Hammer in the Dirt

"Holy shit."

So, the weapon that formed out of nowhere? Turns out, it's huge. Like one and a half times as tall as me, with a massive hammer head adorning the top.

It's comically large, unusable and ridiculous looking. Like, I get this is a fantasy world and all, but no one could actually wield this thing, right?

The head itself is so heavy that it lodged itself into the dirt along with the wolf's head. The hammer head was halfway submerged into the ground, putting the long handle at a strange angle. So, in light of this new and strange situation, a quick question. How do I get this thing out of the ground exactly? The thing probably weighs a tonne!

Grabbing the handle, I pulled with all my might, only succeeding in losing my grip and falling back onto my ass. The sudden jolt sent my mind into another spat of pain. I grunted with annoyance, it felt like my brain was swimming in molasses. Did dimensional travel have to fuck with my head so bad? Would have been easier to sport a bad cut or something instead.

Even pulling as hard as I could, the massive hammer wouldn't budge. After a few tries, I resorted to starting at the thing in rage. That God had to have known that this would happen, right? Did he give me this weapon or is this what my soul took form as? Whether God is stupid, or I am stupid is an argument for another time. A piece of my soul is currently stuck in the dirt and I can't do anything about it.

Wait, what about that 'Might' I got as reward for killing the wolf? If this world actually had a stupid game system...

"Uh, status?" I grumbled, because who wouldn't feel like a massive idiot while trying to invoke a game system in real life? But, sure enough, some text flitted through my mind. I didn't see it, but it was like something magically brought the information to my attention.

[Might: 9 (7)]

[Mind: 8]

[Agility: 5]

Well, that was a terrible stat screen. You'd think an actual God would be able to make statistics more interesting, but apparently not.

Why even have a status if it was going to be this bad. Were people actually so gullible that they'd believe this wasn't an arbitrary addition? I grumbled, but gave the stats some thought at least, if this was my reality, I may as well try and make use of them.

For one, my stats were pretty low, my Might being the highest with the extra points, then my Mind. The boost to Might was significant, around thirty percent, but I felt no different. No idea if it had even done anything at all.

I sighed, dilly dallying won't help anyone. Time to give this hammer another shot.

I grabbed onto the handle of the hammer and pulled, leveraging all my strength into the action. I could feel veins protruding on my arms as I shuddered, my muscles screaming with the effort. Ignoring my muscles, I continued, pushing as hard as I could. I was going to get this piece of shit out of the ground, one way or another.

Despite my efforts, the hammer barely budged, only moving a tiny bit. But that only propelled me. It excited me, the feeling of moving such an incredibly heavy object. with my bare hands

Then inspiration struck. I changed my grip on the handle, and hung from it, leveraging gravity and my own weight to my advantage. I mimicked the curling motion of a professional arm-wrestler, using my wrist for all it was worth. I pulled with all my might, weight and momentum, all at once in synchronicity.

"Move you fuck!" I screamed, pulling on the handle so hard that I could hear the blood screaming through blood vessels in my ears. The throbbing pain in my head pulsing away with a sadistic glee all the while.

And then I felt the earth the hammer was stuck in give way. I rolled out of the way, dodging the handle of the hammer as it fell. The handle hit the ground with a heavy thump right next to me. I swear that it made the ground shake a little.

"Jesus." I breathed. I lay there, panting in the dirt when I felt something pull my attention.

[Feat of Strength: You've pushed yourself to your limits, using your everything to accomplish something. +1 Might]

Well, at least the stupid system gave me something for that. More liberal with the stats than I had expected from a system this obscure.

Are the achievements different than training? Does training your strength go up in increments of one, or is that separate from the stats? It being separate would be smart, but I wasn't going to hold out hope. See, this is the problem with stupid, vague stat systems, it leaves too much interpretation with no benefits.

Now that I have the hammer out of the ground, and a little boost in strength, I can go figure out what I'm supposed to be doing.

I don't remember much of the God's speech, blaming it on the headache for now. What I do remember, though, was a lot of gloating. There was no point mourning the loss of that information. So, I'll have to figure it out as I go.

I'm going to have to get moving. The sun isn't going to slow down for me, and I don't want to be out in the wilderness lugging this massive thing around at night. That sounds like a good way to get eaten by another wolf.

I get up out of the dirt and brush off my sturdy clothing. I have a feeling that I'll be falling down quite a fair bit, so these tough clothes will serve me well.

I grab the handle of the hammer and try and pick it up, which was the dumbest idea I'd ever had. It got about 5 centimetres off the ground before I couldn't keep it up anymore.

"Damn this thing is heavy." I growled.

Instead, I resorted to dragging the bloody thing across the floor. The dirt and small stones were going to scratch up the hammer's head, but I didn't have much of a choice.

Looking at it now, the forest was quite beautiful, I'd never quite seen a forest that was this pristine before.

The greens of the leaves were vibrant in contrast to the deep brown of the trees. The dirt was a darker brown, almost like a rich chocolate. It was soft underfoot, so much so that you could walk barefoot through here with no real worries. The smell of the forest was cleaner and clearer than any other forest I'd been in.

Most forests were a cacophony of powerful smells all mixed together, but the air in this forest felt pure. It was excellent to breathe, like drinking a cold cup of water on a hot day. It was the best tasting air I'd ever breathed.

I wasn't sure if the air was any more functional than regular air, but it sure didn't hurt.

The only real problem that I had with this forest were the roots. The roots were everywhere, disused by dirt covering them. Thing is, I can't afford to fall over all that much, especially when I am dragging this massive hammer around. One bad fall and the handle could come down on my leg.

So the only way that I could mitigate that was to walk very, very slowly. Even slower than the hammer already made me walk, which was frustrating. Every time I had to lift the hammer a few centimetres to pull it over a snag, it sapped my strength. Soon enough, my muscles were throbbing with the exertion, screaming for rest.

I couldn't pull the hammer through the roots like you might instinctively think. The hammer might be heavy and would be a perfect tool for the job. The amount of strength to not only use the hammer, but also rip through root systems? It'd be insanity for me to even try, even with my increased Might.

Unfortunately, that means I have to pick up the hammer over and over to jump the roots. Talk about a bad back, I was beginning to relate to Atlas. Poor guy.

Progress was slow. It felt like hours of traveling between trees before there was any change in environment. But, as I travelled the density of the forest lessened. That also meant that I also got a good look at the sky, the thick canopy parting enough to see through. Looking up, however, was quite the shock.

Well… at least the sky was blue?

The sun was a whole lot bigger than Earth's was, but that wasn't a big deal, it wasn't the main focus. The main focus was the other planet that was orbiting this one.

Oh yes, another planet, orbiting this planet. You heard me right. It had a whole lot of blue, and a whole lot of land, and it was definitely a planet. You could see it's night sky, hiding it's face away from the sun and facing this planet instead.

At first, I thought it was Earth. Which it obviously wasn't after a moment of observation. It's continents are different, and you can see them all with your naked eye! Super trippy by the way.

No, it was a totally different planet, casually orbiting this one. Don't ask me how that works, physics is as unknowable as magic is to me.

So that's cool, I guess. If this world was a stereotypical game, that'd be where the was 'Demon Lords' were, right?

Wanna put a bet on it?