Chương 19: CHAPTER 17: THE REJECTION OF THE WEAK

Five hundred pounds of solid dwarven iron. In his past life, Rudra would have looked at a mass of metal that dense and calculated the mechanical leverage needed to crane it out of the way. Here, trapped in a subterranean furnace, he was expected to haul it off the ground with a single human arm. The heat rolling off the cracked masonry brushed against his face, carrying the dry, choking stench of sulfur and molten slag. He stared down at the massive smithing hammer.

Its head was a block of unyielding black metal, etched with faint runic grooves that still simmered with a dull orange glow. Standing right beside the weapon was Thrain. He didn't just look strong; he looked like the mountain itself had grown a beard, put on a leather apron, and decided to pick up a fight. Thrain was the Chief Vanguard of the Gilded Crag, widely known across the lower sectors as the absolute strongest dwarf alive.

Barely four feet tall but wider than a wine barrel, his torso was packed with dense, rock-hard muscle caked in coal dust. He puffed lazily on a smoking iron pipe, his glowing amber eyes locking onto Rudra with cold, total indifference.

"Lift it by sunrise, human brat," Thrain had rumbled before walking out earlier, his voice like two tectonic plates grinding together.

"Do it, and I'll consider you a man worthy of a lesson. Fail, and we throw you back into the aqueduct torrent to drown properly." Rudra ground his teeth, his left fist clenching until his knuckles popped. His right arm hung completely useless, wrapped tight in pungent, medicated linen. A blood-red system notification still floated at the edge of his vision, a constant, mocking reminder that his dominant hand was practically dead."

Saala, ek toh parivar nahi bacha paya, upar se yeh pathar ke thade mujhe aukaat dikha rahe hain," he spat internally. The trauma of the horse cart massacre wasn't dragging him down; right now, it was pure fuel. He refused to be helpless again. If he couldn't even budge a hammer, how was he going to survive the global manhunt Hades was organizing above ground? How was he ever going to get his peaceful vacation? He squatted over the weapon, planting his boots firmly on either side of the cracked stone.

He reached down with his left hand—his only working hand—and gripped the rough leather wrap. The moment his skin touched the handle, the sheer, dead weight of the iron anchored itself into his bones. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Get up," Rudra muttered, inhaling a deep breath of scorched air.

"Up!" He threw his weight backward, driving his heels into the rock and channeling every ounce of internal mana into his biceps. His muscles instantly screamed. A violent tremor rippled down his spine as his joints creaked under the pressure. The heavy iron block groaned against the stone, tilting by a fraction of a millimeter— And then his grip tore away. The hammer crashed back into the floorboards with a thunderous bang, sending a jarring shockwave straight through Rudra's legs.

He tumbled backward, coughing violently as a cloud of ash kicked up around him. He lay flat on his back, panting, staring at the ceiling while his left arm shook uncontrollably." Warning," a cold, mechanical chime echoed inside his cranium as a secondary alert popped up on the glitched interface.

[SYSTEM NOTICE: User's physical muscular density is entirely incompatible with high-tier Dwarven heavy weaponry.] [Current Strength Stat: 14 | Required Strength: 45] [Recommendation: Cease physical exertion immediately to avoid permanent skeletal fracture.]"Shut up," Rudra snarled, wiping sweat and grease from his forehead.

"I didn't ask for your opinion. Give me an anatomical breakdown of the weapon's center of gravity. Optimize my leverage." The system whirred, reluctantly shifting into a scanning mode. A faint, wireframe grid overlaid the iron hammer, highlighting a precise point along the leather handle where the weight balanced perfectly. It wasn't a magic fix, but it was a surgical map. He didn't have the brute force of a dwarf, but he had the structural intelligence of a modern medical mastermind. Hours bled into the dark.

Outside the iron door, the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of the fortress anvils never stopped. Rudra didn't stop either. He pulled, he failed, he adjusted his footing, and he dragged himself back up to pull again. His clothes were soaked through, his palms were raw and bleeding, and his shoulder felt as though it were being torn apart by hot pincers. But every time his knees buckled, the mental image of the bandits' blades cutting down that innocent family flashed behind his eyelids, forcing him back onto his feet.

By the time the magma veins in the ceiling began to dim—signaling the subterranean shift to dawn—Rudra was running on pure adrenaline. His fingers were completely locked around the leather handle. The heavy iron deadbolt on the door suddenly groaned, sliding back with a sharp clack. Thrain stepped back into the room, taking a slow puff from his pipe. He expected to see a broken, weeping human child clutching a ruined arm on the floor. Instead, he froze. Rudra was standing in the center of the chamber.

His legs were shaking violently and his chest heaved like a blacksmith's bellows, blood dripping steadily from his left fingertips. But the 500-pound solid iron hammer was no longer on the ground. Rudra had the weapon hoisted exactly three inches in the air, his left arm locked in a rigid, trembling line of absolute defiance. His face was pale, his eyes shot through with blood vessels, but he was staring directly into the strongest dwarf's face with a predatory, unyielding focus.

A heavy silence descended over the room. Slowly, the corners of Thrain's soot-stained mouth twitched upward into a grim, respect-filled sneer. He took the pipe out of his teeth and pointed it at Rudra.

"You've got a bit of iron in your spine after all, human," Thrain rumbled, his deep voice shaking the low ceiling.

"Drop it before your shoulder explodes." Rudra let go. The hammer plummeted, shattering the stone beneath it entirely, but Rudra remained standing, refusing to fall to his knees. Thrain stepped forward, unstrapping a heavy, crude iron prosthetic device from his back. The contraption was a chaotic mess of jagged gears, copper wires, and sharp runic spikes.

"You passed the test, brat. But learning to fight with one arm is useless. To survive my training, you're going to need a second fist. Sit down. This is going to hurt worse than dying."