With his money pouch in hand, Marcus made his way to the weapons merchant. It was about noon in the city of Jakarta. People were going about their day, looking at the goods set out on the stalls lining the streets. Mixed in this crowd were the criminals, mostly pickpockets. That's why Marcus had a tight grip on his money, although most were intimidated of his size, pickpockets didn't seem to care. It must have been their desperate situation that made them take any chance they could to survive. Though there were guards, they couldn't prevent every crime that may happen.
As he entered the store, he was assaulted with the smell of oil, iron, and sweat. The shop covered about two-hundred square feet, with a counter set up in the corner of the room. On display were a variety of weapons, swords, daggers, maces and warhammers. Having never wielded a sword, Marcus was leaning towards a mace or warhammer.
"Hello mister! How may I help you today?" A cheerful greeting came from behind the counter. A fifteen year old girl walked out from behind the counter, giving Marcus her best business smile.
'She must be the dealer's daughter.' Marcus thought to himself.
"I'm looking for either a mace or a warhammer." Looking at what was on display, Marcus wasn't really pleased with what he saw. The maces were light, only about thirty-three inches in length. They had wooden handles with leather strips wound around them. Picking one up, Marcus tried it out.
He was by no means an expert on medieval weapons. He just had in his mind that they were supposed to be bigger.
"Do you happen to have anything bigger? These are all a little small for me." Marcus asked.
"Hmmmm, let me go ask papa, he's in the back." The girl said with a smile while she turned around and bounced towards the back of the store.
About five minutes later, Marcus could hear something being dragged from the back. Along with a grunting noise, the girl came from the back with what Marcus had asked for. It was about five feet long with a dark iron handle with leather wrapped around the last two feet of the handle that was dyed a crimson red. The head was still wrapped in a thick wool cloth so as to not scratch the floor when she dragged it.
Stopping next to Marcus, the girl let out a deep breath and wiped a little sweat off her forehead.
"Here ya go mister! Papa said this is for breaking down doors. He said it's not really a practical weapon to use though." She said with her bubbly attitude.
Unwrapping the head of the weapon revealed a massive warhammer. It had no spike on the end of it, but had a round side like a huge ball-pein hammer. The other side of the head was a spike that came off the head like a cone, going down to a point the size of your thumb. It had a carving of a bear on both sides of the head where it was flat.
Picking it up, Marcus could feel the weight of it. If he had to guess he'd say that it was probably sixty pounds or more. Given his newfound strength since coming to the world, Marcus could actually wield it with one hand like it was nothing.
"Wow mister, you sure are strong!" The girl said with wide eyes.
"How much for this hammer?" Marcus said, ignoring the comment.
"Papa said that since it's been sitting around taking up space for a couple of years, he'd go as low as twelve silvers. He said that's as much as the materials cost to make it." The girl said with a serious face, still watching Marcus wave the hammer around.
Marcus still had a little over thirteen silvers left in his pouch. If he bought this weapon, he probably wouldn't need to get another one for a while given how beefy the hammer was, it could probably take quite a bit of abuse. Then he'd be able to take on some escort missions, they paid a lot more than the manual labor ones.
"That seems fair." Marcus said nodding his head. "I'll take it then.
"Great! Here, take this oil, make sure to maintain it or else it'll turn into a big hunk of rust!" She practically yelled with enthusiasm while taking the money from Marcus and handing him a small gourd of oil. Chuckling Marcus nodded as he tied the gourd of oil to his waist and hefted his new warhammer over his shoulder.
Happy with his purchase, Marcus wanted to go try it out. Being from earth, he wasn't trained in any kind of combat art. Although there were places to go learn, he didn't need to at all in his daily life. So he was thinking that he'd just hit whoever with his warhammer and that'd be that. He wasn't against learning to actually use a weapon, but right now he had to make money first.
With the warhammer over his shoulder, Marcus made his way to the city's west gate. The forest wasn't too far from the gate, maybe about a half hour walk. People were giving him strange looks as he walked by. Some were looking at the man sized hammer others at the small giant carrying it. Most men were only about five feet five inches tall, so Marcus towered over them by at least a foot.
Making it to the gate, he walked out into the fresh air. Although he was already outside while in the city. It was still crowded, it was just different with no buildings or people surrounding you. Taking a deep breath, he made his way into the forest.
.........….
Looking around himself, he was really quite pleased. There were trees in varying sizes all knocked down, it looked like a small explosion was set off. He started practicing with his weapon by just seeing how fast he could swing it and return it to his starting position. Seeing that he could swing it with one hand fast enough to hear it, stop and go back the other way just as fast, he moved on to how hard he could hit with it.
Grasping the warhammer in a baseball grip, Marcus spread his feet wide and swung with about half his strength. His target was a tree about thirty feet tall and about two feet in diameter. With a thunderous crack, bark exploded off the tree and a large chunk was gorged out from the side.
Next he took aim at the rest of the tree and swung again. The tree lurched to the side and with the scream of cracking wood, the tree toppled. Impressed with himself, Marcus continued to strike the trees around him.
He practiced one handed swings, overhead swings, double handed swings, anything he could think of. He really wanted to get a good grasp of handling his new warhammer. Finally after about an hour, he decided to call it a day.
Wiping off the sap and wood chunks, he cleaned his weapon. After applying a little bit of oil, he swung it over his shoulder and headed back towards the west gate of the city.
Swinging by the Mercenaries Association before he headed back to his inn, Marcus wanted to see what missions were available. On the board there were the usual labor missions, he skipped past those and went to the iron ranked escort missions that were posted.
Reading over them, he picked one that would start at noon tomorrow. He had to escort someone so that they could go to the forest to collect herbs. Seeing that it paid five silvers for just about six hours of work, he thought he couldn't go wrong. Working all day at the docks only made him two silvers, this was a piece of cake compared to that.
Taking the mission off the board and to the counter, Marcus accepted it. With his new weapon and escort mission that he got today, Marcus was very happy with how this day had gone. Humming a happy tune on his walk back to his room, Marcus decided to get some dinner at the inn then go to bed to get an early start for tomorrow.