Chapter 5

After smoking the meat of the rabbits, he only took the skins and put them to dry in the shade next to the others he had, and feasted on rabbit meat with them and water, which strangely tasted quite good, despite the scarce ingredients.

The boy began to build a clay oven after eating, using clayey soil, water, and dry palm leaves, which was about 70 cm high and shaped like a bottle, with a wide base and a thinner neck, and he made two holes in the bottom where he put two small bamboo sticks that he hollowed out with a stick.

Where the small bamboo sticks that came out of the oven ended, he made a small clay base and quickly cut a large bamboo about 15 cm in diameter and about 2 meters long that he had brought from the forest, in two, and using a straight log, which he hardened with his 'chi', he hollowed them out and placed them on the base, then covered them with clay.

Using a couple more bamboo sticks, about 3 cm thick, which he also hollowed out, and which had two clay 'plugs' at their ends, he sealed the mud 'towers' with bamboo inside.

After that, he began to grind the rocks he had brought from the stream with the help of a stone that he had hardened with 'chi', leaving a very fine powder, which he kept in a clay pot and decided to rest until the next day, as the sun was setting.

The next day, after his typical breakfast of coconut, the boy began to destroy the mud mountain that contained the logs inside, where he found a good amount of charcoal, which made him smile, and without wasting time he began to put it in the clay oven he had made the day before.

After lighting the charcoal with a small fire, the boy began to move the bamboo sticks protruding from the mud towers, making sure to release the hole at the tip of these when he raised them and covering it with his thumb when he lowered them, where he had tied a couple of cut pieces of wood.

When the fire began to come out of the top of the oven, the boy quickly began to throw the rock powder into the oven and blow again, and after a moment, the fire began to turn green.

"Yes!!! I have copper, damn it!!! HAHAHAHAHA"

The boy continued to throw the rock powder into the oven and blow while putting charcoal in from time to time, until he finished with all the rock powder, and quickly made a hole with a stick at the base of the oven and with the help of some long tongs that he had made with bamboo, he began to take out everything that was inside.

After spraying the glowing residue with water and waiting for it to cool down, he began to pick up several golden metallic nuggets from the ground, which he put into a clay pot. Once he made sure he had collected all the nuggets, he set out to tan the rabbit skins that were drying, so he took them out and went with them to the stream without forgetting his spear, where he washed them very well, making sure to remove all the salt from the skins, with which he later returned and created an improvised clothesline with some sticks and ropes where he left them drying in the sun.

Next, the boy went and hunted a few more rabbits, smoked their meat, and salted their skins, but this time instead of burying the brains as always, he put them in a rather large clay pot that he had made and boiled them until they dissolved in the water.

By that time the skins had dried quite well, so he proceeded to apply the solution he had made with the brains to all the skins, making sure to cover them very well, then rolled them up and put them to dry in his cabin, where he had made a small space for that purpose.

When he finished with the skins and left them drying in his cabin, he went to the stream again with his basket, where he picked up more rocks and repeated the same process to extract copper for several more days, until he managed to completely fill the clay pot where he kept the copper he had obtained.

In these days, getting copper was not the only thing he had done, he had also managed to make some shorts with rabbit skin, a pair of wooden-soled shoes, and gloves, advantages of being small after all. In addition to all that, he had created a couple of clay crucibles, making sure to make them sturdy enough to withstand high temperatures without breaking.

The boy took a couple of wooden logs and started carving various shapes with the help of his stone knife hardened with 'chi'. Even though he failed a couple of times at the beginning, he eventually got the hang of it and managed to carve what he needed: a machete, belt buckles, a hammer, a chisel, an axe, knives, a shovel, hooks, and nails of different sizes.

With the carvings made, the boy began collecting fine sand from the forest, as the one on the beach was too coarse for the purpose he needed it for. With a sieve made from a wooden frame and a fine weave of plant fibers, he ensured that the sand was as fine as possible.

In a large clay pot, which he filled with fine sand, the boy used the carvings he had made to imprint their shapes into the sand. After compacting it very well with the help of a rock, he proceeded to place the copper nuggets in the crucible, which he put in the oven and heated until the copper melted.

Several impurities could be seen on the surface of the incandescent liquid, which the boy removed with a green bamboo stick, after allowing it to cool slightly, only to reheat the crucible in the oven.

After repeating the process several times, no impurities could be seen on the surface of the molten liquid, so he quickly took it to the pot with sand and poured the copper into the various shapes he had made with the carvings.

After repeating everything several times, the boy ended up with 2 hammers, 2 axes, 2 small knives, 2 larger knives, 4 machetes, 4 chisels, 1 large belt buckle and 4 small ones, 2 shovels, and several nails of different sizes.

Using large stones hardened with 'chi', the boy polished and sharpened all his tools until they were capable of cutting thick ropes with ease. He then began to create handles from the trunk of a super-hard tree similar to an ash tree, securing them to his tools with the various nails he had created, and then wrapping them with leather cords made from the leftover rabbit skins.

"At last, I have a good machete; it would be better if it were steel, but one must adapt to circumstances. But..." the boy began to caress the blade of the machete, which undoubtedly was the best shaped and most polished, making it look beautiful. "I really missed you, little one..."

While saying those words, the boy looked at the machete fondly. It was the tool he had used the most in his first life, after all. The old man who took him in had a small farm where he grew various types of flowers and raised animals, so the first thing he taught him was how to use it. After all, it was the ultimate weapon in the field, useful for weeding, cutting branches, making fences, herding animals, in short, it served for everything.

"Although it's strange to hold a machete without the scars on my hands that it left me when I was little, hahaha, I still remember when I almost cut off a finger weeding the field."

The boy, after losing himself a bit in his memories with a smile, ran to his bamboo cabin and took out a couple of rabbit skins he had saved especially for making sheaths for his machetes. He took their measurements, cut and scraped the leather, and then sewed them carefully using the rabbit bone needle he had made some time ago.