Many hands made light work. With so many people in the survey team, it did not take long to set up the camp.
This was also thanks to the solid groundwork laid by the pioneering team. The ground had been leveled and tamped down, the surrounding vegetation cleared away, and even the tents had already been put up. Nor were they ordinary tents—they were specially thickened and reinforced, with inner and outer layers, windproof and waterproof, with outstanding insulation against both heat and cold. Though the weather was freezing now, the moment one stepped into a tent with a brazier burning inside, a warm breath enveloped them. Living in tents like these, there was no need to worry about frostbite no matter how cold it became.
The survey team's main tasks were to set up the equipment needed for prospecting and build that small smelter.
They used a magical furnace. Such furnaces were extremely costly, and every use consumed a great deal of magical power. Usually, a mid-level mage had to oversee one for it to be used frequently. Naturally, the survey team had mid-level mages—three of them, in fact. By pooling their strength, they could fire up the furnace roughly once every two days, which was more or less sufficient.
In theory, as long as it had enough magical power, a magical furnace required no fuel. But to ensure the furnace's stability, the survey team had still prepared a large supply of magic crystal stones, worth at least ten thousand gold coins in total.
If necessary, these magic crystal stones would serve as fuel for the magical furnace. But unless there was absolutely no alternative, no one would be willing to consume magic crystal stones just to smelt ore—silver ore itself was certainly not worth that price, and even