Dalton shook his head and explained: "Lord Karl, Terra's current population is quite small, probably less than four hundred in total."
"Most of them are children, women, and the elderly who have lost their ability to work."
"There are few men in their prime, and many of them are still sick or... during the hardships of their past lives, they left."
He changed his tone confidently: "However, I believe that under your rule, the population will increase."
"You have, with great kindness, exempted all taxes except the tithe. Sooner or later, the news will spread."
"Before long, there will surely be liberated people from other places, or serfs who can no longer survive, who will hear of Terra's decree and choose to migrate here to settle."
Karl nodded, understanding that population growth could not be achieved overnight.
In an era of inconvenient transportation and information isolation, the spread of news relied mainly on word of mouth from merchants and refugees, which took time.
Instead, he asked: "The iron ingots and other metal raw materials I asked you to negotiate for—have the prices been agreed upon?"
Dalton paused and carefully watched Karl's expression.
He said slowly: "Most lords and merchants sell ordinary iron ingots for four silver coins each."
"If it's an iron ingot from the Mahakam dwarves' Carbon Mountain, the quality is better and there are fewer impurities."
"But it's also much more expensive—about seven or eight silver coins each."
Karl's face was expressionless, but his eyes grew a little colder, and he snorted coldly: "Four silver coins? Seven or eight?"
"For their price, they certainly get the money directly, but they're willing to hand over a symbolic iron ingot, so I should thank them for their 'generosity'?!"
Dalton immediately lowered his head and remained silent, hearing the strong sarcasm in Karl's voice.
Lord Karl was clearly extremely dissatisfied with the monopoly and price gouging of these lords, dwarves, and merchants.
Karl muttered quietly: "Want to raise prices? Fine, I won't buy! In a while, I'll bring someone to your door and give you a slap!"
He raised his head and said loudly to Phillip and the others, who were trying to beat a "horseshoe": "Did you all hear that? Even buying the simplest materials is being exploited like this!"
"As for forging equipment, we can no longer be controlled by others!"
"We may be unprofessional temporarily, but we don't even know the most basic forging skills! That is one of the fundamentals of survival!"
When Phillip and the others heard Karl's words, they felt the determination in his words and immediately stopped their hand movements, straightened up, and answered in unison: "Yes, Lord Karl!"
Leaving the few people in the forge to continue practicing, Karl left the manor alone.
He went out to an open area, looked around, and ensuring no one was watching, lightly touched the ground with his toes.
The next moment, his body rose from nowhere and quickly soared into the sky.
Within a few breaths, he was already a hundred meters high in the air.
He didn't stop and, at the speed of an ordinary person's run, began to move parallel through the air.
At the same time, a glint of light flashed in his eyes, his clairvoyance fully activated, and the ground below him in his field of vision gradually became transparent.
The surface soil and rock layers desalinated layer by layer, revealing the deeper geological structure.
Mountains and rivers were like models on a sand table under his feet, and his gaze penetrated them, reaching the depths of the earth.
After just a few minutes of flight and exploration, the corners of Karl's mouth betrayed a slight satisfaction.
Under the ground belonging to Terra, there were more mineral resources than he had imagined.
In his field of vision, veins representing different minerals clearly stretched into the distance, with significant reserves of iron ore.
There were silver mines with a silver-white luster, and even an attractive gold vein.
In addition, there were large quantities of associated minerals such as copper and tin.
Karl muttered to himself: "The mineral resources are quite rich, but they are buried a bit deep. No wonder no one has found them."
Most of these veins were located hundreds of meters underground.
However, with the traditional labor-intensive mining technology of that era, it was indeed extremely difficult to reach and utilize them.
But for Karl, this was not an insurmountable problem.
"First, I need to mark them to facilitate future planning."
His figure quickly descended from the sky and landed near the area where the veins were most concentrated.
He looked around and saw several huge, solid boulders, each almost the height of three men.
Karl easily lifted the boulders and soared into the air again.
He hovered at the desired height, his gaze fixed on the roughly distributed area under the veins.
Then, as if throwing stones, he hurled the boulders in his hand at these key points.
BANG! BANG! BANG! Several muffled, loud sounds followed one after another, and the ground trembled slightly.
The boulders carried immense kinetic energy and smashed into the earth, instantly causing several shocking deep pits, with earth and gravel spraying everywhere.
These deep pits and the conspicuous boulders would become the clearest landmarks for the future location of the mines.
After locating the vein and marking it, Karl didn't delay.
He chose one of the iron veins, marked by the white marble, which had significant reserves.
Standing still, he slightly bent down, his eyes fixed on the hard ground beneath his feet, and used no tools.
He simply spread his palms like shovels and plunged them into the earth at will.
POOF! With a soft sound, his palm sank into the ground without hindrance.
Immediately after, both arms were also plunged in until his shoulders were submerged.
Then the muscles in Karl's arms trembled slightly, and he rose up, exposing a large clod of earth mixed with grass roots, soil, and broken stone.
He suddenly "pulled" it from the surface and tossed it aside.
This was just the beginning, and Karl's figure blurred.
He was no longer content with digging again and again, but turned his hands into two efficient excavators.
His movements were so fast that they left afterimages, his hands alternately digging into the earth at a speed difficult to capture with the naked eye, each lift bringing up a huge amount of earth and rock.
Karl wasn't digging randomly; he controlled the path and angle of the excavation during the ultra-fast process.
Part of the excavated soil and rock was slapped and tamped down on both sides of the passage, naturally forming a sturdy supporting wall.
The entire excavation process was less about creating a hole and more about "forming" a stable passage into the earth.
Why did this vertical passage, hundreds of meters deep, not collapse under such high-speed excavation...
This, naturally, was thanks to Karl's formless, intangible, yet omnipresent bio-field.