The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 8 Page 14

<“Are they after me…? I doubt it. I wouldn’t be here if I had not met Maou earlier. So are they after you?”>

  <“It would have to be. It could be our neighbor, perhaps, but either way, we’re the only three people in the building now.”>

  The ominous army outside showed no signs of movement, but with their numbers, a human-wave attack would be all it took to finish Ashiya off.

  <“Can you fight?”>

  <“Under any normal circumstances, I could finish off these forces in an instant. Now, however…”> Ashiya clenched his teeth. It all felt so pathetic to him.

  <“I, too, have never received any formal battle training. If Tsubasa… If only Acieth were back here for us…”>

  This Tsubasa, or Acieth, must have been the woman with Maou earlier. A woman who was probably zooming to Chiho’s aid at the moment, for reasons Ashiya couldn’t fathom.

  Then he realized. If everyone in the forces surrounding them were from the Eastern Island, there was only one man who could’ve pulled the strings behind them: Olba Meiyer. And with Emi gone and Chiho’s school under attack by someone or something, either Suzuno was coming to the rescue, or Maou—whose powers were near infinite, assuming he could get his act together. Urushihara’s motives remained a big question mark, but Ashiya knew there were times when he tapped on a resource besides demonic force to wield his powers.

  It meant that no matter how he put it, there was only one force in Japan right now with absolutely zero ability to fend for itself.

  “The Eastern Island…?”

  Ashiya gritted his teeth. Emi and Suzuno weren’t the only ones in danger. The furor over at Chiho’s school was just a feint. Olba and Barbariccia, their enemies, had their swords pointed squarely at the Great Demon General, Alciel.

  “Uggh, this rain is awful… It wasn’t like this at all on the other side.”

  The woman who left the Sasazuka Station building groaned at the driving rain as she surveyed her surroundings.

  “Should I grab a taxi? I don’t think it’s that far from the station, though. It’d kinda be a waste.”

  She stood in front of a neighborhood map as she pondered over which road to take, a wheeled travel suitcase with a large shoulder bag slumped on top of it at her side. But the piece of paper she held in her hand wasn’t some handwritten map, or note, or cell phone. It was, oddly enough, a résumé.

  “Right! Taxi it is! I don’t wanna get all wet!”

  She stuffed the wrinkled-up résumé in her shoulder bag, walked through the hall that housed the turnstiles, arrived at a guardrail on the side of the road, and looked around for an open taxi.

  Then the wind changed direction.

  “Agh!”

  She twitched her nose a little.

  “…What is that?” she said, puzzled. She rubbed her chin for a moment in thought, then turned toward the direction from which she detected a certain scent.

  “Ahh…”

  She nodded, her suspicions apparently confirmed. It noticeably soured her face.

  “Can’t take the taxi there, huh? Shoot. They don’t have a bath, either, do they?”

  Then she trudged back into the station, still griping to herself as she tossed her possessions into a coin-op locker. After that:

  “Hyaaaaaahhhhh!!”

  She screamed as she plunged, running, into the heart of rainy Sasazuka, without so much as an umbrella to protect her. Her carelessly tied ponytail and healthy tan were both instantly soaked, and it wasn’t long before she melted into the long curtain of water before her.

  Maou and Acieth, meanwhile, were finally near Sasahata North High School, despite their little side trip. They were encountering a few difficulties.

  “Arrrrgghh!!”

  Maou screamed as he tried battering his way through the stormwall. But his human legs couldn’t even keep him upright against the pounding gale. It sent him reeling along the road before he crashed into a light post.

  “Owwwww!”

  “Wow, big disaster!” Acieth observed, not bothering to comment on Maou’s painful misfortune.

  “Damn it! We made it all the way here and I can’t even see inside!”

  From the outside, it looked like a gigantic cumulonimbus cloud had decided to swallow up the school grounds. It had settled in a neat circle around the property, refusing entry from the outside to anyone and anything. The damage outside this area was far below what he feared—just one (rather recently) downed light post, actually.

