The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 1 (13 page)

The magical force, strong enough to visibly shimmer in the darkness, made the twisted sight all the more plain.

Maou’s voice seemed higher up than usual because his legs had transformed into a demon’s, more gnarled and twisted than any animal in this world.

The transformation ended there, but it was clear to see that Maou was in the process of regaining his Devil King form.

“So I have the barriers up, and it’ll be easy to get this rubble out of the way. But this still isn’t enough power to control the Gate, so don’t worry about that, okay?”

It was difficult to keep from worrying when faced with a sight like this. Emi had no idea why, but Maou was able to regain the magical power necessary to become the Devil King, all in the short, fleeting moments after the corridor collapsed.

“I’ll have to find a way to keep the barriers going while I get the rubble out of the way. Who knows how I’m going to explain this new look, though.”

Little by little, Maou infused his bright red magical power into the rubble around him.

Satan, the Devil King, wielding his untold force to rescue Emi, rescue Chiho, rescue Ashiya, rescue any number of Japanese people he didn’t even know the names of. If “the Hero Emilia” were here, face-to-face with the Devil King, his back wide open, there was no doubt she would be lunging at him, holy sword glinting in the light. But this was Emi Yusa, and all Emi could do was stare at the defenseless back of her sworn enemy.

In her heart, she feared that demon’s wings would shoot out from his back, pushed to the surface by this dreadful magic. If she threw all caution into the wind and drummed up the final bit of holy force left within her, she would be able to summon a holy sword with enough power to defeat the Devil King, right here, right now.

“Mmm…”

Chiho’s half groan, half dreamlike whisper in her sleep quickly quashed the microscopically tiny candle of murderous rage that had kindled itself within Emi’s body.

If she killed the Devil King here, she would fulfill her mission. But it would also snuff out the lives of so many others, crushed in an instant by the rubble instead of surviving by the grace of that infernal demonic force. Emi and Chiho would be no exception.

“Why?”

Deep within her throat, imperceptible to anyone else, Emi cursed herself.

“Why is the Devil King
saving
people?”

As far back as Emilia Justina could remember, the land of Ente Isla lay in a delicate balance between the Devil King’s forces and those of the human race, which were led by Ente Isla’s Church armies.

She was an only child, daughter of Nordo Justina, a humble farmer who tended a small wheat field in the countryside of the Western Continent. They were a father-daughter household, with no other relatives; she had no recollection of her mother.

When Emilia was ten years old, the Northern Continent and the kingdom to the east fell, destroyed by a demonic force that fanned outward from the Central Continent like a tsunami.

The Western Continent was well protected by the royal forces’ generals. Its armies centered themselves around the troops provided by the Church, a seemingly omnipotent presence whose powers were connected directly to heaven itself. But the advance of the western invasion forces, led by the Great Demon General Lucifer, had plunged the island into total war.

Nordo Justina, a devout member of the Church, made sure to visit the local chapter with her daughter on a daily basis. The young Emilia didn’t know what the words of prayer sung by the parishioners meant, but even she could tell something serious was happening. Copying her father’s motions, she clasped her small hands together and prayed with all her might.

But all the prayers were for naught, as the western forces slowly began to crack under the pressure of the demons’ advance.

Emilia passed her days listening to the criers that brought the latest ill-boding news to the village. Her nights were passed in fear, constantly wondering when the demons would come to burn the crops she and her father had raised.

Her father was a simple man of the field. He knew nothing of battle, for he had devoted his entire life to the cultivation and production of wheat.

Whenever Emilia would lie in bed at night, crying to herself out of fear, he would always seem to appear, stroking her hair with his thick hands until she fell asleep.

Emilia loved her father. She respected him, adored him, and relied on him more than anyone else in the world. He was the greatest hero she had.

Then, in the year Emilia turned twelve, the fateful moment came.

The message arrived that the land owned by the local nobility, right next to the province where Emilia lived, had fallen.

And then, almost as if on cue, the bishops came from the Church.

At first, Emilia thought the Church Guard had swooped in to save the village.

But she then found herself being loaded into a Church wagon, alone, her father telling her he would stay here.

At first, Emilia had no idea what her father was saying. She begged the bishops, and the village elder who had come to see her off, to convince her father to come along.
I can’t live alone. I am who I am because of Father, because of the villagers.

“Let’s go, Father! Let’s go together!”

Emilia screamed as loudly as she could, but the response her father gave was nothing short of unbelievable.

“Emilia, please, go.”

Emilia doubted her own ears.

“Father! Father, what are you…!”

“This is all for the sake of a day I hoped would never come. For twelve years, I have protected you. I have been the father of an angel’s child, one I had no right to receive.”

“I don’t understand! What are you saying, Father?!”

“You are the child of an angel. You have inherited the blood of heaven, the blood that will wipe away the darkness covering Ente Isla. You are the only one in this land with the power to defeat the Devil King.”

“Me? No! No, Father, I’m your daughter! The daughter of a village farmer!”

“Yes. You are. But you are also your mother’s daughter. The daughter of an angel.”

“My…my mother? An angel?”

Her mother was dead. Her father had said as much for years.

“You will understand someday, Emilia. Please, let the bishops take you. Your mother is still alive, somewhere. I know she looks down upon you now.”

