“Why do they need to take all this time to arm me and take me to Heavensky?”
Emi engaged in a staring contest with the helm for a few moments. Then, letting out a deep sigh, she flung herself onto the bed.
“If I knew this was gonna happen, I wouldn’t have let Eme and Olba handle all the travel arrangements and strategic decisions for me during our quest. I knew I shoulda used my head a little more…”
It was a declaration of defeat, and it sounded just as pathetic as the words portrayed it. This sort of espionage wasn’t beyond Emi’s abilities, but when it came to political guile and negotiation skills, she could never keep up with Emeralda and Olba—two people who made such skills their career. This made them the brains of the expedition, which meant that Emi and Albert were the brawn, more often than not.
That had already been hurting her in Japan. She was fully aware of it now, but no matter what the topic, it always seemed like Maou had a deeper understanding of issues than she ever did.
“Heh. The Devil King’s the company boss, after all. I was just a temp worker.”
Then she remembered something else. Back before Suzuno was fully on her side. One time, Ashiya explained Emi and Maou’s relationship to Rika by portraying them as business rivals.
“Wow, that seems like ages ago… I don’t think Alas Ramus was around yet, even.”
Emi lay on her back in bed, staring up at the ceiling.
“Wish I could go back to Japan…”
“Mommy…?” a worried Alas Ramus asked within her mind.
Emi smiled a little. “It’s all right,” she said, trying to calm her adoptive daughter. “It’s all right now.”
“Yeh?”
“Yeah. I’m with you, after all.”
It wasn’t really an answer, but it was enough for Emi. She sat up and looked at the water pitchers near the room’s entrance. There were two of them for some reason. At the bottom of one, a large number of black granules had settled. Emi had deliberately avoided that pitcher over the past few days. It helped her maintain the rage in her heart—keeping it from turning into helpless timidity.
“That’s all it took, though… To keep me from fighting. If Olba and his people are planning something…do I have what it takes to fight?”
The black mass at the bottom of the pitcher sent Emi’s memories back to the first day she returned to Ente Isla.
A light began to come into view at the other end of the rainbow-hued Gate. Emi could feel something powerful tugging at her hands. She was being pulled in—not by the friend ahead of her, but by the world waiting at the other side.
The next moment, the digital static that dominated the Gate’s inner space disappeared. Her heartbeat started to ring in her ears.
“Uh… Whaaa?!”
Emi couldn’t help but scream upon opening her eyes. She was someplace she was not at all expecting to be. She could feel the pull of gravity against her body. One second, two seconds, five, ten, twenty… Time wore on and on, and her body kept falling, irresistibly attracted to whatever lay below.
“Wh-why are we in the—Gapff!”
The thinness of the air around Emi made her involuntarily cough. There was hardly anything to breathe. She turned her eyes down, mind still adrift in chaos, only to find a level field of cloud cover below.
“We don’t know who might see us, sooooo…!” shouted the easygoing friend who had just led her through the Gate.
“Okay, but isn’t this too high?!”
It must have opened up well into the stratosphere. Emi let her body fall, observing the full table of stars spread out above the cloud field.
“Ah…”
Then she noticed two particularly large heavenly bodies, sparkling brighter than the rest as they looked down upon the two of them. A blue moon, and a red one. Two moons of mystery that were like nothing on Earth. It was the exact sky that Emi had spent the majority of her life looking up at.
“Emiliaaa! We’re going in the cloooouds! Cover your eyes and eeeears!”
The warning snapped Emi out of her reverie. She looked back down.
“Ngh!”
Adjusting her position, the Hero closed her eyes and plunged into the carpet of white headfirst. The wind pounded against her ears—but only for an instant, compared to the cacophony inside the Gate. She was out of the clouds in the blink of an eye, something she could tell by the change in the soundscape around her.
Emi opened her eyes and took it all in.