  Things, however, were different inside the school grounds.

  “You are no help at all, huh, Maou?”

  “Man, do I hate you.”

  Acieth shrugged, not even bothering to care about her hair slapping all around her head. “Why you tell me to go back to apartment anyway? I no like that.”

  “Well, if something happened to you or Nord, we’d really be up the creek!”

  Figuring that transport was the hard part and he could get together with Suzuno to handle the rest of the dirty work, Maou had ordered Acieth to return to Devil’s Castle and await further instructions. But:

  “Are you suuuuure? It is better if I here?”

  “You are really pissing me off right now!”

  Maou just couldn’t get in the school. Once the local wind speed surpassed forty miles an hour or so, it was hard for a normal human being to even stand up. The wind around this storm was a lot faster than that—going in unprotected would just send him careening back all over again.

  “Wonder if Suzuno’s already in there,” he muttered nervously. He didn’t know what kind of enemy was lurking inside, but recent otherworldly visitors to Japan were proving to be quite a handful to the Devil King, especially in his current inconvenienced state. The sort of foe that not even the Hero could handle without Alas Ramus would (he hated to say) give Suzuno some mean odds to deal with.

  Along those lines, Maou had yet to actually see Suzuno devote her all to a fight. He had seen that from Emi after their knock-down-drag-out on Ente Isla, and there was no doubt Alas Ramus had made her even stronger. But while Suzuno had been his enemy at one point, Maou was equipped with nothing but a pair of boxers at the time, and Suzuno was clearly restraining herself. Her full powers as a magical warrior remained a mystery to him. He wondered how often Church clerics engaged in all-out combat in the first place, not counting exceptions like Olba—but even back in Choshi, she was going on about how she wanted to kill an entire army of Malebranche down to the last man.

  Maou tried to spot her amid the storm, but the howl of the wind and the pattering of the rain, along with the sirens from fire engines all around the neighborhood, made it impossible. The stormwall was already exacting nearly its full force by the time he arrived. It made sense that someone called the authorities to deal with this bizarre weather event. Not that it was Maou’s fault, but it’d still be nice, he thought, if Japan’s general public was willing to accept this as just another freak climate event to argue about online.

  “Hmm… Over there.”

  “Huh?!”

  As Maou descended further and further into panic mode, Acieth unexpectedly pointed at a speck in the air.

  “There. Traces from opening.”

  “Where?!”

  There was no telling where she was pointing to, what with the stormwall, the wind, and the assorted other detritus flying through the air.

  “It is demon-force wind. I think someone forced it open, there. One more push, and I think they smash up the whole thing, huh?”

  “Whaddaya mean, one more push? Who?”

  “Wow, Maou, why you so useless? All right. I’ll do it. You want go inside, yes?”

  “You…can do that?”

  “Mmm… Can you give me little more time? Pop isn’t near me, so…”

  “Pop” didn’t seem to have a lot of holy energy storage potential within him. What was the deal with that?

  “How much time are we talking?”

  “Mmm…one hour?”

  Maou almost fell for e
ntirely non-wind-related reasons.

  “That’s too damn long! It’d be faster to just go back and fetch Nord again!”

  “Wanna do that?”

  “I told you, I don’t wanna get you guys involved in this crap.”

  “Ooh, but it’ll take big power to break that down…and if you were my latent force, Maou, I think that doesn’t make holy power for me.”

  “Latent what?”

  “Force. My sister and me, our power comes from person serving as our latent force. The strength in heart, yes?”

  “Whoa, hang on!”

  That sounded like something extremely important, this little tidbit she just tossed at him. He wanted to explore it more fully, but he could tell listening to the whole story would take even longer than an hour.

  “Just give me a quick synopsis, okay? Are you saying you can siphon power from someone right by you? Even someone like Nord with no magic force at all?”

  “Mmm, not sucking from him, no. More, um, his influence makes me feel better?”

  Maou gasped. It was exactly how he transformed into his full demon self. By turning the feelings people felt in their minds into actual power.

  “Well, can you make me the target for the time being or something?!”

