It’s said that one should prepare as much as possible for the future; but the bigger the thing one is preparing for, the harder it becomes to keep everything organized. Now it was late July, a bit over a week after Maou and company went to the Sasakis to apologize. The day had finally come.
Three days had now passed since the red moon had reached its closest point to the blue moon. The two had reached a stable balance, and once they stopped moving around, the group of Heroes planned to storm in. Maou’s party wasn’t sure if they were outside the Roche limit Ashiya and Emeralda had worried about, but either way, they set off a week after the demon realms stopped gaining ground over heaven. The storming party consisted of Maou and Acieth, Ashiya and Urushihara, Emi and Alas Ramus, Laila and Gabriel, Copyhara and Amane, and Camio and Farfarello. Amane would not fight; instead, she’d observe and defend herself, while keeping watch over Copyhara.
So Devil’s Castle was launched once more from the demon realms—and even when the party plunged into heaven, there was no reaction on the other side. Considering the vast amount of time and effort they’d spent launching from Ente Isla, they ran into no obstacles at all, and after a short voyage through space, Devil’s Castle landed in heaven.
“Well, you’re just outside the demon realms. How do you feel?”
“I’m fine. Don’t distract me.”
That was the exchange Emi and Maou had as they surveyed the surface of heaven. Neither of them would ever bring up that night again. They had both decided that, even if they looked at or spoke to each other, they would never rehash the words and memories from that early evening. That was what enabled them to gaze at these enemy lands in full possession of their serenity. They both encouraged each other to act that way.
If Maou had to describe the landscape, the only way was to compare it to a field of ice. The land was a cold shade of blue, one that froze both time and hearts.
“Coming here sure was easy, wasn’t it?”
“I suppose there won’t be a welcome party. I was pretty nervous about this…”
The quiet surface of the heavens was rocky, a uniform light blue in color. This, they could tell, was why the moon looked blue from the surface of Ente Isla.
“Y’know, this… This is just too weird. I expected something a lot crazier than this…but I don’t even see any of the Heavenly Regiment.”
Even the normally garrulous Gabriel seemed quizzical as he looked around for signs of life. They had brought along squads of Pájaro Danino fighters, along with a Malebranche platoon led by Farfarello, but it was so quiet that they wondered if it was worth tapping their ranks at all.
“Yeah, so over there is where the Tree of Sephirot is. And over in that direction is the administrative research unit Ignora and the rest of us live in.”
“Well, Devil King?”
“Obvious, isn’t it? We’ll check out the Sephirot. Our mission isn’t to wipe out the angels. We’re here to release Alas Ramus’s family…and if we’ve got Copyhara, that oughtta help us against any other Sephirah.”
“Whoa, though,” protested Urushihara. “Maybe Ignora trained more guys like Erone. If she throws all of them except Yesod, Gevurah, and Da’at at us, we’re gonna have trouble taking ’em out.”
He turned to Gabriel.
“Whaddaya think about that? And what’s up with the guardian angels? You took Yesod, and Gevurah was Camael’s responsibility. I don’t really get the whole guardian angel thing in the first place, but what about all the others? Is there anyone else I know?”
“Ahh… Well, no point keeping it secret now, but there’s one more guardian angel. That’s ’cause there’s just one more Sephirah that’s manifested as a ‘kid,’ kinda.”
“…Malchut?” Emi asked.
“Oh, hey, you knew?”
Gabriel blinked, surprised that she had the answer—but this wasn’t news to her.
“Well, Alas Ramus has had Malchut’s name on her lips pretty much the whole time I’ve known her. Bright yellow, the symbol of Malchut, is her favorite color. It’s funny that the Malchut Sephirah’s name is just the same as the Sephirah itself, though, unlike her and Erone.”
Alas Ramus had been name-checking Malchut since back when she lived in Villa Rosa Sasazuka.
“Malchut, well… I’ve never really made contact with her, either. Her guardian is a guy named Sandalphon, but unlike me and Camael, he ain’t really suited for battle.”
“Sandalphon? I don’t really remember for sure, but isn’t he pretty old by now?”
“Do angels age, really?”
It was a simple question from Emi, but Gabriel gave it a serious answer.
“Well, we’ve obtained immortality, but we can’t turn back the clock on aging, mm-kay? And Sandalphon was already gettin’ on a fair bit by the time we left our home planet.”
“About that,” Maou said, this talk of their planet jogging his memory. “I’ve been wondering, Gabriel… Why are you able to cast holy magic?”
“Huh? You’re askin’ that now?”
“If my landlord is correct, humans lose their holy and demonic forces as they mature. Your planet had a huge disease hit it, but it was way more advanced than ours. And if you can cast all this holy magic, why couldn’t you use a Gate or something to find another planet?”
“Ahh, umm, I don’t know how that whole system works, really. But the reason we didn’t open any Gates is easy—we didn’t have a Gate spell, and we couldn’t use it if we had it. Like, we had no idea at the time where a habitable planet even was, y’know?”
“Oh, no?”
“Nah. Lemme tell you guys, you were damn lucky to get blown from Ente Isla to Japan. Normally, you gotta define a set entrance and exit for a Gate to work, along with enough force to get you the distance you want. If you don’t have control over it, then for all you know, you coulda wound up on Mars or Saturn instead, mm-kay?”
“That’s how it works, huh?”
That sounded plausible enough to Maou. Maybe it meant Earth and Ente Isla were pretty close to each other on an interstellar scale. A Gate journey between them took about forty minutes one way—and come to think of it, Olba managed to single-handedly trace Maou and Ashiya’s Gate to come here with Urushihara in tow, no angel’s feather pen required.
“As for using holy magic, that’s a little outside my area of expertise, but we were definitely able to tap it since birth. If I had to guess…I’d say our planet’s Sephirah saw that we were gonna have a crisis way before it happened. Maybe they figured we needed some kinda non-standard power like holy magic, or we’d never be able to cope. That’s just my guess, though. But we went and killed Caiel and Sikeena, so we’ve got no way to find out now.”
It was rare for Gabriel to talk this soberly about anything, as he stared at the blue lands around him.
“Well, shall we? I know the Tree of Sephirot and our Sephirah administration zone pretty well.”
“Ooh, yes, I would bet!”
Acieth, who had kept her mouth unusually shut up to now, didn’t bother hiding her resentment as she glared at Gabriel.
“We were born from the fragments, too, so what you have done, I don’t know. But depending on everybody’s condition, maybe you prepare to die soon!”
“Eesh. Scary.”
Gabriel, having already lost a very one-sided match against Acieth in Efzahan, quivered underneath her burning rage. It made Maou quiver for much different reasons. If, by some happenstance, the Sephirah children sided with the angels and Ignora in some way, they’d have to face an opponent as powerful as Acieth.
“Calm down, Acieth. Don’t kill Gabriel. He’s a lot more helpful to us alive.”
“Wow, nice of you to actually sound like a Devil King for a change! Like, I’m sure Ignora thinks I’ve betrayed her by now. I’m literally between the devil and the deep blue sea, mm-kay?”
“Look, I sympathize for your plight, but even with that in mind, what you did in Ente Isla was horrible. You more than deserve payback for that.”
“You think maybe my contributions to this make up for it a bit?”
“What?”
“Okay, okay, they don’t. I get it, I get it.”
Gabriel’s shoulders slumped. One look at Acieth, and he knew almost anything could set her off right now.