The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 5 Read Online Free PDF Page B

that, but if I’m failing to avoid mistakes I could’ve easily avoided if I cared a little, that’s not a mistake so much as sheer laziness, right?”
    “And that, my liege, is precisely why the Internet is there! That is as wide a net as anyone needs to cast. The news is no different between the Net and television, is it?”
    Maou grinned bitterly at Ashiya, whose fervent desire not to blow their budget on a TV purchase was oozing out of every pore in his body.
    “Lemme put it in a way you’d understand. Let’s say you heard ground beef was cheap at the supermarket, so you go out expecting to make some burgers for dinner, but when you show up, you notice that the sliced salmon is actually a lot cheaper. So you decide to change the menu to buttered salmon and use the extra change to buy some bean sprouts to flesh out dinner a little. You ever have that kind of thing happen?”
    “Um? …Well, certainly, yes. If you put it that way.” The sudden topic shift to household errands perplexed Ashiya.
    “So instead of buying buns or ketchup for the burgers, you buy some butter for the salmon. And from that point forward, you know how to whip up a meal of buttered salmon and bean sprouts for really cheap. That kinda thing.”
    “Yes… Indeed.” Suzuno, who cooked for herself just as often as Ashiya, could empathize.
    “But that’s the thing about the Net. You can’t
learn
stuff like that online. If you search for burgers, you get hits about Worcestershire sauce and barbecue grills and upscale burger chains and Wagyu beef and maybe Hamburg, Germany, too, I dunno. But you aren’t gonna get anything about buttered salmon with bean sprouts. You don’t get that kind of happenstance going on.”
    “Happenstance, huh…?”
    Urushihara sat up a bit, uncharacteristically attentive.
    “Of course, things spread in all kinds of ways, so you can’t say that about everything. But with the Internet, once something loses your interest, you don’t go back again, right? You don’t need to.”
    “Yeah. I suppose you wouldn’t. But TV’s the same way, isn’t it? You don’t like it, you turn it off.”
    Maou shook his head at Emi, the only extraterrestrial with a television.
    “But with TV, there are things you don’t care about
now
, but might care about later. It’s not just an on-or-off thing. With the Net, meanwhile, all you see are the things you want to see. And you need a guide for that sort of thing, right? For things you don’t actively want right now, but might come in handy later.”
    “…Your Demonic Highness, how did you come to know so much about television in the first place?”
    “Oh, that was back when we just arrived here. I had this temp job where we all congregated at a soba noodle place for lunch, and they had a TV in there. It was playing the news, and they were advertising this piece about how the temp agency I was working for was under investigation for something or other. So I waited around for the piece, but then another customer changed it to some stupid variety show. Man, that pissed me off.”
    “I know now’s a different story but, Maou, you
are
another world’s Devil King, right?”
    “Enough of that topic, Chiho. All it would do is serve to depress me even further,” Suzuno interjected. “The Devil King, going on about noodles and tuna and hamburgers… It disgusts me.”
    In many ways, Maou’s enemies seemed far more concerned for his future than he was.
    “Anyway. I just figured it’d be nice to have some play, you know? Some more exposure to unintended discoveries like that. I know the Net’s easier and you can look up anything you want and stuff, but in terms of creating chances to take an interest in something new, I think TV’s still a lot more vital. Then, if I want to examine a topic more in-depth, I can hit up the Net for that.”
    “Yeah, true,” Urushihara admitted. “A lot of people brag about never watching TV, but if you look at search term rankings and trends