Chapter 142 : Autonomy Was Her Lie
Chapter 142: Autonomy Was Her Lie
The following conversations between both sides became much friendlier afterward, and the Treants agreed in principle to lead all Elves to join the Seris Alliance family.
However, among them, the older group of Treants chose to remain hidden from the world.
As the bargaining chip for remaining in seclusion, the two Tree Kings would share one forest, and the Elves under their banner would, under the Alliance’s organization, cooperate with the Alliance’s Agricultural Science Department to catalyze and cultivate new potato and sweet potato varieties.
Meanwhile, the younger faction of Treants had far more open-minded views.
They agreed to establish secularized Elven tribes on the outer edges of the forest, allowing trade, communication, and even tourism with the outside world.
At the same time, each sub-tribe would offer several Elven priests to cooperate with the Alliance’s Forestry Department in screening fast-growing tree species, cultivating fast-growth forests in a targeted manner specifically for Alliance needs.
Among them, several juvenile-stage Tree Kings were easier to fool, and Mitia coaxed them into offering up their true bodies, taking root near the secularized tribes as the greatest scenic attraction of the area~ In truth, it was equivalent to simply relocating.
But Mitia did not mistreat these little things.
Their forest resources would bring them the majority of the profits, whereas other Treants received only twenty to forty percent.
No one should assume money was useless.
With the Seris regime already stabilized, there were countless things that could be achieved through currency—for example, hiring specialists responsible for forest patrols, or conducting environmental protection campaigns across the Federation.
Or even directly spending money to buy surrounding lands from the government to expand forest area.
When Mitia signed the treaty, she did not hand over their current forests to them for free.
Instead, she delineated boundaries—one side belonging to the Federation, the other belonging to the Treants and Elves.
But the treaty was not set in stone.
They could buy back the original forest area bit by bit through currency, something Mitia would not obstruct.
Mitia was not scaring them: protecting ecological environments was simple to talk about but difficult to carry out.
With the Seris Federation’s current technological level, most pollution could only be controlled at the “serious reduction” level—meaning filtered, diluted, or minimized.
Anything beyond that would not be addressed.
Even the exhaust-filtration requirements of waste-incineration power plants could not yet meet the target air standards; other areas were even more difficult.
Resource extraction followed the same logic.
Aside from prohibiting destructive mining, other aspects would not be strictly regulated.
Whether it was achievable or not, the costs simply would not be allowed to rise.
Considering the Federation’s immense demand for resources, even a slight increase in cost would become an astronomical burden when applied across the entire Alliance.
This was a matter of priorities: protect the environment first, or develop first? With global tensions unstable and so many potential enemies, naturally development came first.
And if development came first, many problems had to be ignored.
Mitia had even begun to signal through Parliament her intention to excavate several canals connecting the Alliance from east to west.
At the same time, old river routes would be connected or expanded, and new canals would be dug.
Once this mega-project succeeded, the coastline navigation routes behind the Seris Alliance would instantly shrink by more than two-thirds.
How much ecological environment along the coasts would be altered by such a super-project? Probably no one could say clearly.
But its strategic benefits were immeasurable, and the necessary sacrifices were inevitable.
To put it bluntly—
Handle their own survival first; once external threats diminished in the future, remediation could still be done afterward.
If the Alliance were to cease existing, then what use would this world have anyway?
But Mitia was not so gentle with other nations joining the Alliance.
Allowing them in was not because Mitia was idle and wanted to perform charity.
She wanted these new lands and populations to become a sacred and inseparable part of the Alliance—autonomy was her lie~
Not only were all former rulers taken away to undergo re-education, but territories were converted into states, and even autonomy became limited autonomy.
Military, government, and party—all three had to accept direct control from the central Alliance.
At the same time, local-born officials were forbidden from holding office in their own regions; no one in state, city, or town-level leadership could possess local background.
Even stationed troops followed this rule.
All local taxes and revenues had to be handed over to the central government, which, after verifying calculations, redistributed funds proportionally.
Subsidies for local armies were allocated by the central government, directly issued by the Central Military Department.
Their status was similar to centrally governed provinces.
Autonomy only extended to village-level self-governance—customs, culture, even tribal codes were permitted to exist and be handled independently.
But tribal codes had to align with current Alliance laws.
For example, if someone in the village committed a crime that, according to tribal code, required execution—and if Alliance law also required the death penalty—then under a bailiff’s supervision, the village could carry out the code themselves; if the criminal survived, the bailiff would finish the job.
If Alliance law warranted only decades of imprisonment, yet tribal code called for execution, then the tribe could only enforce punishments other than death and then hand the person over for imprisonment.
If the tribal code did not require execution but the law mandated it, then the legal death penalty prevailed—stricter enforcement was allowed, leniency was not.
Small contradictions could be handled internally, but once they escalated to homicide or extremely serious consequences, the local court would intervene, acting within the framework of Alliance law.
Mitia was not doing only harmful things.
For every newly annexed territory, she dispatched a large number of geological survey teams, combining local records to conduct large-scale surveys of resource distribution.
This served as the basis for determining the territory’s role within the Alliance.
For example, the former Dwarven Kingdom—mountainous, rich in mineral resources—with discovered phosphate ore, various metal ores, and coal reserves of immense scale, was naturally designated as a mineral-export state.
Furthermore, an enormous tungsten deposit was discovered, and chromium and molybdenum were detected within the ore.
This drew Mitia’s immediate attention.
Tungsten had countless uses; its high hardness and heat resistance were indispensable across mechanical processing, metal materials, chemistry, electrification, aerospace—virtually all fields.
For this reason, Mitia mobilized large quantities of TNT to the region for military blasting operations.
According to the Alliance’s resource prioritization system, states rich in mineral reserves received priority in railway and airport construction, as well as airship transportation networks.
Simultaneously, numerous supporting factories were built, professional technicians were transferred in to train newcomers, and once the locals could self-produce, they would manufacture finished materials onsite for distribution to surrounding regions.
As for the Paria region—mostly grasslands and deserts—the proportion of warhorse breeding was reduced, while cattle, sheep, and other livestock were increased, turning the region into a meat-supply state of the Alliance.
As for the Ortu region...
The original Beastmen natives had the greatest say.
They had always called it a “ghost place where not even birds would defecate.” Their ability to survive there previously was purely because they were poor enough—apart from the people themselves, there was nothing of value.
But interestingly, the previously hopeless survey teams discovered dozens of oil fields of various sizes in Ortu.
The total reserves had not yet been fully determined, but the preliminary answer was astonishing.
This caused Mitia, who was working in her office, to repeatedly glance at the cat-girl secretary in the corner whose cat ears twitched as she worked.
No wonder Mitia had felt something was off—turns out the girl had forgotten to wear her headscarf~