Infinite Farmer

Tulland. Tulland. TULLAND.

The System couldn't be loud. Without the ability to yell or shake Tulland awake, it had apparently been at least some amount of time before its efforts actually seeped into Tulland's dreams enough to convince him something was wrong, and a bit longer than that to actually force him to shake himself awake.

Immediately, Tulland felt something wrong in the air. He had been deep enough in slumber that he couldn't figure out exactly what was going on as he rubbed his eyes and peered through the dark, but there was something unhealthy about the space around them, now. Reflexively, he threw his arm over to Necia's sleeping area and began shaking her awake too.

What is it?

I felt the System of this place move. I felt it before when you finished that armor for Necia. It's on my list of things to talk to you about. This was much larger than that. Some major shift.

How major? Tulland summoned his vines as he began to shimmy into his armor. Necia, off to the side, was doing the same thing, even before she asked why. Is it dangerous?

I don't know. But I suspect you do, if you'd check. Do you have any new notifications?

Tulland checked. He did have a few.

Environment shift!

Your local environment has gone through a change that makes it more dangerous than you could have predicted. As a courtesy and because this System-involved change carries implications you could not have predicted through normal caution, you are being alerted to the change and being given a chance to prepare for it.

In the immediate future, you will be well-advised to ready yourself for a wide variety of potential dangers. Be alert and you may yet survive.

Did you get that? I tried to think it out loud as I read it.

Yes. This System is a dramatic one, it seems. I don't yet see what the change could be, only that it's going to be large.

"What are we looking for?" Necia finally broke her disciplined silence with the quietest whisper she could manage. "I don't see anything. And that notification wasn't particularly informative."

"There's nothing to see yet. Just something the System can see moving. But it should happen soon, I think."

It did. In the next few moments, Tulland began to feel a shaking in the soil through the soles of his boots, a trembling that grew from a slight quiver to a strong vibration that threatened to render his legs numb. It seemed even worse elsewhere, quaking so strongly off to his left that grass was flattening out as the soil it used for its support shifted and loosened.

Then, further off but still so close that he could see it happening in the starlight, the ground ripped itself apart.

"What is that?"

"Not sure." Tulland watched as the ground reformed itself into a ramp inside the big, jagged crack that had opened in the ground. "But if I had to guess, I'd say it's probably a new dungeon."

The world system confirmed that for him a moment later.

Dungeon Spawned! (Radiant blight dungeon)

The blight reaches and corrupts, ever expanding its corrupt influence. As it does, some nodules of its power grow concentrated enough to make that influence known in tangible, obvious ways.

Somewhere in your vicinity, this effect has produced a new dungeon. As a radiant dungeon, it draws its power from the blight itself, and is appearing at full maturity as a result. As is the case with all blight dungeons, the local resource-leeching rate has increased dramatically and will continue to increase until the dungeon is cleared.

"I think I feel a little sick." Necia's hand shifted to her stomach. "It has to be related."

"Yes. And the grass is dying." Tulland reached down and snapped off a bit of grass that had browned and stiffened as he watched. His farmer's sense wasn't giving him much in the way of specifics outside of a painfully loud this is wrong signal that he did his best to ignore. He could tell that much without it. "Do you think we should go in? This world's System seems to be saying things will get worse if we don't."

Stolen novel; please report.

"Maybe. I was going to say we should wait and see, but if this new notification is right it might be making that choice for us."

Dungeon Break!

A nearby dungeon has overfilled its own capacity and is sending out its excess supply of dangers to wreak whatever havoc they can. Defend yourself!

Up the ramp, something was moving. It was so solidly and uniformly black that Tulland could only see it due to the fact that it was in motion, and otherwise would have only known about because of the sick squelching it made with every step. He sent a quick mental query to the System of this place, one that it at least responded to quickly.

Blight Ogre

As an emissary force of the blight, this abomination is an ogre in both form and function because the blight willed it so. At its core, it is something other, a darkness representative of the illness that is the blight, following its mindless commands as it works to render the territories into which the blight wishes to expand more vulnerable.

A blight ogre takes damage very conventionally, soaking up arrow strikes or sword blows and displaying that damage both as local injuries and as damage to their overall health, which tracks roughly with that of a similar, non-blight ogre.

