I definitely agree I think salt is important I just don't know what kind and how big a role it may play later in the story.

I definitely think the weather could be altered, and I wonder if it's simply thatno other Master has thought to try and alter the weather before...?

I do think Hades would take some pity or show favor towards MC as it is mentioned in Asterion's death flashback that he was in Hades guard and it seemed Hades disagreed with Asterion's punishment... So he might see MC's interference with the other Gods' plans as a good thing...

I do think that one happy ending to this whole story would be a jump forward into the future where both Asterion and MC have died and gone to the Underworld together and live in the Asphodel meadows.

I don't know if you've played the Routeless Route or if you've watched my playthrough of it. Salt, lots of it, is a necessity in order to active the hidden Poseidon shrine which yields a boon that can allow Asterion to escape. In the route, Nikos is given a bottle of potent salt to use for the shrine by the goddess Nemesis. If I had to guess, the salt that Oscar gets from the Tapir God can do the same and if Oscar has it in a playthrough, it will likely lead to making a future trial easier or bypassing it all together like Argos' piety trial. Though I do wonder if the Tapir God's cursed salt actually works as a purifier like other salt or if itself is defilement. I think the implication from the rites scene that used Hinterlands salt and the hot springs scene is that that particular salt does not purify and instead defiles. The salt is dirty essentially much like how running water can be used to cleanse but dirty running water is going to defile. I don't think all of this is why salt can be made however, it really is because salt was used as a form of currency. It's why the word salary exist as it does.

I never thought about the weather being a thing that might be manipulated through contracts. That would be interested to see if it could be done and if it's used to make the valley green. Granted, anything that naturally grows or is created from the realm will be hostile to Asterion but the view would be prettier. I don't know if seeds brought from outside the realm and planted in the valley would have the same hostility to Asterion. On one hand, the seeds weren't created by the realm but on the other, it was nurtured and grown by the realm. Though by that same token, you could say the same thing about people who live there and they don't become hostile to Asterion.

The afterlife part is really interesting and likely is based on belief. However, how would that work for Robert's realm? From what I interpret from what Robert reveals about his realm is that he's from Nazi hell, a hell dedicated to torturing Nazi's for their crimes and likely anyone else who have had a similar devastating impact on mass populations. I would imagine that the Nazi's themselves wouldn't have believed they'd end up in a special hell for them after death (quite the opposite most likely). So what determined how they ended up there? Is it some divine intervention? That would imply something like a Christian god. Or did all the gods look a the Nazi's and collectively thought to themselves that some humans are just so bad that they don't want their souls? Was the hell created out of other people's beliefs that there should be a special hell for those types of people? And why would that supersede one's own beliefs on where they go after they die? It's a lot of interesting questions we can ask about the afterlife and how it pertains to the worship of gods as well. Like how devoted do you have to be before you'd set your path down a specific afterlife? What if one worships a god that doesn't actually exist (or at least doesn't have enough worships to come to life)?