For the next month the titans on the island have been completely whipped out. The new anti titan weapons brought in by the mid-eastern alliance helped eliminating the titans inside the walls while Eren and Leo dealt with whatever was left outside.
"It is back breaking labour this is!" Sasha shouts hitting the ground again and again with a shovel.
"Who... Who said it would help us train by building a road from Shinganshina to the port?" Connie continues.
"It could be worse. You could be like Leo." While everyone was busy digging in front of the road Leo had to use his crystallisation power to build the foundation for the road. Since rubber wheels were introduced to Paradise a crystal road would be useless. Instead of being able to create one straight line from Shinganshina to the newly founded city outside the walls he has to wait for the others to dig then fill the foundation with crystal on top of which will be placed rocks that don't damage the tires nor makes them slip. Since he can't create one giant crystal construct he has to use his power for the whole duration of the day making him constantly tired with a bleeding nose. Eren couldn't use the attack titan for the construction of the road since it's thirty minutes per day time limit was too short for anything substantial. He was however helping building the walls of what will soon become Eldia's newest port and even then in human form. If a Marleyan ship would approach he would be the first to act in stopping it.
Marley however had no intentions in attacking Paradise, or rather didn't had the power to do so. The Warriors had to be spread very thinly as more and more rebellions and invasions occurred in the continental sized nation. Leo left Marley broken and the reveal on the world stage of Eldia didn't helped at all. Instead of the world joining forces to fight the island devils they were joining forces to free themselves from Marleyan imperialism. This lead for a golden age for Eldia but a golden age that lasted only a few days.
The mid-easter alliance was forced by Leo's actions to ally with Eldia but the island simply had nothing to offer.
"No manpower to aid us in the war and even less experience with modern weapons. You have no infrastructure, no factories, no roads and no food. Paradise is literally a sink hole in which to lose all of a country's founds within days!" A man with a large moustache says sitting at a table with the Eldian diplomats. "The only thing Eldia has at the moment is free land for people to built on top of. You'll have to give us that otherwise there's no reason why the mid-east should continue dealing with Eldia."
"Nothing on Eldia you say?" Hange says drawing the attention to a few objects placed on the table on top of a metal tray. "You see, this is a piece of wood. It burns slowly and creates very little heat. I give it a one! This is a piece of coal, it burns faster and releases a little bit more heat than wood. I give it a three." The next object on the tray was some blue crystalline dust. "Now, this object right here is one of the most common minerals on Eldia but at the same time one of the rarest outside the island. Iceburst crystal or more specifically, crystallised titan flesh." Hange sets the very small pile of dust on fire and it burns immediately creating an explosion, large enough to shake the table.
"I give it an eleven. Iceburst crystal is the most effective form of fuel available in this world." Hange gets up and looks out the window towards the outer gate that leads outside the walls.
"I assume you came here by train right? It was incredibly hard to create two train stations and a railway in so little time but... our advisor was very adamant in having a comfortable means of transport for our esteemed guests. To make the journey from the port to Shinganshina and back it takes one hundred and forty kilograms of coal, or five hundred grams of iceburst crystal dust." Hange turns towards the mid-eastern diplomats trying to put on the best poker face possible.
"Should we talk about iceburst crystal based weaponry? An explosion caused by a cannonball filled with iceburst crystal is similar to that of a titan's transformation. It shakes the ground, pushes everything away, breaks through concrete walls and destroys bunkers. It takes down titans even if the shot missed by less than two metres. If you fear us island devils turning all into titans and invading your country you'll want the iceburst crystal to power your weaponry. If you don't want us, the island devils to be the sole owners of such weaponry then you'll do the very same."
"You wanted our land to mine the crystal thinking we are not aware of its usage didn't you?" The mid-eastern diplomat is accused of such low tactics but it was true. Having his hands tied he sits back at the table and starts bargaining for a low enough starting price. The people of Paradise were real island devils for they were making the mid-eastern alliance pay for grams.
Saying that they paid only with money was not true though. Through the mid-east Eldia made its first step on the world stage properly. The mid-eastern ships were used to send Eldian diplomats all over the world and their technology was used to update that of the island. As Leo suggested, the next ally and the drop that tipped the scales in Eldia's favour was Hizuru. In the beginning the mid-east was an unwilling ally to Eldia but with the arrival of Hizuru at the negotiation tables the three nations united were starting to become a really important player on the world stage. The mid-east had the manpower, Hizuru had the technology and Eldia was the pivot around which everything was spinning. After Hizuru there came the south-western nations and then some.
