Infinite Farmer: A Plants vs Dungeon

The rest of the date went well. Really well according to Necia. Tulland hadn’t realized it, but somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind, he was imagining that he’d be in trouble once he got out of the training zone. That he’d have transgressed some kind of hidden code having to do with the appropriate allotment of time between surviving a suicide run in a dungeon and taking care of his first boy-girl relationship. The feeling had gotten stronger and stronger as the time in the hidden arch zone had stretched on.

Synced back up with Necia’s time, he was having a hard time not trying too hard to make up for the imaginary mistake.

“A river. That would be nice. If we could find a river to sit by.” Tulland looked around desperately for any bit of romance the terrain had to offer. It was mostly just grass, unimpressive trees, and shrubs. “Or a tall hill. Or something.”

“Or, Tulland, you could just walk with me and calm down. I’m having a good time. I promise.” Necia grabbed Tulland’s hand and squeezed. “Think about it. Do you need anything special besides me being here?”

“Not being attacked by monsters,” Tulland offered.

“Point taken, but we already have that. I’m fine, really.”

Necia’s stomach chose that moment to rumble. Without her armor to blunt the sound, Tulland heard it loud and clear, and his stomach echoed the sound.

“Didn’t they feed you in there? Don’t tell me you got to feast while I was out here starving,” Necia said.

“You didn’t have time to,” Tulland pointed out.

“Absolutely nothing.” Tulland lowered his eyebrows. “Which is confusing, now that I think about it. I was in there for weeks. I slept. I never really ate.”

“Really?”

“Really. And I have no idea why.” Tulland shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t make sense to let someone die during a reward. Wouldn’t be fair.”

“Well, you are back in the world of the hungry now. Get to work.”

Tulland was able to carry so much food in his Market Wagon that he’d likely never run out, provided he accepted that the System would sterilize any use besides sustenance straight out of it when he did. His cooking gear was small enough to carry in a pack, which left him in a good position to supply their picnic with the best food available.

Soon enough, they were laying on their backs, holding hands and looking up at a fake sky together.

“How long do you think we have before the next wave?” Tulland asked.

Tulland was hoping that he’d get at least a few days to put his newfound skill to use. If the butchering he had in mind went forward, his farm would take a serious power hit. Without time to recover from it, he’d be going into the next level weak. Weaker than he otherwise could have, anyway.

“Two days at least, three days at most. If you are asking me to guess,” Necia said.

“How do you figure?”

Necia wobbled her head side to side uncertainly. “Just a feeling. We are all truly bad at changing formations at the moment, which means most of the sane adventurers feel vulnerable enough to keep at the work. The practice isn’t fun, though. Once we are consistently getting things half right, most people are going to want to move on.”

“You’d think they’d take any chance to improve,” Tulland said.

“People like White and Potter will. But most adventurers aren’t like them. The average adventurer here is someone who left behind all their peers a long time ago. Some of them never worked in teams to begin with. They are good at everything besides this. They’ll be frustrated.”

“You sound pretty sure.”

“That’s because I’m frustrated, too. If I wasn’t teamed up with you, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have registered my intent to move on with the arch myself already.”

They spent another hour chatting and relaxing before Tulland’s impatience to move on started to show, at least judging by Necia’s reaction to it. She rose from the ground, straightened out her clothes, and offered Tulland her hand.

“Come on, you. I want to go see the show.”

“The show?”

“Yes. There’s an obsessive farmer I know who is about to take the knife to all his hard work while hoping he won’t ruin the entire thing by doing it. He’s probably going to cuss and whine the entire time. It should be fun to watch.”

—

The big show, as Necia seemed to think of it, was about what she expected it to be. Tulland wasn’t actually cursing, but that was only because he was so enveloped in his work that he wasn’t forming full words in his non-stop, distracted mumbling.

Tulland had imagined that the process would involve a lot of chopping in the best farm he had ever made, and that he wouldn’t like doing that much. He guessed it wouldn’t be that difficult outside of the emotional toil. He was right about the first guess but couldn’t be more wrong about the second. Every single plant, it turned out, was an entirely different challenge waiting to bend his mind in unexpectedly different ways.

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The modifications he was making purely to maximize the points value of various plants were the easiest. When he approached his first Lunger Briar, he felt the pruning part of Farmer’s Intuition move forward based on his intent, instructing him to cut away all but a four or five inch segment of each vine, then to plant about twice as many in the same space. As he cut each briar, he could tell they’d never be the same height again, or any good at fighting. Still, they somehow felt leaner in a way he couldn’t quite define.