“But…but Father—”

“I made a promise to your mother. I promised we would all be together, the three of us, here in this village, someday. And if I want to keep that promise, I have to fight for it.”

Nordo gave another, stronger hug to Emilia, who clung to him like a toddler, then knelt down to her eye level. A large, rough hand reassuringly patted her on the head.

“It’ll be all right. Everyone in the Church army is fighting alongside us to protect this village, this province. The day will surely come when we all live together again.”

“…Really?”

“Of course. I never lie to my girl. Have I ever broken a promise before?”

“…No.”

Sniffling, Emilia used a fist to wipe away the tears as she shook her head.

“There’s a good girl.”

Her father laughed, his laugh as warm as a fresh bushel of wheat.

“I’ll be praying for you. Praying for a world where evil is driven away, where you can live your life bathed in holy light. Emilia…my daughter, I love you from the bottom of my heart.”

The rest was all a cloud in her memory. Her father, blurred in her teary eyes, and the arm of the bishop trying to separate them. The village, and the only parent she knew, growing smaller and smaller through the carriage’s thick portholes.

She must have cried herself to sleep, because the next thing she knew, she was in an ornate, luxurious, and wholly unfamiliar bedroom.

The bishop serving as her steward explained that this was Sankt Ignoreido, the Church’s headquarters on the Western Continent. It was the day after she was separated from her father. The same day news arrived that her homeland, her village, had been razed to the ground, the Church’s exertions proving to be all for naught.

After this, the young bishop told Emilia a great number of things.

The revelations flowed like a stream. Her mother was actually one of the great archangels; only a cross between human and angel could
wield the heaven-gifted holy sword known as the “Better Half.” To Emilia, hearing all this provided neither solace nor pain.

Having all of these bizarre tales spun before you, then being told all of it was the unadorned truth, would have been hard to accept for anyone. But Emilia had no desire for a holy sword, nor for whatever dubious stories they had about her mother. All she wanted was power. Power to gain revenge against the Devil King forces that destroyed her small, peaceful village.

From the day after she arrived in Sankt Ignoreido, she begged to be taught in the ways of the sword. Even now, she remembered her surprise at the weight of the iron weapon that the grown knights seemed to brandish with such ease. By the time she was ready for routine training, her body was already scarred, her hands deeply calloused.

Her first journey to battle came a year later. She was to join a defense line mounted in a rural frontier. The demon side was composed of strictly the lowest level of monsters, just common goblins and imps, and yet the sight of her first battlefield, the smell of blood, made her legs fall out from under her. She failed to defeat a single demon; the Church knights were forced to safeguard her from start to finish.

Her own weakness, and how far advanced and deathly terrifying the foe she was attempting to challenge truly was, was now revealed in graphic clarity. The tears she swore she would never shed again after losing her father poured out all too easily.

But time continued to pass, and Emilia gained more battlefield experience. Before she knew it, she stood upon the front lines, leading the Church knights as they captured Devil King citadels and command posts.

The name of Emilia Justina, knight of the Church Guard, spread among not just the Church forces, but also through the knights and mercenaries serving the armies of all the land’s kingdoms. She bore a great shield, her armor composed of silver plate with the Church’s seal etched in gold and scarlet; her knightly sword featured the Cross of Ignora, the symbol of the Ente Isla Church. Those who witnessed
her slaying the throngs of demons that dared to challenge Emilia called her the Virgin of the Battlefield, the Holy Knight; and soon, Emilia was known across the human race as the leader of the Guard fighting the Devil King’s hordes.

A vast, wide group of trustworthy friends gathered behind Emilia’s lead.

Olba Meiyer, one of the six archbishops of the Church, the highest figures in the Church bureaucracy. Emeralda Etuva, alchemist and member of the court of Saint Aile, an empire on the Western Continent that had been captured by Lucifer’s forces. Albert Ende, a martial artist who toiled as a woodcutter deep in the mountains of the Northern Continent.

Sometimes they fought as a quartet. Other times, each captained their own force against the Devil King’s armies.

By the time Emilia’s sixteenth birthday tolled, she had matured to the point where she was a warrior capable of wielding the holy sword. The Better Half was instilled into her body, granting her, in both name and ability, the power to destroy the Devil King himself.

News of the birth of Emilia the Hero, the woman who wielded the sword from heaven, spread across the land, galvanizing the spirits of all who heard it. The day the Hero was born was also the day when the humans of Ente Isla launched the first truly unified resistance against the Devil King.

Emilia’s response was subdued. She felt no pride at the adulation; there was no sense of holding a great mandate for the people. To her, the day held no special meaning, apart that she now held the power to challenge the demon overlord at his own game.

Within Emilia’s heart dwelt two things: the eternal, unflagging image of her father, and a dark desire for revenge against the demons. Her companions stood silently, all too aware of this, ready to become her sword and her shield as they united together for a common cause.

With seemingly unstoppable momentum, they defeated three of the Great Demon Generals. After pitched, bloody combat, they
had stormed the Devil’s Castle, the edifice that would serve as the site of the final battle. The dark joy Emilia felt as her sword sliced through one of the Devil King’s horns nearly shook her to the roots, so sublime it was. And the dull blue rage she felt as the Devil King escaped through the Gate, robbing her of the final blow, was cataclysmic.

From the moment she began training, she had dreamed of the single moment when the Demon King would be dead by her hand.