34 Chapter 9: Meetings and Alliances

- Silas -

Two weeks had passed since the Walpurgis and things were getting back to the routine again.

Weiss and Irene had taken over the job of managing the Kingdom nicely and Shuna and the rest were doing quite well with my home world.

It's just that several factions wanted to make alliances and sign treaties with the White Night Youkai Group now.

Yes, that's the name they selected.

In fact, they were aware of the chunni-like name given to me by the people of Rimuru's world and even named their newly formed faction after it.

Well it's a good thing if they were making friends. I really don't like unnecessary fighting.

I was just worried about Ikki, who was going to that Soul Society place with Kisuke and Yoruichi.

Milim was busy nowadays due to Frey becoming her assistant and making her work for her territory.

I somehow couldn't even imagine her doing paperwork.

On the other hand, Ramiris had established a base in Tempest and a dungeon was being constructed for adventurers. Rimuru was creating an attraction for the people to come to Tempest and also generate a source of income for the city.

And on the topic of increasing income, my restaurant was now reconstructed and far bigger than before.

The dwarves did the work and with some work the whole district around us was transformed. Yuri and Tanya had been buying properties around the area and now we had the surrounding area under us. The Dwarves and Orcs took care of all the construction under the barriers which made them unnoticeable.

And so my Restaurant was now several times bigger than before with two floors and private cabins for meetings.

The entire place was fortified to the High Heavens by all my friends. Starting from Ainz, Zeref, Irene and Rimuru who used his own Ultimate Skill Uriel to create barriers around the place. It was a modified and upgraded form of the Unlimited Prison Spell which kept Veldora imprisoned for several hundred years.

According to Dantalion, one can keep dropping Nukes on the restaurant till the end of the planet's lifetime and it still wouldn't make a dent in the place.

It's not like the Restaurant needed the barriers but the Dwarves had made a resort of sorts around the place coupled with hot springs and all which was not considered a part of the restaurant and thus not under the Restaurant's protection.

In fact, more or less the entire town was under extremely strong barriers.

Still… these guys overdid it.

I still needed to choose the staff. For now, Weiss had sent me some people from the kingdom. Elves.

Fuck, I didn't even know they existed in Rimuru's world.

Rimuru was so jealous when he found out.

Two girls, one a Dark Elf and the other a normal Elf. They were named Mhirael Discardia Monarova and Latifa Synphetee Ortavia respectively. We shortened their names to Mira and Latifa.

Mira was a silver haired woman with slightly darker skin and purple eyes. Latifa on the other hand had golden blonde hair and pale skin with green eyes.

She only needed white wings and I would have believed that she was an angel.

They were the leader of the crowd and were currently being trained by Yuri and Naberal about their maid duties.

As for the cooks, I talked with Jiro-san and Sanzaemon-san. The former said that he will look for some people and the latter actually invited me directly to his School to choose any people who I wanted to invite.

I really need to go there soon. Managing such a big restaurant will become hectic for me if I don't use magic, which I really don't like using while cooking.

Shuna and Lavinia were getting busy with other work so we needed other staff. Orihime on the other hand was a regular. She had become very famous with the guests.

Today, people from another Youkai group from Kyoto were going to come for some kind of treaty.

Shuna and the others will be busy with the meetings so the Restaurant was left to Orihime and me.

The door to the Restaurant was opened and to my surprise, the ones who came in were… bunny girls?

Another group of new people. The last few days several new people had arrived in the restaurant. First there was the old guy who was a ship coater, Ray-san.

I really had no idea what the coating thing was. Maybe it was something like painting.

He got along quite well with the oldies group. Apparently he was something of a martial artist too.

Then there was that student of a Knight Academy, Kagenou. He was quite happy to eat Japanese food, especially Ramen.

And now these new ones.

"This building….I don't recall there being a building like this here before. The one at the lead said." The one in the lead said.

Orihime greeted them.

"Please take a seat. What will you all be having?" She asked.

"What place is this? When did you all set this place up?"

"Eh!" She was not expecting the question.

Did the door open in some kind of odd place?

I went and explained the situation to them and surprisingly, they didn't even question it. From them we found out that this world had had several such cases before.

They were members of the Warrior bunny tribe and lived in the territory where my Restaurant's door had opened. I talked to them and they agreed to cooperate.

Yuri went to meet their leader and discuss things to not cause any problems.

The girls were managing things quite well.

- Yasaka -

She was escorted along with Nurarihyon, Azazel and their guards to meet the Princess of the White Night Youkai Group, the girl who had destroyed the Clan of Abe no Seimei, almost single handedly.

To say that none of them were nervous would be a lie.

The attack which was used there was enough to shake everyone in the country. It was at least on the level of the Top 10 Strongest beings of the world.

A youkai of that strength could be either a boon or a curse for all Youkai in the world depending on their attitude.

They had shown an extremely unbending attitude against the Seimei Clan which made people hesitant to even speak with them. It was only the reassurance of Nurarihyon and his previous connection which made her reassured for this meeting.

Even the escort, a blue haired Kijin, was strong. Extremely so. Not to mention the sheer number of auras she could sense with her Senjutsu. Either they were using some kind of illusion or she was dreaming because there was no way they could have above one hundred Ultimate Class beings.

How was such a group unknown?

"These barriers, I have never seen anything like this before." Azazel commented.

Yes. These barriers which covered the whole city were unlike anything she had seen before. They were strong, much stronger than her barrier which separated the mundane and supernatural sides of Kyoto.

Just how were they even maintaining this thing? She needed the power of the leylines to maintain her barriers and there were no such powerful leylines in this place.

Several other thoughts were running through her mind.

