“D-Dummy... That’s not true!” Junko turned red and looked away.
“Right, right.” Yoshie laughed and gave Junko a pat on the head.
“Gaah! Stop! What’s wrong with you?” Junko yelled.
Yoshie ignored Junko’s rage and instead clapped her hands together to draw everybody’s attention.
“Attention, everybody. I’ve got a present for you!”
When she saw everyone was looking at her, she took out Korone’s bag. The smiles disappeared from everybody’s faces.
“Oh...”
“That’s right. Korone is...”
“Hey, that’s pretty insensitive, isn’t it?” Fujiko stormed over to Yoshie. “What the hell do you mean, calling that thing a present? Korone’s dead...”
And then she stopped. A hand came out of the bag, followed by a body.
“What...?” Fujiko couldn’t believe it.
“Korone!” Akuto yelled.
“Korone!” Keena and Junko yelled too.
It was indeed Korone who was standing in front of them.
“When we leapt into the teleportation circle, I grabbed her head and stuffed it in her bag. I knew if I had it, I’d be able to repair her,” Yoshie said. “So, I repaired her in secret and turned her on, but I don’t know if her memories are working right. She and I never knew each other. So, tell me. Do you have your memories?” Yoshie asked.
Korone blushed and pointed at Akuto. “I have memories of the night he held me tight...”
“Oh, that’s definitely Korone,” Akuto sighed, and then laughed.
“Yes. I’m back,” Korone said, actually smiling. And then she gave Akuto a hug.
“Hey, is this another one of your jokes?”
“It’s not a joke. You gave me your love, even though I am a Liradan. I need to show you that I feel the same way,” Korone said in a serious voice.
“L-Love? Wait...” Akuto began to stammer.
Korone suddenly raised her head to look up at him. “Do I look like the kind of girl who would say that? I have a new body, so I am, in a sense, a virgin. So I thought I should act like one.”
“Listen, you...” Akuto frowned, but he didn’t try to take Korone’s arm off his waist. Instead, he put his hand on her head. “You do look a little more virginal.”
“I do? Oh, by the way...” she said, and then turned to Keena. “I am now the Empress’s aide. An observer, if you will. So you’ll be seeing a lot of me.”
“Really?!” Keena said with a huge grin.
“Yes, really.”
“Hooray! Welcome back, Korone!” she yelled, and jumped on Korone to give her a big hug. The two of them almost fell off the roof, but Akuto saved them.
Everyone laughed, and kept laughing until the students on the top floor of the dorm started banging their ceiling with brooms to quiet them down.
○
“A new empress... There was no need for such a thing, but...” Kento sighed. He was lying on the couch in his room, talking to a man on a mana screen.
“You’re always so clever. You seem to think everything will go the way you want it to,” the man on the screen said, annoyed. He was bald, with a strange rubbery black skin.
His codename was “Rubbers.” He was a member of CMID-8, and had once participated in the attack on Constant Magical Academy.
“That’s right. If something doesn’t go the way I want it to, it’s an irregularity,” Kento said calmly.
“So it was part of your plan to have CMID-8 lose so many members?” Rubbers asked angrily.
“It’s not my fault. It’s the fault of the people who screwed up. But it’s difficult for even me to determine what the next move is.”
“Because there’s a new empress?”
“Correct. It’s going to make completing ‘The Last Judgement’ a little more difficult.”
“You really believe in what Boichiro said before he died, huh?”
“I’ll do a better job than him. I’m not going to let my personal feelings get in the way.”
“Then what do you mean it’s gotten ‘more difficult’? I thought you always did everything perfectly.”
Kento ignored his provocation. “The issue is these irregularities. There should be several others with the imperial bloodline. If they want the throne, we could have a problem.”
“I’m not interested in being Emperor.”
“Me neither. That’s the one thing we agree on. But I want to be on the side of the Emperor or Empress who wins in the end,” Kento said, and ended the call.
Afterword
Thank you, as always, for buying my book.
I’m Shoutarou Mizuki.
This is Volume 9, a continuation from the last book. With this, the current story arc concludes. A lot has happened, but personally, I feel like I’ve successfully climbed a mountain. Hooray.
But there’s still more to come. I have to keep working on the big story arc, but next volume will be a collection of short, daily-life vignettes. I’m hoping to talk about what happens next with Yoshie, or maybe tell you a surprising story about the student council. I hope you’ll look forward to it if you’re a fan of books that aren’t so serious.
Now, it’s finally time for the anime to start. If you’re buying the book new, you can see information about it on the front flap. If not, check the webpage. I’m writing this a little before it airs, so all I’ve seen now is the voice recording sessions, but those were great. You’ve got a lot to look forward to.
A lot of fun things happened at the recording. Aoi Yuki, the VA for Korone, made homemade chiffon cake for me. I got to see Chiaki Takahashi (Mitsuko) and Shizuka Ito (Fujiko) cheer on Aoi Yuki as she did her best to sound sexy. And I got to watch the other VAs surround Aoi Yuki and take photos. If you think that I’m focusing too much on one thing, well, you’re wrong. All the people working on the book dropped in, and I hope you readers can get a sense of how much fun it was too.
Now, on to some stuff that doesn’t matter. As always, I watched the Winter Olympics on TV, and said to myself, “Curling looks fun!” But there’s only certain places and situations where you can play it. Just because you saw it doesn’t mean you can pick it up as a hobby, which is a little disappointing.
But in Canada, there’s places where you can drink at a pub while you play, so maybe it’s like pool in Japan. It’s a big world. It seems dangerous to fling around stones and brushes on an icy rink when you’re drunk, though...
Lastly, thank-yous. So many people are working on this now that I don’t know who you all are, and I haven’t met you all yet, but thank you. Thank you all so much.
Ohashi, my editor. Thanks for hanging in there with me to improve the quality of this volume. I learned a lot.
And more than anybody, Souichi Itou. I’m sorry I’m always late, but your work on the manga is just amazing.
And of course, thank you all I hope you’ll keep reading. There’s lots more fun in store!
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Copyright
Demon King Daimaou: Volume 9
by Shoutarou Mizuki
Translated by Adam Lensenmayer
Edited by Aimee Zink
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 Shoutarou Mizuki
Illustrations Copyright © 2010 Souichi Itou
Cover illustration by Souichi Itou
All rights reserved.
Original Japanese edition published in 2010 by Hobby Japan
This English edition is published by arrangement with Hobby Japan, Tokyo
English translation © 2018 J-N
ovel Club LLC
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
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The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Ebook edition 1.0: January 2019
Demon King Daimaou: Volume 9 Page 13