Limits

Chapter 11

The next day I woke up at 5.30 am. Because I had nothing to eat I could only go out and complete my tasks. When I arrived at the well, I noticed couple of buckets laying around. I then looked at the map and decided the route I will take.

When I filled the first bucket with the water from the well, I noticed that it had holes and the water was coming through them like in a sieve. I poured the water from that bucket to another one. It happened again, then again… until I was left with only one bucket.

'These motherfuckers!'

I thought. They obviously did this on purpose, with two buckets I would only need to make 50 rounds from the well to the households but with one bucket that was 100 rounds! I understood that they wanted me to work but this is just plain wrong. I vowed to myself that they will pay for it one day.

It took me around 30 minutes to do just 10 households. That means I would need about 1.5 hour to complete this task. I still had an hour but the thing was I still needed to make it to the woodcutter's lodge at 7am therefore about 5 to 10 minutes was taken away just for travel. I was angry but still completed the task. Although walking with one bucket instead of two was easier and less heavy but covering the households a bit further from the well was more time consuming and also I had to walk more.

At 6.50am I finally finished with the water carrying task and went off to the woodcutter's lodge. I timed myself and it took me about 5 minutes to get there at normal speed, so I had 5 minutes of so called free time. I sat down outside the lodge and waited.

At 7am a middle aged man came out of the lodge and so I got up. He said "Follow me" and moved behind the lodge. He then pointed at an old and tattered axe and said "Go to work, next time when you come here just start doing your job" and he left.

I was left with mountain of logs and an old, rubbish axe. Of course they wouldn't give me anything sharp, it wasn't because they were afraid I would attack someone. No, it was to make it more difficult for me, to make me more tired.

I started splitting the logs into halves, then splitting the halves again to obtain quarters. After about 10 minutes I started to sweat. 'This axe is shit!' I thought to myself. I had to use more strength just to split the stupid logs and I had no such thing as strength because of lack of food.

I slowed down with the work but still after half an hour I was too tired to continue. I decided I would rest a bit. I placed the axe back on the stump used as a cutting table and shook my hands around to relieve some pain.

Not even 2 minutes later I could hear a voice shouting "BACK TO WORK!" and so I picked up the axe again and started to split the logs but with much lower speed now. Even though I was tired, I persisted until about 8.30 am and had to rest again. This time the voice screaming "GET BACK TO WORK!" only after 5 minutes. I wondered 'why was that longer than the previous time'.

Picking up the axe I continued on till 9am. Supposedly I had 30 minutes break but in reality it was about 20 minutes. I had to return to the house I was staying at and then at 9.30am I still had to be at the blacksmith's place.

When I returned to the house, I noticed some food waiting for me. There was a bowl of porridge and stale bread. I also got surprise, surprise a glass of water. I devoured the meal in a minute or two but as I suspected, I was not satisfied and felt hunger anyway. I laid down for a bit on the bed to rest, about 15 minutes later I had to go out and travel to the blacksmith's workshop.

When I arrived, a large man with muscles showing on his arms told me "Grab the hammer from the wall over there and come back here" while pointing with his hammer at the opposite wall. I grabbed one of the hammers and returned to the blacksmith.

He said "Watch what I'm doing and then you will start the work" and started his work. First thing. He took couple of lumps of ore I assumed and threw that into a furnace. He then retrieved a molten liquid and poured it into some sort of mould. He then cooled it a bit with water but it was still red hot. Next he took out the solid but orange metal from the mould and started hammering it. He did it for couple of minutes until the metal got flattened out completely. He then put this into the furnace again and after a while took out molten metal and repeated the steps again.

After doing this 3 times. He then melted it again, then poured it into the mould and submerged it in water to cool it producing a lot of steam. I noticed he had 4 large barrels with water. He submerged the mould with metal in one, then another and so on. After the fourth barrel, he took out the metal from the mould and it was an ingot.

He then turned around towards me and said "Now that you know what to do, this will be your work from now on when you come here. Remember only to melt the bar 3 times before cooling it completely". He then packed some stuff and left. There was no one left in there so I could only do what he showed me.

It wasn't overly difficult to remember what he did. Therefore I started repeating the process. I melted the ore, then poured it into the mould and then the problems started. When I hammered the bar, it was very hard to flatten it. I had to use a lot of strength just to flatten it completely like the blacksmith did. I was out of strength so I decided to rest a bit. This time I didn't hear any voice saying I should be back at work, so I rested for 10 minutes and melted the flattened bar to pour it into the mould again.

To actually create one ingot it took me one hour. Because I watched his demonstration it was already 10.30 am, so at the maximum I could probably create one more ingot. Time passed slowly and at around 11.30am I completed my 2nd ingot but I was too tired to continue.

Couple of minutes before 12pm the blacksmith returned to the workshop and said "Show me what you've created". I showed him the two ingots I created. He asked "Only two?" to which I only nodded my head. He then examined both ingots and said "You may leave now" so I did.

When I returned to the house I was staying at. I thought to myself 'My next task is working in the fields' so I decided to rest properly before I go to the fields because I had a feeling that they saved the best for the last.

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