“Whoa! Wow, it’s a complete mess in here… Uh, h-how about you just sit down here, Suzuno…?”
Maou listened to Chiho’s startled reaction through the wall as he studied the papers. Slowly, the meaning behind them dawned on him.
“…This is a map of the Eastern Island. The cities, the road links, what areas the other islands have influence in, what the central mountain tribes fighting against Efzahan are up to… There’s some top secret information in here, too. What was he doing with this…?”
Maou knew that Ashiya had taken to spending a lot of his time writing lately. Is this the product of that? But before he could figure out what his general had left this behind for…
“Also, Ashiya left me a message for you.”
“A message?”
“Yeah,” she slowly said. “To you. He said he’d be ‘waiting at the National Museum of Western Art.’ That’s all. I don’t know what it means.”
“The National Museum… That’s in Ueno. Ashiya went there on research trips a few times…”
The Tokyo neighborhood of Ueno was home to a number of large national museums. Maou recalled how they both paid numerous visits to most of them early on, exploring planet Earth’s occult history in an effort to find a way back home.
“So that map’s from your world?”
“Oh, um…”
Then Maou remembered his present situation. Amane was…unusual, no doubt about that. But how did she know from the first time they met in Choshi that he and Suzuno, for that matter, weren’t from Earth? And that went for Miki Shiba, her aunt and their landlord, too, right?
Amane shook her head as Maou pondered over this. “I told you before, didn’t I? I can’t tell you anything if Aunt Mikitty hasn’t already told you. That’s how the rules work.”
“Oof…” Maou groaned, discouraged at Amane’s indifference to his plight. Then he heard Rika moan as she squirmed to life on the floor. He thought she had woken up, but instead she settled back down after a moment. It was a relief to Maou that she was sleeping at least, and not unconscious.
But then—
“Ashi…ya…”
“She’s talking in her sleep?”
“…Help…Ashiya… Help me…”
“Yeahhh, it musta been pretty scary for her, I guess. She’s just a normal woman, besides. I’m sure Ashiya and the other guy tried their best to protect her, but…”
That reminded Maou of another key point. Emi and Alas Ramus were on Ente Isla—and now, that almost certainly applied to Ashiya and Emi’s father. They were all back where they used to be—but now, it was undeniably hostile territory to them. Whose job was it, then, to save them? What needed to be done?
How could he get back to Ente Isla?
He couldn’t use his own powers. And he still didn’t know what he was dealing with in Acieth. His Gate abilities were powered by demonic force, anyway; there was no guarantee he could build a stable one with any other sort of power source.
So who could open a Gate right now? Didn’t Suzuno say it herself? That you could open one as long as you had the right amplifier?
And Ashiya was waiting at the National Museum of Western Art…
Maou looked up.
“A Gate… That’s it! A Gate! Hey! Suzuno!”
Leaping out of Devil’s Castle, Maou zoomed down the hall and banged on Suzuno’s door.
“M-Maou, wait a…! Y-you can’t come in right now!”
Maou ignored Chiho’s pleas and opened the door wide.
“Oh…”
“Ah…”
“Maou!!”
The moment he stepped in, Maou’s face ran right into a curtain with some kind of intricate pattern drawn on it.
“I told you, you can’t come in!!” Chiho continued to admonish.
What Maou saw in the dimly lit room before this curtain blinded him was Chiho providing Suzuno an energy drink as she took a wet towel to her wounds, and:
“M…Maou…youuuuuu…”
And Suzuno, whose kimono was stripped down to her waist as Chiho tended to the gash on her shoulder.
“Oh, uh… S-sorry! I’m sorry, but listen to me! This is really impor—ow!”
“Just get out of here, Maou!!”
“Gahh!”
From the other side of the curtain, something rather blunt hit Maou in the forehead with enough force to bend him backward. He toppled over, but came back up to his feet, head still caught in the curtain. He had to get this across to her, now.
“Maou, you’re really starting to make me angry, okay?!”
