With that, the still despondent Urushihara slowly walked forward. Then, just as Kinanna did, he stepped up and into the only empty capsule remaining.
“Close it from the outside for me, Maou. And…you. You operate it, okay? You know how, right?” Urushihara asked.
“Can’t you call me Copyhara? He’s the one who named me.”
“I’d rather die, dude. Come up with a more Sephirah-like name.”
“Um… So close it? Like this?”
As instructed, Maou closed the lid on the capsule, blocking out Urushihara’s voice. At the same time, Copyhara placed his index finger on the control panel.
The next moment:
“Huhh?”
“Cheep?!”
A torrent of light and vibration, nothing like the roaring from before, filled the eyes and ears of everyone in the room. As it did, they could all feel the entire underground facility traveling farther downward.
“Is this whole place an elevator?!”
“We—we can go back, right?”
“Don’t worry, mm-kay? I have my feather pen if we get in trouble.”
“Great, but what about me and Camio and Kinanna?!”
“Mommy!!”
Amid the din, Alas Ramus’s voice shot out more sharply than the rest.
“Someone…is here.”
Not something, but someone. That put everyone on edge, but when they saw who that “someone” was, it made them all put on quizzical looks.
“What…is that…?”
When the room quieted down, they found that the wall facing Urushihara had opened wide. They all peered in, curious about what lay beyond. There, they found an even larger laboratory, complete with the capsules Urushihara and the rest had stepped into—except they were several dozen times larger. Even compared to the giant capsule holding the spear, these were still about five times as big.
“…It wasn’t this huge, but I think I’ve seen something like this before…”
Stiffening up, Emi sifted through her memories as she examined the new chamber. There, within the gigantic space even deeper in the underground facility, they could make out an enormous, enclosed jar. It was about half-filled with soil, extending out from which was a withered stump, its shape twisted. A soft light shone down on the container, and a thin layer of moss covered the soil’s surface.
“Right. It’s a terrarium.”
“Tera… What? What’s that?”
This was, in essence, a blown-up version of a terrarium—a glass container with a small natural environment inside, often kept for decoration.
“A terrarium. You know, those small containers with plants and stuff you put in the window. A lot of people make them for fun using stones and small branches and moss. If you do it right, you can create a self-sustaining ecosystem inside.”
“So it’s kind of a gardening thing?”
“It just looks like that, I mean. But…”
Upon further inspection, it seemed to be sealed away—locked in an underground facility, to be opened only by Urushihara and the Devil Overlord’s relics.
“If this only opens after you collect the Devil Overlord Satan’s relics and lost child here, it can’t just be some hobbyist bonsai. Maybe you can turn it into a great weapon, or… Huh?”
As they stood there, unable to fathom what the container could really be:
“Asseth, that’s us.”
“Yeah. It is. We were here.”
Alas Ramus and Acieth whispered to each other, apparently aware of what it was. It made Acieth drop her bag of gummy squid.
“Alas Ramus? What do you mean? When you say ‘we’… Are there still Yesod fragments in there?”
“No. That’s us.”
“Emi, why don’t you put the fragment in your holy sword up to it? Then we can see if there’s some in there or not.”
“Y-yeah… Um, Alas Ramus, if you have a minute?”
“Okeh.”
At Maou’s suggestion, Emi remembered to summon her holy sword. Alas Ramus disappeared as she did.
“Hey, are you sure this is all right? I don’t know anything about this place. And besides giving Alas Ramus to Satan, I didn’t leave any other fragments in the demon realms…”
“If there’s no guiding light from the fragments, it won’t react at all. We’ve made it this far. We need to test out everything we can.”
“That’s true…”
Quieting Laila’s concerns, Emi—as she had done many times before—held her holy sword aloft, infused it with holy force, and released the power of its Yesod fragment. If another shard was near, they would see a beam of purple light connecting the two. If not, the sword would instead react to the next nearest fragment, the one in Acieth.
“…Did it just shake a little?”
“It did. That didn’t feel like an earthquake…”
But everyone standing there could feel a vibration cross their bodies.
“Yes. Because of that.”
Acieth pointed at the stump inside the giant terrarium.
“Wait, was that there before?”
Maou squinted at it. At first glance, it definitely looked like a withered tree stump. Now, however, a whisker-thin twig had sprouted atop it, with a young bud fully spread out from its top.
“It call me and my big sis, Emi. Saying ‘Let’s go home.’”
“Go home…? Ah?!”
Suddenly, a much larger tremor rocked the entire space.
“Hey, Gabriel…”
“Ah, um, yeah. You’re probably right. But I can’t say I really predicted this, or, um…like, how big it got is kind of a surprise. On the other hand, it would also be unexpected if it still worked at this size…”
“Laila! Gabriel! What are you two so convinced about? What’s all this shaking? And what’s in that stupid jar thing?!”
Recovering from illness, drained of magic power, and exposed to a train of improbable events, Maou was tired of it all. He pressed the two archangels for answers. They turned toward him, showing more bewilderment—plus a tiny amount of excitement—than he typically ever saw from them.
“I think we probably won’t immediately get what’s going on, even after we leave here, but…”
“But we can tell you what this is, yes.”
Laila walked over to Acieth, standing next to her. She hadn’t picked up her bag of gummies, nor had she moved on to another snack. As Laila patted her on the back, all she did was gaze at that lone bud from the stump.
“This is not the end of something…but yes. Very long…”
“You’re right. I’m sorry we made your wait so drawn-out.”
“…So this is something related to the Sephirah?”
“More than just related. This is literally a root from it.”
“Heh-heh!”
Gabriel giggled a little after Laila said that—just a casual snicker, as if someone had just inadvertently made a pun.
“The one we knew was a lot smaller than this. Small enough that a grown person could lug it around. But…yeah. Considering how much time has passed, this is still pretty puny.”
Laila, holding Acieth by the shoulder, looked toward Emi’s holy sword.
“I’m sure the same question must have crossed your mind. Out of the ten Sephirah, why was it that only the Yesod shattered into pieces?”
That hadn’t been a passing thought, no. Ever since Erone, born from Gevurah, appeared, the regulars at Villa Rosa Sasazuka Room 201 had always kept that concern in the back of their minds. Emi even asked Laila about it once. Why fragments? Who broke it, and how?
“Well, here’s your answer. Long ago, Satanael cut this from the Tree of Life. Maybe the other Sephirah would have shattered if he’d cut off anything else. That’s how this works.”
The solemnity of Laila’s voice was not lost on Maou and Emi. It was the first time they’d ever felt that from her.
“This is one of the roots that supports the Tree of Life. There are eleven in all on Sephirot, each corresponding to its own Sephirah, and this is the ninth.”
Listening to her mother’s voice, Emi couldn’t help but tighten the grip on her holy sword.
“The Yesod Sephirah’s root…”