Infinite Farmer

Tulland listened to Necia as he worked. In another life, in his last one at least, he guessed that he would be in love with her by now. It would have been a really bad idea with how deadly she seemed and he'd have no chance at making anything out of those feelings, but he knew he would. Here, he could feel his heart pulling somewhat in the same direction, but it was so restrained by literally everything else in his life that the idea was making no headway.

This world wasn't a game. Necia wasn't going away into the badlands to hunt because she enjoyed it. She was going there because she was in over her head and needed to find a way to survive. And he wasn't growing plants and feeding her for no reason. She offered him some protection he couldn't otherwise get, and was bringing back more fertilizer than he could make himself.

There are reasons for everything we are doing. And neither of us has time for anything else. Remember that, Tulland. You don't have time to waste.

Before he went to bed, Tulland pulled out his Farmer's Tool scythe and considered going to work on the Wolfwood tree. The only factor that stopped him was the complete lack of seed pods on the tree. If he somehow managed to mess up the harvest enough to kill the tree, he had no way of knowing if he would ever get another one.

Laying down in the dirt again as the last of the light waned from the sky, he kept his weapons near him, just in case. And then he was asleep.

—

The next morning's dawn woke up a Tulland who for once had not had any dreams of his past. If there were any little pithy lessons from his tutor or uncle that would have helped him get through the day, he was going to have to get along without them.

"So what's in the plans for you, over the next couple of days?" Necia asked when the two of them regrouped.

"Well, my garden is about as good as I can get it. Almost. There are some enhancements I can do to those Swamp Ache trees, I think. And the fur-tree you like will have to get a little bigger before I can do anything with them. But after that, I think I have to start seriously figuring out how I'm going to conquer this level."

"Ah." Necia screwed up her face into a look of sympathy. "And that won't be easy for you."

"No. Probably not. Is it the same set of requirements for you?"

"Probably. Big anthill?"

"Yeah."

Tulland had checked the floor description during the first more-or-less safe moment he had found on this floor, but had been studiously ignoring it up until this point.

"How hard was it for you when you first went through? This will be your second time right?" Tulland asked.

"It wasn't incredibly hard. I was just strong enough then to take out an ant with a single hit, and they aren't as good at tracking as you might think. I just chose random tunnels and ran through them until I got to…" Necia stopped and gulped. "Oh. Apparently, I can't tell you about that until you find it yourself."

"The Infinite is stopping you?"

"Yes. It's a common thing on shared floors. You can't give other people the keys to the castle, information-wise. Sorry. I'd help more if I could." Necia stood and clapped some of the dust off from her fruit-juice covered hands. "Well, thanks for breakfast. I'll be back tonight."

"So soon?"

"I'm afraid so. I've done about all I can get out of this floor. The wolves were just about farmed out before you got here, and now that I'm sharing them with you, I'm hardly seeing any. And the ants aren't giving me enough experience to matter anymore. I'll go try to do… damn. I'll be doing the thing I can't tell you about, and then moving on."

"Got it." Tulland hated every bit of that idea, and it wasn't for romantic reasons at all. It was simple companionship. Once Necia left, he'd be alone in this place again, and forced to turn to a non-physical being for company. The same being who was actively profiting from his imminent death. It wasn't great. "You will be missed."

"It's not all that bad." Necia seemed to get it. "You'll run into other people here and there. Me, even, as long as you... As long as there's opportunity."

"It's okay. There's nothing to be done about it, anyway." Tulland stood up. "But yeah, do come back tonight. I'll see if I can make a surprise for you."

"A surprise?" Necia arched her eyebrows. "In this place? This I have to see."

—

After Necia left, Tulland turned to face his mostly full day of farming. He dumped his full magical stores a few times as he circled around the farm, making sure all was well. His magic power regeneration was such that he could do that now, but he had found that after the first few charges of Enhance Plant of the day, he got a sharply diminishing return on how fast the plants could grow. Maybe higher skill levels would help with that eventually, but for now there was only so much time it made sense for him to spend on the farm plants.