The similarities end when it comes to their attacks. Blight is especially effective against living things, and damage not directly obstructed by metal, stone, or similarly non-living substances will be much more severe both to your body and any armor you possess that comes from living sources.

"Hard counter?" Necia asked.

"Maybe. I'm not sure we shouldn't run from this. Every single thing we have fits the description of the kind of thing it loves to hit. If we let them touch us…"

Tulland, if I may. I think I can tell you something.

Do it.

This enemy is perfectly suited to fight things like you, and would be a hard counter. However, I can more or less see its general strength and would approximate its capabilities at roughly those of a vitality-class warrior at level twenty-five or so.

No. Really?

If this had been the old days, Tulland would have taken that warning with a much larger grain of salt. The System, back then, had a lot to gain from him dying. Now he found it hard to suppress a laugh. He stowed his vines and pulled his Farmer's Tool out before walking forward.

"Tulland?" It took Necia a moment to follow with him, given he had just been contemplating running away rather than standing and fighting. He figured she'd catch up soon enough. "Tulland, wait. What's going on?"

It was faster to show than to tell. Tulland transitioned from the pitchfork to a shovel, reasoning that he didn't want to get his weapon caught in the flesh of these things if that were at all possible to avoid. Taking a few running steps forward, he made it to the foremost of the emerging ogres and swung his shovel at its head. Its arms were up in a guard, which did it no good. Its defense blasted away as it took the full force of the swing on its skull and immediately dissipated into a cloud of sick blackness.

"Oh." Necia swung her mace experimentally at the head of one of the other ogres. "It's like that, huh?"

Tulland suspected he'd never get this fact entirely through his own thick skull, but his level was very, very high. He was very, very strong now, something that had never been apparent because every other person in The Infinite was at least nearly as strong as him, and because The Infinite was an overpowered sort of place. What helped, though, was the fact that every single one of three follow-up blows he threw by reflex effortlessly smashed through another ogre, killing two and at disabling another one completely.

That was a Brist thing, something the boxer had drilled into him. A momentary wave of thankfulness for that bout of that throw-punches-in-bunches, every-hit-has-a-brother training. It had given him a bit of knowledge and a whole lot of keep-the-other-guy-off-you muscle memory that now was turning out to be just as effective of an offense as it was a defense.

Necia was doing just about as well off to his side, swinging her mace and taking out her enemies a few shots apiece. Tulland suddenly learned what an overpowered thing her shield should have always been thought of too. As every shield bash hit, an enemy would be launched off its feet, often taking as much damage as the mace was doing.

That was especially true for her revenging counter-punching shield block special skill. Tulland saw a particularly motivated ogre set its shadowly club aflame with black fire before sending it towards Necia with a powerful two-handed swing. He thought about stepping in, only to see Necia grin like a maniac before sending a glint of power through her new shield.

The usual reaction to being on the receiving end of that give-as-good-as-your-shield-got ability was to go flying. Tulland had seen it send big, terrifying boss-level monsters flying with half the bones in their body temporarily shattered. He was shocked when nothing of the sort happened here. The monster didn't move an inch.

Of course, the fact that you had to be alive to move an inch had something to do with that. The noise that came from the ogre wasn't the sound of breaking bones so much as it was like hearing a bag full of seashells and pudding get stomped on. The ogre seemed confused by what had happened for a moment before it blew apart with a velocity and force Tulland hadn't come near matching.

"That's impressive." Tulland took out two more ogres in a single swipe. "Really good."

"I know, right?" Necia charged forward with her shield, knocking a half-dozen ogres over in the process. Tulland switched to his pitchfork and cleaned them up for her, despite the fact that they hardly needed it. He doubted any of them would have got up any time soon. "It's like we are actually strong."

"I don't think many people make it back from The Infinite with their levels intact. There are sure a lot of them, though. How many do you think we have to kill before this is done? A hundred?" Tulland asked.

"Oh, Tulland. This is a dungeon break. Usually, it's the type of thing an entire city's forces would deal with."

"So more than a hundred?"

"Let's just say we probably aren't going to get much more sleep tonight. We can make it up later though. Dealing with a whole dungeon break ourselves definitely counts as legendary hero stuff. We can handle it."

"You sure?"

"Unless something changes." Necia took out another ogre with her mace. "And you know what? I almost hope it does. Because these guys are pushovers, and I'm getting pretty bored."