“Ente Isla…”
The tears were rolling from the corners of her eyes, keeping them from drying out in the wind. That’s what she told herself. But either way, there was no stopping them now. Her life hadn’t changed a bit since the day she set off as the Hero of legend. If anything, it had only grown more complicated and chaotic. This was no safe haven for Emi. But to her, the vast landscape could have been nothing else.
“I’m…home…”
It was home, on a faraway world, something she dreamed about, something she even cried about as she searched within her dreams.
“Emiliaaa…”
The warmth of her friend wrapped around Emi’s outstretched hand. She looked up at the smiling Emeralda Etuva, her irreplaceable friend, the one who had just guided her back home.
“Welcome baaack!”
“…Thanks!”
Emi used her free hand to wipe away the tears she could no longer make excuses for.
“Ah-ha-haaa! We’d better find some clothes for us firrrst…”
No matter how dry Emeralda’s laughter was, it wouldn’t be enough to wring out her and Emi’s wet clothes. And they weren’t just wet, either. They were covered in mud, from head to toe.
“Well, at least our luggage is safe…”
“I-I’m sorryyy! I didn’t realize there was this huge maaarsh where we laaanded…”
Emeralda was being endlessly apologetic. She had set up the Gate to discharge them into the sky to keep the resulting gigantic energy discharge from being detected. Her Gate-opening skills had less to do with her conjuring ability and more to do with the angel-feather pen Emi’s mother, Laila, had given to her—but either way, it still generated a large burst of holy energy.
That was why, even when they went into the ensuing free fall, Emeralda didn’t cast any kind of flight spell on Emi until she was just about ready to pancake on the ground. They planned this drop at night to reduce the chance of eyewitnesses spotting them in the sky. Magic-driven flight would envelop the two of them in an eerie glow—something a nearby watchman or knight corps could easily spot and investigate.
Considering the current political headwinds in Ente Isla, they had to eliminate any potential trail. The Hero Emilia was one thing, but if Emeralda, a major Saint Aile authority figure, was caught smuggling her to safety, the fallout would be dramatic.
So she kept the two of them in free-fall right down to the surface before she deployed her magic. Everything worked well up to then—but considering all the holy energy flying around in the air uses, she had opted to glide themselves down to a safe landing instead. What she didn’t notice until too late was the marshland within the forest she picked as her touchdown point. She and Emi wound up splashing down near the edge of it.
Emeralda had attempted to take off again once she realized her mistake, but the moment had already passed. The air from her gliding flight was already kicking up marsh water at them. It left her and Emi forced to stare at each other sheepishly, both of them smelling slightly like raw sewage.
“…Oh, it’s fine. Maybe smelling like this will keep us safe from animal attack anyway. The bag’s fine, at least. See? It’ll take a lot more than this for Japanese flashlights to stop working.”
Emi fumbled through the large knapsack she brought along for her trip home. She took out a headlamp and flicked it on.
“I’m sorryyy!”
Emeralda, head still bowed in apology, stood in the middle of the light beam. To say the least, she needed a change of clothes
.
“It’s all right, okay?” Emi said as she tightened the lamp around her forehead. “I’m more worried about you than me, Eme. That’s a court robe, isn’t it?”
“Ooh…I’ll just say I tripped and fell while inspecting a pig styyy…”
It sounded like a pretty far-fetched excuse to Emi, but there was no point dwelling on it.
“Okay, so where are we?”
“Well, ummm… Ooh, all this mud…”
Emeralda took a map out from inside her robe, griping at the water already making its way into it here and there. It was a close-up map of the eastern section of Saint Aile, the empire that dominated the Western Island and that both Emi and Emeralda were native to. She pointed at it, drawing an imaginary line toward its southwest.
“Your home village of Sloane is over heeere, and I think we should be here, in this forrrest.”
“If I follow that path, I should run into a few big towns and villages, right?”
“Indeeed,” Emeralda said. “And few of them have retained the size they had before the warrr. Lucky for us, perhaaaps, but…”
Emi could guess what war she was talking about.
