I Became a Witch and Started an Industrial Revolution

While conducting the resource inventory and surveys, Mitia also did not forget to ease the regional famine.

Thanks to Mitia’s previous floating grain-price “Forager Mouse Strategy,” the former Federation’s grain reserves were extremely abundant.

First, she mobilized the local villagers to spontaneously form Farmers’ Associations to await Alliance relief, while simultaneously transferring large numbers of former rural Farmers’ Association backbones to the disaster areas.

Through large airships conducting regional point-to-point airdrops to the disaster zones, the anxiety caused by the spreading famine was eased.

Under the lead of the Farmers’ Associations, cultivation and production began to recover, and irrigation canals were dug open.

Large amounts of agricultural machinery were also continuously supplied to the prioritized regions through various channels.

In military matters, the Alliance also welcomed a key breakthrough.

The Elves lived long lives, never worried about food or clothing, and generally had many hobbies—this made them well-learned.

Although in industrial technology they understood very little, or rather understood nothing at all, they possessed extremely profound foundations in life sciences, as well as the inscription alchemy that always gave Mitia headaches.

The Elves even had independently developed wooden Mechanical Bodies of their own!

When Mitia saw treants over five meters tall, all colorful and decorated with all sorts of trinkets, running wildly across the proving ground, she was stunned.

Weren’t Elves supposed to wield bows and ride little deer? Even seeing them ride white tigers would not have surprised her—but what was this gaudy wooden Gundam-like thing supposed to be?

And surprisingly, even though it was wooden and looked unreliable, the wood they used possessed excellent magic resistance, and burning it with fire was of little use.

Compared with the standard Mechanical Bodies of the Main Continent, these had considerable advantages—though the same old issue remained: their resistance to the kinetic armor-piercing weapons used by the Alliance was poor.

But Mitia did not care about that.

What she cared about was that she now had a group of talents with deep mastery of inscription alchemy!

Because the ductility of wood and metal was completely different, the design philosophy the Elves used for Mechanical Bodies was also very different from that of the Goblins of the Main Continent.

The Elves revered life, nature, and harmony, so their manufacturing philosophy was to use as few inscriptions as possible and prefer to rely on the properties of the wood itself.

In transmission mechanisms, they tried to combine various structural designs, crafting their wooden frames as if making works of art.

This approach was actually very similar to mechanical engineering principles and held strong reference value.

Of course, using a large number of structural components meant a sharp increase in complexity.

If anything broke, aside from the Elves themselves, other races probably would not even understand what they were looking at.

Once the first steel Mechanical Body prototype that adopted the Elven design philosophy was successfully built, confirming that applying their ideas to metal was still feasible—

Alliance scientists began collaborating with the Elves, adding a moderate amount of basic inscriptions and attempting to simplify the components.

Small size meant insufficient power—so you either increased the power or reduced the weight of other parts.

But most of the time, it was “insufficient defense → increase armor,” “insufficient payload → increase structure,” and then the power core could no longer support the weight.

If the power core could not support the weight, they had to switch to a bigger core—raising the weight again.

Then another cycle of stacking this and that, until the Mechanical Body and its power source finally reached a relative balance.

Therefore, if possible, it was best for the Mechanical Body to possess some degree of self-support even without power.

This was very important, as it could reduce part of the power core’s burden.

Mitia thought of exoskeletons.

No matter how she looked at it, exoskeletons were still the option that could function without power, and by adding external armor and energy packs afterward, they could be reversed into full Mechanical Bodies—essentially one set serving two purposes.

First, create a non-powered exoskeleton with reserved gaps for installing external armor and power packs.

It could function normally as an exoskeleton, and then integrate an armor set onto it—treating the exoskeleton as the supporting framework for the armor.

This method seemed feasible? Maybe?

Whether it worked or not, they had to try to find out.

The greatest gain at the moment was still the discovery of molybdenum.

This meant there was now a foundation for producing high-alloy chromium-molybdenum steel.

Chromium-molybdenum steel had excellent performance and could be used to manufacture engines, gun barrels, and cannons.

With better materials, engines could withstand stronger power output.

That meant the upcoming No.

2 medium tank project could finally begin, and larger main guns also meant the tonnage of warships could rise again.

Now that the nations around the Seris Alliance had witnessed the destruction of the Church’s “Invincible Fleet,” they were terrified and were desperately attempting to build steel warships.

Spies and agents were flooding toward the Alliance like they cost nothing.

The warships were right there; if they wanted to look, let them look.

Mitia viewed this with a happily indifferent attitude—in fact, she even deliberately leaked part of the cruiser manufacturing technology.

One phrase described her intention perfectly.

“Small indulgence is entertainment; too much indulgence harms the body; excessive force brings utter annihilation.”

This fit the warship-building race perfectly.

How did one build steel warships stronger than another’s? By throwing money at them!

How much high-quality steel did high-strength hulls require? Could main guns be made just by talking about them? What about fire-control and range-finding? How would they solve the power system? Countless problems awaited them!

To put it bluntly—even if she gave them the blueprints, they still could not replicate the ships.

No matter how simple a warship was, it could never be “handcrafted.” Even if the Zhiyuan-class cruiser did not need 8,000 supporting suppliers, it still required hundreds of industrial factories to provide parts.

So what if they could not build them? Then buy them.

The Seris Alliance welcomed their purchases!

The Alliance shipyards even offered custom orders—they could build anything according to their ideas.

If they wanted thirty main guns on one ship, the Alliance would install them.

Not buying cannons? They still had to buy the power boilers, right? Or did they think an iron warship could sail using sails?

How much did it cost? Sorry, the boiler was extremely difficult to manufacture, so it was the most expensive component.

Bought the boiler but the ship still could not move? Sorry—the propeller drive shafts were sold separately.

If they did not want to buy them, they could make their own and ship them over for installation.

She had no opinion either way.

How much did the main guns cost? Sorry, the main guns were extremely difficult to manufacture, so they were the second most expensive component.

Send people to study? They thought too highly of themselves… She would be generous if she even taught their crews how to make the ship move.

They purchased one? Wait—surely they did not plan to buy only one ship?

It was not that Mitia looked down on them—let the Empire try building them; that was at least possible.

But how many ships could those kingdoms produce even if they used the entire nation’s strength?

Even if they had a lot of money and could build many, she could always use their money to build better ships—maintaining permanent superiority in combat power.

Would they dare stop investing?

They could decide when the naval arms race began, but when it ended—that would be decided by her.

She also was not worried that those kingdoms, feeling bullied, would independently develop something amazing.

If technological barriers were that easy to overcome, the world would have already known peace.

The saying “Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river—do not bully the young and poor” was, after all, the exception.

Most of the time, it was “Do not bully the middle-aged poor, do not bully the elderly poor—the dead deserve respect.”