The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 16

by Satoshi Wagahara

  “Are those three arrows in Chiho’s hand?”

  Emi noticed it first. Short- and long-range arrows differed in structure and shaft diameter; long-range ones had more narrowly sculpted shafts, which made a tsugiya even more difficult to pull off.

  “Yes,” Wurs effused, “Chiho said that if we’re dedicating this to the Spear, two arrows alone wouldn’t have enough impact. She really wants to help you guys, you know? It looks to me that you were too busy looking down on her to notice her feelings…or her strengths.”

  They looked down on her.

  The words stabbed into Maou’s and Emi’s hearts. Had they only assumed that Chiho, unable to fend for herself in battle, was this thing that required constant protection? Had they decided, somewhere in their minds, that Chiho was, at best, a supporting actor in this effort to invade the heavens? After Chiho made it no secret that she wanted to help Maou and Emi, never wavering from that position for months, did they brush it off as her just being polite?

  “If you really intend to kill off our god, then this arrow will serve as the signal flare for the next hundred years of Ente Islan history.”

  Chiho gave the crowd a graceful nod of the head, then took an arrow in her right hand, lifted her bow, and assumed the stance. Not a single shred of hesitation was in her eyes, the arrow loaded into her taut bow making her look like the subject of a fine Japanese artwork painted on a folding screen.

  “Chi-Sis! You kin do it!”

  “Chiho! You’ve got this!!”

  “I like those eyes. Those are fighter’s eyes.”

  The fragments held by Alas Ramus and Dhin Dhem Wurs lit up. Chiho’s right hand exhibited a faint light of its own to match.

  “…!”

  With a clear, high-pitched zing, the arrow went aloft—and the next moment, it was lodged right in the middle of the target. The roaring of the crowd dominated the scene. A perfect shot, from 109 yards away.

  That alone was hard enough to believe, but even more astounding was the way Chiho immediately began loading her next arrow. When she extended her bow, the crowd fell into nervous silence once more, Alas Ramus and Acieth watching Chiho with bated breath. Maou could almost hear his own heart beating.

  “!”

  Again, a high-pitched whine heralded the arrow’s trajectory—and then, a lower sound, duller than the thud of hitting the target.

  “……Whoa.”

  “Wow, Chiho…”

  Maou and Emi couldn’t help but mutter it to themselves. The second arrow was lodged halfway down the shaft of the first. It almost looked like Chiho had simply fired one extremely long arrow into the target.

  But the cheers didn’t come. There were three arrows. Everyone was waiting for a three-arrow tsugiya from long range, a feat like none before in history.

  Taking up the final arrow, Chiho once again took her firing stance, the entire audience focused upon her.

  “!”

  Her eyes met Maou’s. Her back was turned to the box seats, but just as she was loading the arrow on her bowstring, she turned her head enough to catch a glimpse at Maou. The single eye looking over her shoulder felt to Maou like it was sucking him in; it made him forget to breathe. He thought she was smiling—but the next moment, Chiho was staring down the target.

  Maou wasn’t sure if that was really Chiho he saw there at all.

  Chiho could feel the holy force bubbling up all across her body. With this final shot, her role would be complete.

  This had begun by tricking the rest of the zirga participants into letting her in. She was so happy Suzuno had sought out her help, so happy to help Maou for a change, that she gladly became a part of the Spear-snatching operation. But all those confusing feelings were gone now—and the only thing ahead of her was that tiny, tiny star, barely visible on the left side of her grip…

  …or, to be exact, a point even beyond that.

  And with that, Chiho called for the great demon who had fought against Maou, trained Maou, fought alongside Maou, and become friends with Maou, a demon whom no one would ever see again.

  “May you wield the ancestral spear of the Bluehorns once more, for the sake of Satan, the Devil King.”

  The moment the holy force within her activated, the bow and arrow in her hands began to shine a silvery color.

  “Wha…?”

