(RISA POV)
"And that's it, huh?" I thought aloud, "What do you think, Althea?" I asked.
Althea cocked her head, reviewing the memories. "I think that they need to die, Lady Risa." She replied with a straight face.
"...Yeah, I agree." I shifted out of my humanized form and into my dragon maid's arms. "He's way too greedy and full of himself… But he's right. Even if Big Bro Rimuru and I know what he's done and have proof of it, if we get rid of Yuuki ourselves right now, his relationship with Englesia will ensure that Tempest is never allowed inside the Council of Western Nations, even if we get rid of him secretly."
I went through thousands of potential scenarios with Thoth.
Only Tempest's top fighters could kill Yuuki, according to my calculations. Diablo, Althea, Izzy or I, and Rimuru all had a chance over 99.85% to annihilate him instantly, but even with Benimaru, Soei, and Hakuro, the chances of winning dropped down to around 50% or so. Shion's chances, even with all of her strange skills, were less than 5%.
But my calculations stated that Horus could definitely completely overwrite the effects of whatever anti-skill thing Yuuki was using to protect himself with, so teleporting him somewhere and setting up an ambush would be insanely easy.
In theory, we could instantly kill the guy at any time.
But if Yuuki vanished, his backup plans kicked in. Englesia as a whole would basically completely turn on Tempest, launching an irritating political war that would essentially destroy Tempest's burgeoning influence in the melting pot that was the hundreds of small countries that made up the Western Nations would basically die instantly, and the West would split into two separate, complete economic blocs that would have to silently war against each other until we ate them up bit by bit.
And while that would be fine, it wasn't our 'Plan A'. It'd be slow, tedious, and just an all-around pain. We'd have to quell the ever-quarreling West country by country, using our allies in places like Blummund, Coleus, and Raja as small footholds, and with the way some of these countries had been silently warring for centuries on end, they wouldn't join with us, or their enemies, quietly.
No, the most optimal solution was to simply not deal with it. Take out the King (the Council in this instance), and just treat the whole thing as one big entity that just so happened to also not be our problem. That way, we could delegate all of those stupid internal conflicts to an entity that actually cared. It was rather like what'd happened with the Sorcerous Dynasty of Thalion. Around a dozen different small states with their own little internal issues, all governed by a single body.
But while Thalion's government ran smoothly as one entity, the Western Nations would just not be able to resist us.
To use a metaphor, it was like two groups of people. One with a single elected representative, and one where everyone just did whatever they wanted. If one random person walked up to the former group and punched some random person out of the group in the face, the entire group would instantly start defending their ally, and the outsider would be completely mobbed.
But if someone walked into the latter group and did so, maybe the people who actually liked the assault target would try to defend them, but the vast majority of the group would either take their phones out and record it, laughing, or simply completely ignore it, since it didn't directly affect them.
And on top of that, if anyone in the latter group attempted to take control after they'd all established their social dynamics, they'd have a terribly hard time of it. They'd have to prove to each and every different social group exactly why they deserved to lead, and quite frankly, they'd almost certainly face some pretty heavy pushback. That was simply human nature.
According to my calculations, most of Yuuki's remaining forces were already our enemies. Not all of them, but most.
Essentially incapable of coexisting with Tempest, on an even more fundamental scale than old Farmus's uselessly shady government officials who'd probably have ended up hiring mercenaries or something from the surrounding countries to attack us again if we'd let them off with a simple show of strength, these shady people were basically a limited resource for Yuuki. Criminals, or traitors to their own countries, who Yuuki had some sort of dirt on, or who had some sort of ties to the dying Cerberus.
Easily manipulated idiots who would soon be too scared to go against Tempest.
Unfortunately, they were easily manipulated idiots with deep pockets. While I couldn't use Thoth to deduce the exact nature of resources that Yuuki likely had and what he would likely do, the same way that Isis had almost certainly already done, Thoth could at least help me go through different scenarios and deduce every single potential scenario, the dangers levels, and the rough chances of them happening.
For example, I was 99% certain that whatever Yuuki was going to do, he was going to put in a pretty impressive effort to destroy my own endeavor in New Farminus. 95% certain that he wouldn't stop there. At least three, maybe up to five separate plots, including an attack or two directed at Tempest itself. Likely economic. Potentially involving the Church somehow, I didn't have enough data on the Luminists to tell for certain, unfortunately. Outside of Lubelius, information on the Church's inner workings was rather rare, and I'd never really felt the need to specifically look into it in the past.
Yuuki would also definitely use the dismantling of Cerberus against us, somehow.
There was even a 2.28% chance that we'd end up opposing someone with an Ultimate Skill. Only slightly smaller than the chance that he'd use the otherworlder kids that Big Bro Rimuru had taught at Shizu's request in his plot.
To ensure that didn't come to pass, Soei was tasked with keeping an eye on the children 24/7, using his Shades that were pretty much completely undetectable to anyone without a broken analysis skill on par with my old Curiosity. If Yuuki tried anything with them, he'd immediately whisk them back to Tempest with Spatial Motion.