[Yes, the story is larger in physical scale, but he recognizes the pattern. Part of him wants to ask: and does it end when the next army is defeated? (And another, older, more insidious, I hope you left no one behind.)

But that is no concern of his, really, when he has his own world and his own endings to return to. He turns his attention instead to the terminology Marvelous uses, eyebrow lifting when he considers 'searching for treasures' and the earlier words that made it sound like fighting this emperor had been more happenstance than deliberate.]

Looting doesn't sound like the sort of thing people who take on empires do. Was that not your purpose in your world?