  “Ooh, yes,” Acieth said, quickly nodding, before suddenly switching over to a dour frown. “But I dunno… I don’t like your feeling, Maou. Not sure if I can accept you, or…”

  “How you can say that? This is an emergency! And, geez, it’s only the first time we’ve met!”

  Never in his time in Japan had someone so brightly, cheerfully stated to him that he was physiologically unacceptable to her. She had just said at the test site how swell his hand smelled, too!

  “But you can do it, right?”

  “Mmm, but it is no holy force from you, Maou, so…”

  “It doesn’t matter! We just gotta apply as much power as we can to that rift you mentioned, right?”

  “Yeaaah…”

  Acieth still seemed reluctant. Maou grabbed her hand, clenching at it.

  “Ah!”

  “Please! We have to try something! I’ll take care of you after that!”

  “R-really…? That, first time a man said that to me…”

  Acieth’s cheeks had just a twinge of pink to them.

  “…I mean,” Maou nervously added, “I’ll tell you everything I know about your ‘sister,’ all right?”

  “All right. Go a little closer.”

  Acieth motioned with her eyes as Maou took a step forward, figuring there was some sort of process he had to follow.

  “S-sure, I… Whoa!”

  Instead, what he found was Acieth, eyes closed, bringing her face right up to his. He hurriedly sidled back.

  “Wha-wha-what’re you doing?!”

  “What? It is forehead and forehead, yes?” she replied, clearly surprised by this sudden rejection.

  Maou breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t quite the worst he had feared. But then, he realized exactly the extent of what he had just imagined. It filled him with an inscrutable sort of shame.

  He approached Acieth again, this time carefully, as he brought his head forward.

  “No running, now.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Maou said, smirking a little at how Acieth phrased the command like a line from an action flick.

  Her forehead approached his. As it did, he spotted a familiar glow. It was purple, and just like with Alas Ramus, it came from her Yesod fragment. So Acieth really was like Alas Ramus.

  “Your latent force, huh…?”

  Just as Acieth’s phrasing crossed his mind again, their foreheads met. Then, the next moment, it was Acieth jumping back, like she just touched something hot.

  “Wh-what is it…?” Maou grew nervous. Was it some kind of problem with the procedure, he wondered, as Acieth gave him a look of shock like nothing he’d seen before.

  “M-Maou…” she said with trembling lips. “You… You’re…”

  “Yep.”

  Acieth’s forehead gave out a stronger pulse of light.

  “You were Devil King?! Like, ‘Maou’ in Japanese? So you have that last name?!”

  “Oh, for…”

  Whether an Idea Link–style force sprang into action or their little love tap triggered a little demonic force, Acieth must have learned the truth just now. Something about her reaction, however, made the moment seem less than dramatic. Yes, his name meant exactly what it sounded like.

  “That’s what surprises you at this point?! What’s the big problem, huh? Use your ears, geez!”

  “It not very creative, no!”

  “Oh, you’re one to talk… Yow!”

  Before Maou could continue pleading his argument, the light from Acieth’s head extended across his entire body.

  “Ay, look at me, leaving body and soul to King of All Demons… I’m sorry, Mom…I am bad daughter to you…”

  “Dude, I’m not some street punk asking your mom to let me date you, all right?!”

  Acieth never failed to seize the opportunity to berate Maou. But now all the light made her practically invisible to him.

  And then, it exploded.

  “Agh!!”

  Acieth was now an array of countless light particles, each still strengthening more in power—and they were all descending upon Maou.

  “Uh… What’s…? This isn’t…?”

  Beyond the initial surprise, Maou’s brain was warning him about potential disaster ahead. As the light enveloped him, he realized he had seen something quite a bit like this before. Quite a few times, actually. Although it was the other way around whenever he saw it.

  “…This is exactly like when Alas Ramus comes out of Emi, ain’t it?”

  It was probably too late, in assorted ways, by the time the thought reached his mind. That was because the pillar of purple of light at the base of the stormwall was tearing through the sky, all but ready to rip it apart.