The next task was checking his ant-trap. Walking out to the pit took very little time now that he knew exactly where to look, and could see his surprisingly green and healthy briars growing above it like signposts in the distance.

When he got there, his vines were busy fighting. He leaned over the edge of the pit to see that of the five or so seeds that had eventually found their way to the bottom of it, only three had survived to healthy adulthood. Those three were wrapped around the main body of a single ant and each of its mandibles, respectively, and were slowly draining it of life. As he watched, the ant slumped, then began to dissolve into nothing as the vines took full advantage of the nutrient wealth the ant represented.

The briars on the lip of the pit were mostly at level four, which probably meant some ants that made it past the three higher level briars before meeting their end. They weren't planted in the best possible situation, and didn't have much water beyond whatever they were getting from the occasional ant that slipped past the bad boys in the center.

He left that pit alone and wandered around the local area until he got lucky and found another ant pit, planting briars around it in the same way as yesterday. And in just the same way as yesterday, he was immediately attacked by ants, this time a group of just three.

As they came out of the wall, Tulland took the opportunity to peg each of them with their own little flower bomb, using up about half of what the non-farmed swamp trees had produced between the last batch and this. The ants reacted to getting their own individual dose of the flowers about how he expected they would. They were all completely blinded, immediately ignoring his seeds and stumbling out of the pit to try and figure out where the attacks were coming from.

Fighting blind ants was not hard. Tulland put his back into killing them fast, watching as they split their time between desperately cleaning their antennae and trying to get away from the invisible force attacking them. He weaved through and around them, avoiding their mandibles while piling on the damage. And he didn't give them a single chance to fight on even footing.

As he killed off the second of the two ants, the third one was just about clean. Tulland simply gave it another splash of exploding flower powder on its head, then took it down easily and safely.

Was it a cheap way to win? Absolutely. But Tulland was okay with that, especially on his way to getting stronger. With as many remote kills as he had racked up on these things overnight, the lack of rewards for exploiting their weaknesses as the last one died was no surprise to him.

The ants would not be any more use to Tulland as direct targets anymore, except for the practice he got fighting them. He'd get a little more experience out of them from indirect farming, but not much.

And that meant it was time to turn his attention back to the wolves.

—

The wolf struggled against a full half-dozen level six briars for a time until it was hit directly in the nose with an exploding hallucinogenic flower. While the ants had appeared more or less immune to that particular toxin and were mostly just bothered by the chemical, smelly nature of the Acheflower, Tulland saw that wolves were fully vulnerable to its mind-altering effects.

A few seconds after getting hit by the flower, the wolf's face went dopey, then transitioned back to enraged and pained as the enhanced vines dug in a little deeper to its flesh. After a few times through that cycle, it was already beyond the point where it could adequately struggle against the briars. The distraction of the drugs was too much for it to truly resist, especially because Tulland's Enhance Plant had got some major boosts in the past few hours.

Tulland didn't know when exactly the experience from the wolves he was directly killing would cap, but it would be pretty soon. After that, he would have to rely on his growing army of randomly sown crops to kill them as they tried to navigate the world and hope that was enough to get him whatever scraps of experience he could still get.

And once that was done, there was no choice but to press forward into the danger. He had a little bit of growth he could expect from his ant-trap briars, which would let him go into danger fully armed. And he would get some sort of improvements out of the flowers, probably, when he was finally able to start cultivating them on his own cultured Swamp Ache trees. But after that, he'd be about as strong as he could be.

At least Tulland would be in some senses. More and more, he was learning that the regular wisdom his tutor had dumped on him all those years was applicable in more situations than he had ever suspected it was, and that his uncle's less-frequent advice was about the same. And both of them had things to say about the situation he was in now.

He walked back towards his base, ready to do some of his last harvests and to plant his very last crops in this place. He would craft a little, and then prepare a bit more. He would do his very best to increase his chances of survival as much as possible.

But after that, it was do-or-die time.