  Maou had seen that light only once before. It was the light Chiho exuded up on Tokyo Tower. Back there, with Laila and the Yesod fragment backing her up, she had gathered up the demonic force in the area and melted it into the air, as if purifying the barrier around the area. There was no demonic force here. Pulling off the same act wouldn’t accomplish anything. But this could only be interpreted as Chiho exerting her full force to its limits, and not only she, but everyone else involved in the plan—Suzuno, Laila, Wurs, Libicocco, Albert—all expected that much from her.

  But what happened next was something that nobody could explain later.

  Around Chiho’s feet, narrow spikes of thornlike ice sprouted up from the ground, slowly swirling around her body like a protective force field before merging with the silvery, shining arrow.

  “What…the…?”

  Now Maou’s breathing stopped. He never thought he would see that magic spell again. Albert and Wurs also sat to attention, not expecting any of this, but Chiho didn’t move an eyebrow, her spirit focused solely on the target.

  “Thank you, Adramelech.”

  Then, she fired.

  The arrow, spewing off silver light that trailed behind it like powdery snow, made a beautiful sound that seemed to make the earth itself tremble as it reached its target. When it hit home, the three arrows, along with the target itself, were encompassed by a blast of ice from the ground. It spiraled upward to the heavens, shaking off more snow as it did, and, in short order, took on the exact shape of the Spear of Adramelechinus, encasing that miraculous three-arrow shot inside its transparent ice.

  “…”

  The crowd barely stirred, their eyes darting between the girl and the pair of spears. Chiho, the light surrounding her gone, lowered her bow like nothing was amiss, bowing to the spear of ice that just encased her masterpiece.

  “Wh-what is that?!”

  The shout from someone in the crowd turned everyone’s attention upward.

  “Wha…!”

  “What on…?”

  Maou and Emi followed their neighbors’ gazes, gasping in surprise. Chiho was the last to turn toward it—the original Spear, the one that was there before. Now, on one side of it, was the feared and venerated Great Demon General that once ruled the Northern Island.

  “Adramelech…”

  As if amplifying Maou’s whisper, the name Adramelech began to ripple across the grandstand. Adramelech, the great founder who created the Bluehorn clan, had made his fabled return. All his attention was focused on a single point. When the crowd got over their shock enough to follow his eyes, they found the small girl who pulled off that miraculous offering.

  “You supported me, didn’t you?”

  Chiho smiled at the demon before her, with the great, blue head of a bull and a body several times larger than her own.

  “Thank you very much.”

  She then lowered her equipment and bowed at her superior officer in the Devil King’s Army.

  “Ahh?!”

  Then, Adramelech vanished into thin air once more, as a blue light began to descend upon his Spear, forming a shimmering column that began altering the weapon, seemingly melting it into nothingness. Chiho stood back upright, watching the light do its work. And when the blue light finally faded, its blinding sparks no longer illuminating the night, both Adramelech and his Spear were gone, revealing the clear, uncluttered skies of Phiyenci.

  All that remained were the befuddled people of the Northern Island and the new spear of ice, forever commemorating the greatest arrow shot ever made. That, and the girl who triggered the entire miracle.

  On a set of tatami mats built in the middle of Devil�
��s Castle on the Central Continent, Maou, Ashiya, and Urushihara were enjoying lunch around their low kotatsu table.

  “I swear, man, if you guys all knew, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I told you, because we all knew you’d say no. What’s the big deal? It worked, dude.”

  “My sincerest apologies, Your Demonic Highness. By the time I was aware of everything, Bell and Dhin Dhem Wurs were already well into their planning. I was unable to put a stop to it.”

  “Well, yeah, I’m glad it worked out in the end, but…”

  Maou put his bowl down, swallowing the remaining rice in his mouth, then looked at the giant object lying by the wall of his cavernous throne room. It was the Spear of Adramelechinus, just as it was before disappearing into that pillar of blue light.

  “Do you have any idea how many years of my life that whole experience in Phiyenci took from me?”

  “So what? It was cool, huh? That cranky-ass old lady was falling over herself praising you all, and Bell and Laila and Albert Ende were all ‘Oh wow, oh wow…’”

  “Well, if I was in on the script, maybe I could’ve appreciated it a little more!”

