FFF-Tier System, SSS-Rank Wife-Chapter 54: Push through your limits and keep on running!

If leaving the city was the easy part, dealing with the whole charcoal experiment and then the matter with my dreams was the interesting part, then the return?

That was the hard part.

Straddled by the heavy backpack full of charcoal, tired after taking several exhausting naps mid-day and now running at the greatest speed I could maintain, I couldn’t even complain.

Doing so would cost me the valuable air I needed to... well, breathe.

Selia offered me no favors here, pushing the pace up to the very limit of what I could keep on running at.

I couldn’t blame her, though.

Even though we didn’t get all that far from the city, as it turns out, my whole sales-pitch play took away the valuable seconds we needed to return before the closing of the town’s gates!

And judging by how this was a frontier town we were rushing back into, no one was going to wait for us to return in time.

’Honestly, I get where they are coming from,’ I thought while fighting to maintain the pace for just a little longer. ’I know how it feels when you are about to close the shop down for the night, only for some lazy-ass customer to come at the very last moment, and then force you to stay beyond your shift just to serve him.’

By translating this kind of an experience to the reality of this world, the gate’s guards didn’t owe us anything. And just like everyone else, they wanted to hurry up and go back to their families, to the inn with their friends or simply back to their beds.

And between the kindness to keep the gates open just a little longer for late stragglers like us and the practical desire to just get the day over and done with...

I didn’t need to think hard to figure out which of the two would triumph in their hearts.

"Hurry it up!" Selia called out, herself already a few paces ahead, slowing down only because I myself could never keep up with her actual speed. "We are almost there!"

I dared not even open my mouth for anything else but catching another mouthful of air. But I just managed to sneak a quick look at her face.

’Fuck!’

With her atop the very last and also the biggest hill we had to climb to get back to the town, she already knew whether the guards were preparing to close the gates or not. And judging by the look of mild panic on her face...

’SCREW IT ALL!’

Cursing to the limits of censorship in my head, I gritted my teeth and pushed through my limits, running even faster than I did back when trying to escape that damned jungle of death from two days ago.

Yet, right as I finally managed to reach the very top of the hill...

An unfamiliar yet painfully obvious noise reached my ears.

The gate was moving.

’Keep going!’

I gritted my teeth, refusing to give up on the very last straight.

I would camp by the town’s gate, if such was my fate for the night... but if I kept going, then Saintess could easily make it, couldn’t she? And after all that she helped me with, getting her to get a good night of sleep in an actual bed was the least I could do!

Which is why—

"Keep going!"

I called out, hoping to hurry her up.

What I didn’t expect, though, was for the gate to suddenly stop moving, with the guard operating the huge wheel created to bring the steel grate up and down actually putting the job on hold.

"Hurry it up, guys!" he even shouted, clearly holding back at the cost of his own time, just to let the two of us into the town.

And just like that, with a mix of luck, kindness and perseverance, I managed to cross the gate and then continue past the entirety of the gate’s tunnel...

Only to then stop and nearly collapse to the ground, resting my hands down on my knees as I desperately attempted to catch my breath, all in full view of both amused and slightly startled guards.

"And you guys are...?"

One of the guards even went the extra mile to actually approach to get us checked out, only to then look to the side and notice Selia and catch her awkward smile.

"Ah," the guard instantly lowered his guard and smiled himself. "Welcome back."

And just like that, we managed to make our way back to the city, right before we would be left stranded outside its gates for the night.

"That was one hell of a run from you," Selia pointed out, her polite yet awkward smile from before now turning all cheeky and genuine.

"Thanks..." I muttered in between my desperate breaths.

A few moments later, as I finally managed to get my breathing in order, I looked up and around before ultimately landing my eyes on, surprise surprise, Selia’s face.

"Do you want to go and visit Greg’s smithy right away?" sensing my stare, she turned her head and asked while dropping her hands down and resting them on her hips.

"Huh?" I looked around, at the pitch-black darkness of the rather late evening if not outright early night. "Isn’t it a bit too late for that?" I then asked while glancing over my shoulder, where the guards just finished closing up the gate and switching with the next shift.

"Oh, you silly little man," Selia grinned from ear to ear before spreading her arms open, "this town doesn’t go to sleep with the closing of the gates. And Greg’s smithy in particular rarely ever closes," she added with the confidence of a local brimming in her eyes.

"Yeah..." I breathlessly nodded, still fighting off the aftereffects of such a strenuous sprint with the added weight of my heavy backpack, one that I stubbornly refused to let Saintess carry.

Not out of the worry she would do something with it, of course, but out of the stupid pride that disallowed me to burden Selia, a woman, with a weight that was mine to carry.

"While that might be true, we shouldn’t give him unrealistic expectations over how easy or quick it is to make... the product," now that we were in the town and despite the late hour, I still found it more prudent to avoid using keywords like charcoal.

Even though no one knew of it now, as soon as the news would spread, it was better if no one would be able to connect it back to us... And me especially.

"We did speed up the process a fair bit with our abilities, didn’t we?" I then pointed out, to give Selia a valid and proper reason.

Even though I could just admit I was too tired to bother dealing with that dwarf... It was only a part of the story.

The concerns I raised were perfectly valid and reasonable. I simply saw no need to add my personal factor to the whole issue.

"I knew we were speeding it up a bit..." Selia muttered under her nose, before turning her head over to me, "by how much?"

Seeing the familiar sparks of curiosity brimming in her eyes, I couldn’t help but smile a bit.

"A day? Maybe two?" I shrugged my shoulders. "I’m not really sure myself, but venting all that heat could take a good while," I shook my head, "especially if you went for a bigger piece and greater amount."

A smithy like Greg’s would go through the charcoal I brought in my backpack within a few hours tops.

Their need for this manufactured black gold was much bigger than what I realistically could produce on my own. In other words, it was never my intention to sell them charcoal, but the recipe for making it!

And with that in mind, it wouldn’t be the smartest idea to just go ahead and deliver them freshly manufactured goods in a time shorter than the time it would take them to craft it themselves, despite following the exact same formula that I did!

"I guess you are right," Selia muttered before stretching her hands out to the side, then up above her head before leaning back so far out, I started to worry about her spine. "I guess it’s back to the inn for us, then," she summarized before smiling from ear to ear. "And after a good day’s work, it’s time for you to finally eat something!"

"Now that you mention it..." I took a moment to think about it, but now that I did...

I was pretty much fasting from the very moment I got into this world! A fact that somehow missed my attention thus far. But now that I noticed it...

"Yeah..." I muttered while massaging my stomach and feeling the unfamiliar, unpleasant sense of suction in it, "it might be a good idea for me to get something to eat."