“This is just a placeholder, but take a look,” Tahara said, showing them a concept he had been working on for a while.
With the others, Yu inspected the map too.
First, nobles who had refused to side with Dona would be moved to the bountiful Central district. There were not many names on that list, though, since the majority of them had served Dona. The Holy City would be under the jurisdiction of the Holy Church. The Butterfly sisters would control the southern territory, where high society and the minority artists would settle.
Some edits on the map seemed reasonable, and others outlandish. Harts and Sambo, for instance, groaned at the fact that the north would lose the entirety of its territory while the southern territory would be given to high society and the artists.
Harts could hold his tongue no longer. “The south holds mines just as lucrative as those in Central, as well as fertile ground and endless cotton fields. Would it not be more sensible to sequester those territories?” He couldn’t comprehend why Tahara would reach for the barren north over the bountiful south. Desolate or not, the northern tundra was an ancestral home to many who lived there.
Tahara acknowledged Harts’s concern and answered in earnest. “The south does have a lot to offer. That’s exactly why we’re gonna put most of the nobles there.”
“Only to allow those nobles to fatten like pigs?!”
“Exactly! We’re going to expand our business ventures in many ways, and they’re going to be our target demographic. We want the rich to stay rich,” Tahara explained.
“Target demographic...?” Harts repeated.
“There’s a note about this on the map, but the north is going to become one big stronghold. We’re not going to squabble over land rights or ancestral grounds or any of that nonsense,” said Tahara.
“One big stronghold...?” Harts parroted again in disbelief. It was inconceivable to fortify the entirety of the north, especially when the impenetrable Gatekeeper protected its borders already.
Tahara, however, had his eyes set on the future and projects of astronomical scale. “We’ll place enough stores to feed ten thousand soldiers along the border between Central and the north, along with at least twenty underground bunkers to hold weapons and supplies,” he said.
“J-Just a moment—”
“More importantly, we’ll establish ten midsize bases aboveground, with a Training Ground attached to each of them. Chief, if you don’t mind whipping those up too.”
I’m not your slave, Tahara! the Demon Lord wanted to exclaim. I’ll be dead of old age by the end of it! After the one thousand Buckets Tahara had commissioned a moment ago, it seemed like the Demon Lord was in for a battle far more grueling than the one against Dona’s legion.
Harts shook again as Tahara unfurled his plans before them. There was only one good reason to garner ten thousand soldiers and put them through intensive training. “Against what country do you intend to wage war...?”
“What country?” Tahara scoffed. “The Secretary intends to subjugate every nation on the continent, so all of them, of course.”
“You’ll wage war against the entire world...?” Harts felt faint. Was this a bad joke?
The Demon Lord, too, hid his quivering hand. All of a sudden, he’d found himself with his finger on the trigger of a gun. One twitch of the finger and the whole world would plunge into war. As it turned out, the comfortable bed he’d been lying on was a crate full of gunpowder with a lit fuse attached.
Wage war against the whole world?! What am I, a comic book villain?! Where are they going with this?! The Demon Lord finally turned to the group and decided to break his silence. Even if he were to not say a word for the rest of the meeting, he feared that he would be washed away by a torrent of his advisors’ making.
“There’s nothing wrong looking towards the horizon, but we must first pave the road we walk on,” he said, much to the relief of Harts and Sambo, who began discussing the map.
The Holy Church would govern the Holy City, other nobles would run the rest of Central, and White and Queen would rule the west. Harts and Sambo’s reservations about the fortification of the north aside, Tahara’s proposed structure seemed much more organized than the prewar status quo of Holylight.
“I don’t understand much of this,” Sambo admitted. “But it seems better than what we had before.”
“Anything is, when our country has been filled to the brim with conflict both domestic and foreign,” Harts agreed.
Until the civil war, Holylight had treated their three Holy Maidens as figureheads while the Militants, Central, High Society, and Artists vied for power. Living conditions were so tumultuous that the likes of Satanists rose up. Compared to that, any general idea of restructuring was a brilliant one.
Harts stared into the map in an attempt to visualize it all when he found another exceptionally intriguing note. “Mister Tahara, there’s a mention of someone named Manami...”
“Dear me!” Sambo exclaimed. “It says here that she is a Grand Angel?!”
“Yeah, because she is. The Secretary’s going to summon her pretty soon,” Tahara said.
White and Queen were just as shocked by this statement. The Demon Lord’s plans were sounding more and more like deeds in ancient myths.
“Lord Lucifer will summon an angel...?!” White exclaimed.
“That’s no joke...” Queen said.
While Tahara grinned with pride, Yu was glowering at him with a look that didn’t hide how much of an idiot she thought he was.
Meanwhile, all other eyes were drawn to the Demon Lord, who turned around for a brief look, then faced the window again before slowly lighting a cigarette as if to tease the attendees.