Toda introduced Benjamin to a little girl after they left the snow-covered hut.
"This is Nina. Since you don't look used to heavy work, you'll be following her around and doing what she does. It's fine if you're not the best. There will always be something you can do to improve." Toda left after checking that Benjamin had enough furs covering him.
"Hi." Benjamin greeted the young girl."
"..." Her dark eyes looked at him warily. He was a stranger. She turned around and without saying a word, headed to the edge of the village.
In a corner, a slanted roof like an outdoor shelter covered a few tools and seats. When he got closer, Benjamin also saw an area of the ground that was scraped bare from the snow. But when he got even closer, he could tell that it was just one layer of snow that had been scraped away, revealing another hard-packed layer that was like solid ground.
In the middle of that tiny square, there was something that looked like it had been a hole.
Nina frowned and walked over. She stomped the old hole with her boot, trying to break the snowy ice. It didn't break. With an annoyed sigh, she rummaged through the tools until she found a large drill with a hole at the top. She grabbed a stick that was also among the tools and inserted it in the hole.
Lastly, she grabbed a log stump to sit on before starting to reopen the hole by twisting the drill.
'Looks simple enough.' Benjamin thought.
There was only one drill and only one hole, so he couldn't do what she was doing.
"I can take over if you want?" Since he couldn't do it with her, Benjamin offered to do it instead of her. It looked like she was struggling with turning the drill, after all.
Nina looked Benjamin up and down before shrugging and letting go of the drill handle. She shuffled her stump back to make space for him. He didn't get to sit down, though.
Benjamin felt like it would be easier to stand, so he didn't mind.
The thick leather gloves made his hands a little clumsy, but he found a grip on the drill handle that worked. Nina had also fastened it in the ice, so he just had to start twisting.
Nina wasn't impressed. Benjamin could feel her judgmental gaze as she crossed her arms. But he continued twisting the drill with the crunching sound of metal scraping through ice.
Nina sighed and got up. She righted the drill up since Benjamin had tilted it while he was twisting it.
"Ah…"
Benjamin realized it wasn't just about twisting it and drilling through the ice. He needed to do it straight down. It wasn't that hard. Nina just had to correct it a couple of times until he was deep enough that the drill wouldn't tilt again.
But by then, Benjamin was already sweating, and his breathing had gotten heavier.
Nina stopped him from continuing.
"It's fine. This much is nothing," he said, waving away her concern.
Nina looked at him for a moment before shrugging and sitting down again.
Benjamin continued drilling until he suddenly broke through the ice. A sploshing sound accompanied the ruffle he made when he stumbled and scraped against the ground with his foot.
He quickly stood up and pulled up the drill.
"See? No biggie." Benjamin did his best to suppress his labored breathing while looking at Nina, who had picked a fishing pole from the pile of tools and was in the process of attaching what looked like jerky to it.
She glanced at him before returning her focus to her hands. Despite wearing gloves as thick as Benjamin's her fingers worked quickly as they tied the string around the jerky.
"I can…" Benjamin started, but Nina pointed at a stump half-buried in the nearby snow. He understood what she wanted, and he didn't mind the break, so he dug out the stump and sat down next to Nina while she fished.
The bait hadn't seemed special, but it was effective, and Nina picked up several fish, whose heads she knocked against the rim of the bucket she threw them in. She was good at it.
However, Benjamin had trouble appreciating her skills after a while.
The warm sweat that had made his back and armpits a little sticky had cooled down after he sat on the stump. It hadn't just cooled down. It had decided to rob Benjamin of his heat. It wasn't that bad, and it wasn't like he was freezing.
But he couldn't stop shivering. His shoulders twitched and trembled.
Benjamin crossed his arms and hid his hands in his armpits as best he could with the thick fur coats and leather gloves. He considered standing up and jumping around to regain some body heat and blood circulation, but he didn't want to look like a clown, especially since he could see Nina smirking at his shivers.
He would have been impressed if not for the circumstances. He couldn't move his facial muscles properly, much less make a smirk. The fur from his coat and its hood helped protect his face from the windchill, but it didn't keep it out.
The first half of Benjamin's day did not go well.
Fortunately, he still had the rest of the day to redeem himself.
Unfortunately, however, he didn't succeed.
After Nina had filled her bucket of fish, it was time to prepare them for consumption and storage while someone else filled another bucket since it could be dangerous to be seated in the cold for so long.
That meant they were working in one of the huts. Benjamin was overjoyed, even if it took a while for him to regain control over his fingers and lips.
But even with stiff hands, he did his best to help gut and skin the fish. It reminded him of when he had to patch himself up after some of the worse beatings he took from his bullies. The process was the opposite of what he had to do, but it was similar. The main difference was the painlessness.
However, even if it gave Benjamin a feeling of nostalgia and similarity, he wasn't very good at it. Nina was dissatisfied with the results of his work. He had removed a lot of precious fish meat in the process.
In the end, she forced him to watch before eventually having him do it extremely slowly and thoroughly, which drained Benjamin more than he thought it would.
Like that, his first day in the village passed. And when it ended, he passed out on the same furs as last night.
He didn't even have time or energy to think about the dungeon or how to solve it.
He also didn't have time to think about what had happened in the last couple of days.
It felt more like he was experiencing the life of people in cold places in the past. The difficulty, cold, and judgemental ten-year-old aside, it was nice. Definitely nicer than being bullied by his classmates.