Daily Life Marches On

A/N: Sorry I've been taking more and more breaks for writing nowadays guys. As a 'responsible adult' I don't always have the time or motivation to sit down and write these fanfics. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but there's been a mix-up at my job recently and they are trying to move my department out of state (I live in Southern California) and into Texas. My new position would also mean I'd have to be deployed for several months at a time, so I've been looking around for other job options, but nothing will even come close to paying what this job will.

I guess that's why most fanfic writers are young (in high school or college) and don't have to work for a living, lol.

.~.~.~.

After my not-so-subtle message to the Councilors the day previously, Rimuru, Milim, and Lilith were allowed to officially join the newly renamed World Council without many difficulties. Some nobles still looked down on Rimuru in particular and tried to pull a stunt to 'control' him, but it was easily stopped by Diablo and Testarossa, who saw through everything.

Rimuru was also able to reveal the depths of corruption within the council which lead to dramatic instability within the organization when the representatives who were revealed to have been paid off by special interest groups or other countries came to light. Lilith also used some of her soft power to smooth things along, blackmailing the politicians behind closed doors using information she'd gained from her succubus network.

Sure it revealed her hand, but she was so entrenched in human society by this point there was nothing they could do. Without exposing the fact that they were being blackmailed, and thus exposing themselves, they wouldn't be able to take any action against them, as the succubi were seen as an essential service by that time and trying to get rid of them for being 'potential spies' would make that politician sound like a crazy, bigotted, conspiracy theorist.

Yumina even used the Council's dysfunction over these last few days as an excuse to completely de-couple the Guild from the Council. The Guild had, under her careful tenure, long since outgrown the need for the Council's financial support. It was proven how inflexible and corrupt the institution actually was, so no one was able to fault her judgment, even if they weakly objected with no real ground to stand on.

Thus, my daughters and Rimuru, in only the course of a few meetings, had essentially taken total political hegemony over all Non-Empire allied human nations and the Guild no longer had any oversight and could act with impunity.

As a matter of fact, if it wasn't for some tricks and speeches I pulled, stating how humanity needed to unite and all that sappy stuff, the entire Organization would have probably collapsed. Even then, the only REAL reason it didn't was because of a report by Evelyn to the council on the first day after my trial which revealed concrete proof of the Eastern Empire's mobilization and the capture of a few Imperial Sabatoors and Assassins who were discovered by Testarossa during the conference.

It was pretty clear that a lot of the destabilization came from their actions too, and nothing unites people quite like a common enemy.

Anyway, the result of everything was that the Tempest Pact (Tempest, Dwargon, Babylon, Nava, Amrita, Farmenas, and Sarion) all essentially became a large super-national organization similar to the EU from my previous world with the World Council falling into their orbit. I couldn't really care less though, I was too busy enjoying having all of my children together for so long.

Being able to have dinner together with everyone for a whole two weeks was great. I also got to meet Lilith's "husband" during that time.

I say that because they weren't really married and Lilth treated him more like a favored slave or 'pet' than anything. She even told me he has the Unique Skill [Masochistic One]. It was a pretty broken skill that converts physical damage into magical energy while also giving self-regeneration. Furthermore, the skill allowed Lilith to take that stored energy for herself, in exchange, so long as Lilith was alive, Astaroth was completely immortal.

Its only downside was that it made gaining resistances impossible since it relied on its user taking damage to activate, and the worse the pain, the bigger the benefits for Lilith. It's a good thing Astaroth was such a helpless glutton for pain then, otherwise, the skill may have actually been the first useless Unique Skill.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and after 17 days of negotiations, the World Council came to a close. We bid farewell to the foreign diplomats and headed back to Tempest in a Convoy. I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. I knew we couldn't keep everyone away from their jobs forever and hated all the politicking, but it was fun to hang out with everyone as Rimuru ensured almost every night was a party of some kind.

That was why when word reached us a few months later about the Tempest Festival, I was super excited. We knew the Empire wasn't going to make its move for a few more months, as their military needed to be fully mobilized, so Rimuru decided now was the best possible time to do what he did.

He held a marriage ceremony for himself and Shizue. He paired his wedding with the Tempest Opening Festival, showing off to the entire world just how prosperous Tempest really was and drowning many of the nobles who were on the fence about him in so much luxury that they were begging to be his allies by the end of it.

I wish I had more to say about the ceremony itself, but I really didn't. Sure, I was the 'priest' for it and officiated everything, but that was only because no one else could really have taken that role. Rimuru couldn't use his subordinates to do so, as they didn't have any authority over him, and Luminous said no. /1\

Also, I did hear loli Chloe mutter something under her breath to the effect of 'this isn't over' to which Shuna and Shion seemed to nod their heads in agreement over, but I'm sure I was just imagining things.

