After the actual council meeting came to a close, Guy hosted an actual banquet for all of the participants.
Unfortunately for me, after she finished beating on Veldora, Luminous almost immediately left, not giving me an opportunity to speak with her.
I couldn't really blame her for being worried about the fact that Kazalim had specifically called this meeting to target her domain, but it still left me with unfinished business.
I needed to figure out what was going through her head. I didn't particularly want the Western Holy Church as long-term enemies.
Religious fanatics with a deep-seated hatred of monsters were not a threat to be underestimated. Even now, Hinata was probably stronger than Benimaru.
So, after bringing out our Tempestian alcohol, only to realize that Milim, Ramiris, and Risa were all three, at least developmentally, too young to partake, I spent the entire banquet watching over those three to make sure that they didn't drink.
Even with my incredible, True Demon Lord abilities, I failed.
Treyni snuck Ramiris a small drop of booze, causing her to fall unconscious inside a pie. Guy picked her out of it and handed her unconscious form to Beretta.
Shortly after that, while I was joining in a discussion with Carillon about the state of Eurazania going forward, I heard Frey cry out in alarm.
Sure enough, Milim had gotten herself drunk.
She proceeded to rip a hole in the strange pocket-dimension-like space (something that Risa, Guy, and I almost instantly fixed at the exact same time), throw a pie at the back of Daggrull's head with enough force that it actually hit (Which alsomeant enough force to completely vaporize Carillon and Frey), and fall asleep hugging Risa's slime form so tightly that she actually accidentally ripped Risa's slime form into two separate halves, something that would've killed a lesser slime, but Risa just waved it off with her Infinite Regeneration.
Luckily, the experience scared Risa off of drinking, at least temporarily. She'd eventually want the experience, but all calculations veered toward, when she did get drunk, her doing something even more terrifying, dangerous, and irresponsible than anything that Milim had done.
So, at least, when I used Dominate Space to bring us all home, Risa at least wasn't drunk.
Unfortunately, the only one of my entourage who, when we finally did come home, wasn't acting depressed or annoyed at me, was Diablo.
Ramiris, Treyni, and Beretta apparently had a few things that they needed to do back in their old labyrinth before they moved to Tempest (Luckily. I didn't really know where to put them right now, anyway. Luckily, that was a problem for tomorrow's me), and Milim had been practically stolen by Frey (apparently, she needed to get accustomed to her new duties, once she slept off the alcohol).
As a result, I came back with a depressed, Milim-and-Ramiris-less Risa, a Veldora who was still a bit annoyed by the fact that I'd allowed Luminous to beat on him, and a Shion that I still hadn't managed to convince that Guy hadn't been hitting on me… probably because Guy had been hitting on me during the banquet.
At least Diablo was happy about how everything had gone. Like usual, he immediately jumped into praising me and touting everything that I'd done during the Walpurgis to all of Tempest like he was spreading the word about the Messiah or something.
After that, we had another small celebration, and finally, the long, long day was over (after a short bath with Shuna and Shion. I didn't technically need to bathe, but there was something about floating in a nice, hot bath with two gorgeous Oni women that simply couldn't be considered lightly.
I wanted Risa to join us, too, but she declined, instead letting Althea take her directly to her house. She'd taken the whole 'Milim's going to be busy' thing pretty hard.
Which made sense. Despite their incredibly close connection, the Walpurgis was the first time the two girls had seen each other in several months. That was a significant portion of Risa's 'sentient life'. The ten years as a barely sentient blob of immobile goo didn't really count as 'living', after all.
She had every reason to be a bit upset about not getting more time with the girl.
Fortunately, we were all basically immortal. The work would pass, the depression would pass.
In fact, it'd probably pass pretty soon. Even if she didn't start feeling better when Ramiris came back here later this week, since I'd unfortunately been dumb enough to agree to let her live here in Tempest, I'd just become a Demon Lord. I needed to announce myself to the world, anyway. That'd have to happen pretty soon. In fact, we'd probably have to start planning it right after the debriefing tomorrow morning.
Somehow, just imagining the massive amount of work that I had to deal with over the next few weeks gave me a small migraine that speared straight past Pain Nullification and slammed into my brain, completely ignoring the fact that it didn't even exist.