The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 4 Read online

  PROLOGUE

  Emeralda Etuva felt she was already short enough, even without the stress weighing her down.

  While serving as Court Alchemist for the Holy Empire of Saint Aile, even as the Hero’s companion, she had become a household name. Emeralda now found herself one of the most influential people in all the Western Island.

  The role of court alchemist was traditionally an academic one, with some government advisory work mixed in as necessary. Before the previous wholesale invasion of Ente Isla by ransacking demon hordes, she had been in little position to speak up on political or diplomatic affairs.

  But thanks to the role she played in the Hero’s quest, the people of this island now hung on every word she spoke publicly—and beside them, the Federated Order of the Five Continents, the group tasked with the rebuilding of the world.

  As a result, compared to her duties before the Demon King’s ultimate demise, her unexpected new role as advisor to the Federation’s top generals had the effect of dramatically increasing her workload.

  This rise in the political ladder made her the envy of Saint Aile’s power brokers. Beneath the surface, it made the Church—whose relationship with her took a major blow after the whole Olba Meiyer affair—view her with hostility. It all led to a dangerous amount of stress, enough to make her vent at her former traveling partner Albert:

  “Once the Central Continent is rebuilt, I think I’m gonna defect, you knooooow?”

  Her only solace was that her official post in the Federated Order of the Five Continents was overseeing the armies tasked with wiping up the demons that remained in the land.

  These hordes were nothing to sweat about, particularly. They certainly didn’t call for Emeralda herself to ride for the battlefield.

  But the job of annihilating the demons that remained in the Central Continent still required the efforts of warriors from every nation, united under the common banner of protecting the weak and helpless. Beholding this spontaneous show of brotherhood was enough to make Emeralda believe there was still some hope for this world yet.

  But Emeralda, and Albert as well, knew the truth.

  The battle between the Hero and Devil King still raged on. Far away. In another world.

  And though barely two years had passed since the Devil King’s forces fell, the people of Ente Isla, unaware of this, were quickly ferrying the name of the Hero Emilia away into the oblivion of legend.

  At first, Emeralda and Albert worked fervently to restore Emilia’s good name, so badly besmirched by Olba’s would-be altering of history.

  But even at this early point, the world situation no longer required Emilia. It needed a decent bureaucrat or two, not a semi-heavenly savior.

  Whether she was alive or dead hardly mattered. To most of the people who lived and breathed here, the name Emilia Justina meant little more than “this lady with a sword who lived somewhere or other.”

  Only a small clutch of people, the ones who knew Emilia personally, could associate that name with an actual human being any longer.

  And any attempt to restore Emilia’s reputation would require revealing Olba and the Church’s high crimes to the public—costing the organization its power, its authority, its whole reason for existing.

  Justice, wrought by the connected and powerful in the name of righteous anger, could damage far more than it could heal. If Saint Aile and the Church—the two most powerful presences on the Western Island—were to formally clash with each other, the entire subcontinent would be split in two, the decline of the entire region no doubt in the offing.

  Emeralda found herself lost.

  The other four lands that comprised Ente Isla were devoting their collected strength to rebuilding the world. The Western Island couldn’t afford not to keep a unified front. She had to keep that from unraveling; keep their power from being wasted on internal strife.

  Thus, Emeralda Etuva made a politician’s decision: She put her country’s future ahead of her friend’s honor.

  Emeralda was no heartless powermonger, though. Her decision was supported by another factor:

  Crestia Bell, cleric on the Reconciliation Panel.

  Once feared as the “Scythe of Death,” the leader of the Council of Inquisitors, Crestia was now a loyal companion to Emilia.

  A Church cleric, one in a position to advise the Archbishops in their Sanctuary, was working to restore Emilia’s honor and reaffirm the noble name of the Church. The news came as music to Emeralda’s ears.

  The fact that she once directly reported to Olba was also enormous.

