five years? You sure the groundwater hasn’t changed routes due to a cave-in or something?”
“Yes. They worked in tandem with the Holy Magic Administrative Institute in Saint Aile to get those results. There’s virtually no mistaking it.”
“Huh. So the Church worked with the Institute after trying their boss for apostasy or whatever? That little broccoli-haired girl? I suppose I can trust in that, yes.”
““Bphht!””
Albert and Rumack laughed at the same time. The nickname wasn’t new to them.
“Wasn’t there infighting between the Institute and Stumpy’s group, too?”
“…No,” Suzuno replied, wrinkling her nose at her own nickname. “I was out on completely different business. I have simply built a close personal relationship with Emeralda.”
It was a surprise to her, seeing how Wurs seemed to have her finger on everything going on in the world from this restaurant in the North Island. It would not be wise to defy her, Suzuno thought, just because she gave people offensive nicknames.
“Hohh. So a Church inquisitor and the head of Saint Aile’s Holy Magic Administrative Institute? Strange bedfellows, I’d call that. I didn’t think they’d work as closely as the Church’s diplomatic mission and Saint Aile’s administration would—on the surface, at least.”
“Call it strange,” Suzuno replied, “call it what you will.”
“…I see.” Wurs gave her a wry grin as her gaze shifted to Albert and Rumack. “I should have known the moment I saw Death Scythe walking around with Hazel Rumack. I’m going senile, I suppose. Hey! Ranga!”
She took a pipe and a box of tobacco out of her pocket, crushing some leaves in her hand as she pushed them into some charcoal. She put this mixture into her pipe, quickly smoking in peace.
“Is Emilia well?”
“…”
Albert didn’t answer. But Dhin Dhem Wurs laughed anyway, the light glinting off her monocle.
“I see! I heard she died fighting the Devil King Satan, but… Well, well! I suppose the rumors of her being around when old man Hu from the East got his palace wrecked were true, then. Phew…”
She took two or three puffs, rather rudely using the edge of the fireplace to tap her pipe. The rapping brought Laila back to attention as Wurs stared at her.
“What’s she to you?”
“What…?”
“Ranga fought alongside Emilia. That I know. Hazel was probably her legal guardian or something. And Stumpy Scythe, since she works under Olba, I can get. But what connects you to Emilia? And more than that, Laila—I don’t think Emilia’s anything like the girl you hope she is.”
“…What do you mean?”
There was a touch of resentment to Laila’s voice.
“Exactly what I said. Certainly, she must be a good fighter—good enough to beat Lucifer and Adramelech. But she’s this sheltered little girl. She’s got guts, yeah, but without Ranga, Olba, and Li’l Broccoli, she couldn’t succeed on this adventure. She may be the Hero of the Holy Sword or whatever, but I don’t see why you’d give her something like this.”
She fussed around with her monocle a bit.
“If I could ask,” Suzuno interjected, “what do you use your fragment for, Chief?”
It struck Suzuno just now that the powers of the fragments she had seen didn’t follow any discernible pattern. Emi’s sword and armor seemed to pop right out of her fragment, but the one Alas Ramus had in her forehead didn’t demonstrate anything like that. She saw how fragments could cast beams of light between one another, but with Wurs, it seemed like Laila was using it to communicate with her in some way, too. That was the only way she could send an envoy to the cathedral to greet them, despite receiving no advance notice.
But Wurs simply glared at her. “You think this chief’s going to reveal her hand to the West so easily?” She turned back to Laila. “I don’t know how many people you’ve been tossing these fragments around to, but if all you guys are covering for Emilia, then what are you doing here, Laila?”
“There’s nothing strange about it,” Laila replied, head held up high. “Emilia’s my daughter.”
“………Your what?”
For once in her life, Wurs’s jaw actually dropped.
“What’s so strange about a mother working for her daughter’s future?”
“Your daughter? Emilia?”
“Yes.”
