Clayman had to restrain himself with everything in his power from grinning like an idiot when he felt the first of the souls trickle into him.
His plan was a success.
'Cease.' He ordered his other half, the masked girl remaining professionally still as she obeyed his orders.
At once, the flow of souls stopped.
Still this was great and wonderful news. She was only to begin transferring the souls to him the moment the desired amount was acquired.
This meant that his attack on Tempest had worked flawlessly, and many of the Eurazanians had been harvested of their souls.
'Over twenty thousand. My Ascension to Demon Lord is assured.'
He should have expected no less from her. He didn't know how such a competent soul could exist but he was well off for it.
Her skills and abilities were beyond any he'd ever experienced and he'd met that prideful boy Yuuki. Possessing not one but three unique skills meant that her potential was even higher.
Of course Clayman didn't hesitate to obtain her soul when he found it floating around his territory. As a matter of fact, it was the only moment he believed he would have been able to subdue her.
After subduing her, he'd grafted her body using the corpses of one thousand of his own subordinates. Of course the amount of seals and binds he'd placed on the grafted body would have crippled the average Majin.
If it inconvenienced her at all, she didn't show it when she'd single handedly taken out all of his best fighters.
Truly she was a precious little thing. And as long as she was alive, he would never be able to die should his nature as a Deadman ever fail him.
With a satisfied breath, Clayman returned his focus to the meeting at hand.
"So Clayman, are you going to inform us of your actual reason for summoning a Walpurgis, or are we going to listen to you and your grievances against the newbie?" Leon Cromwell rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, what's the point of all this?" Deeno groaned sleepily.
"It seems I've made the mistake of assuming a certain baseline of awareness from most of this council. Allow me to correct that."
He let the silence sit for precisely long enough to be insulting. He used the tension that had formed to his advantage when he saw Guy's smile increase by just an inch.
This was the executive summary.
• Demon Lord Carrion had come up with a plan to ascend to a True Demon Lord alongside Rimuru Tempest. The allegation was backed up by the fact that Eurazania's army was currently stationed in Tempest.
• The plan was to incite the kingdom of Falmuth into attacking the forest of Jura, using that as an excuse to meddle with humans. The souls of the human army would have been enough for the two of them to force their evolutions into True Demon Lords. This kind of unauthorized collusion violated the Demon Lord's agreement.
• Things however, got out of control when the holy church got involved. Now the army was more than twenty times the original size, and the saints were now a part of the war. This was creeping close to a great war between humanity and monsters. A war that would no doubt drag other factions into the middle of it.
"This is the testimony I received from one of my loyal advisors, Mjullan. However, upon informing me of this, she was brutally murdered by the foolish slime. No doubt as a message and a threat to me." Clayman dramatically forced a sorrowful look.
"I realized instantly that there would be an attempt on my life, and I confessed my worries to my dear friend Millim." He paused again, pretending to be overcome with emotions. His handsome face somehow making it a truly moving sight.
"Millim was enraged by this, enough that she destroyed the kingdom of Eurazania, and now Carrion is dead. Even though she'd taken action out of concern for my safety, I still rebuked Millim, after all wrecking nations without any evidence or proven reason is generally frowned upon. Unlike Carrion and his conspirator, I'm not one to destabilise the balance we've created."
"Ever since, Millim has grown rather fond of me and places a good amount of trust in myself, something I'm honoured to have."
Suddenly, Clayman snarled. "A great wrong has been done to all of us who bear our titles of Demon Lord with great responsibility. There's no doubt that Tempest will fall to the humans, after biting more than he can chew. And when the humans overcome him, what's stopping them from just clearing out the rest of Jura, emboldened by their massive victory against such a foe."
Kaede raised an eyebrow. "You think that they have the confidence to attack Maple Tree?"
"And why wouldn't they?" Clayman grinned. "We cannot deny the power that the slime possessed. One capable of naming so many powerful monsters isn't one to be overlooked. And that's why we have to act now, disperse the human army and bring down the hammer of justice on the meddlesome slime."
"That way, the humans will understand that the Demon Lords still remain forces that they cannot hope to provoke while showing them that we do not condone such schemes that take advantage of everyone. Show them that we are honourable as well and not power hungry mindless buffoons."
"That concludes my case!" Clayman bellowed, looking all self important.
'I can't believe everyone was patient enough to hear all of that prattling.' Kaede rubbed the bridge of her nose. 'Oh wait no, Deeno is fast asleep and looks like Daggrul is already nodding off. Even Ramiris is looking drowsy.'
"Would anyone like to add anything?" Guy looked around, waiting for anyone to step forward.
"Yeah, I would." Kaede stood up without waiting for Guy to answer her.
"Generally, I'm not a fan of liars." She began. "I mean, I understand the concept of it and know of the necessity of it, still though, I hate liars, and you Clayman, are the biggest liar of them all."
"You dare!" Clayman roared.
"Shut up, I didn't interrupt you when you were talking did I?" Kaede looked down at him. "As for your so-called evidence. Mjullan right? Well she's not dead. I met her myself actually, she's pretty nice. Kanade even took her on as a student."
"What nonsense are you prattling!?" Clayman yelled again.
Clang! Bang!
A small trickle of blood slid down from the very faint cut that had appeared on Clayman's cheek while behind him, the wall steamed from the impact of the pole that had previously been on Kaede's seat.
