Most of the refugee workers in Starforge Fief no longer struggled to survive.
They had food, clothing, hot water to wash with, and clear, specific work assignments.
With "survival first" as his guiding principle, Louis had gradually established an operating system centered on team accountability and performance-based rewards.
The miners were no longer slaves driven to toil with their heads down, but producers with recognized status, rules, and protections.
Meanwhile, Qi Vein Stone kept arriving from underground along the mine rails.
The workers on the first sorting line had already become skilled at sorting and processing the ore.
The faintly glowing, pale-blue stones were sorted into categories and stacked on numbered material racks. Some had already been sent to the Experimental Furnace Workshop for purification.
The remaining raw ore had also begun to pile up, like a fuse waiting for fire.
The entire transport system ran almost flawlessly.
Roads for Snowhorn Cattle carts, rail routes, and gentle winter-access slopes connecting the mining areas to the main processing station had all been fully constructed over the past few months.
Special stone paving, trained Snowhorn Cattle transport teams, directional signposts, and nighttime Light Glyph illumination had been introduced together, ensuring that operations could continue even when heavy snow sealed the mountains.
This not only allowed materials from underground to be transferred quickly, but also provided transport routes for the large equipment, building materials, alchemical bases, and high-temperature furnaces that would arrive later.
Of course, what they dug out was only raw stone, still a long way from being truly usable.
Unlike ordinary ore, Qi Vein Stone naturally carried extremely high demon energy and an active internal structure. Using it untreated would not only be wasteful but could also trigger unstable reactions.
Yet when Starforge Fief first took shape on this tundra, there