  If Crestia, an outsider to politics, could take Emeralda’s place in exposing the corruption that threatened to topple the Church—although news of such heinous apostasy would no doubt roil the public—it would help the Church “heal thyself,” as it were. Faith in it would remain strong, and with it, stability. Wasteful infighting and disorder among the masses would be kept at a minimum.

  Emeralda, meanwhile, was pinned in place by her very public name. If she clashed directly with the Church, the resulting shock waves would throw the people into panic and agitation.

  It vexed her not to raise the flag for Emilia, considering she was her first real friend in life. But if she wanted to both restore Emilia’s name and keep the peace nationwide, Emeralda concluded it wiser to allow Crestia to take action in her place.

  And someday, there would come a time when Crestia’s name took a rightful role alongside her own as a fighter for the Hero’s cause.

  Maybe.

  “It’d be niiiiice…but, ooooh, maybe not so niiiiice…”

  Emeralda murmured to herself as she read through a weighty stack of reports on the desk in her office, a gift from the Federated Order’s headquarters.

  “But…I don’t knoooow…maybe Emilia shouldn’t come back home at alllll…”

  Japan. That alien world. That blissfully bountiful, peaceful land.

  Emilia might be better off living a quiet life over there. It was her second home now.

  The thought refused to banish itself from Emeralda’s mind as she shot a glance at the alchemic audio transmitter—Emilia referred to it as a “cell phone”—on one corner of her desk.

  “Hey! Eme! Listen to this!”

  The voice that had spoken through it not long ago was agitated, but somehow still light and airy.

  “He’s been volunteering with the neighborhood cleanup crews! Him! The Devil King! That horrible monster! Doesn’t that make you laugh like a maniac?”

  Once, not long ago, she was a knight in the Church’s service. A woman whose entire life was devoted to one thing: revenge for her father, earned by blood.

  “Can you believe this, Eme? I’m going nuts here! The Devil King is killing me! Why is changing a diaper so goddamn hard?!”

  But now, like any woman her age, she laughed, cried, and raged in equal doses.

  Her report about a “girl who popped out of a giant apple” a while ago, followed by the revelation of the child’s true identity, was enough to stun even Emeralda. But instead of this girl’s origin, the people on the other side seemed more preoccupied about the fact that she saw Emilia and the Devil King as her parents. Things like Heaven and the Sephirah, both far more pressing topics of discussion, were somehow by-and-large glossed over.

  “I want to restore my father’s wheat fields.”

  That had been Emilia’s dream.

  But if she returned to Ente Isla, she was Emilia Justina, The Hero Who Saved the World. If they could repair her reputation, the people would lovingly sing her praises as they adopted her as a symbol of justice for all time. But it would keep her from those fields, likely forever.

  To Emeralda, it
wouldn’t mark the end of Emilia being solely her friend. But it would make access far more difficult.

  Besides, she was already deep into the political game, a position she accepted without asking for Emilia’s feedback.

  “Things never go as one expects, dooo they?”

  Emeralda heaved an exaggerated sigh, letting the stress out before it diminished her any further. Emilia had already accomplished her main mission in life. What happened to her next, she was free to decide on her own.

  Whether she returned to Ente Isla or not, it was Emeralda’s role to prepare a world for her that was as bright and shiny as possible. She saw this as her responsibility, the result of plucking a simple girl out from the village and transforming her into a myth.

  Then Emeralda realized it: This entire line of thinking hinged on the assumption that the Devil King, too, was staying put in Japan.

  She knew why that was so easy to take for granted. The Devil King, to his credit, was no longer the Devil King she and Ente Isla once knew and loathed.

  Satan, lord of all demons, was now hard at work in the human world, living an honest, sober life among them and even attempting to raise that girl from the apple. Like a human parent would. Emilia herself admitted to it.

  “So is that all it takes for peeeace? Without any of these other questions answered? Or should we seek to find those answers, even if it leads to certain…saaacrifices? A tough nut to crack, indeeeed.”

  Emilia Etuva, friend of Emilia, struggled against the Saint Aile court alchemist within her.

