Infinite Farmer: A Plants vs Dungeon

“It’s more different than I thought it would be.” The little girl was well into ruining the old man’s day, hogging a good portion of his bench and almost all of his silence. “They didn’t lose anyone.”

“That’s happened before.”

“I know. I know everything you know. Being you and all.”

The little girl instance of The Infinite was what they thought of as a mover, a part of themselves that didn’t do much thinking or work of their own but who excelled in getting others to think harder or work faster than they would by themselves. The old man was a watcher, one of the parts of The Infinite that waited and monitored. All of The Infinite’s different parts were necessary in some way or another, but not all them got along.

The old man wasn’t always sure if he and the girl were in the category that disliked each other, or some other relationship he didn’t understand. But she was there for a reason, and he’d have to play along.

“No. You don’t. Not in the same way. And if you did, you wouldn’t pay attention to it unless I forced you,” the old man said.

“Well, geez. Fine.”

The old man waved his hand at the screen and made a mess of facts and figures appear on it.

“This is all the information for the safe zone group with the farmer. All of it. Who is there, what levels, what stats, what equipment, what potential synergies have been discovered, which ones have not been thought of yet, and a hundred other factors that relate to both their performance and the potential for their future performance.”

“Maybe. But here’s just the section related to their performance so far.” The screen zoomed in on about twenty percent of the available information, cutting everything else out. “Before you say that this is the same thing written in larger font, here are the parts of this data that are outliers, with comparisons to the normal average. Highlighted for your convenience.”

The little girl found herself being drawn into the data despite herself. Some differences were to be expected, group-to-group. These were more than that. About forty percent of the categories were implicated.

“Is this right? No deaths in the scenario shock?”

“That’s right. Usually, they’ll lose something like a quarter to half of their number in the first run. Up to this point, there hasn’t been any consistent way around that. Some percentage of the people don’t take the threat seriously, can’t transition out of independent thinking, and the surprising organizational capabilities of the monsters catch them off guard.”

“And this time?”

“None of that. Nearly everyone got on board at the initial talks. That wasn’t as unusual as you’d think. But then almost nobody defected from the plan. That never happens.” The old man swept to a video of the initial parts of the fight. “Of course, they were lucky to have a poisoner of sorts for the first round. That’s a known advantage. But even here, where they should have lost people to the initial charge, they just didn’t. They were prepared.”

“And what’s the difference?” The girl swept her hand to a zoomed view of the participants. “They don’t look stronger than average. Their personalities are more or less within range.”

“Anything I’d tell you would be a guess.”

“Then guess, old man! I have places to be.”

The old man sighed and poured a cup of tea from his thermos, thrusting it into the girl’s hand and following up with one of the cookies he hadn’t intended to share. He might not be able to make her patient, but at least he could keep her mouth busy for long enough for him to think.

“I think it might be because they were well-fed.”

“No.” The girl shook her head. “Nobody starves to death in The Infinite. The rations are too easy to purchase. At worst, a few of them would have low blood sugar. That wouldn’t affect the fight this much.”

“Not the fight,” the old man said. “The time before it. You are young. Haven’t you noticed people feeding you when you come to bother them? Cookies and things? Tea?”

“Yes. Because I’m cute.”

“No. Because you won’t calm down otherwise.” The man pointed at her stomach. “That appetite isn’t real, but it’s modeled after theirs. Which is relevant because when humans are hungry, they are discontent. Not just starved. They become upset when they aren’t full.”

“That seems suboptimal. They get worse at getting food when they most need it.”

“And yet, it’s the case. And because is this case nobody was very hungry, I think they were not in as much of a hurry.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

The girl screwed up her face in consideration of this.

“Bullshit.”

“Language, young lady.”

“I’m not any younger than you are,” she said. “I just seem to be. And no. I won’t watch mine. This isn’t enough of a factor. Everyone survived! They waited an extra week. And you are telling me it’s the difference between just enough and a little more than enough?”

“That’s the idea, yes. Small differences, young woman, can make large effects. And here, it just had to make enough of a difference to keep people from defecting.”

“I’m still not sure I buy it.”

The old man stood and held out his hand, which the young woman took advantage of when pulling herself to her feet.

“You don’t have to. Your job is just to push me to see if I really buy it. And I think I do.”

They walked along for a bit, quietly. The little girl eventually broke the silence.

“If it’s that big of a difference, why don’t we see this more? That boy is already going to be sending back an above-average amount of contribution to his world. If he clears the fifteenth, it will be that much more.”

“Even more than that. He’s getting a piece of all the progress that The Infinite considers his, which means he’s getting a small percentage of everyone else’s progress too. For a while, it was just that girl, and hardly mattered. Now? He’s pulling double or triple the amount. And that may not stop.”