“You…truly wish to die…do you not? Ngh…”
Even in her current state, the murderous intent was clear in Suzuno’s muffled words.
“Hey! Oh, Maou! We are one, now, heart and soul! And now you peek at the naked ladies?!”
Even through the curtain, Maou could tell that Acieth’s timely entry into the room made that murderous rage grow even hotter.
“I better call the police… Hey, Urushihara, is there a phone in here?”
“Dude, I’m… I’m a lot more hurt than I look, so…”
Listening to the sad exchange between Amane and Urushihara next door made Maou feel like he was getting completely shoehorned out of the picture. He left the room—or Acieth dragged him out, more like—and spoke to Suzuno through the closed door. The first thing he spotted as he lifted the curtain from his head was the giant hardback Japanese dictionary that Chiho apparently threw at him.
“H-hey, Suzuno!”
“…Whaaaaat?”
It was weird. She sounded so weak and frail, but the tone of it still made Maou’s hair stand on end.
“Y-you can beat me up all you want later, so just listen for a sec, okay?”
“Ooh, you like, Maou?”
“Shut up, Acieth! Suzuno, listen! You said we could open a Gate if we had the right amplifier, yeah?!”
“…I did,” came the gravelly reply.
Maou’s eyes lit up. “I think we got one! There’s an amplifier I think you can use at the National Museum of Western Art in Ueno!”
“…In Ueno? A holy-magic amplifier?”
Chiho seemed not to understand Maou’s words. Suzuno, on the other hand, furrowed her brows.
“L-let me just say… Ngh…”
“Suzuno!”
“N-no… I am fine. Devil King, the ‘Stairs of Heaven’ have been the subject of people’s faith for generations. They were carved out of the very earth following oral traditions and those of our scriptures. They are the largest of amplifiers, providing a meaningful contribution to the very concept of holy magic. I do not wish to discount my adoptive home for the time being, but I sincerely doubt any object in Japan would be the object of such a high level of faith and power—to say nothing of an object so close by…”
“There is, all right? There is! And we don’t even have to pay to get in! It’s the Gates of Hell!”
“The gates of…hell?” Chiho and Suzuno looked at each other. Maou was starting to sound more like the Devil King again, although they could tell how much he emphasized the free-entry aspect of it.
“Have you ever seen it before, Chi?” Maou confidently asked. “That really big bronze sculpture outside the front entrance of the National Museum of Western Art in Ueno?”
Chiho searched her memory as she wrung out her towel.
“…I think I might’ve, during a school field trip or something. Like, isn’t The Thinker posing above the gates or something?”
“Yeah, that!” Maou eagerly replied.
The piece depicted a scene from “The Inferno,” the opening chapter of the Divine Comedy, in which Dante is guided by an ancient poet through the various circles of Hell. It is depicted not as a land of anguish where the dead pay for living a sinful life, but as a world of holiness, created by God as part of His grand scheme. The Gates of Hell was crafted by Auguste Rodin, hailed as the father of modern sculpture; the one at the National Museum was one of seven bronze casts that exist throughout the world
, continually absorbing the story of mankind’s thoughts, faiths, and histories as they accumulated over time.
“It’s the entrance to hell as it was described in the Divine Comedy. That’s exactly what it depicts!”
“So, so…”
“It might…be worth trying, yes.”
“Yeah, totally! I know we can open a Gate with that! So heal up already, man! You too, Urushihara!”
Maou wrested the curtain from his head and spiked it on the floor to emphasize the point.
“Ashiya, Nord, Alas Ramus…and Emi, too! We’re gonna save ’em all!”
EXTRA CHAPTER: THE HERO HAS A CRY
Today marked day fourteen since Emi was taken to the prison cell disguised as a luxury retreat. Watching the vast ocean expand out through her windowside view, she let out a light sigh.
She hadn’t thought there was anything dangerous about it, so why did it have to turn out like this?
“Mommy!”
“…Alas Ramus, if you keep playing up there, you’re gonna fall off the bed again.”