As they reached in front of a building, another figure stepped out and Yasaka found herself staring.

Nine Golden Tails.

A nine tailed fox! A completely new and unknown nine tailed fox!

She unconsciously spread her aura to see if this was some kind of a trick and was frozen stiff.

Such insane amounts of power.

During her reign as the leader of the Eastern Youkai, she had met several other faction leaders, but none, not even Lady Amaterasu, the Head of the Shinto Pantheon had this much power.

"Oh, checking me out?" The one in front of her said, making her realise that she was caught staring. The girl however didn't look offended at all. "Sure. I understand it. I am worth checking out after all." The girl laughed.

"My apologies. I didn't expect a Kyubi no Kitsune in this place and was caught unaware."

"Hahahaha don't mind it. You are all here to meet Shuna-chan right? Go on. I won't stop you. We can get to know each other after the meeting." She waved it off before walking towards a place which looked like an Onsen.

They were left speechless. Even Azazel, who would have made some inappropriate remarks, was unusually quiet after sensing her power.

"She was?" She asked the Kijin leading them. In her shock, she had forgotten to ask for her name.

"Kurumi-sama is a close friend of our clan and lives with us." The Kijin replied.

"So there are other types of youkai here too?" Nurarihyon asked.

"We don't discriminate by race. There are beings of other races who have joined us and live with us of their own will."

"Oh, which races?" Azazel asked, all the while checking the surroundings.

Before she could answer, they had reached the destination. They signalled their subordinates to wait outside as they went in.

There were several people inside the room. A red haired oni and a white haired old man and in the middle was the pink haired girl, their Princess.

"Thank you for escorting them, Yuna-san." The princess nodded towards the blue haired Kijin who bowed and retreated. She then turned towards them. "My name is Shuna and these are Hiro-san and Hakuryu-sama. They will be accompanying me in the meeting. I hope none of you had any inconvenience coming here."

"No no. We are practically neighbours. There was no inconvenience."

"Thank you for your benevolence." She bowed slightly.

Yasaka had to force herself from raising an eyebrow at her. The manners she was exhibiting were immaculate. It was hard to believe that such a young and polite girl was capable of doing what she had done.

Nurarihon took the lead. "I believe this is our first time meeting each other so I will introduce myself. I am Nurarihyon, the Supreme Commander of the Nura Clan. We had an alliance and I thought I should meet our new allies and see for myself. These are my friends, Yasaka, the leader of the Eastern Youkai faction and Azazel, the leader of the Fallen Angels."

"We would be honoured to show you our home. I apologise if it's not to your liking. It's just that we haven't settled here for too long and things are still under construction."

"The place is coming up quite well. I am sure that in a year or two it will become one of the best places for Youkai to live."

"Thank you."

Some pleasantries later, they approached the actual subject of this meeting.

"We are neighbours and I for one do not wish for any kind of conflict between my Kyoto Youkai and the White Night Group and therefore, I would like to propose an alliance between us."

"Definitely. We at the White Night Group do not like fighting either… unless attacked first. I hope you can understand that if we let anyone attack us, leave without any retaliation, it would make people think we are easy targets and invite further attacks."

"So, was that it? The Seimei clan was just that, an example?" Azazel asked and Yasaka found herself glaring at the man.

The red haired Oni's expression steeled but the Princess on the other hand was not offended.

"Tell me something Azazel-sama. If someone were to enter Grigori, attack your closest people, cause damage which results in something very tragic for your faction and then walks away, what would you do?"

"But destroying their whole faction was a bit over the top."

"We asked them politely, several times in fact. They had just laughed off at us."

"Well obviously, Ariyuki was one of their leaders."

"Which makes his actions all the more serious. The leader of a faction comes and attacks another faction, it was a big deal. A genuine sign of war. Just because we prefer to remain peaceful doesn't mean we will back away from such blatant provocation. I believe we have every right to protect our people too."

Azazel raised his hand in surrender. "Now now, no need to get so riled up. I just wanted to know what kind of views the White Night Group has. Someone of your power suddenly comes out of the unknown and destroys a well established faction. It does make people quite uneasy."

"We have a responsibility to protect our people, Azazel-sama. As a leader of a faction, you must understand my situation too. We are a new faction. We have lived in seclusion till now and only came out because our leader thought it would be good for us to see the world so that we do not stagnate. We do not wish for any kind of conflict with anyone and are perfectly happy to be on our own. In fact, we prefer to keep a neutral stance regarding any other faction's politics. You do not need to feel uneasy with us."

"That's good to know. But you just said leader. Could it be that you are not the leader of your faction? I thought you were the princess."

Yasaka's heart skipped a beat. She had noticed it too. If she was not the leader, who was it? Was it that Kurumi?

"Our Leader is called the Lord of the White Night. He is the Guardian of our faction. Apart from this, he prefers to remain anonymous. He has no interest in politics or even factions. He enjoys his simple life and does not want others to disturb it. For all matters and purposes, Shuna-hime is our leader."

"So no chance we can meet him?"

"My apologies."

"Is it the one called August?" Azazel asked.

August?

Both she and Nurarihyon looked at the Governor of the Fallen, thinking what he might be up to.

"August? Do you mean the magician August-sama? Oh yes. Lavinia-san must have told you about him. I thank you for the information but no, August-sama is not our leader. August-sama's father is a good friend of our Lord."

Over the course of the meeting they tried to enquire several times about their leader but were met with the same answer.

At least they were willing to cooperate on anything as long as it didn't involve any kind of war. Even their demands were nothing excessive. Just a piece of land in some of the places she owned to make outlets for their human businesses.

It was until they were informed that there was a fight involving one of the escorts.