Chapter 399

Chapter 399

For Jacqueline, as long as Blue Star operates better, she is one step closer to true freedom.

This fiery sorceress would occasionally take time to wander around the headquarters of the Magic Council, casting meaningful, malicious glances at the officials.

She prowled like a predator stalking its prey, selecting the weakest target to snatch away.

After doing this for a few days, the entire Magic Council found that their staff were mentally drained.

Especially those elders assigned to duty, who soon developed a range of ailments, including but not limited to colds, headaches, sprained ankles, magical imbalances, and suddenly remembering that experiments from hundreds of years ago had been left unfinished.

In short, within just a week, the Magic Council ran out of healthy elders with no pressing duties.

Faced with this situation, the Magic Council finally handed over the promised items to the Beast Pet Shop, even eagerly wanting to get rid of this burden, going so far as to send several mages familiar with the equipment to install it with meticulous service.

The Magic Council washed its hands of any maintenance responsibilities.

The Mage Tower of Evocation took the initiative to take on this responsibility, sending many mages to help maintain these magical barriers.

For this set of equipment, Lancelot even made a special trip back from the West Sea to oversee its installation.

The outermost circle of the Black Forest was enclosed within a 1-kilometer-wide area by two sets of magical barriers.

Countless beast pets were working with fervor here.

This closed hunting area was a recently established zone just a couple of days ago, so there were quite a few beasts in it.

The eager beast pets were still trying to clear out these creatures, and the farmers and the Wingless Flywheels specialized for tree cutting had not yet officially entered such a dangerous place.

They were all outside this closed area, in front of the outpost, toiling day and night among the tree stumps.

Once the land was fully cleared, the hunting area would probably be cleared for them, and the hunting area would gradually expand as the light screens shifted.

Of course, clearing and leveling the land is not a simple task.

To clear this part of the Black Forest, merely cutting down the trees is not enough; the deeply entrenched roots must be completely removed, and the holes left by the roots must be filled with soil and compacted.

But these old trees that have grown on the edge of the Black Forest for who knows how many years are not so easy to deal with; their roots are intertwined and densely grown underground, often extending several meters or even tens of meters deep.

Their roots often span dozens of meters.

Even skilled practitioners struggled to dig them out, not to mention the ordinary people who were conscripted to handle these roots.

Now that the weather has completely turned cold, it is not an easy task to dig through the frozen hard soil to extract the roots in such cold weather.

Many workers’ fingers turned red from the biting cold during this process.

Even with torches everywhere, they could not bring much warmth.

When Alfred and others saw the large number of people in the 'root clearing area,' they couldn't help but swallow hard.

Just by looking at the work those people were doing, Alfred felt that with such work intensity, he was worried he might not survive the winter.

However, before he could panic for long, the staff who had led them took a detour and brought these heavy-footed farmers to the now somewhat established tent camp outside the outpost.

The camp was not large, but there were quite a few along the Black Forest line.

Looking from the edge of the camp into the distance, one could even see the faint outlines of one tent camp after another.

Due to the extensive stretch of the Black Forest area, Lorant chose to increase the number of tent camps and reduce the number of people in each camp, using a small-scale setup to ensure those living here could reach their workstations faster, thereby indirectly increasing efficiency.

"Alright, from today on, everyone will be living here," said the staff member with the Blue Star Logo on his clothing, stopping and pointing to the empty tents up ahead. He spoke to the timid group behind him, who walked quietly. "We’ll be doing logging work here in the Black Forest, and starting tomorrow, different foremen will lead you to your workstations."

"The tasks assigned to each person might differ, but don’t worry, these jobs aren’t too hard, and with the foremen guiding you, there’ll be no problems as long as you put in the effort."

"On your way here, you probably noticed that the work here involves either moving logs or beast remains, or digging out tree roots from the ground. If you put in the effort, you’ll do fine."

Hearing his words, Alfred and others nodded repeatedly.

At least it sounded like these tasks weren’t too troublesome, just somewhat tedious and heavy, but as this Blue Star gentleman said, if they worked hard, there seemed to be no difficulties.

This made Alfred feel relieved.

If he were assigned some overly complex tasks and ended up being disliked or removed because he couldn’t complete them, that would be truly terrifying.

At least he felt confident he could be useful here, and only useful people have the right to survive.

This wasn’t the end. The staff member continued, "Everyone, don’t worry, life at Blue Star will be way better than you think."

"Each camp has a dedicated canteen, providing three free meals at 5:40 in the morning, 12 noon, and 6:30 in the evening. You can get them for free using your work badges and camp residence permits that will be issued to you later."

"If you’re hungry outside these meal times, you can purchase ingredients from the weekly camp market, but you’ll need to cook them yourself. It’s all up to your cooking skills."

"It’s already late today, so the camp has prepared basic living supplies for you. Four people will share a tent, and you can sort yourselves out. After assigning, go to the registration area at the entrance to register your tent and collect your camp residence permit."

"Also, if you’ve got any special skills, you can mention them during registration. It’ll only benefit you."

"But one thing to remind everyone: the camp has very strict rules. Someone will give you a simple lesson tomorrow to explain the specifics. What I want to say is that if you violate the camp’s rules, punishment will definitely be enforced." The staff member showed a somewhat frightening smile, his eyes fixed on the people in front of him.

He was definitely trying to scare these farmers.

In fact, Blue Star does have punishments for those who violate the rules, but in this administrator’s eyes, the punishments are somewhat light.

If possible, he didn’t want any trouble to arise under his watch, so he played a little trick, not clearly stating what the punishments were, just using a 'you know' expression to look around.

His intimidating words and demeanor were evidently quite effective. Alfred and the others quickly straightened up, nervous, afraid to leave a bad impression on this person who would soon control their life and death.

For newcomers unfamiliar with Blue Star’s rules, they couldn’t imagine that Blue Star would have such lenient regulations.

From their life experiences, even the most lenient lord treated them no better than a wild grass by the roadside.

Entering the tent, Alfred and others were pleasantly surprised to find that although the tent wasn’t large, the overall environment inside was quite good.

Clean and tidy, with four beds each equipped with basic bedding, and the ground even covered with a layer of insulating materials to keep out the cold from the ground.

Alfred delightedly touched the quilt and pillow on his assigned bed, the soft texture making him feel that this bed was even better than the one at his home.

Indeed, for this batch of bedding, Lorant specifically set aside two fabric processing workshops in Blue Star to produce these sheets and pillowcases.

Although the quilts weren’t luxuriously filled with animal fur, cotton, or beast pet Slime products, they were made from a mainstream plant used for bedding in this world.

While the warmth and comfort couldn’t compare to those high-end materials, they were still better than quilts stuffed with dry grass.

After all, time was limited, and Lorant had Blue Star operating at full capacity to achieve this.

The bedding that made Lorant feel somewhat guilty brought joy to these people, their faces lighting up with a bit more color.

Not just these insulating supplies, Blue Star also prepared some toiletries for these people, such as cleaning twigs for brushing teeth, showing very thoughtful consideration.

Each bedside also had a mess tin, clearly the utensil for communal meals as mentioned by the staff earlier.

Everything inside left Alfred utterly astonished.

On the way, after learning that their group had been directly consigned to the Blue Star Pet Shop as labor by the church, the group was filled with a chorus of grim murmurs.

Due to the large number of people in this batch, there were always a couple of farmers with kin or friends who'd been through the same ordeal.

Most of the laborers directly consigned by the lords did not survive more than three months.

Survival hinged on the mercy of the next lord and a stroke of good fortune.

And the vast majority of disregarded laborers did not have such good luck.