"I hope you can find peace, now." I whispered to all of the poor souls that'd made up Clayman's Demon Lord Seed, as I watched the black magicule smog that made up my Ultimate Skill, Belzebuth, fade into oblivion.
Now that Clayman was inside me, those souls were all transferred right into my stomach, along with all of the other souls that'd been collected since this whole disaster began. Adding the spillover from the Farmus army, the souls collected during the White Army's purging of Farmus's corrupt nobles, whatever'd been collected from New Farminus since the White Army had taken it over, and now the souls that'd managed to awaken Clayman's seed, the total sat at around 80,000.
I call them 'souls', but that was just a unit of energy measurement. Any other soul that I 'ate' would be sent through my stomach, and divested of their 'soul energy' via Horus. Unlike Clayman, I didn't like the idea of leaving people inside of me to just suffer for all of eternity, so once I had all of their energy, they'd be recorded into Mnemosyne, just for the sake of it, then released back into the cycle of reincarnation or whatever.
There were two major exceptions to that, though: Clayman (who didn't deserve reincarnation), and Shizu (who didn't want to reincarnate into this world). Probably a couple more, too (was Ifrit still in there?), but those were the important ones.
Anyway, after I gave a quick prayer to the souls that I'd just freed, I replaced the table I'd eaten, and we all took our seats (with Milim sitting in 'human' Risa's lap now, with a juice box for some reason) to continue the Walpurgis Council.
Immediately, though, I realized a truth about this world.
Anybody who says killing the Demon Lord is the most difficult part of dealing with one is always lying. The aftermath was a thousand times worse than anything Clayman could've inflicted on me. It was politics.
The first order of business, after Clayman was cut from the picture, was territory.
Which was a very tricky matter, because it was something that the Demon Lords both cared deeply about, and didn't care about at all.
In the very beginning, I put my foot down, and laid claim to the entire Great Forest of Jura. Nothing more, nothing less. I had zero desire to expand my influence beyond Tempest, as a rule.
While taking over the planet sounds nice in theory, in practice, it's just opinions and paperwork. I'd take responsibility for Tempest, but the rest of the world could run itself. As long as they didn't try to kill me, I genuinely didn't care who made their laws.
Unfortunately, from the perspective of the other Demon Lords, my influence had already expanded beyond Jura.
After all, I currently had forces stationed in both Dhistav, and New Farminus. So, I had to explain myself.
First, we dealt with Dhistav. Though I'd been the one to take Clayman out, I didn't want anything to do with the country he'd had claim to. Just like Leon had done in the past, I simply wanted to wash my hands of it, after it stopped becoming a problem.
Luckily, when I laid out what I wanted from it, the problem just kind of solved itself.
Explaining that Milim and Carillon had taken the biggest hit from this whole affair, I offered to donate around 70% of Clayman's treasury to the rebuilding of Eurazania's capitol city. Another 10% would go to Milim (or at least her people), for their role in the whole thing, leaving the last 20% for me to use as I pleased.
The army we'd captured, under the oversight of Geld and his High Orcs, would also aid in the rebuilding efforts, after which point, the war prisoners would have 'fulfilled their sentence,' since they were honestly just following orders.
Then, the Sky Queen, Frey, dropped a bomb that I had not seen coming.
She said that, since, according to her measure, she'd probably lose in a battle between her and Shion, to say nothing against the awakened Clayman that I didn't even consider worthy of a fight, she decided that she didn't feel she had any right to call herself a Demon Lord.
So, she resigned. According to her, she trusted Milim, and felt it only right to serve under her from now on. She'd still be the reigning monarch of her Sky Country of Felbrosia, but she'd also answer to Milim as her subordinate.
"NO! I don't wanna! Then, things would change, and you won't be my friend, and hang out and scheme with me anymore!" Milim immediately threw a fit at the idea, crushing her juice into oblivion as she stood from Risa's lap, looking shocked and betrayed.
But then, Carillon added his two cents.
And resigned too, citing the fact that he felt like, having been defeated by another Demon Lord, he didn't think it'd be right to continue acting as one. As such, he told Milim that he'd be working under her as well.
"You won't say 'no,' right, Boss? After all, it is your fault that my ENTIRE CITY WAS OBLITERATED." He reminded her.
Blatant blackmail. For someone as pure as Milim, just like Risa, it was a perfect critical hit.
With teary eyes, she gave up thinking, and started rolling around on the ground, flailing and going "Whatever, I don't even care anymore! Just do whatever you feel like-" over and over again in a childish tantrum.
Anyway, with Carillon and Frey attaching themselves to Milim, that made Milim's territory suddenly expand to basically everything directly south of Jura, except for Dhistav.
So, I managed to unload Dhistav into her lap along the way. She was getting the people and the treasury, anyways. Nobody even blinked when I casually 'slid' the land over to her, too. Adding that to her territory, rather than keeping it for myself, was better for everyone.
Beyond the fact that it was closer to her territory than mine, there were only three land-based routes from the Western Nations to the Eastern Empire. Going down, starting in Clayman's territories, then through Milim, Carillon, and Frey's territories, before going through the Kushu Mountains that were technically now part of my territory, but only on paper, was the scenic route.
Then, there was the route straight through the Jura Forest, which had once upon a time been considered nearly impossible, but wasn't, now that Tempest existed.
Then, finally, there was the route that went through the Canaat Mountains, which meant either going under them through Dwargon, or going over them, through Dragon Lord territory. That one emptied out into either Jura or Farmus territory.
In other words, I currently had my armies stationed across every single route. That was called a 'Trade Monopoly,' and it was absolutely unsustainable. So, giving Dhistav to Milim was absolutely perfect.
And once Dhistav was off of my plate, I had to deal with the whole 'New Farminus' mess.
Did Risa have a single regret about how absolutely she'd handled the 'war?'
No.
Did I regret letting her do so, now that I had to explain it?
Yup.
And the worst part was, none of the others particularly cared. In fact, they were more than happy to just throw the entire territory into my lap officially, and call it a day.
So, I had to explain that New Farminus was not Tempest's new vassal state, and why it wasn't a big deal that Risa's White Army was occupying the land and aiding the new rulers.
And, to be honest, I didn't have much of an argument. While New Farminus was going to be paying us back for everything we were doing to establish their government, the main reason that Risa did so was to ensure that they wouldn't attack us again. In other words, we were controlling them, to a small extent.
But, eventually, I managed to convince them that I wasn't planning on ruling the country from behind the scenes.
At least officially. I wasn't sure if Roy Valentine and his retinue believed me or not, but since the Western Holy Church still had a large amount of influence in the New Farminus government, I wasn't particularly worried about that.