  “Hmmm…?”

  Distracted by these intertwining emotions, Emeralda’s hand stopped as she more closely examined the documents she was stamping.

  For the past half month, she had noticed that the demon hordes seemed to be, oddly enough, growing. The number of demons eyewitnessed during a typical patrol was slowly, yet clearly, on an upward trend.

  “Oooh, I don’t like thaaat…”

  Last month, there was even a day or two with zero demons put down. The rise was very slight from day to day, but through the previous two weeks, this gradual rise was starting to add up, with no sign of a decline.

  The rise in potential demon targets also led to an accompanying rise in Federated Order casualties. Emeralda frowned.

  If this kept up, she might have need to set off herself to investigate.

  It was just as she began to write her recommendations along those lines in a supplementary report that a shrill voice rang out.

  “Lady Etuva!!”

  It belonged to a knight’s assistant from the North Island, who all but sprinted into the office with a clatter.

  “What is it?”

  The young squire’s face was white as a ghost as he gasped for breath, eyes darting to and fro nervously.

  It indicated before she even asked that there was no good news to come.

  THE DEVIL FINDS HIMSELF JOBLESS, THEN HOMELESS

  Her flowing silver hair shone beautifully, like the Milky Way gracing the night sky.

  The pair of eyes bobbing in this heavenly waterway emitted a quiet, powerful poise, presenting a sublime light brighter than even those twin rulers of the skies, the sun and the moon.

  “She’s so pretty…”

  His frail whisper, as if his soul had been torn from his body, dissipated into the air before it could reach anyone’s ear.

  A turn of the eye, and then he was enraptured by the figure’s powerful, bounding arms and legs: life personified, at the peak of kinetic activity.

  The innocent frame was gifted with seemingly limitless possibility, the rest of its life awaiting it with open arms, reaching the pinnacle of beauty in a way that surpassed any work of art that came before it.

  She was as dexterous and nimble as a bounding gazelle, but her legs were as supple and delicate as the petals of a lily.

  Her beauty had an airy, almost lyrical quality to it, like the wings of an angel, but her arms were as bewitching and beguiling as a jaguar on the prowl.

  But above anything else, her face—more beautiful and fluid than a kaleidoscope, more colorful than a rose, more graceful than a peony in full bloom, more fleeting than a cherry blossom—was sheer bliss, far beyond what a thousand songs and poems could hope to capture in sound and word.

  “Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha…”

  The sight snatched his heart away. And although he was alone, nobody could have chided him for losing himself in the mesmerizing sight.

  “Um…Maou?”

  “Ah-hah-hah-hah…”

  After all, from the moment he awoke to the moment his eyes closed, he was forever caught in her siren-like attraction.

  “Maou, you should really keep your voice down…”

  “Bwah-hah-hah-hah-hah!”

  Heart and soul, he was her prisoner, his very life a mere plaything in her hands.

  “Maou, come on!”

  “Gahh! Wh-What, Chi?!”

  Sadao Maou, feeling someone shake him by the shoulder, flashed a creepy smile to himself before returning to his senses.

  Turning around, he saw his coworker, the only girl he fully trusted in Japan (and the only native Japanese woman to know his true identity), puffing up her cheeks as she put her hands to her hips.

  Inside the staff break room at the MgRonald in front of Hatagaya rail station, the world-conquering Devil King was being scolded by a teenage girl.

  “We can hear you laughing all the way over in the kitchen. And it’s kind of freaking me out, too!”

  “Oh. Uh? Ohhh. Sorry. Guess I kinda lost control.”

  Chiho Sasaki, face reddened as she looked up at the taller Maou, glanced down and frowned at the cheap cardboard photo album in his hand, the kind most camera shops give out for free with purchases.

  “Ugh… You’re looking at those pictures of Alas Ramus again, aren’t you?”

  “Sure was! Hey, take a look at this one a sec.”

