Work Prophet
Chapter 654 - 27: The First Steel Factory of Green Field

Chapter 654: Chapter 27: The First Steel Factory of Green Field

With the factory and equipment in place, workers were needed, and fortunately, Li Yu and Ireya brought back quite a few people from their trip to the Royal Capital.

Green Field did not lack population, so the Green Field First Steel Factory, a joint venture between the Double Rest Sect and the Arias family, quickly recruited the first batch of four hundred employees.

Besides enjoying the basic benefit of bi-weekly rest days, the salary at the steel factory was also very generous, and those who had worked as blacksmiths could receive double pay after passing an interview.

Moreover, the steel factory offered lunch and provided an hour’s midday break... These working conditions were novel to the indigenous people of the Bratis Continent.

The Dwarves in the mines found it novel as well.

After being captured, they had braced themselves for execution, as they were the ones at fault this time, having secretly allied with the barbarians of the Dragon Ridge Mountain Range to launch an attack on the West, and had even caused the death of Marquis Kuren.

However, the Lady only executed their Commander but spared everyone else, even allowing the Dwarf Prince Oli some leeway to write to the Dwarf King to arrange a ransom.

Although the amount was somewhat hefty.

Eventually, after some negotiation, the two parties agreed to a price of seventy thousand gold lions, after which the Dwarf King also wanted to ransom back the ten thousand captured Dwarves.

But when Miss Rabbit quoted one million, there was no follow-up.

In truth, according to the usual market prices on the Bratis Continent, a warrior without noble status might be worth one or two gold lions at best, as their families could not gather more money than that.

The reason the Lady offered such an outrageous price was actually to indicate that she did not wish to send these people back to the other side of the Dragon Ridge Mountains.

The Dwarf King Herry certainly also picked up on this underlying message, so he very tacitly did not inquire further.

As for Oli, this fellow was rather talented himself, and in his urgency pressed by the Lady, he used every tactic to persuade Herry to pay the ransom.

First, in his letters, he dredged up memories of Herry’s childhood to play on his feelings, then he put on an act of pity, saying that if Herry didn’t pay up, he would soon be killed by the imperial people, his body hung at the city gate for people to spit at.

But what truly moved Herry was the last sentence in the letter, where Oli said he knew how the Dwarves had been defeated this time.

And this was precisely what Herry most wanted to know.

Until the night of the attack, almost all the news coming from the front was good.

The Imperial Army, as planned, was trapped and perishing in Gravel Valley, then the reinforcements were lured in, seemingly about to be annihilated in one fell swoop.

Herry had even felt a bit of regret at the time that the second Imperial Army was too small, having only brought five thousand men; but to his surprise, it was these five thousand men who ultimately defeated nearly thirty thousand soldiers of the Dwarf Kingdom.

When the news reached the Royal Capital, Herry could hardly believe his ears, he was shocked and angry, and he also took note of the name Ireya.

Afterward, he sought to understand where exactly the defeat had come from.

Although some of the surviving soldiers managed to escape back, they were completely terrified, and the way they described the battle felt like myth and legend to Herry, hardly believable.

In the situation where the army’s commander, Jerome, was dead, and Oli, as a surviving officer and a member of the Royal Family, his words should have both high credibility and reference value.

That was the real reason why Dwarf King Herry was finally willing to pay the ransom; what he bought with these seventy thousand gold lions was, in fact, an understanding of the defeat.

Unfortunately, his simple wish was doomed to fail, because even now his uncle had no idea how they had been defeated.

But at least Oli’s life had been saved.

Miss Rabbit was quite trustworthy, after receiving the money, she immediately hired a few wilderness people to send him back over the mountain.

She even thoughtfully packed some Green Field specialty carrots as a parting gift for the Dwarf Prince.

In addition, she took some of the Double Rest Sect’s white paper and linen and advised Oli to also show them to the Dwarf King, suggesting that if he needed more in the future, he could come to order them.

Oli, the Dwarf Prince, returned home looking like a product promoter.

Along the way, he gave away all these items to the accompanying wilderness people, and as they were about to cross over the Dragon Ridge Mountain Range, the Dwarf Prince even asked two wilderness people to whip him fiercely with a whip.

Afterward, as if still unsatisfied, he gritted his teeth and broke one of his own legs before limping back home.

While Oli, as a prince, was able to return to his homeland, the other Dwarves weren’t so lucky and had to honestly labor in the mining camps.

But after some time, they also started feeling that something was off.

How come life didn’t seem too bad?

Despite the daily mining being arduous, they had quite a bit of rest time, and every five days they could rest for another two days.

The food for prisoners certainly couldn’t be called good, but it was edible, and the Lady wasn’t shortchanging or mistreating them on meals.

As for earnings... there were none, but Li Yu had persuaded Ireya to give the Dwarves some extra little sweeteners.

The most popular among these was a small item called an Alcohol Exchange Voucher.

Accumulate seven vouchers and you could trade them for a drink; admittedly, it was only inferior alcohol, but having some was better than none. For Dwarves, who loved their liquor, the happiest thing now was to sit under an open-air drinking shed and enjoy a good cup.

In their eagerness to accumulate drink vouchers sooner, they started working much harder.

And oddly enough, when some Dwarves asked to work through the weekend, so they could drink more, they were rejected by the mine’s supervisor.

The man said this territory belonged to the Double Rest Sect, and Saturday was merciful; people were not allowed to continue laboring over the weekend.

Some Dwarves, particularly those from poorer backgrounds, began to think of their own wretched experiences—endlessly working and farming on the other side, then being pulled into military service, only to end up earning hardly any money.

By comparison, they felt that being captives wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

So, when the Missionaries of the Double Rest Sect came to preach again, the Dwarves’ aversion didn’t seem so strong.

Add to that they had witnessed the Divine Power of Saturday firsthand in the previous battle, and seen the Prophet of the Double Rest Sect perform miracles.

Some Dwarves, whose faith was not that strong to begin with, began to waver, and approximately on the twelfth day after the Missionaries had come to the mines, a Dwarf was finally willing to become a follower of Saturday.

Though it was only one case, it was a good start, and thereafter, more Dwarves gradually changed their beliefs and came forward expressing their desire to join the Double Rest Sect.