  A dull clanging sound echoed across the Sasahata North High School area as Suzuno’s hammer thudded against Libicocco’s dire claws.

  But the cross-dimensional battle unfolding in the sky didn’t quite have Chiho’s full attention. She glanced at Urushihara, standing on the roof as he watched the fight, and the door back downstairs, ripped open by Libicocco a while back. The twisted knob was still on the floor.

  “Stop worrying, dude,” Urushihara said, noticing Chiho’s eyes on him. He gave the steel door a couple of pats to reassure her. “I can seal this door back shut with holy force, easy.”

  “Y-yeah, hopefully…”

  It still worried Chiho to no end. Urushihara was, after all, a fallen angel—one whose lifestyle fit the term perfectly—and she assumed he was more of a demon in terms of species by now. The white wings, and the power on a level of Emi’s or Suzuno’s, was nothing short of astonishing to her.

  Suzuno must’ve spotted him a 5-Holy Energy β—but was he safe drinking that? It was the same as what Chiho drank, although her dosages were still being strictly regulated. Just one of those little bottles was enough to send the (allegedly) mighty demon Ashiya into a near coma. Maou himself mentioned that an unexpected influx of holy energy would do nothing to his body but damage it.

  Then she heard a voice from beyond the door, perhaps responding to Urushihara’s rapping.

  “Hey! Somebody out there?! Open the door! Dammit, why ain’t it opening?!”

  It was one teacher or other, boldly stepping up to take action despite the fierce typhoon and the Biblical conflict unfolding over the front yard.

  Urushihara, following Suzuno’s orders, had used his magic to seal off every door and window in the entire school. It was a preventative measure to keep any wayward students from getting caught up in the conflict, but the fact Urushihara engineered the spell gave Chiho no end of anxiety.

  “Sealing an entryway’s pretty high-level stuff, dude. A regular person could, like, never break through it.”

  The fact Urushihara had such a
n eerily convenient spell on hand was one surprise. She wasn’t entirely sure what the spell was created for, either.

  “Oh, there’s a thousand ’n’ one uses,” he explained. “Maybe you don’t know, living in Japan and everything, but folks like kings and Church officials cast this spell on themselves and their, like, treasure rooms and their sanctuaries to keep intruders away.”

  “I…see…”

  It made sense to her. But why did Urushihara have it? And how did he cast it using holy force?

  “Hey, it’s not just me. Sariel and Gabriel can probably use it, too. It’s kinda a must-have if you wanna call yourself a high-level angel. That’s what he told me, at least, so I learned it.”

  “Told you?”

  This puzzled Chiho for a moment, but Urushihara’s attention was focused back on the fight. No further explanation seemed forthcoming, so she joined him instead.

  It didn’t take long for even her to conclude that the battle was decidedly one-sided. Despite the bulky-looking kimono, Suzuno wasn’t letting the demon so much as touch her. All the bravado Libicocco attempted to dominate Chiho with was long gone—after all the abuse it had taken, the claws on one of his arms had been taken fully out of commission.

  During that first battle she witnessed between Emi and Urushihara, there were so many spells and complex battle strikes exchanged that it looked, to her eyes, straight out of a fantasy blockbuster. By comparison, the fight between Suzuno and Libicocco seemed kind of like a schoolyard brawl, or a round of backyard wrestling. It wasn’t pretty, but watching Suzuno swing a hammer easily as tall as she was, smashing it against a demon that weighed several times as much as her, was undeniably a sight to behold.

  And yet, it was clear to even Chiho’s eyes that she was going easy on him. She had taken his back and overpowered him in a hammer-on-claw duel multiple times, but not once did she attempt to strike a lethal blow on Libicocco. She couldn’t make it out from here on the roof, but they were exchanging more than a few words in the process, too. Maybe she was pleading with him to return home.

  “…Huh. Weird.”

  “What?”

  Urushihara, watching the proceedings above him, cocked his head. “Like, Libicocco sure doesn’t fight like a Malebranche.”