An increase in the point output of the briars at the sacrifice of the minimal amount of security they provided was a great deal, but the process of pruning them was much more taxing than Tulland had expected. He felt drained after doing it, and fully expected he’d be miserable by the time the day’s plant-hacking was finished.

The Wolfwood trees were easy enough to modify, and mostly required Tulland to remove branches at the trunk, leaving more uninterrupted bark, a protruding crown of branches at the top that promised to grow more leaves now that competition from lower down was eliminated, and an overall sense of being more valuable as plants now.

Most of the plants went a similar way. The best most of them could do for him was to provide more points, taking up as little space as possible and devoting as little energy as possible to anything besides existing.

“You should stop now, Tulland. It’s dark, and you look miserable.” Necia motioned towards the door into their house after a couple of hours. “It’s warm in there. And I made food.”

“Give me another half hour,” Tulland responded.

“For what?”

“I’m done with everything but the Silver Star trees and the Chimera Sleeves. I need to finish those. It won’t take long.”

“Your loss.” Necia sashayed into the house. “I’ll see you whenever you get done, plant man.”

Rare that you’d withhold information from her.

This information seems dangerous. You saw what was happening to Kelsa at the end there. She was trying to tell us something about the Chimera Sleeves and getting ripped apart for it. I didn’t even know things could defy The Infinite in that way.

They can. Just not for particularly long. When I can’t tell you a thing, it’s because I’d be destroyed for doing so. If I really wished, I could likely get a word or two out before that happened.

I suppose it wasn’t that great of a cost for her. Since she’d stop existing in a few moments anyway. She always seemed ambivalent about being alive again anyway.

Don’t fool yourself. No healthy thing chooses to die without good reason. A living thing’s will to live supersedes rationality in most cases. Whether she had little time left or not, she sacrificed something for those few words.

Then I’ll try to make them count. At any rate, there’s no reason to put Necia at risk by telling her.

Agreed. Now get to it.

The Silver Star tree was going to have to wait. Tulland was still trying to figure out what he wanted out of it anyway. Tulland had at least an idea of what he wanted out of the Chimera Sleeve vines, via his earlier rampage through his own farm. The Clubber Vines had been a successful experiment.

He had a few Chimera Sleeve vines growing outside the farm as backups to the ones he carried with him that he could cut without fear of losing points, and he started on those. Pulling one from the soil, he turned it over in his hands, letting it expand to its full, sleeved form before having it contract down to minimum size again.

Farmer’s Intuition isn’t giving me anything. Not a single feeling.

It’s a much more complex plant. And you hardly know what it’s for yet. Keep trying.

Another half hour with the Chimera Sleeve vines did nothing to help. He was still stalled, with no idea how to adjust them to his benefit. Even trimming one the same way he had trimmed the Clubber Vines without guidance from his skill was a disaster. He made some cuts, then found himself guiltily burying the mangled corpse of a once-useful plant.

So how do I figure out what she was talking about? My modification skill won’t do anything.

You may very well just not be ready. Wait patiently. You still have information to gather on those plants simply through leveling them. Clues will generally reveal themselves with time. What’s your hurry?

I might die any given day if I don’t get stronger. Necia too.

I suppose there is that.

So what happens to me if I figure it out?

Pardon?

Tulland bit back a bit of frustration. There almost certainly wasn’t a major problem with discovering whatever Kelsa was trying to tell him, or both she and the System would have been trying to discourage him from moving forward. He never would have suspected there was anything weirder about them than any of his incremental improvements.

That didn't mean he liked being in the dark either. Knowing you were fine without knowing why in a world filled with dangers was only kind of better than thinking you were in danger. It was still stressful.

Kelsa got attacked for mentioning it. You can’t talk about everything you know. What happens to me if I figure it out, then walk around using whatever secret there is?

Ah. No. You couldn’t be punished for this. At the worst, figuring out the secret of those vines would trigger another slight reduction of your class, but still leave you in a better spot, or else wouldn’t be quite good enough to warrant something so drastic.

In both cases, I get a reward. And that’s the worst case? What’s the best?

Anything outside of those two scenarios. You’ve already been held back once, remember. To avoid the appearance of unfairness there, you were given quite a bit. If you manage to make it happen a second time? Even I can’t predict what might happen.

Tulland would take that answer. It seemed like that was all he was likely to get, anyway.