I read it as one ‘word’, meaning something along the lines of “anyway, more importantly…”. I think it’s a recognised conjunction rather than something you infer directly from それ and より independently.
I’ll look at the other bits once I get home and can look at my copy ^^ (and yep, seconding what seanblue said, there will be a separate thread for chapter 1 come Saturday which will contain the bulk of the discussion 
)