Infinite Farmer: A Plants vs Dungeon

“In any case, the longer we can put it off, the better.” Tulland had already considered himself to be in deep water with everything he had going on. Somewhere in his heart, he was harboring an irrational hope that somehow the clerics would just go away, that they’d find another safe zone floor to occupy and leave him to his work.

“Do you think that amulet had any chance of working?” Necia asked. “They seemed convinced it was going to rip you back to your world with no trouble at all. Why would they believe that?”

“My world is… special, I think. At some point, the Church understood the System and how it operates so well that they were able to banish it. If something like an amulet that pulls people out of The Infinite is impossible on other worlds, it still might not be on mine,” Tulland said.

“You don’t seem convinced of that.”

“I’m not convinced at all, at least of the part where they could make something that could break The Infinite. It’s just that if anyone could, they can. There’s only one person I know who probably knows as much as they do about that.”

“So ask it.” Necia looked forward. “I’ll be here when you get back from your chat.”

Is it possible? If they are carrying around an amulet that just needs a little work to get us out of here, I want to know.

They aren’t.

How are you so sure?

So…

So your friends from back home have as little chance of ripping you out of this place with an amulet as you would have trying to reel in a continent with one of your uncle’s fishhooks. That’s if the amulet was ever meant to work in the first place.

Why wouldn’t it be? Certainly, the Church wouldn’t send these people to die.

Why not?

What do you mean, why not? They’d know they had no chance of rescuing me. Even if they didn’t care about them as people, why would they waste the resources?

Tulland, imagine the panic that island felt when one of its most promising sons disappeared without a trace. Now imagine the rage and betrayal they might have felt if they found that an arch that the Church had left unguarded and virtually unfenced for generations was a portal to certain death. That their children had played around the closest thing to a portal to the hells that exists.

I wasn’t that important to the island.

You are wrong, and even if you weren’t, it wouldn’t matter. People care about their own safety. They care about how trustworthy their leaders are. If you were the Church in this situation, what would you do to keep them from continuing to nurture those feelings of betrayal? What would be your first step?

I’d tell them the arch had nothing to do with it.

Then the very next day, they would have to explain the disappearance of your uncle, your tutor, and perhaps even that foolish boy who was granted a class instead of you. No. They would need to identify the arch as a threat without explaining what it was. They would need to find a way to shift the blame.

You think they blamed you. That when I disappeared, they said that the evil System did it.

I know they did, and so do you. Those clerics blamed me for tricking you through to this place, which is true enough. But they called it a facsimile. A fake. They believe this is my illusion, not The Infinite’s.

The Church lost track of what the arch was for?

Not a chance. But they likely kept that information from their rank-and-file. A single paladin acting on his own and disobeying them could have brought me back that way if he got lucky. They let those people believe it was a fake, gave them an amulet, and sent them through to save you from a prison you simply can’t escape.

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But why? To gain what?

To make a show. The people of Ouros would wait months to see if the clerics were successful. By that time, nerves would have calmed. Anger would have dulled. The Church would simply wall up the arch, declare me more powerful than they had suspected, and lament the loss of a promising youth.

My uncle wouldn’t believe them. Neither would my tutor.

Two people can be managed in a variety of ways. Most likely, a simple guard would stop both. They are not young, Tulland. Only one of them was ever anything resembling a powerful warrior. It is mobs that the Church fears.

But what about your power? This many more sacrifices must be a lot, right? Why would they feed you this much energy knowing what you could do with it?

That I don’t know. It’s possible they have something up their sleeve I didn’t anticipate. Remembering an enemy is stalking about does tend to encourage the building of fortifications. I welcome the gift in any case, although I can’t approve of the methods they chose to trick these fools into it.

A bit hypocritical.

Touche.

He hated that it made sense, but Tulland had a hard time seeing any cracks in the logic of the System’s guess. The Church had been around a long time. It almost certainly had to deal with rebellions and uprisings along the way. Putting an unrest like this down would be something they had playbooks for.

“What did it say?” Necia asked when she saw Tulland’s eyes clear.