“This… Hoo. That is something. I can’t even remember the last time I was this shocked. I can hardly believe my ears. Well! Hmm. You’re the mother, eh? My, my, my…”
She opened her eyes wide, as wide as her wrinkled body would allow, and looked around the fireplace.
“You must be a real handful for your husband, eh?!”
“Lidem! What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like, ka-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
The chief knew exactly how Laila would respond to this.
“But… Hmm. Now I understand. I think I’ll trust in all of you, then. But as you probably realize, whether I give you that spear or not’s a whole other question. And I guess I see why it’s bad if the world knows Emilia is alive, but wouldn’t all this be a lot easier if she got involved?”
“We can’t have that happen. For Emilia’s sake.”
“Yes, Hazel, I can see how you feel. But that’s just a small sacrifice for the greater good. Emilia’s not the type to go around calling herself a hero on a whim. It’s not right to be so protective of her that other people’s lives and honor play second fiddle.”
This argument was perfectly valid, of course. But it made Rumack visibly dour.
“I don’t see,” she muttered, “how Northerners who pushed everything on Albert Ende and curled up in their shells can tell us what’s right or not.”
“Rumack…”
“Silence, Albert. This is the kind of ‘pain’ she was talking about with you, huh?” Rumack sternly gazed at Wurs. “That’s like if we went into Saint Aile and the Church made Emilia into a ‘Hero’ icon, caring more about her glory than whether she was alive or not. You think I don’t know what the clan chiefs who tarred you as a loser did when you came back with Emilia in tow?”
“…That’s a fine point to jab at me with, Hazel,” Wurs shot back. “You see, Stumpy Scythe? This is how you use intelligence. Remember that.”
“What…happened?” Suzuno wondered.
Albert bristled. “Bell, please, don’t get into—”
“Oh, come on, Ranga, it’s true. Listen, Stumpy Scythe,” the Northern Clans leader began sharply. “This kid here’s the only Mountain Corps captain who ever lost to an outside enemy. But it would have been the same no matter which warlord in our history was leading that army. Nobody could have defeated Adramelech. Nothing to be done about it. But what happened after that…wasn’t great. This kid came back with Emilia, and he was gathering up the other clans he had been communicating with in secret…but then, there was this shameless leader who spat in his face, berating him for what happened in the past. All, you know, ‘how dare you slither back here after losing so big,’ and the like.”
Even Suzuno could tell the “spat in his face” part was a metaphor. Judging from where Rumack was assigning the blame, this wasn’t some impudent young man acting out of order, but the work of someone who let cowardice get the best of them, out of a need to separate the past from the present.
“But despite that,” Suzuno reflected, “Albert beat Adramelech, he stamped out the Devil King’s Army, and he is still working for people’s futures—including people in the Northern Island. If you say you put pain upon him, Chief, would it be about time to repay him for that?”
“You want me to cover for being stingy with my pawns, eh? Hoo boy. Hard to
mount a defense against that. I have a promise with Adramelech, too. What to do, what to do…?”
“You have a promise with Adramelech? What kind?”
Seeing the chief herder hard-pressed to respond to Rumack’s ill-mannered accusations surprised Albert. Her bringing up a new name surprised him even further.
“Yes. He said, ‘When that young, brave general returns to this land, you must reward him for his efforts.’ That was just before he fought Emilia.”
“Wha…?”
This shocked Albert enough that he forgot to breathe for a moment. All words left his tongue.
“I’m sure he saw the writing on the wall once you invaded Phiyenci. He wasn’t there to fight a losing battle, of course, but Adramelech knew there was no such thing as absolutes in life.”
Albert had faced off against Adramelech three times—the first when the Devil King’s Army invaded, the second when Albert was ejected from the Northern Island, and the third when the demons were defeated for good. Losing the right to die as a Mountain Corps captain, and being denied the right to a final duel with him, must have filled him with shame somewhere in his mind, as if Adramelech never truly recognized him as a warrior. But no. The Great Demon General had recognized him as a true leader, through and through. And through his actions, he was admonishing Albert against an ill-advised death or duel, in order to show him he was a warrior with the hopes and dreams of his soldiers on his back.