  “Oh, shut up, dude! Since when were you such a timid man, Maou? Why do you lose all your reasoning skills the moment Chiho Sasaki gets involved? Like, dude, did you have any better ideas for this?”

  “You shut up!”

  “My liege, calm yourself. You are getting grains of rice everywhere.”

  “No, you shut up, too! Arrrgh, I hate you guys!”

  Maou was lashing out at pretty much everything at the moment.

  After the Spear vanished, the rest of the zirga’s events were cancelled for the first time in Northern Island history. The image of Adramelech, the disappearance of his Spear, and the rise of the new one—it was no time for partying. So Chief Herder Dhin Dhem Wurs exercised her authority to commission an immediate investigation, enlisting every clan in the land to aid the effort. Wurs fully knew where the vision came from and where the Spear went, of course—but Chiho’s frozen arrow, and the pillar of ice that resulted, wasn’t in anybody’s game plan.

  The original operation called for Chiho to borrow Laila and her Yesod fragment’s power to break all zirga records in the archery exhibition. Then, once she knocked ’em dead in the Bowman’s Offering, Libicocco would use his Malebranche-born necromancy and illusion magic to summon a vision of Adramelech. This burst of demonic force would serve as a smoke screen for Suzuno to use her angel’s feather pen to transport the Spear through a Gate without the Northern Island’s sorcerers noticing the rush of holy force that resulted. It was a miracle, but a human-engineered one.

  But then, a miracle really did happen, one not in the script. The thorns of ice that supported Chiho’s third shot were, beyond a doubt, the kind of ice magic Adramelech was best at, and the spear of ice that resulted still stood strong, showing zero sign of melting at all. Wurs had already reported to the Holy Magic Administrative Institute through Rumack that her preliminary investigation revealed no sign of demonic force in the edifice, but nobody had any idea why it stayed so perfectly frozen.

  “I suppose,” Ashiya said, “some kind of anomaly in holy force, like what Laila and our landlord talked about, reacted in some unforeseeable way with Sasaki’s Yesod force and the demonic power left behind by Adramelech around Phiyenci. That is all I can surmise.”

  When Chiho had Laila’s backing in the fight on Tokyo Tower, the arrows she shot dispelled the demonic force gathered around Maou and his friends. And given the ice-tree towers that Adramelech drove into the ground across the Northern Island, serving as a sort of antenna network for demonic force, perhaps Chiho’s power reacted somehow with what part of Adramelech’s force was left in the groundwater. But the nature of that “somehow” was a mystery, as was everything about the ice tower for the time being.

  “Honestly, though, I’m happy just leaving the Northern Island to clean up this mess for us. Plus, having that ice tower helps Rumack and Emeralda a bunch, right?”

  Word of the miracle of the zirga had already spread worldwide, and with much greater speed and accuracy than anything about the Eastern Island conflict or Emilia’s and Alciel’s return. Thus, Rumack and Emeralda, playing dumb about the whole thing, had made contact with Chief Herder Dhin Dhem Wurs to stage a tandem investigation of the incident, the pretext being that the analysis of Sankt Ignoreido’s groundwater conducted by Albert at the Institute could help with figuring out the mystery ice coming up from underneath Phiyenci.

  The idea that anyone had made off with the original Spear was sheer conjecture at this point. Instead, a litany of wild, wholly nonscientific rumors spread around the island—the Spear shot into the heavens to pursue its master, or returned to the demon realm, or Adramelech popped back in from the afterlife to pick up his forgotten relic, or he saw that the people of the Northern Island had accepted the Spear and used Chiho Sasaki Wurs to replace it with another one.

  But regardless of the results or subsequent reactions, the recovery of the Spear of Adramelechinus, the trickiest part of the relic search, ended in great success.

  After the Bowman’s Offering, Maou and Emi were brought to Chiho at the arena. They greeted her with silence, wholly unsure what to say at first. She had left her bow and arrow with Nord, so her hands were in the slits in her hakama pants as she idly fluttered them around.

  “Come on,” Rika finally said to break the ice, “say something!” She pushed Maou a step forward to make the point clearer.

  Chiho, cheeks reddened, looked up at Maou, like a child who expected to be punished shortly.

