“Ughh. What’s the deal with this?”
It was Amane who first appraised the scene before them. Her voice sounded so disgusted, it honestly puzzled Maou.
“What’s wrong, Amane?” he asked.
“This isn’t saying anything to you or Yusa at all? What about you, Copyhara?” she asked back.
“Huh?” Maou asked. “No, um… This is certainly a first for me, yeah, but…”
“Me too,” Emi agreed. “All I can say is it’s just like how Gabriel described it.”
“I knew it was like this from before I was born, dude.”
“Oh. Wow, really? Maybe it’s some psychological thing for me, then,” Amane said.
They were in a vast, soundless wasteland, not even a breeze in the air, and in the middle of it loomed a single large tree, the same color as the land. It seemed gigantic in this otherwise flat plain, and from all the many years it had lived, it looked like a lifeless husk at this point, despite all the energy it still contained for the countless years to come. No leaves covered its branches, no flowers heralding the arrival of spring, no fruits symbolizing its living bounty. It was just a dejected-looking tree, sitting here in the middle of nowhere.
Surrounding this giant tree were ten small shrines, each with a name carved into the entrance.
“Acieth says she feels sick…but probably for different reasons than Amane,” Maou said.
“Please don’t take her out right now, okay? I’ll be killed before we ever run into Ignora.” Between that and the step back he took, Gabriel seemed honestly petrified of the girl.
“So is there some kinda system where there’s a guardian angel covering each shrine and we have to beat each one in order to free the Sephirah?”
“What kinda video game setup are you picturing, huh? I just told you, we don’t even have that many angels. And the fact nobody’s even here kinda tells the whole story, mm-kay?”
“So why were you a guardian angel at all?”
“I volunteered. Ignora appointed Camael to the role. And I think Sandalphon volunteered, too, maybe?”
“It was on a volunteer system?”
“Not really a ‘system.’ I wasn’t a scientist or a doctor or anything. I just didn’t wanna die from the boredom.”
Gabriel gazed at the horizon.
“Emilia… Satan… Gabriel was just a normal person, you know? Not a scientist—just normal. That’s why, unlike Ignora and Camael, he didn’t truly think it was right to keep the Sephirah this way. That much, at least, I hope you’ll understand.
“In the end, I…was just the type of guy who didn’t wanna die. I didn’t wanna leave my safe little environment. I told myself it was for the team, and it’d keep me fed, too…and that let me ignore the ethical issues. I’ve always been this kind of conniving peon, so, like, coming this far and getting to live this long… I never imagined it. And even now, I have no idea why I decided to side with Satanael.”
“I never heard of a peon who attempted to lead Efzahan and the Devil King’s Army by the nose.”
Ashiya frowned. But Gabriel seemed to be telling the truth.
“Speaking of which, what was all of that? Whatever you used Efzahan and the Malebranche and Olba Meiyer for? I know that you used my liege to deliberately destroy the original plan. But I don’t know what the plan was. I don’t know what you were blocking, exactly.”
Gabriel looked ready to answer honestly for a moment but promptly thought better of it. Instead, he looked at Copyhara, standing behind Ashiya.
“Basically, Ignora wanted it made clear in everyone’s minds that angels are higher beings than the natives of Ente Isla. And, you know, I was, like, ‘Hang on, is that really right?’”
“It doesn’t seem to me that it matters much anymore. Not if it led to Copyhara here,” Amane added.
Gabriel was definitely close enough to Amane to hear that. But he didn’t turn her way.
“Well, forget about the details for now. Those shrines are still the root cause of the strife Alas Ramus and Acieth have gone through, right? So we take those down first. Then our quiet friends on this planet have to make the trip over, right? Then we beat ’em all, and then we win.”
“Sounds good to me. Let’s get going. Alas Ramus’s family needs freedom.”
“Yeah. Just watch for the space suit guy. And if that underground base in the demon realms really was Satanael’s, that means heaven has the tech to cancel out demonic force, too. If that happens to us, sorry in advance,” Maou said.
“If it does, I’ll scream at you for being so useless, but I’ll protect you. Don’t worry. I need you to pay Alas Ramus’s child support,” Emi quipped.
“Wow, I’m about to cry here. Acieth… Let’s go.”
“Okay!”
The next moment, a Better Half appeared in Maou’s hand…along with horns from his head. His legs turned demonic, but the rest of him stayed human.