The bed was of exquisite make, and Alas Ramus was currently using it as a trampoline.
They had not been bound or chained to a dungeon wall. Nothing of the sort. And no physical harm had been done to either of them. And the window was a simple glass affair—window glass itself being a rare, costly commodity in this world. She didn’t need the Better Half to smash it; throwing the writing desk that occupied a corner of the room at it would do the trick well enough. The key to the room was in Emi’s possession.
“…I bet everybody’s worried by now.”
The room overlooked Phaigan, a military port on the far northwestern edge of the Eastern Island. It was the site of a large naval base that also saw use as a commercial port, and the area behind the base was occupied by a fairly decent-sized city. Once a humble fishing village, it was now the nearest port to Skycastle, the capital of Efzahan, steadily growing over the years. It was also the birthplace of the ancestors of the Azure Emperor, Efzahan’s supreme leader.
Emi had visited here once during her quest to slay the Devil King. She still had a decent lay of the land. It was the last of the islands to be freed from its Great Demon General, and that—combined with the authoritarian regime that preceded demon rule—made it seem like a rather dull, dreary city, especially compared to the vast settlements on the Western Island and the lively, multiethnic towns of the Northern Island.
From her vantage point, it seemed like the city had grown even gloomier than before, although Emi’s current mood was no doubt coloring that impression.
“Chiho… Bell… Sorry I broke my promise.”
It was a statement Emi had whispered into the air multiple times over the past two weeks.
How great it would have felt to tell them directly. She knew the holy force that streamed into her from the moment she returned to Ente Isla was several orders of magnitude more than what she had in Japan. She could probably send an Idea Link, for example, without requiring an amplifier like Chiho did.
But…
“…”
“Loyal and brave fighters of Efzahan!”
Emi winced as she placed her hands over her ears. Alas Ramus, hearing the same sound, grimaced.
“We will now announce the results of the sea battle fought around the offshore islands to the northwest…”
It was, Emi presumed, a regular broadcast sent to pump up morale around Phaigan whenever a skirmish involving the port took place. The broadcast equipment of Earth didn’t exist here, of course, but the involvement of an amplifier—for holy force, not for electricity—was one similarity.
They must have had a large facility for housing this force, and she guessed that the port was equipped with sonar equipment for monitoring holy-power usage within the military base. If she sent an Idea Link to another world with no amplifier, that might cost her whatever freedom she had left right now. She didn’t mind that, but the image of Alas Ramus being thrown into some dank, underground dungeon kept her from acting.
And even before considering that, there was also the fact that Emi’s mobile phone had been confiscated. That restricted her options even further. She gritted her teeth, thinking about the events that bought her here to Phaigan. The people of this land, at least, had no reason to take her smartphone away—it clearly wasn’t a weapon. Emi was not a sorceress by trade—without that phone serving as an amplifier, she wasn’t too confident that she could accurately send an Idea Link to a specific person in Japan.
Although, there was one person.
“Well… I hope Rika’s okay…”
Emi recalled the face of the only friend in Japan she was able to make contact with.
Even if she didn’t have anything in her possession, Chiho could send a targeted Idea Link to someone nearby if she knew the target’s phone number. Remembering this, Emi pictured Rika’s number in her mind—the only number she had memorized besides her own—and that let her make a pinpoint connection. She had it down cold because, since she didn’t know how her smartphone’s contact list worked at first, she looked up the number from the workplace directory and typed it in manually each time.
In order to avoid holy-force detection, she made sure to send the Link only when a military broadcast was taking place. These broadcasts were considerably detailed, covering not only battle results but also seaside weather forecasts and what the nobility were doing over in the capital. They tended to go on for a while, which gave her a decent amount of leeway. But…
“…Rika…”
Emi regretted contacting her now. Rika knew nothing about Emi and the people around her. She had thought that if she contacted Rika on a different day from the last time she spoke to Maou, that would lead Maou or Suzuno to realize something was up once Rika brought it up with them. It wasn’t until the second call, however, that she realized doing this exposed Rika to the risk of getting wrapped up in Ente Islan events. If that put her in danger… Emi couldn’t even imagine how she could apologize for it.