“My question stands, old man. Don’t dodge it.”

“I wasn’t.” The old man paused to look at a bird, but kept talking. “If planets knew about this, they’d certainly send more crafters. They’d eventually find that they could send warrior-crafter pairs to improve the crafter’s chances. But one thing we didn’t anticipate in our design of the crafting track is the idea that humans would be so disinclined to come here if they didn’t feel they stood a good chance of success.”

“Because it’s not worth the life?”

“I suspect because the individuals are embarrassed to come here if they have little chance of advancing. We’d send word back with their Systems, but the information a System can take back to their world about this place is part and parcel with the rewards their adventurers earn. They can only know about the ones who come here.”

The old man nodded with satisfaction as the bird he was watching flew away, as if he was somehow associated with its ability to do it and approved of it taking advantage. Both were somewhat true, even if he wasn’t thinking about them that way at the moment.

“The adventurer crafters we typically see in the dungeon are unmotivated criminals who have been thrown into a gate as a punishment. They tend to panic and fail almost immediately. Virtually none clear the first floor. The vast majority of the information we’ve sent back to their planets is just that. They’ve concluded they have no chance. The prophecy fulfills itself.”

They walked a little longer. They were reaching the edge of the space and would soon melt back into the whole that was the infinite, where all of the personalities rested when not engaged with a task. Soon, the conversation would have to stop, whether they liked it or not. The old man thought he’d be just fine with it.

“So why haven’t we stopped it?” the girl said asked “We can exclude anyone we want, even if we don’t.”

“We exclude some. Purely non-voluntary involvement in The Infinite Dungeon is blocked. Criminals are an exception, as some choose it in a way by means of committing their crime. And even there, we block thousands a day across as many worlds.”

“Still. We could block crafters. Retune the dungeon to acknowledge they aren’t there. Why don’t we?”

“That I don’t know.” The old man shook his head. “I never have. There are many of us, myself included, that have counseled that we should do just that. The prime instance has always shot it down, often as a sole decision entirely his own.”

“That doesn’t sound like him.”

“Frankly, it’s not. There’s something in his decision-making that is nonetheless firmly committed to the possibilities of crafters excelling here, and has always left the possibility open.” The old man shook his head. “I have to admit that I fully expected him to be wrong, until today.”

“One outlier result doesn’t prove a concept.”

“No, it doesn’t. But it does prove the possibility of a concept being true. As a case study, if you will. And that changes things. More than you’d expect. It’s a shame that his world is such an odd case, as it’s unlikely for the news of his successes to be communicated much.”

“Unless he does much, much better.”

“Indeed.”

“And where does that leave you?” The girl slipped off her shoes before they crossed the border towards dissolving into the greater whole. It was a habit of hers, like a child might have learned to do before coming indoors on rainy days. “Will it change the advice you give? What you recommend?”

“It might.” The old man looked down at her shoes and decided to try it himself for once. He couldn’t slip his off as easily, but eventually got them unlaced and cast them away before he walked across the border himself. “There’s nothing wrong with change, you know. Especially when it makes the universe a bit better.”

—

Back in the safe zone, Tulland had a sneaking suspicion he was being spoken about. He didn’t care. He was sitting and eating food with his girl, conspicuously not in danger of dying, and for once in possession of untold riches he hadn’t had to put his life on the betting table to attain.

“This is salt.” Necia had said that exact sentence about five times now. “Real, actual salt. From the sea.”

“From The Infinite store.” Tulland was also enjoying the seasoning, and managing to keep his dignity by not saying so a ton of times even if he was thinking it. “But yes. Very good salt. Apparently, the entire group chipped in on a big bag of it. We have enough for months.”

“Why did we not do this before?”

“Too expensive. It doesn’t get to be reasonable to buy it until you are buying big group amounts. I’m not sure why. It might be to encourage cooperation in this zone, for all I know.”

“Well, let’s keep cooperating then. It’s worth it for the salt alone.” Another group of loud warriors walked by, talking about the salt like it was a tavern with free alcohol back on their home worlds. “And guess what? You also have your bucket to stare at. So that’s double the prize, for you.”

“You can’t make fun of me for staring at my bucket. You keep stroking your gauntlet like it’s a newborn baby. That’s just as weird.”

“No, Tulland, it’s not. Armor is not as weird as farmer combat buckets. But, yes, I’m very glad about having a gauntlet that shaves of a quarter of any given impact. It’s a big difference. Now go back to staring at your bucket. I heard if you look at them hard enough, they finally decide to fill themselves.”

Tulland smiled and ate his dinner, and really did go back to looking at the bucket. Sooner or later, it had to fill, and he was determined to see it happen. It was no real surprise that the one minute he truly looked away to get them both another helping of delicious salted food, it finally happened without him.