“That…bastard… Why now?”
Wurs watched Albert as he struggled to deal with the swirling eddy of emotions in his heart, then pointed her pipe at Laila.
“Well, that’s the long and short of it, so I guess I’ll do what I can for you, eh? And in exchange for that, promise me you won’t mess this up, all right? Because if you save the world and trigger a huge war afterward, I won’t know why I bothered to listen to you!”
Laila spotted the glint in her eye. That advice was something everyone on Ente Isla should have taken to heart after Satan disappeared from the planet.
“Of course.”
“I hate people who say ‘of course’ and don’t actually do anything,” Wurs spat out, missing no opportunity to gripe at her audience. “Now, kid, you know we’re in the zirga season. If you’re going to take the Spear, best to do it in broad daylight, with all the clans watching you.”
“In broad daylight? What d’you mean?”
“Well, you’ve got Emilia, you’ve got Emeralda, you’ve got Ranga… Got any other pawns we can use?”
This sounded incredibly bold. The zirga was the biggest event Phiyenci hosted, attended by clans from across the continent, and she wanted them to settle things right in the middle of it.
“Because I’m gonna push the pawn of your choice toward the next chief herder election. With my backing, nobody’s gonna protest you all joining the field. It’ll be up to you to find a way to take the Spear without anyone minding. Don’t use my influence to get the thing—participate in the zirga and make the clans want to have you haul it off. You got someone who can do that?”
Upon leaving the restaurant, their hands laden with souvenirs and their clothes reeking of smoke, the thoroughly puzzled group returned to Devil’s Castle.
“She wants us to pick someone to run for chief herder?” Albert scratched his head, pausing only to bite into the sandwich of ground goat meat, vegetables, and that singularly pungent sauce he took with him. “Who could we count on for that?”
“I can understand her logic,” Suzuno remarked. “Dhin Dhem Wurs is just ensuring we set the stage correctly, so we can more easily access the Spear. The problem is…”
“Yeah,” interjected Rumack, “she doesn’t want it to look like some outsider borrowing the chief’s influence, in the eyes of the other clans.”
“So not even Albert’s a possibility,” said Laila, arms crossed and looking a tad lost. “He’s too involved with Emilia and Emeralda. In fact, his name’s still in the Saint Aile records as a substitute for Emeralda. Could anyone even match the conditions we need at all?”
If they wanted to get as much support from Wurs as possible, their candidate couldn’t have even a whiff of political involvement with other countries. That was off the table, but within the group preparing to invade heaven, nobody could meet that condition while still being well versed enough in matters to hold the job.
“Being recommended for the position is a big deal, but the conditions are just too harsh…”
The chief herder, by the nature of the post, needed to be someone charismatic enough to enjoy islandwide popularity. It required different skills from the leader of the Mountain Corps, but battle prowess still wasn’t optional. Chief herders had later become corps leaders several times in the past. One didn’t need to be head and shoulders above the pack in every field, but they couldn’t blow it in every field, either.
Rumack pored over the notes that Wurs gave her about the training a chief would be graded on at the zirga. “Personality, popularity, a superior education, archery skills in a hunting setting, familiarity with magic and horsemanship, no Eastern or Western influence, and aware of the heaven-invasion plan… It’s silly. There’s no one.”
“What about Laila? Or maybe Gabriel? He ain’t connected to the West or the East, is he? And he could beat just about anyone in combat or magic.”
“I thought about that for a moment, Albert, but we had best avoid him,” Rumack said.
“Why is that?” he asked back.
“He’s simply not fit for the job. I doubt Lady Wurs would endorse him for us.”
“What d’you mean by that?”
“Well, no offense, but it didn’t seem like Lady Wurs trusted you a great amount. Besides, I fear his lips are too loose for his own good. I’d be on pins and needles the whole time.”