  Shaking off Chiho’s accusation, Maou thrust the album in her face, fully forgetting what she’d told him three seconds ago.

  “…Another new one?”

  The photo he showed off depicted a silver-haired toddler frolicking around somebody’s lawn, arms wide open in the air as she breathlessly ran forward.

  “Y’know, this isn’t really a photo, though. It’s a…uh, what do you call it? A screen capture? One of those. From a video. I had them print it out for me!”

  “……”

  “That bastard Emi hardly brings her over at all, you know, so it’s like, jeez, having to wait for the big day practically drives me nuts! I shot this when I took Alas Ramus to the sports gym in Hatagaya the other day, but man, she pretty much ran around the whole day! She’s an animal!”

  “…That’s great.”

  Chiho couldn’t find any other response.

  “Hey, did you need any of these, though? I got a lot of new pictures of her!”

  “…I’m fine for now, thanks. I got a lot to look through already.”

  Despite her attraction to Maou and her honest love for Alas Ramus, his output was proving difficult to keep up with. She gently returned the photo.

  In the past two weeks, once Emi brought Alas Ramus back to Maou after the girl was feared lost forever, Maou’s behavior around the child had tiptoed past mere devotion and was now fully ensconced in the land of overprotectiveness.

  The all-consuming love was enough to drive Maou, who’d never purchased anything beyond the bare necessities for himself during his entire time in Japan, to buy an outdated digital camera and photo printer. It was clear how much of a terminal case this was.

  He had Hanzou Urushihara, the deadbeat fallen angel who now had nothing to boast of apart from his past glories and Web-surfing skills, process the photos and videos on their computer, allowing Maou to view what he had shot while Alas Ramus wasn’t around to soothe his soul. However, the purchase of these not-so-bare necessities was far from a welcome sight for Shirou Ashiya, the demon who served as guardian of the Devil’s Castle coffers. />
  The running costs associated with the ink alone was nothing at all to sniff at. Urushihara also had the habit of leaving the printer on after processing Maou’s photos, a colossal waste of electricity. To Ashiya, whose fervent dream was to make the demon realm’s official slogan “A penny saved is a penny earned,” it was yet another everyday stress to tangle with.

  “I mean, you’re free to use your break time any way you want, but…Ms. Kisaki’s gonna come back pretty soon, so could you, uh, try to get it together a little more?”

  “No problemo! I flip the switch in my brain, and bam, it’s back on the clock!”

  The shift supervisor/Devil King’s avowal, delivered in the wake of being admonished by a teenage girl, turned up lacking in the way of convincing force considering the simpering, half-mad grin he accented it with.

  Granted the right to dote on Alas Ramus from Emi Yusa—her other “parent” and his own sworn enemy—on the several occasions per month she brought her along on a visit, Maou acted exactly like a father who’d lost custody of his child after a long, bitter divorce.

  To Chiho, fully aware of Maou’s goals and his former cloven-hoofed self, it wasn’t a cause of exasperation so much as honest concern. She left the staff room, having said her fill.

  “I hope Maou’s all right, going on about Alas Ramus all day and night like that. I guess he could afford the camera and printer, so he must have some spare cash…but then again, I don’t think he works anywhere else…”

  She took a glance at the calendar on a side wall as she whispered furtively to herself.

  “We’re closing up shop tomorrow, too…”

  Sadao Maou: Better known elsewhere as the Devil King Satan, an all-powerful scoundrel from the demon realms who all but had Ente Isla wrapped around one clawed finger. Emi Yusa: Better known elsewhere as Emilia the Hero, the savior who rescued Ente Isla from a fate worse than death.

  Thanks to the child called Alas Ramus claiming both of them as her parents, the Hero and Devil King were now struggling with a life of child-rearing that neither were particularly used to. It was only with extreme reluctance that they worked together on the effort.

  The confrontation against the archangel Gabriel over the fate of this child had ended in a narrow victory for these “parents,” if only thanks to a very unlikely chain of completely unpredictable events.