Lina froze when she heard that.
She had seen temporary housing before, and she had seen sheet metal before, but what was a sheet-metal house?
A house made of sheet metal?
That sounded even more absurd than her stone bed.
"You mean the houses outside are all made of sheet metal?"
"That's right."
"All of them... made of iron?"
Theus scratched his head. "Well... if you'd arrived a few years ago, I'd understand why you'd be surprised. Didn't you see those self-propelled artillery pieces on the battlefield? Isn't the Empire covered in Steam Tanks too? Even the mobile Stellar Furnace we're in right now is forged from steel."
"I, I..."
Lina did not know how to respond for a moment.
Theus was right. The battlefield really had been full of Steam Tanks and self-propelled artillery.
But those had been supplied by the entire Empire!
Steel had always been the most important strategic resource. The Empire had now forbidden civilians from making kitchen knives, requiring several households to share a single knife in order to save steel for the front lines.
Even the Church had to donate any excess ironware.
Lina had assumed Castel was much the same—no, it should have been even worse.
After all, the Empire had ten times the population here, yet even supplying the front lines with steel was so difficult. Wouldn't Castel have to squeeze every last bit of production capacity dry?
What did it mean that temporary housing for refugees was made of sheet metal?
Do the wheat grown in your Castel sprout steel ears? Lina roared inwardly.
If Theus knew what she was thinking, he would definitely have laughed out loud.
If steel had to grow from the ground, there really would not have been this much production capacity.
Both Castel and Blood Port