“I thought you didn’t trust it,” Tulland said.

“Oh, I don’t. Not in the way you seem to. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear what it said. Like you say, it hardly ever lies. If what it says makes sense, there’s no reason not to know what it thinks.”

“It thinks the Church sent him here as a ruse to calm people down after I left. That they sent them in knowing they’d die to buy time for people to forget about it a bit. It makes sense, but I can’t imagine anyone actually doing it.”

Necia stopped in her tracks and turned to look at Tulland. There was something in her face he couldn’t read at all.

“What?” Tulland cocked his head. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No. I’m just deciding whether I want to tell you something.” Necia played with her hair, nervously. “If I do, you have to promise to understand that I never did what I’m telling you myself. I never approved of it. It’s one of the things I wanted to fix.”

“Necia, I believe you. Even if I didn’t, I’d still know you changed since you came here.” Tulland grabbed her hand, brought it up to his chest, and gave it a squeeze. “I wouldn’t lie about that. Trust me.”

Necia smiled and squeezed his hand back.

“My-father-the-king called it the price of rulers. That normal people could be moral in absolute ways and see things close-up, but a ruler had to see things from further away. To tally the numbers, see the sums, and make colder decisions based on those. He called it the morality of arithmetic,” Necia said.

“I don’t understand.”

“You will. Just imagine being in charge of a thousand troops. You know of a place you can send a handful of them to strike the enemy. Every man who goes on that sortie will die, but the distraction they cause will allow you to win a battle you would otherwise lose. You can trade the lives of ten for the lives of at least a few hundred, but you have to knowingly send those ten to their deaths. What do you do?” Necia asked.

“I don’t know. It’s a hard question. I suppose I send those ten. It’s a couple of lives for more lives,” Tulland said.

“There are a lot of people who think that way. That someone has to die in any case, so the general’s responsibility is to minimize those deaths. That example is just a toy version of real life, though, and it assumes the best intent for everyone. Now imagine if it’s the life of a few dissenters, or else the toppling of your regime. Or cutting down a few rabble-rousers to prevent a rebellion that would kill millions, but you benefit by staying on the throne as well.”

“That’s harder. It feels more selfish.”

“It is more selfish. But I have heard the order that took tens of lives based on that same rationale. The morality of mathematics, where someone’s life becomes a number on a sheet and is made to dance until it helps the ruler arrive at the conclusion they were always going to find.”

Tulland understood why Necia was ashamed of knowing that now. Everything about her told him she would have been horrified by all of it.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that.” Tulland gave her hand another squeeze and soaked in the look of gratitude he got in return. “You think the Church used the same kind of math?”

“I don’t know. I was never around your Church, or its leadership. But people in power tend to be the same everywhere. It’s how they get to power and maintain it in the first place. If I had to bet, I’d say the safe money is that the lives of a few men don’t seem like a very high cost to your Church’s leadership. Not compared to the allegiance of a whole island, or unrest anywhere else if word was to get out.”

“Especially if people could bring the System back by entering The Infinite. It would be an attack they had no way to stop,” Tulland continued.

“Sure. Now let go of my hand. Those clerics might catch up any minute, and you don’t want them to know more about us than they already do if you can help it. It might make things complicated,” Necia said.

They made quick work of the rest of the distance between them and the meeting place. When they entered the building, the discussion of the day’s surprise was already in full swing. It paused momentarily as Tulland entered, but only for a moment. Soon enough, it was back to various discussions, arguments, and near-fist fights as people worked out their opinions on the implications of the morning for themselves.

“Need advice on what to do?” Licht sidled up to the table Tulland and Necia had chosen once they sat. “Or just a friend. I could observe your conversations with them if you have any. Give you my thoughts later.”

“Both would be nice, thanks. Right now, my best guess is that they really don’t know they are in The Infinite.”

“It seemed that way to me, too. What do you think they’ll do when they realize they are?”

“No idea. It took me weeks to come to terms with it when I found out where I really was, and what was really going to happen to me. For them? It could be a while.” Tulland sighed.