She sounded reluctant to say it, but it was the unvarnished truth. Even Laila couldn’t contest it.
“Besides, Gabriel’s already been tasked with guarding Devil’s Castle.”
“Ah, yes, he was, wasn’t he? Given how low the enemy’s layin’, I totally forgot.”
No matter how rough they thought the chances were, the heavens could have picked this exact moment to storm the planet. The team had to put a sentry up around Devil’s Castle, at least, given its crucial role in capturing the heavens. But since Maou and Emi couldn’t be on call all the time, the job had to go to the second tier—Ashiya, Urushihara, or Gabriel. And since the first two were busy fixing the castle or carrying out other needed business, Gabriel needed to serve as the on-site security system, or else the safety of the whole operation was under question.
“We have to think about the human world, the enemies, and the demons, too. Maou and Lucifer look human, but their demonic force rules ’em right out.” Albert sighed. “There’s no way we can make that old bag happy. We’re screwed! Hey, Bell, you got any bright—”
“There is one person.”
“—ideas… Huh?”
“There is only one person.”
The other three gasped.
“Personality, popularity, education, magical sense, and excellent archery skills. Horsemanship, no—but she is well versed in our plans, she has worked hand in hand with us, and there are no Eastern or Western influences in her background. Plus, she knows the truth about Emilia, the Devil King, and how we are all related to each other. She is the only one.”
“Magic and archery?” Albert raised an eyebrow. “Since when did we have someone that useful?”
Laila, on the other hand, turned pale. “W-Wait! Wait! Bell, are you joking with us?! You don’t mean…”
“Who else could we call upon?”
“But—but if we—If we go with that, you know Emilia and Satan won’t take it sitting down!”
“Why inform them?”
“Bell?!” Laila was shouting now.
“There is no need to.”
“But…!”
“The chief will understand why, too, once we explain matters.”
&n
bsp; “This is crazy! It’s just so incredibly hazardous!”
“Nothing hazardous about it. The zirga is not a battlefield; nothing the heavens would pay close attention to. Once Chief Wurs endorses her, we can keep her under your and Albert’s guard, and all is well. If we talk to the Malebranche about it, perhaps they would even volunteer to bodyguard her. Farfarello and Libicocco, at least, would almost certainly seize upon the offer.”
“That—that would be enough protection…but…”
Laila started to stammer. Suzuno shook her head, her voice cold.
“We will need to check with her first, but—at this point in time—I think she will accept the offer.”
“Wh-who are you talking about?”
Suzuno smiled a little at Albert.
“Someone you know quite well, Albert.”
THE HIGH-SCHOOL TEEN CHANGES THE WORLD A TAD
“Emi-Yu, are you doing okay? You don’t look too good.”
“I don’t?”
“No. You getting enough sleep?”
Emi quelled the panic in her mind at having this casually lobbed at her by Akiko first thing in the morning shift.
“Oh, uh, I had too many drama series on my DVR, so I played them, and I couldn’t stop watching.”
“I’ve totally been there! Sometimes, I record a whole series and delete it before I ever watch it, but when I do start watching, I get the whole series queued up, and I wanna know what happens next, soooo…”
“R-right, yeah. So that kept me up late.”
“Yeah, I need to start paring down my list, too. My whole family uses my DVR, so we’re constantly running out of space!”
“Oh, yeah, that creeps up on you, huh? Ha-ha-ha…”
Emi was sleep-deprived, but she didn’t want Akiko to know the real reason why, so she dodged the subject long enough to point her attention elsewhere. What a relief.
“Ahh, but I’m gonna get busy with school and work before long. I don’t think I can just plop in front of the TV and start watching anytime soon.”
“Oh, like tests and reports and stuff?”
“Pretty much. College might look like it’s play, play, play all the time, but if you actually wanna study, it can keep you pretty busy!”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 16 Page 10