Limits

Standing in the house I wondered 'What the hell is their problem?'. I did nothing to them, we never talked nor met each other in the past so why create more problems for me than I already had. I figured that this must be the human nature playing its part. I was just a slave to them, although I didn't think like that about myself. I was also from a village as well and much bigger than that, so what right did they have to treat me like that? Strength! I was alone, if the whole Freemount village were to stand with me they would become the slaves not me.

I started to notice more about how humans were fake and how they used numbers to overwhelm the weak ones. If I was healthy, at the top of my condition and could retaliate. Would they still look for trouble with me? I assumed no but because I was weak and they had whole village behind them, they knew I could do nothing so why not pray on me.

With these thoughts in my mind I went to bed. I knew the days ahead would become more difficult but other then preserving and focusing on my own goals, I could do nothing else.

Time went by and it was already a month since I started working for the whole village. The spring was ending and with it came the summer. Past this month I had to avoid the young people of this village and do my tasks at the same time. They would sometimes come looking for me when I was in the fields or carrying the water. They actually never disturbed me when I was smithing or cutting wood. Maybe because I had a weapon in my hand or maybe because they were scared of the people who owned the place.

After my work was done, I always went to the river to catch some fish but because these people started to look for me whenever I had free time, I had to change my spots often so that they couldn't find me. They of course did find me couple of times and chased after me like the devil. Sometimes I managed to get away and sometimes there were too many of them, therefore I could only get beaten up.

Although life was like this, I had some improvements as well. Because of my fishing, I managed to restore some strength and although my skin and muscles still looked terrible, it was much better than a month ago.

I had more strength but I didn't show that. I still spent the same time to carry the water. I took similar breaks when cutting the wood. I still made the same amount of ingots and I still used a stone to plough the ground. Although, the ploughing changed after two weeks. That was due to the field being ploughed through and then they sow the seeds.

As for the hoe, I never produced it in the end. I actually found some metal scrap but it was not enough to create a hoe. Now that I didn't need the hoe, I decided to leave the scrap for a time when I would need it.

My task changed to watering everything, not just the area that I ploughed, no. I had to water the whole field. They were much more reasonable this time and gave me a cart and barrels that no one tempered with. I could use the cart and barrels to transport large amount of water to the field but it still required load of strength to move the heavy cart.

In the beginning, I was barely able to water everything till 5 pm. Later on when I got used to it, it took me less time. Now that the crops were already sprouting, the other farmers were taking care of the weeds.

Because I had to water the whole field, I could sometimes overhear a conversation and learned couple of things. Apparently the old man that "rescued" me was the village chief. He was also the strongest amongst the men in this village. I learned that the woman who chased me to beat me up countless times was his granddaughter. They had some kind of body strengthening manual. That was the reason why this woman was so strong.

I was intrigued by the manual. I wondered what type of things could it contain but I had no desire to actually steal it. I was sure it was heavily guarded or hidden somewhere and if I tried something stupid, I would lose my life for sure.

Another person the farmers talked about was the doctor. Apparently, he was an outsider that only the village chief knew. He was invited to live in this village by the chief and agreed. Besides learning that, I also learned that his skills are quite good according to the people. I could attest to that in a way, he did heal my broken arm completely and I had no complications ever since.

They also talked about how the so called young lady was a future star of this village and that she would marry someone from a large village located two days away from here. The village was called Grasshill Village and it was at least 8 times bigger than the village I was in, at least according to the farmers.

I knew she was arrogant and vain but that doesn't change the fact that I did nothing to her, 'why bother with me?' This thought baffled me a lot and I couldn't find any logical explanation, so I left it there.

Today when I arrived at the blacksmith's workshop, I noticed that the blacksmith is already waiting for me. That was weird because he was always absent through the month I worked at the workshop, of course besides the time when he showed me what to do.

He said to me "Today I will show you something different and this will be your job from now on. Understood?" I just nodded my head in confirmation. This time he took two lumps of iron and threw in another lump of something else into the furnace. When all of that was melted, he took it out and poured it into the bar mould.