“So…”
“Yes. The walled ciiity of Cassius is being rebuilt muuuch more quickly—it has an official Church-run cathedral within its boooundaries, after all. The surrounding villages and towns… Well, they’ve hardly been touched, saaad to say.”
“Hardly been touched? How is that possible?”
Emi blinked in surprise as she pointed out a dot nearby Sloane.
“I mean, this village was home to a stagecoach guild and a warhorse breeding farm. I thought it was flourishing.”
Emeralda shook her head. “Well, based on our investigaaations…”
“Uh-huh?”
“This probably isn’t what you want to hear, Emiiilia, but quite a number of the villagers here gave their liiives up against the Western Island invasion forces led by Luciferrr.”
“I’ve come to terms with it, okay? Don’t sugarcoat it for my sake. What happened after that?”
“Well, by the time Al and I met you in Japaaan, the cathedral in Cassius was buying up a lot of ownership and develllopment rights to this land.”
“Buying it up? So the Church was running the rebuild work? How is that possible? Isn’t that Saint Aile’s job?”
The Church, centered at its headquarters on the far western edge of the Western Island, was the largest religion in Ente Isla. Its sphere of influence extended well beyond the Western Island itself, spilling out across a variety of regions worldwide, and it enjoyed the faith of several hundred million followers.
This meant that high-level Church clerics often wielded far more power than the kings and nobles of smaller, less influential nations. Saint Aile, however, was not one of them. It had the political force to take on the Church in its home turf, preventing it from fully dictating its terms on its home continent. The idea of the Church being the sole director of recovery work in and around a city as large as Cassius seemed unthinkable—unthinkable, at least, within the boundaries of Saint Aile.
“Oh, they were craaafty with it,” Emeralda explained. The way she put it, not only had Lucifer’s invasion force killed off the majority of landholders in the area, but once the demons’ dirty work was done, it wasn’t even clear where most property boundaries lay any longer. After Devil King Satan and his army were expelled in the climactic battle in the Central Continent, Saint Aile naturally solicited its citizens to settle back down in these lands, so they could get back to normal as quickly as possible. They also deployed merchants to ferry over the resources they needed, as well as knight corps to lead the rebuilding operations.
“The Churrrch started by bidding on rebuilding projects for Cassius, where their catheeedral is based. They gained the right to lead the recovery effort in all the lands around the ciiity.”
And rebuild they did. Things proceeded at breakneck speed inside and outside the walls of Cassius—and while no one was looking, they had expanded the boundaries of the city’s walls, calling it “repair work.” This was followed by the Church offering the new immigrants to the surrounding villages the right to move to these new frontiers at low prices. Having this influx of new population within direct control of the local cathedral instead of spread out across the countryside provided assorted advantages for the Church at large.
So what happened to the villages these people abandoned? On paper, at least, a large number of Church-affiliated people had poured into them. But it was strictly on paper. On the ground, it was clear that recovery work had barely started at all, if any had been embarked on in the first place.
“Wh-whoa. Hang on a sec. What’re the Saint Aile knight corps doing, then? They were stationed in Cassius and all the villages, weren’t they? Even if the Church snapped up the land rights in the area, that doesn’t mean they get to just take over everything, does it? They can talk about all the rights they have, but they’re still bound by Saint Aile law!”
“Well,” Emeralda rumbled, “hate to saaay it, but that piece of traaash Pippin and his gang seized controlll of the area.”
“That piece of… Huh?” Emi was startled. It wasn’t like Emeralda to use her prim voice to curse at someone like that. “Do you mean General Pippin of the Saint Aile Imperial Guard?”
“Oh, no need to call him generrral. Just call him Piece of Traaash Pippin, please.”
“…So you don’t, um, like him or something, Eme?”