This however had the negative effect of pushing the third party nations into allying either with one block or the other as the world was dividing itself more and more. It didn't helped that Paradise was growing at a rate unseen before. In the old world where Eren brought the rumbling forth Paradise was still lagging behind compared with the other nations but just as Leo hopped, this time Eldia was just as advanced as any other nation on earth and it stood a chance on the world stage. Even so, by no means was Eldia a powerful nation. They had the smallest population in the world outside of small island or city states that have no place to be considered a world stage participant. Instead of being an island with a handful of people on it, Eldia was an island with a handful of people on it which had very powerful explosives and highly effective farms. If Marley sneezed to its right Eldia would have been wiped out the face of the world, if not for the titans.
Paradise still had the Colossal titans inside the walls which were a war deterrent powerful enough to hold the whole world back, but it was also the one thing that made Eldia the world's biggest target.
What was to stop Eldia from starting the rumbling, destroying its neighbours and taking that land for themselves, use the colossal titans to protect that land and use it to grow the nation into the new, strongest power on earth? Nothing absolutely nothing if not the thin line of hopes and dreams held by a man willing to defy space and time to stop the rumbling from happening. Eldia really has only its word to calm the whole world from the threat of annihilation. Such a special council was held with all the heads of state and the military.
"The Colossal titans are needed. Marley still has five titan shifters at their disposal, one of them I might add is powerful enough to destroy a whole city by itself!"
"And what will happen if Eldia captures those titan shifters? We would have eight titan shifters on our side and the wall titans to start the rumbling."
"What you are saying is... our hands are tied between protecting our nation from Marley with the wall titans but at the same time being unable to neutralise Marley since we would be too much of a threat to the rest of the world."
"If I may. I've seen the rumbling with my own eyes. I've walked besides it as it trampled the world underfoot. We cannot take it as an option, Eldia does not have the wall titans to keep itself safe!"
"And why shouldn't we just use the wall titans to simply eliminate every other nation on earth and start all over. We've considered ourselves the last humans alive for so long and now the lives of our enemies matter to us?"
"Are you listening to yourself talking?" Leo asks in disbelief but the atmosphere in the room shows how his opinion was the popular one.
"The rumbling is not an option by any means. Let's pretend we start it, you know what will happen? Marley, or any other nation that has access to blimps will fly directly towards Paradise who has all its walls and anti air defences destroyed, they will carpet bomb us into oblivion and the world will mutually annihilate itself as soon as we start!"
"And why didn't that happened in your past world? Why didn't Marley invaded Eldia and destroyed it?"
"Because in the past, four more years between Marley and its neighbours lead to mutually assured destruction. More or less all nations on earth capable of flight were ravaged by war and the few airships remaining were barely enough to damage a district, let alone the whole island! Now however, the world is united either against us or on our side and I doubt our allies will be on our side for long while we ravage the world with literal giants that crush everything underfoot!"
"What do you propose then? What would save the world from destruction?"
"I've thought it up a lot, I've considered everything Eldia needs to have a safe future. We will get rid of the wall titans one by one if necessary to show the world we aren't a threat. We will receive all the willing continental Eldians on our island to boost our population and keep focusing on increasing it as much as we can. Using the power of the founding titan we will start a countdown to protect ourselves allowing Eldians to transform into titans only for seven more generations. Until then the power of titans will be transferred as it is transferred now in Marley. The founding titan will create a vow of peace, never sending our titan shifters into outside wars unless defensive. We will also not allow the founding titan in contact with royalty afterwards as to make sure no one will be able to stop the Eldians from losing their titan powers forever. With that Eldia will be safe for long enough for our island to grow into a nation capable of protecting itself without the use of titans. Eldians will become the same as every other human on earth and peace will be achieved."
The council voted on Leo's proposal and it passed. Eldia didn't needed to invade other nations, it didn't needed to wage offensive wars, it only needed time to protect itself as all other nations do. The elimination of the titans inside the walls will commence immediately.
Just as with everything Leo thought well on how to deal with the wall titans as well. Using the power of the Warhammer he would create a crystal cocoon around each individual titan, starting with the ones inside the outermost walls. At night a hole would be drilled through the wall and a blade would be inserted into the titan's nape in order to destroy the titan without waking it up. If the titan falls after it got killed the crystal cocoon made sure it didn't created a domino effect in which it dragged all the other titans down with it. Thirty minutes every night though was barely enough to even make a dent in the sheer number of wall titans but time was on the scout's hands.