The march was monotonous and dull. The limited intelligence of the beasts in the Arathi Highlands kept them away from this dangerous group.
It was already June, and the Arathi Highlands were about to usher in a hot summer, which was also the time of year with the most rainfall.
Soon, a traditional festival, the Midsummer Fire Festival, would arrive.
Galen wasn't sure how this festival came about, but on this day, people would remember their ancestors, commemorate their pioneering of the land, defending their homes, and expelling darkness, and also to express the people of Azeroth's yearning for the light.
The festival lasted for more than ten days, and Galen could eat a lot of Midsummer-specific delicacies during this time, such as Midsummer sausage, which was delicious, as well as baked bread, candied pies, dipped in honey, sweet to the heart.
Although Galen didn't particularly like sweets, the Midsummer sausage was really fragrant, but Galen and his group would be spending this festival on the land outside Stromgarde.
Perhaps he could ask Harmon Caven to come to the mining area to sell festival specialties around the Midsummer Festival.
While Galen was lost in thought, they arrived at the hub of the Royal Road, Threeforks.
When the team arrived at Threeforks, they were only one day away from the Southeast Mine.
When leaving Threeforks, he used the Heart of Creation to remotely notify Gandalf to prepare to set off and meet at the southern mine of the Southeast Mining Area.
Galen prepared to go to the northern mine first to see how Count Dabyrie's preparations were progressing.
In the Southeast Mining Area, the northern mine, hundreds of laborers were working in full swing. Two originally damaged guard posts had been repaired in the north, with two teams of guards on alert and several teams of soldiers patrolling around the camp.
In a simple tent in the center of the camp, Galen saw Count Dabyrie, who was looking at the drawings.
"Good day, Teacher Davil."
Count Dabyrie raised his head, saw that it was Galen, and quickly put down his work, welcoming Galen with a smile.
"Your Highness, you've arrived."
Galen also smiled and walked towards Count Dabyrie, responding:
"I just entered the camp and wanted to see how your progress is going."
"I arrived here ten days ago, repaired the abandoned camp and guard posts of the former kingdom, and then started to clear the mine. A large number of giant spiders occupied it. I spent a lot of effort and only cleared the mine yesterday. Several people were injured for this, but fortunately, I brought an apothecary who prepared an antidote in time."
After listening, Galen was satisfied with Count Dabyrie's progress and informed the Count that Viscount Garson had set off one day later than Galen and was expected to arrive tomorrow.
The three groups had a clear division of labor. Count Dabyrie was first responsible for the safety of the mine and building the camp, Viscount Garson set up the mining equipment and re-laid the tracks, and finally Viscount Newall brought a large number of workers, and the mine could be officially mined.
As nobles of the same generation as Thoras, they had experienced the ups and downs of the kingdom with Thoras many times, fought with the Witherbark trolls for half their lives, and were experienced. Galen didn't need to worry about them at all, and they were the backbone of the kingdom.
"Teacher, I'll leave this mine to you. I'll leave most of my soldiers to you later. You can ask Omar if you need anything."
After discussing with Count Dabyrie for a while, the project here was in good order and didn't need him to be present. After that, Galen went outside the camp to find Omar.
This mine was in the north and would be the first to be noticed by Witherbark Village, so security was the most important issue. Moreover, the branch mine in the south was going to build a town hall, which was a secret that needed to be kept, so Galen prepared to only take 300 soldiers from the base, leaving the remaining 700 behind.
After handing over the 700 people to Omar to command, Galen took 300 people to escort the convoy to the southern mining area. Varokal and Omar were prepared to follow Galen, but Galen refused to let them go no matter what. It was not easy to hide the construction of the town hall from them.
He made it clear that there was danger in the north, and he would be safe in the south. After finally tricking a few people, Galen immediately took the convoy away.
When Galen arrived at the southern mining area, Gandalf had already led the farmer team to arrive in advance, setting up camp in an open space near the foot of the mountain, waiting for Galen's arrival.
The convoy entered the camp one by one. Gandalf was waiting for Galen at the entrance of the camp. Galen asked him to put the gold coins in place and arrange for people to protect them.
Space pouches were too rare, otherwise Galen would have put these gold coins in his bag long ago and traveled light.
Walking into the tent, he couldn't wait to connect to the Heart of Creation and, in the open space specially left by Gandalf in the center of the camp, directed a farmer to deploy a town hall.
The first town hall was completed instantly, but now this branch showed a construction time of 180 hours, more than a week, which was the most time-consuming of all the buildings Galen had built.
This was too torturous. He was stunned by the 180 hours.
Just as he was about to say that life was like xx, if you can't resist, then xx, Galen suddenly remembered that the buildings of the human race could be built without waiting for the progress bar to slowly finish, so he immediately summoned more than a dozen farmers and asked them to knock on the town hall together.
Eighty gold coins for a big hammer! Forty gold coins for a small hammer!
Every time more than a dozen farmers knocked, Galen seemed to feel the words +40 +80 gold coins floating above their heads.
Looking at the resources consumed to build the town hall, Galen felt it was worth it, after all, one hundred and eighty hours was too much of a waste of time.
Immediately afterwards, Galen deployed a barracks at the entrance of the camp and surrounded the entire camp with dozens of farms, using up all the excess gold stored by the base during this period.
Galen asked the farmers who had no construction tasks to cut down trees and pile them up in the camp first. The farmers in the entire camp were busy like this.
Then Galen drew a piece of parchment, took out a quill pen and started drawing on the paper, while closing his eyes to check the base's scan of the surrounding environment.
He was planning the future mining area. He was going to build a city here. This would be his main base in the open in the future, all for the sake of the path of kings.
After a difficult day of waiting, the town hall was finally completed. He couldn't wait to have the soldiers move half of the gold coins into the warehouse of the town hall.
He, Galen, the nouveau riche, the tycoon, was going to spend money like water today.
He recharged 50,000 gold coins at once, and watching the town hall completely absorb several large boxes of gold coins and convert them into 100,000 units of gold, a smile that was difficult to suppress appeared on the corner of Galen's mouth.
The opportunity for a great leap forward in the strength of the base had arrived.
After completing the recharge, Galen luxuriously built a second town hall, just to train farmers in two town halls.
They only had more than a month to develop. When the senior leaders of Witherbark Village returned and found that all their scouts in the south and north had not returned, they would definitely notice the abnormality.
Although Danath's side was also taking action to clear the scouts, having such a smokescreen would also interfere with the trolls' judgment and delay them for a few days.
For a whole month, it was calm, but Galen knew that this was the calm before the storm. He was ready to meet the trolls' series of actions.