Infinite Farmer: A Plants vs Dungeon

The new sphinx gave Tulland just enough time to get away from his broken partner before diving. He didn’t try to dodge the attack. His tolerance for the stupid combination beasts was as low as he could imagine it being for any animal. Instead, he waited until it was close, propped the pitchfork into the dirt, braced it with his arms, and adjusted the angle just so.

The impact was still stronger than his weak, mostly-mental-stats frame could stand up to. He was blown back from the shockwaves, but not before he saw the tines of the pitchfork bury themselves as far in as they could go, past the sphinx’s rib cage and straight into what he imagined were dozens of things it didn’t want to get stabbed.

Tulland was hurt from both the impact with the sphinx and the impact with the ground. One of his legs was very badly broken, while the other was scraped and cut deeply. He still didn’t have it as bad as the sphinx, which had taken the same impact internally. Hobbling over on his pitchfork, Tulland balanced on one leg as he stabbed the sphinx one last time through the head, then fell over to rest.

“That was stupid.” Necia was standing over him, smiling down. “You could have stalled. You look like hell.”

“I didn’t want it using you as a distraction if it figured out it could do that. And I’m not as bad as I look.” It was true. His new farm-aligned regeneration was pulling him together with surprising quickness. “I’ll be fine in just a minute.”

“I’m almost there myself.” Necia stretched. “Let’s take this next one together. I think it should be easier that way. Did I tell you I picked up another level in one of my armor skills?”

“No.”

“Well, I did, in that last big scuffle. I think I might just be able to take a hit without shattering my arm, now.”

“That’s big, if it’s true.”

Another two fights with the sphinxes took them all the way back to the farm, where Tulland was finally able to stock up on his fighting plants.

See that, System? I’m thinking this is when the real bloodbath starts.

I should say so. Let’s see it, Tulland. And good job back there. I didn’t know you had that in you.

—

The general ease of the fights after that meant that Tulland had some time to examine his notifications. There weren’t a ton of them, but there were several, and all were pretty significant. The first were generic level ups to some of his skills, followed by pure level-up stat gain that he didn’t think about that much. These days, pretty much all of the points were going into focus, especially now that he knew just how much of the power of his farm was feeding back into the Produce Armament skill. He got done with those adjustments quickly.

The bigger notifications were bigger. Tulland’s farm bursting forwards in power to the tune of almost-thousands of points meant a lot of bottlenecks were removed from a lot of skills. Most notably, Market Wagon

The next notification was somehow even bigger.

“You keep grinning.” Necia was more or less juggling an injured sphinx as Tulland ran back and forth over his farm, tossing seeds in newly monster-fertilized soil. “Like an idiot.”

“I pretty much am an idiot right now. A 25% increase is huge, Necia. Absolutely huge. It’s not a straight 25% increase in strength, because of how doubling up on plants goes, but… it’s big. And it was already big!” Tulland realized he was babbling and decided not to stop. “And it’s not done! I still haven’t optimized!”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Well, get as much done as you can. Because unless I’m wrong, we are going to run out of this little guys pretty soon. We were never meant to burn through them this fast. Your new weird plants made you much stronger than it should be possible to grow on a single floor. I can only hold them like this so long before you have to kill them.”

“It’s a shame. If there was a way to hurt them just a little all the time, we might be able to…”

Tulland suddenly felt like an idiot.

Oh, good, you finally got there.

You couldn’t have told me this before?

I very literally could not.

“Stop talking to your invisible murderer and tell me what’s going on.”

“Could you hold it down?” Tulland pointed to the sphinx. “Just for a second. So I can do precision stabbing.”

“Sure.” Necia angled her shield down, intercepting an attack from the sphinx with her Shield on Shield counter skill. It drove it down into the dirt hard, leaving it obviously dazed. Tulland circled it, damaging each of its joints in turn before it could recover. “What’s this about, now?”

“I’m going to keep this one alive. But trapped.”

“With those giant vines? The grabby ones?”

“Just a few, and Lunger Briars. It’s going to be tricky to figure out the exact amount I need to match the regeneration rate, but if I can…”

“Then you can grow for days. Tulland, that’s genius.”

“Thank you, thank you.”

It took three sphinxes to get the mix just right. It turned out he needed to get them as close to death as possible, and get a Lunger wrapped around the neck, each of the legs, and both the wings. After those were in place, he was able to keep them from moving with several Giant’s Hair vines, which also added just enough crushing power to the mix to let him fine-tune the draw on the sphinx’s recovery.

The rate was still very slightly in the sphinx’s favor, which meant he had to stop by every hour or so and give the animal a few pokes from his pitchfork. Otherwise, it was perfect. They had time now. As much as they needed.

“Tulland, we could stay here for weeks.”

“Not weeks.” Tulland shook his head. “Days. Just long enough to get the low-hanging fruit, so to speak.”

“Why?”

“Because the rogue had to have been stretching his timeline to even wait for us as long as he did. He was ahead, remember? He’ll be on the other side now. Getting stronger.”

“Faster than you?”

“Right now? Probably not. But every point I squeeze out of this farm is harder than the last. We don’t have forever.” Tulland laid back and watched his farm slowly grow as he dumped another full tank of magic on it. “We can get a night of good sleep. Maybe two. Eat all the food we can, harvest all the seeds I’ll need for the next safe zone, and then work out our tactics for the boss.”

“And Halter? The Chaser? Do we know how we’ll beat him?”

“Not yet. But we can work on that too. Because if I had to guess, he’ll probably be waiting on the other side. He doesn’t seem like the giving up type.”

“Ready?” Tulland asked Necia. “We can stall a bit if you need more time.”

“Says the guy who just spent two days obsessing over vine and tree synergies.” Necia shook her head. “Was it worth it?”

The sphinx dove, Necia brained it with her shield, and Tulland walked in and calmly stabbed it to death.

“I have five thousand, five hundred and thirty-something points that say it was,” Tulland smiled. “Remember the plan. And don’t feel bad if you have to break it. We only have guesses about what this thing will be like.”

Before anything was close enough to see, the wind began to stir. Off in the distance, behind one of the few stands of trees thick enough to conceal anything of significant size, Tulland began to hear a beating noise. It was like the sound of one hand clapping, he thought, but only if that hand belonged to a god. And soon enough, he saw that he wasn’t that far off.

“I’ve got it. Besides, it’s you doing all the really crazy stuff.” Necia frowned at the monster as it cut through miles of air in mere seconds as it closed the gap towards them. “All I have to do is stop a red abomination the size of a mountain.”

“I appreciate you.”

“You’d better.”

The closer the chimera got, the uglier it became. None of that ugly was ill-fit, however. It looked fast, even sleek. When it finally dove towards them, it wasn’t the brick-heavy fall of its predecessors. Instead, it cut through the air like an arrow, moving so fast towards Tulland that he could hardly track it.