...
The tribal warehouse stored a large amount of iron ore acquired in a trade with the Beast Feather Clan last year, but it had remained untouched ever since.
Now that the snow was melting rapidly, the air had become damp. With the iron ore just sitting in the warehouse... An Jin wondered, 'Will it rust?'
But more than half a year had passed, and the tribe still hadn't found a suitable fuel.
Ordinary, resin-rich wood was fine for cooking, but it was nowhere near enough to smelt iron ore.
Only a high-energy fuel like coal could possibly melt the iron ore for smelting.
No wonder Beast Gathering City had been so quick to trade away the iron ore. The truly scarce resource must be high-energy fuels like coal.
Coal was formed from the fossilized remains of ancient organisms and was usually buried hundreds of meters deep underground or within mountains. With the Beast World's level of technology, excavating it in large quantities was a near-impossible task.