Hinata also looked like she was sulking a bit so I decided to take her out for ice cream and used [Abhoth] to create hundreds of slimes for her to wail on, which seemed to have improved her mood. Though the face Rimuru gave me after the whole ordeal was hilarious. Apparently, he'd approached her in his slime form during this time and was reduced to jelly. If it wasn't for the fact that was a [Parallel Existance] and another one of his bodies was with Shizue for their honeymoon, he may very well have actually died there.

My trolling didn't end there either. I met Granbell's granddaughter, marry-something-or-other who tried to control me with her Unique Skill [Greed] during the festivities when I was drunk. I wasn't exactly in the best mental state at the time, but whispering "How Cute" into her ear when her attempt failed probably was the wrong move, considering just how absurdly afraid of me she looked by the look on her face.

<<She probably thought you didn't notice her attempt and you were secretly a pedo, dear.>> Velzard explained to me the next day, but I brushed it off.

Surely it couldn't be taken like that. Right?

<<...>>

The silence was painful.

Thankfully I was somewhat vindicated when she tried to use [Greed] on Velzard too. Velzard decided to do a bit of trolling in my stead, as she pretended to be inflamed by her greed for me and was being very clingy and demanding of cuddles. Seeing Mariabell squirm, wondering why she couldn't get Velzard to follow her orders even though she was 'clearly affected by [Greed]' was pretty funny and she ended up going home defeated after the festivities were over.

The only other major change after all of these events was that Veldora and Ramiris started to date 'in secret' after the festival. Apparently, after reading some slice-of-life romance manga and being swept up by the romantic atmosphere, they decided to try it out.

I've known Ramiris longer than I'd even known Velzard, so I instantly saw through her cheeky attempts for romantic advice for a 'friend'. Velzard was also shocked when Veldora swallowed his fear for her and asked her for advice as well. I thought he'd go to Rimuru for this kind of stuff, but apparently, it was 'too embarrassing' for the mighty Storm Dragon to catch feelings.

What made it all the funnier was the fact both of them were totally clueless that they liked each other while literally everyone else already knew they had feelings for one another. Hell, there were a few Goblina children who were drawing pictures of the two kissing in class. Treyni told me all about it.

<< It's like a romance anime! Like in Komi-san or Uzaki-chan!>> Velzard declared with a bit more enthusiasm than I was expecting, though I guess it was literally her younger brother's first crush, so she was happy for him, even if she didn't show it in front of Veldora himself.

There was even a minor 'jealousy arc' when Dino refused to leave Tempest after getting kicked out of Dagruel's place and Rimuru assigned him to Ramiris' team as an assistant.

Unfortunately, I dropped that 'season' of the Dragon-Fairy Love-Heart-Drop-Kick anime due to another, FAR more pressing concern, though Velzard kept a close eye on it with [Clairvoyance].

Now, I hadn't seen Rudra in a while, but that was fine. We are two immortal beings. A few hundred years is really nothing in the Grand Scheme of things, plus his nation is currently antagonizing the nations of my friends, so I was obviously a bit concerned that the next time we'd meet wouldn't be as friends, but at combatants on the battlefield.

Imagine my shock when I saw almost 90% of Rudra's soul standing before me in the form of the 'Lightspeed Hero' Masayuki Honjou and his party.

I was baffled beyond belief and actually had to do a double-take to see if Rudra had died, using [Clairvoyance] to check, but no. Masayuki and Rudra were in two very different places and states.

I briefly believed that Masayuki was just a [Parallel Existance] of Rudra using an alias, but after interacting with him for a bit, I discovered that that also wasn't true. Masayuki was just a normal-ish, guy who seemed to have been thrown into the whole isekai story headfirst. He reminded me a lot of a stereotypical shonen protagonist, though without the harem.

Originally, when I heard of the 'Lightspeed Hero', I thought that it was another one of Velgaia's pupils rising through the ranks, but when Yumina personally called me over to see him for myself, I knew something had to be going on. Something bad.

I vaguely recalled something in the Web Novel about how Masayuki was Rudra's reincarnation without his memories, but the circumstances for this and that were completely different. Rudra appeared to be completely normal whenever I peaked at him with [Clairvoyance] and although weaker than he was in the past, he didn't seem to be constantly dazed like he was in the Web Novel.

Additionally, I double-checked the World System's logs via [Abhoth] and didn't find any mention of [Manas: Velda] existing in any worlds. I even checked and noticed Yuuki was still in Japan, making waves as a young politician, so I was extremely confused about what was going on and decided to ask about it after the whole war situation between nations was over.

Even as strong as Rimuru was now, he'd be hard-pressed to take on Velgrynd, so I'd have plenty of time to ask one of her Other Bodies about it if it came to that. And so a year passed, an the Empire made its first move.

.~.~.~.

/1\:

Luminous said no for two reasons. First, she would have to reveal herself as the goddess of Ruminism to do so, and revealing that would destroy her political base, and the second reason was that she was salty at Rimuru because she knew how much Chronoa (Chloe/Hinata) adored him, and this was a bit of an unintentional spit-in-the-face for that, but she also knows she can't just TELL Rimuru about Chloe, as it would change things in the future.