“This is what I get for living a lie all this time, I guess…”
“Mommy, you okay?”
Now Alas Ramus was at her feet, giving her a worried look.
“Alas Ramus?”
“Yah?”
“…I want you to never lie to your friends, all right? Ever.”
“Lie?”
Alas Ramus, apparently, was still too young to understand the concept. She gave Emi a questioning look, but Emi remained silent, eyes turned back toward the swells on the sea.
“…What would they even do, though? Like, even if Rika contacted them?”
Urushihara wouldn’t give a crap. Ashiya would probably do a jig right on the spot. And maybe Maou would be a little unnerved—he did care about Alas Ramus—but he couldn’t care less about Emi. And part of her didn’t want him to.
“No way…”
So what was she expecting, then, when she gave Rika an Idea Link?
“…Ahh!”
Emi covered her face with her hands, holding them tight as she gritted her teeth. She had to, or else the unbelievable reality she just thought of was going to physically pin her to the ground.
You have to be kidding. That’s impossible.
“I don’t want them to…help me…”
How could she live with herself if the Devil King flew in to the rescue? Whenever he helped her in the past, there was always an ulterior motive, another goal that Maou was hoping to achieve for himself.
“Mommy, you’re okay.”
“Alas Ramus…”
“Daddy’s coming.”
“……”
She had yet to explain the current situation to the child. She doubted she’d understand, and if anything, she seemed to be enjoying this little coastal vacation. But Alas Ramus still managed to expertly jab her “mommy” right where she was weakest.
“…You know what, Alas Ramus? Daddy’s…Daddy’s busy with work. Mommy’s gonna have to handle things for herself for a whil
e, all right? She’s a Hero, after all.”
“Hero?”
“Yeah, so…”
“Do you have to?”
Another bout of silence. Children could be so cruel sometimes.
Emi tried to flee the innocent question. A question from the girl who loved her as a mother.
“Well… I guess I do, yeah. But if someone does show up, it’d be a lot better to have Suzuno or Emeralda, I think.”
“I wanna see Suzu-Sis! An’ Chi-Sis, too! An’ Al-cell ’n’ Looshifer!”
“Um…yeah. Yeah, I bet you do.”
“Waph!”
Emi picked Alas Ramus up and held her tight—tight enough to make the child squirm a little. The salty air of the Ente Isla seaside, the land she had wanted to return to so badly, now strained her heart to its breaking point.
A knock sounded on the door. Emi hurriedly placed Alas Ramus back on the floor. “One second!” she said as she fused the girl back into her own body. She didn’t want Alas to see how she interacted with the person on the other side—the cold, dark sneer, so unbecoming of a Hero.
She sighed, wiped the corners of her eyes, and then glared at the door, as if firing bullets through it.
“All right, come in.”
“Pardon me.”
It was a voice from way back. One that had a calming effect on her, long ago. Now, it sounded nothing less than hateful.
“…What do you want, Olba?”
It was Olba Meiyer, one of the six Bishops of the Church and a central part of Emi’s quest to rid the world of the demon scourge. Maou in demon form defeated him when he used Urushihara to attack Sasazuka, but—as she learned from the demon Camio in Choshi—he somehow escaped custody and made his way back to Ente Isla. Coming to Phaigan, however, and seeing him in the flesh once more, filled her with such a black, sinister sense of hatred. It surprised her, how much rage she could feel against someone she used to count on as a close confidant.
“I am here because I have something to give you. You don’t have to be so angry at me. I will not be long.”
“Anything you give me, you know I’m giving right back to the maid later on.”
“Ha-ha-ha… Well, I suppose I understand your feelings, but I’m not so sure you can do that with this, exactly. It is, after all, one of the reasons why you came here in the first place.”
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 8 Page 19