(Back home.)
Artoria was setting out all the details. An official announcement hadn't been made, but she was sure that news had already made its way to the people who should know. It's practically impossible to hide such a conflict from other eyes, but she didn't care. She just needed to sort all the details and then celebrate.
"Hey, Artoria, so, now what?" Rimuru asked as he saw Artoria quickly writing some things down in a thick notebook. It was a notebook filled with details of the aftermath of the war and how to handle it.
"Now, we celebrate, Rimuru," Artoria simply said as she kept writing, not bothering to look up. She wanted to get this done as fast as she could before she passed it off to a bunch of other advisors and workers. She had things to do back home and things to prepare.
"Oh, so another festival?"
Rimuru was a little excited. It was a while since this place had a festival, which was a little rare, since this place would try to throw a festival or celebration for almost any reason that could fairly be argued.
"Exaclty. We're going to have a week-long festival, and on the final day it's going to culminate in a grand military parade."
"A military parade? They do that in America?"
Rimuru was a bit surprised by what Artoria said. He knew of military parades, but from what he knew, America didn't do anything like that. If they did, he was sure he'd know because he had no doubt that a military parade from them would be extra over-the-top.
But Artoria's answer quickly curbed his expectations.
"Well, I mean, not really. It's rare, but it's happened. There was one to celebrate the Union's victory in our Civil War. There were two during World War 2; one was before the United States joined the war, and then one after to celebrate winning. Then there was one after the Gulf War, and there was also another one to celebrate the Army's 250th anniversary. And then there's other parades that have military units, but aren't classified as a military parade, like our Independace Day parade."
"That's only like four."
"Like I said, it's rare."
"So, they must've been good, right? If they're so rare, I'm sure they made it count."
Artoria could only sigh in disappointment, remembering what she saw. "Well, I wasn't even alive for the first three. As for the 250th anniversary one, it was so underwhelming. I was expecting a lot more. You'd think it would be super cool for such a celebration, but it wasn't. I was so excited for it, and I was disappointed. Like, I was expecting something similar to what France does during Bastille Day or what Mexico does during their Independence Day, at minimum…" Artoria was slowly getting angrier as she explained and let out her frustration. "...Oh, and don't get me started on the political atmosphere of it. Let me tell you something, Rimuru, during that parade, people were complaining about the money spent as if the government wasn't throwing literal billions away in other stupid bullsh—"
Rimuru rapidly interrupted her. He didn't need to hear more because it was very obvious to him what this would lead to. "Okay, okay, let's stop here. I got it, I understand what you were probably going to say next, or at least the emotions."
"Alright, fine. So, yeah, after the official announcement, festival preparations will start. I'm also planning on making this a yearly event and occurrence."
Rimuru was slightly relieved that things were calmer and back on subject. "Okay, so, about the Eastern Empire. How are you going to set them up? Like, how will you help rebuild them?"
"Well, first of all, I'm going to make sure they implement new laws, especially concerning more freedoms, rights, and liberties."
"That's nice. Like, what?"
"Well, weapons, first of all."
Of course, that's the first thing she thought of. It shouldn't even be a surprise.
"What? But weren't you going to—"
"I'm talking about regular people, Rimuru, not military personnel."
Rimuru wasn't sure what to think. It was one thing in this country, but the Eastern Empire? After what they went through, and what they probably thought of them after such a defeat? Countries don't usually forget such a thing, let alone rebuild into being super good allies. And now they're going to get really strong weapon rights? Whatever it was, Rimuru knew Benimaru had a really tough task ahead of him.
"I don't know about that, Artoria."
"We have it here. You know that, right? Like, someone, right now, could go buy a some powerful magic weapon, whether it be something as simple as a sword, or something very modern like a machine gun. And don't get me started on the kind of ammo they can also buy. We have everything."
"Okay, but, come on, isn't that a bit excessive? I don't think people should be able to—"
Artoria narrowed her eyes at Rimuru in suspicion as she interrupted him, "First of all, it's not excessive, and second of all, you're sounding like those people."
"'Those people?' What do you mean?"
"Answer me this, Rimuru. If I stepped down now, and someone new came in to lead, can you gurantee, with absolute one-hundred percent certainty and absolutely no doubt, and accounting for near-countless variables and factors, that the government will never descend into tyranny?"
Rimuru thought about it, and that wasn't something that could be promised. Who knew what would happen 100 years from now? "Uh…no…I can't"
"Then this debate is over. Simple as that."
Artoria let out a frustrated huff as she got back to writing. Rimuru decided to try to go back to the topic at hand again.
"Alright, alright, let's move on to something else. What will you do with all that new land?"
"First of all, I'm going to make the battlefield we fought on a national military park. We're going to conserve everything there, making sure it's preserved for generations to come. There'll be park rangers, tour guides, and other things like that, so people can learn. I'm also going to send out an expedition to scout the land to see what pieces of nature should be preserved, so we can establish more national parks. There's that rabbit girl who makes those tour guides. I'll send her and some others, along with whoever they want to take and supplies. It'll be paid for by the government. And there's the increase in population. That'll come with its own issues, and also implementing and enforcing our own laws instead of the Eastern Empire's one. It'll be a tough and annoying transition, but with good planning, it'll be alright."
"What about the Eastern Empire's population? Not only did they lose basically half their population, but they also lost millions from the war. Is that something that can be helped?"
"Well, after a war, there's usually a natural baby boom to replace a population, but if you really want to 'force' it, you can do a few things. One way being to lower taxes a lot. That will cause people to have more disposable income and increase consumer demand, which will cause a consumer-driven economic boom. But if you want to straight up just encourage people to have more babies instead of doing something that will cause population increase as a side-effect, then you can just implement policies for that."
"What kind of policies?"
"Incentives for people to marry, have children, and start a family. You could go about it in many ways. If you only cared about your population going up and wanting people to have babies, you could implement policies that sort of pressure people to do that, through hard cash or loan incentives, but the thing with that is, you'll get people who only have children for the money, and people who do that shouldn't be parents at all. Look, there's no perfect answer to it, and it's one of those things where no matter what you propose, you'll have a bunch of people call you crazy things. The best bet is to just cause a sort of societal change with a bunch of policies that increase population as a side effect."
Rimuru rubbed his forehead as he saw what it would take to help rebuild an entire nation. "Man, this is more complicated than it seems."
"Yeah, every country on Earth has different ways that they're trying to increase birth rates. And some are desperate, like really desperate. You know, places like South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan.
"Uh, yeah, right."
"But don't worry, if all else fails, just use magic. Anyway, I'm going to make an official announcement about all this, and finally let the news spread all over. Something straight to the point. I'm not going to make a big show out of it."
"You have the speech all ready?"
"It's not a speech, just a straightforward announcement," Artoria said as she got up from the desk with the thick notebook in hand. Her part was done, and now it was time to pass it on to other people.
"Alright, so, that's that, I guess."
Rimuru also got up from his spot.
"Yeah, pretty much. With all this done, maybe you can finally find a girlfriend," Artorie said in one final remark as she left the room, leaving Rimuru stunned.
"What?"