In front of Clayman, his masked subordinate was standing while holding her still vibrating dagger in front of her.
Kaede had apparently launched the pole at Clayman at insane speeds and the masked girl had barely managed to parry it, reducing the damage to only a faint cut on Clayman's cheek.
"What did I say about interrupting me?" Kaede smiled at Clayman.
Surprisingly enough, none of the Demon Lords looked phased at all by what has just transpired. Clayman was the only one with a hint of fear in his eyes.
Kaede formed a black box in her hand, one of her projectors that formed a holographic image. "Here's Mjullan and Kanade working a personal project of mine. Here's Mjullan and Youm, that's her boyfriend trying one of Maple Tree's best dishes. She doesn't look like a dead person now does she?"
"If she supposedly gave you all of this damning information, why would Rimuru let her live? Why would he allow such an obvious threat to his plans remain unchecked in his lands?"
"He could have easily had a spirit puppeting her body." Clayman defended.
"A spirit puppet." Kaede repeated the words back at him. "That's your defence?"
"It's a possibility that..."
"It's an unfalsifiable claim." She cut across him cleanly. "Which means it functions as evidence of exactly nothing. I could tell you right now that everything in your presentation was fabricated by a spirit puppet wearing your face and you would have no mechanism to disprove it." She spread her hands. "That's the problem with unfalsifiable arguments, Clayman. They work equally well against the person making them. If my evidence can be dismissed because spirit puppets exist, then so can yours."
Clayman's jaw tightened by a fraction.
"Furthermore." Kaede reached into the projection and pulled up another image, Mjullan mid-laugh at something off screen. "I have been in the same room as Mjullan multiple times. I have shared meals with her. I have watched Kanade argue with her about methodology for forty minutes straight." A pause. "She is not a puppet. She is an annoying and occasionally brilliant woman who makes excellent tea and is deeply in love with a human man named Youm, and she is very much alive."
"You can't possibly verify..."
"I have [Analyse]." Kaede said simply. "Something, all Demon Lord should be in possession of. I can verify quite a lot."
'Not everyone here has that skill though?' Everyone else collectively thought the same thing at the same time.
Clayman looked at her.
His composure was intact. It was, she had to admit, impressively intact for a man whose central piece of evidence had just been publicly taken apart in front of the oldest and most powerful beings in the world. The smile was still there. The posture was still easy. But something behind his eyes was recalculating with incredible speed.
'He's not going to fold.' She thought.
"Regardless of Mjullan's current status," Clayman said, and his voice had regained its measured quality, the composure resettling over whatever had shifted underneath it, "the core of my case remains unaddressed. The war is real. The army is real. The threat to the balance of..."
"FOUND YOU."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere simultaneously, filling the space between the walls without appearing to originate from any specific point. It was quiet. Conversational, almost.
Every head in the room turned.
The meeting room, no, the dimension shook.
Ramiris spun around on her chair.
The wall behind her cracked.
Not a fracture but a deliberate crack. The stone went grey at the edges of the crack, then white, then simply stopped being stone in any meaningful sense.
Two hands appeared in the gap.
They closed around the edges of the crack and pulled.
The wall came apart like a curtain being drawn, the dimensional boundary peeling back with a sound that was less a crash and more a tearing, the kind of sound that suggested the fabric of the space had been significantly disturbed.
Rimuru Tempest stepped through.
The slime had chosen a humanoid form that was, if anything, slightly below average height, with silver hair and golden eyes and starkly, beautiful face.
He stood in the gap he had made and looked at the table.
His golden eyes moved across it. Past Ramiris, who had gone very still on her chair. Past Daggrul, who had straightened with sudden attention. Past Leon, whose expression had not changed but whose eyes had sharpened considerably. Past Deeno, who had woken up at some point during the dimensional shaking and was now watching with his chin on his hand.
Past Guy, who was still grinning. (Does he do anything else? ಠ_ʖಠ)
Past Kaede, who looked at him, and then looked at the crack in his mask.
And then his eyes found Clayman.
They stayed there.
Clayman did not move. To his credit, he did not move. But the five tailed fox on his lap had gone rigid, every tail rigid and flat, and the masked girl behind him had shifted her weight by a fraction in a way that was not visible to most of the room but was visible to the two or three people in it who were paying that quality of attention.
Rimuru said nothing for a moment.
Just looked.
"Clayman." His voice was the same one that had said found you through the wall. "I've been wanting to talk to you."
The room held its breath.
Ramiris recovered first. She spun back around on her chair, pointed at Rimuru with one small finger, and said with considerable feeling, "How did you even get in here!?"
"I followed the signals released by Berreta." He said. Still looking at Clayman. "I still created them, even if they're your servant. I could feel where they were."
"Not cool Rimuru!" Ramiris complained. "Berreta is my servant!"
"I'll make it up to you, promise." Rimuru smiled at her. Then he turned his gaze back to Clayman and his smile turned cold.
Clayman was smiling.
It was a good smile. His best, probably, the one that had no particular feeling behind it and therefore could not be read.
"Rimuru Tempest." He said pleasantly. "You've saved me the trouble of sending a formal summons."
"I know." Rimuru said. "I just couldn't wait to kill you Clayman."