"HOW IS THAT A LITTLE DETAIL?!" I couldn't help but scream, upon hearing the full report of the 'little detail' that Risa had glossed over at the beginning of the meeting. "Ohh… This totally changes everything!"
I couldn't help but complain a bit. Still, I should've seen this coming.
Because of my newly minted introduction into the Octogram as a certified Demon Lord, Tempest's social development had essentially exploded. Our place in the world not only changed, but cemented overnight. Naturally, I'd expected this, and made sure to take steps to ensure that the situation outside the Forest of Jura didn't take a turn for the worse, but I'd never expected this.
The lands that I 'ruled' under the Jura-Tempest Federation before I'd become an official Demon Lord had only included the lands under direct control of the dryads.
In other words, the western half, or maybe around two-thirds of the forest.
The last third went from the Great Ameld River to the plains that the direwolves had once lived in, bordering the Eastern Empire. That was the same area that, centuries ago, the Empire had actually invaded in an attempt to conquer the western half of the continent.
According to some investigation that I didn't remember Risa having time to do, but existed in Mnemosyne, that'd wreaked havoc on the ecosystem in that part of the forest, and not just because Veldora had slaughtered the army there and flooded the area with a fairly high magicule concentration that'd only started to go down in the last hundred years or so.
That meant that the weaker or unintelligent monsters, too stupid to get out of the Empire's way back then were rather low in number, while the place teemed with strong or intelligent monsters, with multiple races that were technically on par with ogres in terms of raw power.
And now, the entire forest was recognized under my official rule. That meant that from Blummund loggers to the elven village that hid out in the eastern part of the forest and had complicated barriers keeping outsiders out, they all needed to specifically ask me for permission to use the forest, or it could technically be considered a slight against my authority.
Which was why it was a given that all of the more organized races in Jura would find their way to Tempest pretty soon. If the lizardmen were doing it, then at the very least, the multitudes of races lesser than them would come, too.
With the races that we already had relations with, like the high orc tribes we'd scattered across the land, it'd be a pretty casual affair, but the others would probably be freaking out over the possibility that I was some sort of local despot, expecting me to either demand tribute or annihilate them for one false step. Some of the stronger races would probably even want to test me to see if I had what it took to rule over them. That was how monsters worked in this world. The strong did what they wanted, the weaker were more cautious.
Still… It was an opportunity that couldn't be allowed to go to waste.
Between Eurazania, the road work, the developments in Rimuru City itself, Dhistav, New Farminus-
Our list of active projects was so long that I had to shorten it even in my own mind, or I'd lose my train of thought. If it wasn't for the White Force taking over everything in New Farminus, Dhistav, and the peacekeeping patrols around the old Tamed Monsters' Initiative base area about a half-hour walk from Rimuru City, I definitely wouldn't even have enough personnel to spread pretending to deal with it all.
But if all of the monster tribes from all over the Jura-Tempest Federation would be coming in for a visit anyway, then this was the perfect opportunity to recruit!
But the problem was, recruiting meant making sure that these visitors wanted to stay… That meant completely changing priorities.
"Alright, everyone! I've thought it all through! This'll take a lot of work from everyone, but I know we can pull it off! We're gonna hold the Tempest Founders Festival!"
"YEAAAH!"
"A festival!"
"You're a genius, Lord Rimuru!"
Shion picked me up and squished me close to her chest. "Of course he is!" She told everyone with a smile.
They still had no idea what I was thinking beyond 'PARTY!' though.
"Alright, so here's what's going to happen." I laid out my plan.
Basically, I wanted to make this whole 'demon lord introduction' thing as easy and impressive as possible. So, we were going to put it off for about six months, then have it done all at once in a formal, scheduled part of the actual festival.
That'd give us just enough time to optimize Tempest, make this particular festival as stunningly amazing as possible… If we had the personnel.
Yeah, personnel was the big problem. In order to solve our personnel problem, we needed more people short term. If we dealt with (or at least put off) the short term people issue so that Risa and I could work on our little side projects and make Tempest a more amazing place in the immediate future.
But how to do that?
We actually weren't wasting much personnel in Eurazania, so no cutbacks were needed there.
And unfortunately, the 7,500 High Orcs under Geld were mostly split between laying the early groundwork for the road between Jura and Thalion, finishing up the road between Tempest and Eurazania, and aiding the final bits of my construction workforce (mostly volunteer monsters interested in construction) with small projects all across the Jura-Tempest Federation.
Due to that, my own construction force that was technically all under Geld and Myrd was completely tapped dry. Already overextended, in fact.
But then, there was Risa's uber-versatile White Force. Several hundred core, human-speaking monsters, all at least C minus rank or so. Once you added in the lower class monsters (still all above rank D, as strong as a newly-evolved hobgoblin), they numbered around 5,000, with around 250 support-oriented Flower Sprites with E-ranked strength but humanoid bodies.
Thanks to the youngest dwarf brother, Myrd's quick tutoring combined with their natural skills as monsters specifically evolved to be as versatile as possible, they could also serve as a construction crew not completely inferior to the High Orcs in some respects.
Unfortunately, they were also stretched dangerously thin, between New Farminus, Eurazania, Dhistav, with only around 500 left in the Tamed Monsters Initiative headquarters under the command of the low-Calamity class Hell-Angel, the evolved Hellmoth Queen Elise. That included 100 of the 250 Flower Sprites, who were nearly useless for anything that required physical exertion.
They spun high quality Hellmoth silken clothing, though, providing Special quality equipment for the entire White Force, at least.
But of the 500 monsters on standby, only around a tenth could actually be used for physically demanding tasks.
No, the rest of the White Force needed to be freed up.
I guess Risa's ambitions in Dhistav would have to be put on hold for now. Too bad for her.