It took two fucking years.
After countless conversations and exercises had failed, the psychiatrist finally decided to allow Kyle to touch a hammer.
There hadn't been any incidents ever since Kyle had arrived, and he had even been freed of his straitjacket after some months.
Whenever Kyle thought about how much time had passed, he felt weird.
Two years, and yet, it felt like just a day had passed.
Most of the time, Kyle just created random Sudoku puzzles in his head and solved them. He didn't even know if they were solvable after he made them, but that was part of the fun.
To every onlooker, Kyle looked like someone who just sat in his room, looking at a wall.
Of course, he did that on purpose. He didn't want to damage his chances of getting his hand on a hammer, which was why he had tried to be as quiet and compliant as possible.
The best way was to not do anything. If he didn't do anything, nothing bad would happen.
In order to appear normal and harmless, he just looked at a wall while solving Sudokus.
The big man brought Kyle to a big room.
Two police officers stood beside the door, and there were also three nurses beside them.
The big man led Kyle past them and opened the door for him under the wary gazes of the five people.
The big man and Kyle entered.
Inside the room, Kyle saw his psychiatrist and four more nurses.
Yet, his attention was fully focused on the object in the psychiatrist's hand.
A hammer!
The hammerhead was made of a crumpled pillow, which was kept in place by tape. The hilt was made of stacked cardboard tubes from rolls of toilet paper. Naturally, these were also just taped together.
There was not a lot of tape. One swing would probably break the entire thing.
But it was a hammer!
Kyle felt like the hammer was calling to him.
"Kyle," the psychiatrist said, and Kyle looked up. "You said you would accept reality if you got to hold a hammer, correct?"
Kyle nodded with a smile. "Yep. I promise, if nothing strange happens, I can only accept that this is reality."
"What would you consider strange, Kyle?" the psychiatrist asked.
"I dunno," Kyle answered with a shrug. "If I knew, it wouldn't be strange."
The psychiatrist took a deep breath. "It took a lot of effort to get you this privilege, Kyle. I'm putting a lot of trust in you, and I hope that this will finally help you heal."
At that moment, the door behind Kyle closed.
The other nurses from beyond the door had already entered, leaving the two police officers outside.
The psychiatrist slowly walked forward and offered the hilt to Kyle.
Kyle's heart rate increased, and he started to sweat.
This was it!
Touching this hammer would change everything!
His hands shakily moved forward, and he carefully took hold of the hammer.
The psychiatrist let go and stepped closer to the nurses, never taking his eyes off Kyle.
As Kyle held the hammer, he felt… something.
It was…
Kyle frowned.
He slowly lifted the hammer and looked at it.
While he was doing so, the nurses became more nervous.
"Is everything okay, Kyle?" the psychiatrist asked.
Kyle spun it a bit in his hand, his fingers moving it like it was made of air.
The staff became more worried but also impressed.
The way Kyle moved this hammer was so unreasonably smooth. It almost looked like a magic trick.
After a moment, Kyle stopped moving the hammer and just scratched his head.
"This is not my hammer," he said.
"Your hammer?" the psychiatrist asked. "Could you elaborate?"
"It's not my hammer," Kyle answered. "Look."
Kyle's hand jerked to the side, and the hilt broke in two.
This startled the staff, but Kyle hadn't done anything else.
For a while, everyone just looked at the broken hammer.
Kyle carelessly dropped the hammer and assumed a stance like he was holding a huge imaginary hammer.
"It's this size," he said, shaking his imaginary hammer. "It's also super heavy. If I were to swing it, I would swing it like this."
Then, Kyle's eyes narrowed as he looked at one of the walls with absolute hatred and rage.
His decrepit muscles bulged as much as they could, and Kyle's left foot stomped onto the ground.
The staff noticed that something was going wrong, and they prepared to jump him.
However, Kyle only felt a huge surge of adrenaline shooting through him.
It felt so real!
All of this was fake!
His imaginary hammer was the only real thing!
Then, Kyle swung.
During the swing, memories flooded Kyle's mind.
Infinite images of different hammer swings.
He had swung his hammer so many times.
He had swung it more times than the oldest person had breathed.
He knew how it felt.
He didn't need to hold a real hammer to perfectly replicate a strike.
He just needed to strike.
'All of this isn't real!'
'This is not reality!'
'You refuse to give me my hammer?!'
'Your Laws refuse to accept my hammer's existence?!'
'I don't care!'
'To me, my hammer is real!'
BANG!
The wall exploded outward, and the bricks shot towards the horizon.
The staff jumped at him, but they just flew through Kyle as they became fainter.
The world around Kyle distorted, and the Energy in his surroundings fell into chaos.
Yet, he barely took any notice of the changes.
Instead, he only looked at his empty hands with a smile.
This swing had felt so good!
He couldn't resist swinging a second time!
Once more, Kyle swung his imaginary hammer.
The Energy inside his Center dropped by 50% and moved through his arms.
As he swung, an illusory image of a hammer appeared in his hands.
At that moment, a wall suddenly appeared in the path of Kyle's illusory hammer.
He saw the wall, but he didn't care.
He just swung, and his illusory hammer hit the wall.
BOOOOOOM!
The wall exploded into pieces, which quickly turned into Energy.
Behind the wall, Kyle saw a long hallway.
All his memories came back to him.
It was like he had never forgotten them.
As Kyle looked at his hands, he smiled.
His illusory hammer was still there.
'I see,' he thought. 'I understand why the Chief Overseer didn't want to tell me what this was all about.'
Kyle laughed.
'It's actually so simple but also so impossible!'
'Conviction!'
'It's conviction!'
'This is a Law, but not a real one.'
'This Law does not exist in this world.'
'It only exists in my mind. It only exists in my reality.'
'It does not fit into the Law system because it doesn't exist.'
'It's my thing.'
'It's my Law!'
'It's a Law I made!'
'My Personal Law!'
'I didn't comprehend a Law. Instead, I made one myself!'
'But how can it be real if it doesn't exist? That's the tough part!'
'You have to make it real!'
'You have to believe with all of your heart that your Law is just as real as the actual Laws.'
'You have to believe that you have the power to change how the fundamentals of reality work simply by believing really hard!'
'Water doesn't flow up a mountain because you believe hard enough, but in this case, this is literally what I'm doing.'
'I have to force my Law into existence!'
'I have to impose my will on reality, and my reality has to be powerful and solid enough to manifest in actual reality.'
Kyle looked at his illusory hammer with a smirk.
Suddenly, the illusory hammer was absorbed back into Kyle's body, and his Center fully recovered.
'This belongs to me.'
'Nobody else has this. '
'This is my Law!'
'My Personal Law!'
tg://resolv?domain=StrongestHammerGod
The author's patreon. If he gets more than 1000€ per month, he will increase the number of words in the chapter.