Cooling it a bit to make it solidify, he placed the bar on the anvil and struck it with the hammer. I noticed he is hammering only one half of the bar instead of flattening it like he did with the iron ingots. When it was flattened to couple of millimeters, he started to curve it towards the other half of the bar and struck it until both ends were flattened. Then he put it into a furnace to not melt it but make it more workable and repeated the process 5 times. I could see he was already tired after the 5th repeat. He then melted the bar or rather whatever was left of it and poured it into the ingot mold. After cooling it the ingot didn't look dull and grey but shiny and more silver.

The whole process lasted about 40 minutes. I was happy I had almost an hour break. The blacksmith finished the ingot and turned around towards me while wiping his forehead. He said "This is your task from today onwards" and that was it. He left and I was supposed to repeat what he did.

I went to work and repeated the process that blacksmith showed to me. I took two lumps of iron and one lump of, well... something else and threw that into the furnace. Then I poured the molten metal into a bar mold and cooled it a bit. After that I took the hammer and

"Clank" "Clank" "Clank"

I stopped. This metal was about two times harder to flatten then just normal iron. I used more strength and was able to make a dent. I decided to heat it up a bit. When I did that, it was more workable. I guessed that I had to maintain a specific temperature to be able to work on it, otherwise I would have to put in a lot of strength.

Even heated up it was still hard but workable. I did the process once and was already tired. I returned the flattened bar into the furnace to make it melt a bit and prepared for the second repeat. After second repeat I was too tired to continue so I had to rest. I've rested for 15 minutes and not to let the metal cool down I heated it up once in a while.

Then I had to take a rest after each repeat. It took me till almost 12pm to finish that one ingot. The blacksmith came in and looked at the still hot ingot. I cooled it till it was only warm to touch and the blacksmith took it for examination. After a while I could hear the iconic sentence spoken by this intelligent and worldly person "You may leave now". I always wondered if he doesn't get bored of saying one and the same thing. Would it hurt him to say something like "You can go" or "get lost".

Either way I went back to my house to rest. Of course, I encountered some youngsters on my way and had to run. My house was like a sanctuary. I didn't know what rules they were taught but no one ever tried to break in to that house or follow me in. I was happy that they didn't but it was weird nevertheless.

After resting I went out again to water the fields. This time some youngsters tried to make things difficult but when I arrived at the fields they dispersed. I guessed that having crops was more important than bullying me.

When I was done with the last task of the day I went back home to eat, then headed towards the river as usual to get some fishes. I was more proficient at fishing with the net as well as creating it. Sometimes they would find the net hidden somewhere and they would destroy it. So I had to build couple throughout the month. I caught some fishes with the net and I moved to another place. I didn't stay in one place for too long as I didn't want to be detected. After cooking and eating the fishes, I hid the net and went on my way back to the village with some thoughts in my mind.

I still had 11 months to go before I received my freedom but I was sceptical about that too. Would they really let me go? This thought entered my mind often throughout the month I stayed in this village. I was trying to come up with a plan of escape in case they go back on their word. Now that I knew the old village chief was the strongest among the village people, I had to somehow escape his grasp.

I could create a weapon from the scrap I had but It was still to early to do that and maybe I would be able to get something better in the future. That didn't mean I would be able to harm the chief. If his granddaughter is this strong then he is at least two times stronger than her although he is old. I remembered the situation when I first met that old man. He used a cart to transport me and the bear's corpse back to the village. The problem was, how did he put the dead bear on top of the cart in the first place? My guess was, he could lift a bear and I would have to plan for that.

He probably also had fighting experience and so my pity tricks would be useless against him. I needed to practice my skills on top of getting my strength back. I decided that I will use some of the scrap metal to shape thick branches in the shape of daggers used for throwing.

When I have couple of them, I can practice at my house. In case someone tries to find something on me, I would only take wood and shape it at my home. If they find some wood on me what could they say? On the other hand if they found actual weapon, even the ones made from wood, they would get pissed and I would get punished. I wasn't going to give them a reason to punish me.

I collected some thicker branches and went to the place I stored my scrap. I was cautious about my surroundings when I went there as I didn't want anyone to dispose of my scrap. When I retrieved one of the sharp pieces I decided to hide it in a place where no one would look, even if they tried to check me. I will spare you those details but it was difficult to walk nevertheless.

I arrived back home and fortunately no one inquired about the thick branches in my hand. There weren't many people around anyway, it was dark already and those that were around didn't give a shit about me. When I closed the door I went to work straight away, I wanted to finish it as soon as possible and be ready to practice as much as I could through the time I had to be here.