  “Um, Maou, I…”

  “Yeah, um…”

  Maou, for his part, had trouble dealing with those eyes. He had to work hard not to avert his gaze but somehow managed to succeed. If he avoided her eyes now, he thought, he might not ever be able to look straight at her again.

  “Chiho Sasaki…” “Yes?!”

  Chiho, called very unexpectedly by her full name, arched her back upward.

  “You did great. That was amazing.”

  “…Maou.”

  “I’m sure Adramelech is happy, too.”

  He looked at the spear of ice. It truly was a symbol of the Great Demon General, the one who supported his great, lofty ambition with the power of demonic ice.

  Chiho nodded at the observation, then took a deep breath, looking straight at Maou.

  “Your Demonic Highness…”

  It was the first time she called him that.

  “I, the Great Demon General Chiho Sasaki, have completed my mission!”

  “…Well done.”

  And that was the limit.

  “Haaahhhhhhh!”

  She let out a deep sigh, then crumpled to the ground.

  “Ohh, I was sooo nervous. I was so, so nervous!”

  “Y-you okay?!”

  Maou brought a hand down to support her. It brought the two of them close together. Their eyes met at point-blank range. It sent Maou into panic for a moment, but Chiho simply gave him a shy, red-tinged smile.

  “…Hee-hee! But I think I’m better now.”

  “Wha… Oh, uh…yeah.”

  “Sorry I did all this dangerous stuff without telling you.”

  “N-no, um, it wasn’t dangerous at all. It was a real sight to see. Like, amazing. And Chi, your bow, uh…”

  He couldn’t get the words out well, but Chiho still smiled on.

  “I’ve received help from a lot of people. I really don’t have much strength on my own.”

  “No, of course you do. Laila herself told me you’ve got a strong foundation.”

  “Well, I’m just glad you got to see me. It made the effort worth it.”

  “Y-yeah…”

  “If you want to praise her, just do it.”

  The overjoyed Chiho and awkward Maou were interrupted by an exasperated Emi behind them.

  “E-Emi!”

  “Yusa…”

  “I swear, Chiho, you
do nothing but surprise us. This time, though, I thought I was gonna have a heart attack… Next time, I hope you’ll talk it over with us first.”

  “All right. I promise I won’t do this behind your back anymore.”

  She gave her a happy nod, then had Maou help her return to her feet.

  “Akiko’s already taken over my shifts, and thanks to this zirga, I think I have a clearer view of what’s ahead, Maou.”

  A new resolve was in her voice.

  “I don’t mind if we wind up taking the long way around. Now I know, no matter how much time it takes, we’re both aiming for the same place. So…I’m ready to follow you as far as it takes.”

  “Y-yeah…” That weak reply was about the best Maou could muster.

  “Man… Today has been terrible on my heart. In more ways than one…”

  “What, you’re still going on about that?”

  For once, it wasn’t Urushihara yelling at a whining Maou, but Rika.

  “Gnhh… S-Suzuki?!”

  Ashiya reacted to her before Maou could.

  “Hey there, guys.” Rika was dressed for the outdoors, as if she had recently finished her shift at work. A large paper bag was in her hands. The throne room was far above the ground, and it was doubtful that Rika had made it up here by herself. She had probably used her feather pen to build a Gate that led right here.

  Maou gave her a half-dejected smile. “Damn, you can make Gates whenever you want to now, huh?”

  “It’s just like taking the plane or bullet train,” Rika indifferently replied. “The first time, you’re all freaking out, worrying if you screwed up your ticket or whatever, but once you’re used to it, it’s like, What was I so scared of?”

  Neither Maou, nor Ashiya, nor Urushihara had been on either of those transports, so the analogy didn’t mean much to them, but they understood well enough that Rika was now fully used to crossplanetary travel.

  “Oh, also, this is late, but…”

  “Hmm?”

  Rika took her shoes off to go on the tatami-mat floor, then pulled three gift-wrapped boxes out from the bag. She placed them in front of all three demons, the box facing Ashiya notably larger and wrapped fancier than the others.