“I’ve never actually seen it before… Oh. Never mind.”
If Emi manifested her own holy sword with Alas Ramus, she and Maou would be a “pair” in pretty much every way. But she had nothing against Acieth, so she just barely avoided commenting on it.
“Bit too late for all that…”
Chiho, Suzuno, and Emeralda weren’t here. Nobody was going to make fun of them for being a pair, and now wasn’t the time for it anyway. For just a moment, Emi flashed back to that secret encounter she’d had at the apartment that evening, but she managed to push it deep into her memory and bottle it up.
“All right, Alas Ramus… Let’s go. Let’s help out your family.”
“Okeh!”
Emi’s entire body shone. She transformed into Emilia the Hero, with her holy sword, Cloth of the Dispeller, silver hair, and eyes of scarlet. And the moment Alas Ramus’s Better Half sword appeared in her right hand:
“Oh, my! Look at you two people, carrying matching swords for the final battle. That’s kind of nice! Like a pair of wings being brought together for the first time! Almost reminds me of marriage, in a way!”
““…””
At that moment, the two people with the weapons that could change the fate of the world were almost brought to their knees. They both glared at Laila.
“Wha… What?”
She stood there puzzled, unsure why everyone was so angry.
“I had forgotten… You’re that kind of person, aren’t you, Mother?”
“Can you please quit with that?”
“Huh? What?! What’s gotten into you two?”
Having so much wind taken out of their sails reddened Maou’s and Emilia’s faces just a bit, for reasons only they knew. It’d be ridiculous to explain matters now, but bringing up marriage made those bottled memories of that night—sealed away by their mutual trust in each other—spring right back to life.
The life seemed to drain from Maou and Emilia a bit as they marched over to the nearest shrine. The sign on it, in writing neither Maou nor Emi could decipher, read Keter—the number one, the color white, symbolized by a diamond. The first Sephirah.
✦ ✦ ✦
The shrine wasn’t large inside, its décor a familiar sight to everyone on hand.
“Oh, right! This looks like the terrarium with the Yesod root.”
Emilia’s words made Maou remember as well. The shrine was far smaller, but on the far end of it was what looked like a large aquarium tank. Amane winced at it, looking even sicker than before.
“You okay, Amane?” Gabriel asked anxiously.
“Urp… I dunno how to explain this…” Amane glared back at him. “But I feel like I’m being shown all my relatives being tortured.”
“Ahh… I see. Yeah. It’d be funny to say sorry, but sorry. If you could keep Mikitty in the dark about this, I’d appreciate it a bunch.”
“How could I ever describe something so cruel? Maou, Yusa… Destroy this at once.”
“O-okay. But are you sure? Because I see a little bit of a root poking out over there…”
The big difference between the shrine and the demon realm terrarium was that, while the terrarium had a chopped-off root kept in a tube with soil, this looked more like a capsule that grew from the earth itself. The inside was filled with dirt, and the tiniest tip of a root was peeking out from it.
“It’s fine,” Gabriel said, keeping a watchful eye on Amane. “These buildings were plopped down over the roots wholesale. We’ll destroy them in order…but make sure not to damage the roots, mm-kay? Oh, but leave shrines five, nine, and ten intact. That one, that one, and that one. I think you get why.”
Shrine number five was Erone’s Gevurah. Shrine number nine was Alas Ramus’s and Acieth’s Yesod.
“So Malchut, the tenth…?”
“Yeah, keep your guard up for ’er. Like I said, I don’t know the girl or what she looks like. The only one who knows the Malchut kid…”
“…Is Ignora, and this Sandalphon guy who might be around here?”
Alas Ramus had clearly “learned” something from Malchut. She and Acieth had obtained bodies as Sephirah children only recently, but based on what they said, they were likely conscious and self-aware well before that.
“All right. Amane can’t take much more of this, so let’s get crackin’, mm-kay? But keep the roots safe.”
“We go all the way to heaven and the first thing we do is building demolition? Ah, well. Guess the bad guys aren’t gonna make it that obvious where they’re hanging out.”
“You sure made it easy for me, Devil King.”
“Stop comparing us.”
The memory of the Devil King waiting on his Devil’s Castle throne for the Hero was nothing but an embarrassment now.
“All right, Acieth! Let’s do it!”
Then, deliberately raising his voice, he kicked things off by smashing the capsule in the Keter shrine.