The Martial Unity

As the Shepherd had expected, Rui had taken very much for the third model. Frankly, she had considered not proposing it at all, but the reality was that she simply couldn’t hide the truth from a Martial Transcendent. He would see right through her. She had hoped that he would go for the balanced approach that made as good a use of the free market as one could reasonably hope to, while keeping the downsides in check.

But it became very clear to her that whatever the Emperor feared was much greater than any risk of civil war or separatism, fragmentization, or the loss of leverage. He simply sought power.

Not for himself, but for all of human civilization at all costs.

And that required mobilizing every ounce of resources and capital across the entire world, and that could only be done if the model of expansion truly offered tremendous return-on-investment. Rui was willing to tolerate a lot in order to strengthen human civilization to the point where it could withstand attacks from Quasi-Type-Three Civilizations in part, even if not in whole. That was much more precious to him than civilizational uniformity. Military power was absolutely vital to the future of human civilization; all he needed to do was ensure that it could be tapped into when the time came.

Thankfully, the proposals included many forms of bonds that, while ensuring that conquerors still retained tremendous sovereignty and power, would force them to defend Gaia if and when it was ever needed.

That was the ultimate goal. To increase the net military power of his civilization. He listened to the Shepherd go into more detail as to how the system would work. The Shepherd continuously stressed that he would be completely surrendering the right to intervene personally with his power, because it would violate the premise of the model entirely. “If you break your word of not intervening even once,” she insisted. “Then you will lose the accelerated expansion that you so desire. The reason that this model will have the fastest growth rate is that investors, conquerors, and pathwalkers believe that they will have almost absolute control over the territories that they conquer. But if you ever intervene in a heavy-handed manner, they will realize that the promise you made was a lie, and suddenly, they will be less willing to invest in fear of your intervention, depriving them of their investment and effort.”

That meant that Rui would have to truly restrain himself and not exercise his tremendous power over human civilization if he wanted to spark a gold rush into interstellar space.

Of course, he had some experience with that to an extent with the Panama Continent and Gaian Civilization. He didn’t try to infringe upon them even though he had rapidly gained power in the past several years. Now, he would need to let people do whatever they wanted when it came to space expansion, as long as they contributed to human civilization. That meant that he couldn’t leverage his tremendous power to ever act against any private party in interstellar space.

Because if he did, that would instantly chill private parties and make them reconsider whether their investments were safe.

“It’s not just about you not intervening in interstellar space, it is also about you not intervening in other matters here on Gaia as well,” the Shepherd stressed, as if trying to get him to not choose that particular option. “Because if investors see you acting in an authoritarian manner over Gaian Civilization back home, then they can very easily harbor fears that you will one day try to do the same in outer space. Which means that…”

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She walked towards him, putting a hand on the laissez-faire model. “…that this model entails you to withdraw from active intervention into civilization as a Martial Transcendent. In fact, the more you withdraw, the more confidence that people will have in your non-intervention.”

When she put it that way, he understood that it was going to be much more difficult than before. Because he did intervene very frequently to enforce his Void Order Regime, giving him a channel to blow off some steam and practice as a Martial Artist.

“You will have to stay away from doing that for the next ten years,” the Shepherd remarked with a serious tone of voice. “You cannot intervene. Otherwise, you will destroy this model.”

Rui heaved a sigh. “Fine. I’ll keep that in mind. It will be… challenging, but it is a challenge that I’m willing to accept.” He turned towards the thick stack of sheets with a nod.

“Let’s go with this one. Tell me more about it in-depth.”

“Very well, Your Majesty.”

Rui listened with interest as she began diving deeper into the policy of what the governing structure would look like, starting with the fundamental rights that this model required the Gaian Alliance to make to all people seeking to invest in space expansion. The laissez-faire model gave all would-be two fundamental rights in the stars that the entire model would adhere to.

The fundamental right to liberty. The fundamental right to sovereignty.

These two fundamental rights were the basis of the attraction that would draw every single private entity and individual out of the woods and straight into space, for the possibilities that this model offered them were endless.

They could create their own star empire.

They could create businesses on scales undreamt of before.

They could extract resources unlike anything seen before.

They could explore the mysteries of the cosmos freely.

These were extraordinarily powerful motivating forces that made everything within Gaian Civilization extremely banal and mundane in comparison.

A secondary and a voluntary opt-in option within the framework of liberty and sovereignty that the model offered was selling negatron matter and Gaia seeds for the rest of the world in order to fuel their expansion, which they would absolutely need if they wanted to have any hopes of attaining any success. In return, Rui would demand from them an absolute commitment to defending human civilization when the time came, and having them implement the measures that would all but force them to come to Gaia’s aid if and when the time ever came.

Aside from that, Rui didn’t give a damn what they did.