Chapter 171: Just a Little Scare
"Just scare them a bit, don't kill anyone."
Otonashi Chiya murmured quietly to the Falling Devil.
"Understood."
The Falling Devil's order wouldn't be fully completed until the Hell diner finished enjoying its meal, and the waiting time was rather dull—a little amusement right now was most welcome.
The very next moment, the Falling Devil didn't even twitch a muscle; she merely shifted her intent, instantly inverting the gravity of every single police officer and devil hunter standing before her.
She didn't force sad past memories into their minds this time; she purely inverted their gravitational pull.
Complying strictly with Otonashi Chiya's instructions, she merely intended to frighten them without causing fatalities.
The Falling Devil controlled her output with absolute precision. Nothing around them shattered or collapsed, and no full-scale "Falling Domain" was formed—she simply made them float upward.
"What! What is going on?! Why am I falling down—no, wait! I'm falling up toward the sky?!"
"This is devil power... this is definitely devil power! Grab onto something right now, or we'll be killed by the fall even if nothing else gets us!"
"What kind of devil is that woman anyway? I've never encountered this kind of power before in my life!"
The officers instantly panicked. How could they have ever witnessed such conceptual devil power, capable of flipping gravity with a single thought?
Some of the quicker officers managed to grab hold of nearby street fixtures, leaving them dangling upside down like bats.
Those with slower reflexes "fell" straight up into the air.
The devil hunters among them, in particular, began cursing furiously.
"That brainless bitch from earlier is completely insane! How dare she talk back to that young boy? Now we're all screwed!"
"This power is way beyond ordinary devils. With gravity completely out of control, I can't even draw on my devil powers properly. It's all that idiot's fault; we wouldn't be in this mess if it weren't for her!"
"Don't bother trying, I already tested it—it won't work. This devil is definitely an upper-tier entity, we're totally dead..."
At that point, the young policewoman from before wasn't just getting chewed out by everyone; she also received "special attention" from the Falling Devil.
The Falling Devil altered the gravity pulling on the policewoman just a fraction more aggressively than the others.
So much so that she experienced a sudden, visceral sensation of free fall, "dropping" upward toward the sky at a pace far faster than anyone else.
Imagine standing firmly on solid ground, only for the floor to vanish beneath you as you plunge headfirst into an endless abyss—that was precisely what it felt like.
"Yaahhhhhhh—!!"
The young policewoman lost all color in her face, her piercing screams echoing out as her features twisted in sheer terror.
To make matters worse, a massive gate of Hell abruptly materialized in the sky above, a cavernous, blood-soaked maw protruding from within—the ultimate nightmare for anyone with megalophobia.
The Falling Devil applied a minor perceptual filter, however, ensuring that only these officers and devil hunters could perceive the gateway.
In that paralyzed fraction of a second, the shock caused the policewoman to completely lose control of her bladder.
"Alright, that's about enough. Don't take it too far."
Otonashi Chiya casually reminded the Falling Devil.
"I quite agree that it is time to conclude."
Using her extra pair of hands to support her detached head, the Falling Devil gave a graceful nod.
With another flick of her will, the gate of Hell and the gaping maw in the sky vanished instantly. The gravitational pull on the victims began to shift back gradually—a slow normalization designed to let them touch down safely.
Everyone was badly shaken, especially the young policewoman, who had completely passed out from fright.
When she eventually woke up, the sheer mortification would likely make her wish the ground would swallow her whole, seeing as she had literally wet herself from terror.
As Otonashi Chiya anticipated, that young policewoman was indeed a rookie fresh out of the police academy—essentially a hothouse flower.
Lacking real-world experience and a proper understanding of what it meant to deal with devil hunters, she was fueled entirely by a self-righteous sense of "justice" she had cooked up in her own mind, having barely ever interacted with actual devils face-to-face.
Had the Falling Devil looked genuinely grotesque and terrifying from the get-go, the policewoman wouldn't have had the nerve to spout those lectures in the first place.
"W-We're saved...?"
"I genuinely thought we were dead meat. Did that devil actually spare us?"
"M-My legs are completely jelly from fright, can someone give me a hand up?"
The group was in no condition to recover quickly; right now, not a single one of them had the strength to stand upright.
Seeing the pathetic state these people were in, Otonashi Chiya had no intention of pursuing the matter any further.
"Let's leave it at that. I told her to show mercy just now, otherwise none of you would have made it out alive."
Otonashi Chiya said indifferently, "I just wanted to make one thing crystal clear to you all: she is neither a devil under my contract, nor was I out for a casual stroll parading her down the high street. The only reason I was walking with her was to keep her under control so she wouldn't harm anyone at random."
Otherwise, it would look as though he were deliberately swaggering around town with the Falling Devil in tow—behavior that wasn't just reckless, but outright moronic.
That was equivalent to having a completely ungrounded accusation slapped onto him, and no reasonable person would take kindly to that.
Having just lived through a terrifying and utterly hopeless ordeal, the crowd didn't dare harbor a shred of doubt toward anything Otonashi Chiya said.
Meanwhile, the young policewoman was slowly regaining consciousness. Half-dazed, she hadn't yet registered the strange dampness in a certain area of her clothing, her attention instead captured entirely by Otonashi Chiya's words.
"Before you've bothered to figure out the truth, spouting those so-called high-and-mighty principles just makes you look profoundly ignorant."
This final remark was directed squarely at the young policewoman.
Paralyzed by sheer terror, the policewoman lay flat on the ground, not daring to move a single muscle as she stammered repeatedly, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!..."
Yet it didn't take long for her to realize something was drastically amiss. Her face instantly flushed a brilliant, burning crimson, mortified to the point where she wished she could carve a hole in the earth and bury herself forever.
I'm never getting married! I'm never getting married!
My life is completely... ruined!
Without wasting another breath on idle talk, Otonashi Chiya turned and headed back toward the school.
Naturally, the Falling Devil accompanied him, as her original objective had already been fulfilled the moment she finished preparing the main course.
Since the entire surrounding area of Modu Qingfeng Middle School remained cordoned off, the school itself was exceptionally quiet, with the only signs of life confined to the shelter.
"Splendid, the diner from Hell has completely finished devouring my meal imbued with love; thus, your commission is officially fulfilled."
At that moment, the Falling Devil spoke up gracefully.
"Mmh, thanks for the trouble. You can head back now."
Otonashi Chiya nodded.
Without another word, the Falling Devil instantly reverted back to her "action figure" form, dropping right into his palm.
The human head she had "borrowed" tumbled onto the ground; it was never her real head to begin with, merely a temporary accessory.
Naturally, the true Falling Devil had already returned to Hell—Kiga wasn't quite powerful enough to compress the actual, full-scale body of a Primal Devil into a pocket-sized collectible.
Right at that instant, Kiga made her appearance, strolling leisurely toward Otonashi Chiya with a relaxed smile.
"The amount of devil power you burned through this time took quite a heavy toll on me. Shouldn't you offer me some kind of compensation?"