Once the funeral ended and the council of lords finally convened, it was then that the real chaos began.
Honourable lord's began openly abusing and debating against one another as if this was not a gentleman's discourse but a verbal spat between mortal enemies.
Felix voluntarily stepped down from the position of King, The Caesar clan could not rally majority support as the sexist vampires decided that they would never kneel to a mortal queen.
The Velter clan had few supporters amongst their midst as their cut-throat business practices meant that they had enemies everywhere.
Usually, everyone was polite to the Velter clan since they had a close relationship with Regus Aurelius just like the Caesar's did, however, now that the king was dead and the merchants had lost their biggest backing, nobody pulled their punches while addressing them.
Vega Titus was dead and his wife Sabrina wanted to do nothing with deciding who the next king should be, but still decided to provide soft support to Max as she knew that he was Vega's pick to be the next king if he could not do it himself.
As for the rest, they had no real claim to the throne as if the 4th ranked clan could ascend to power based on the strength of their leader, then by that logic Max Rajput was the strongest vampire lord alive and should hence be appointed King by default.
However, the support for Max was thin as well as except for about 11 clans, everyone else opposed his promotion to the throne as apparently they appreciated his efforts to progress the Vampire Society, however, did not trust him enough to back him as the king.
Max, who was silently watching the vampire society descend into chaos wondered if he really wanted to rule these bunch of fragmented ego-maniacs.
Now that Regus was dead, not one of them had the agenda of who would be best for the vampire society as a whole and everyone only wanted to appoint the next king based on which party would provide themselves with the best benefits.
The verbal spat between the lord's was ugly and threats of breaking away from the vampire society were being issued at every other sentence.
Basically, the trust in the vampire society as a whole had been shaken and now everyone was only thinking for themselves rather than about the collective good.
When things seemed to get completely out of hand, one of the vampire lords suggested that instead of appointing a single king, they appoint a council of 4 of the most promising king candidates as the ' Protectors ' of Vampire society who would rule over the society democratically.
The proposal was that Julia Caesar, Leroy Velter, Max Rajput and Sabrina Titus make up the new democratic government with each party holding ' one ' vote over an issue.
For any resolution to pass, there must be a ¾ voting consensus on the matter which would ensure that no single party could autocratically rule.
In theory it was not a bad system at all and after a lot of debating and deliberation, Sabrina, Julia and Leroy accepted the proposal.
All eyes finally turned to Max who was silent from the very start of the vampire meeting up till now as if being lost in deep thought, as the decision now rested in his hands on whether or not this resolution was going to be adopted.
********
( Max's POV )
As Max watched the vampire lords squabble, he could not help but feel that this sort of debate and discussion was only happening because the other lord's did not truly understand the scope of his powers.
Max had never flexed his true strength against the vampires and they only knew that he was an exceptional fighter and could defeat multiple opponents of the same tier, however, what they did not understand is that as a tier7 god his strength was already at the monarch realm!
He did not need the approval of any of these vampire lords to become king, if he truly wished to be a tyrant then he could conquer the vampire society faster and better than Dracula was doing currently, however, the only thing stopping him from doing so was that he did not wish to spill innocent blood.
The reason why he had not already challenged and fought Regus was that he was waiting for the right moment to do so, however, unfortunately Regus died before Max could defeat him.
He couldn't help but think how when his brother decided to take over the universe, he did it with an absolute show of force as eventhough he obliterated the control of the council of monarchs there wasn't a single individual who dared rebel against his wishes as they understood that doing so was akin to committing suicide.
' Perhaps my brother understood this long ago. Maybe in this universe only might makes right?
Maybe if these lord's understood that I did not need any trickery to kill Regus if I truly wanted to take his life they would not dare disrespect me this way!
Maybe if I was more oppressive, the discourse of today's conversation would be more productive and the other lord's would not waste time squabbling amongst themselves.
I do not need the Caesar clan's support, I do not need the vampire council's support, if I want to be king, then none of them can stop me…..
Damn it! I really did not wish to do things this way, however, these fools will never understand my magnanimity until I show them by cruelty ' Max thought as he grit his teeth and steeled his resolve.
He wanted to ascend to the throne the civilised way, he wanted to take the high road and become a hero.
Unfortunately, the people he wanted to protect now saw him as a pushover and a weakling, which is why he could no longer afford to act as a ' hero '.
" Very well…. I have made up my mind on how I want to handle this issue " Max said as for the first time he spoke in this discussion as after standing up from his seat and cracking his neck, he used the move [ Divine Concealment ]