Guard General Pippin Magnus was the head of Saint Aile’s Imperial Guard—essentially, the top authority figure ruling over the empire’s knight corps. Emi had met him during her attempt to rescue Saint Aile’s emperor, but only casually. She couldn’t quite picture what he even looked like any longer—but it was obvious that Emeralda, someone who hardly wore her emotions on her sleeve, detested his very existence.
“Oh, why couldn’t Luciferrr just kill that little sewer raaaat of a general when he had the chaaance?”
“Um, Eme?”
“When the Church forces selected the kniiight corps leaders deployyyed for the recovery effort, they almost alllways chose that sewer rat Pippin’s laaackeys, it pains me to say.”
“Oh…really?”
“The Saint Aile corrrps director in Cassius was totally iiin on it, too. Not only did the Church briiibe him to the point where he rubber-staaamped any plan they wanted, but he also falsified the state of immigration into the nearby villages. That’s how that dunnng beetle Pippin gets away with dancing to the tune of the Churrrch. He’s sucking on their teeeat like the little rat he is.”
“Hmm…”
“No doubt about it. The recovery effort’s seeeriously behind schedule, and it’s all thanks to that stiiinking old man’s meddling.”
“How much do you hate General Pippin, anyway?”
He couldn’t have been a very upstanding citizen, given Emeralda’s consistent appraisals of him, but Emi still couldn’t help but feel bad for the Guard general currently being subjected to this onslaught of abuse—whether she could remember his face or not.
“He’s a craaafty rat, never letting anyone catch him in his evil deeds. And the worrrst part of it is, I don’t even know why he’s deliberately delaaaying the rebuilding work. I escaped the confines of the court so I could ‘inspect’ the delaaays in the planning effort.”
“…I see.”
“So the biggest issue heeere… Well, it’s that this rotten Pippin and his men may have sunk their dirty claaaws into Sloane as well.”
Emi let out a light gasp.
“Given that Sloane was your hooometown and all, they were pretty caaautious with rebuilding it. They decided to delaaay work on the village early on. So for Sloane, at least, the delay makes sennnse, but…”
“But you think General Pippin and the Church people he’s working for don’t mind that one bit, either?”
“Mm-hmm. So do be careful, all riiight?”
Emeralda folded up the map.
“Now, then… I have your identificaaation here, Emilia…”
It was similarly waterlogged, but there it was nonetheless—a wooden card with a symbol branded on it.
“Any card released under my authooority will have the mark of the Holy Magic Administraaative Institute on it. General Fessstering Mold and his men may not appreciate that too muuuch, but to heck with them.”
“Can you at least call him Pippin for me?” Emi chuckled. “It’s too confusing for me otherwise. I’m surprised you’re calling him that, even. Do you ever refer to him that way in front of other people?”
“He and I are eeeven by now. His men call me Lady Midget Broccoliii.”
Plainly they were born destined to clash against each other. That, or the Imperial Guard and Emeralda’s Holy Magic Administrative Institute had had this sort of bureaucratic rivalry for generations before.
“Why does someone like that get to throw his weight around, though? What about General Rumack?”
“Of course!” Emeralda replied, leaping at Emi’s question. “Wouldn’t you thiiink she’d care at all? I don’t think any of this would’ve happened if Rumack was in the couuuntry.” Grief began to cross her voice. “But Rumack was volunteered as the Western Island represennntative in the Federated Order of the Five Continents, the group rebuilding the Central Connntinent. Ever since Efzahaaan declared war on the world, she’s been traaaveling back and forth between there and Saint Aile. She’s got no time to relax at all heeere.”
If Pippin Magnus was Saint Aile’s top general at home, Hazel Rumack was the nation’s commanding officer on the front lines. Emi had collaborated with her multiple times—from the first raid on Lucifer’s forces after her journey began, to the operation to take back the Northern Island, to the final push toward Devil’s Castle. Their relationship had never grown that familiar, but she was the veteran of many a battlefront, and in Emi’s eyes, she seemed like the ideal general—fair, talented, and aboveboard in all her actions.
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 9 Page 5