Infinite Farmer

"Dammit. You have to be kidding me."

A hundred kills into his wholesale slaughter of the motes, Tulland was half of the way to becoming level three. The extra five stat points would be huge at his current level of strength. The first five points and a weapon were enough to demote the motes from a serious threat all the way down to a farmable source of experience. Another five would provide that much more margin of safety in The Infinite.

Except now that was over.

Tulland continued killing the motes as he considered what he had read. By now, the fighting was a function of his muscle memory and didn't distract from his considerations much.

If his experience income from the motes was really tapped out, he had only a few options. The first would be to sit around and attack them some more, hoping for an achievement related to killing a huge amount of them. That seemed risky to him. If he hadn't gained an achievement from killing a hundred of a nothing enemy that people usually only killed one or two of, then he doubted a thousand would be any different.

And as great as his extra points in vitality were, they wouldn't negate the fact that Tulland would eventually have to sleep. He was already exhausted from a full day's emotional drama, a fight for his life, and healing up from the same fight. And then he had spent the next few hours doing consistent cardio. He was in good shape and better now with stats backing him up, but that had its limits.

Tulland hesitated anyway, killing another dozen of the motes as he dilly-dallied and avoided facing the reality of his situation. Eventually, he steeled himself to move forward. Honestly, he had thought about staying in the mote room for longer, perhaps even a couple of months. But there was a steady pull on his will that drove him forward. He was able to resist the dungeon's compulsion towards progress at the moment, but he knew without a doubt it was there, urging him on.

The sole exit to the room was a stone hallway heading out of it. It wasn't worth taking one of the torches from the wall, even if they could be somehow pried loose. The hallway was well enough lit that his eyes, which were now adjusted to the dark, could handle it. Tulland walked at a brisk pace down the hallway, unfollowed by the motes and holding the points of his pitchfork out in front of him as a threat to anything that might jump at him out of the dim darkness ahead.

He might as well have not. After five minutes of walking, nothing had attacked at all. It was only then, as he began to feel comfortable, that the world itself changed around him. In one blink of his eyes, a step that had begun in the dim stone realm of the entrance ended within blinding bright light, warmth, and the sound of the wind.

Tulland eyes adjusted quickly to the light, if not the scene the light illuminated. He was at the edge of a forest, standing at the beginnings of an endless prairie of tall grass. Everything from the sky to the grass and all the way to the trees had a purple-pink tinge to it, something Tulland attributed to the light itself. The sight would have been beautiful if it wasn't filled with unidentified dangers.

"Well, that's that, I guess."

Whatever safety he might have claimed in the last zone was gone. Tulland took a look as far as he could out on the prairie, but could see no immediate threats. The scope of the open space in front of him was almost disorienting. After a lifetime in a world that was firmly bordered by a mountain and the sea, this much space was a bit mind-boggling, even if Tulland had known it was possible.

He started walking. Whatever was waiting for him here was going to be easier to face it while knowing the lay of the land. Tulland stuck to the border of the open field and the forest, judging that he might be able to hide in either one from threats that came from the other.

He saw the first beast before it saw him, somehow. At the edge of the forest, looking out into the prairie, was a furry creature that resembled a cross between a badger and a goat, if badger-goats looked sharp at the end of every extremity. Tulland hid behind a nearby tree and observed the behavior of his latest problem.

Though dungeon-related talk came up very rarely, Tulland's tutor had mentioned that dungeon floors were not the same for everyone, even in The Infinite. Tulland was the same as any other boy on Ouros in the sense that he had read every single book available on known dungeon beasts, but he had never seen this particular monster before. Some floors were the same for everyone, like the fifth with its knight or the tenth, which housed the serpent. But others were seen by few, and even fewer survived them.

Whatever world he was seeing, it wasn't a place that anyone had ever bothered to describe to a scholar once they made their escape. Or else, and worse, they had never escaped at all.

Tulland decided to be different. He wouldn't fail, or at least he wouldn't fail to this first beast. He walked slowly at a diagonal to it, getting more out of its line of sight as he crept deeper into the woods and positioned himself to the back of it.

The beast was either inattentive or deafened by the breeze, and didn't notice as Tulland approached. When he was finally in range, he took a big step and committed every bit of weight and force he had to a surprise thrust with his pitchfork. The weapon hit and penetrated into the animal, but not nearly as much as he had expected it to. It wheeled around, pulling itself off the three points of the tool and screaming out in an alarmed, high-pitched screech.

The system's description triggered then, feeding into Tulland's brain automatically as he tried to recover himself enough for a second strike.

Tulland pulled away as the animal sprung towards him, but not nearly quickly enough. It passed him to the side, ripping with its claw as it did. The legs of the Farmer's Garb performed admirably for what they were, but there was only so much cloth could do against the razor sharpness of the monster's claws. Tulland now sported deep, painful cuts to his leg that failed to actually hobble him, probably thanks to his new stats.

He wheeled and stabbed out at the animal again, missing badly as it effortlessly dodged, flung itself through the air, and struck four deep gashes in Tulland's side as it sliced through his garb above his ribs. It wasn't running, which meant it knew that Tulland wasn't a threat. Instead, it was acting like it was trying to take him down before he ran, so as not to lose out on a windfall meal.

I'm toast. The System wins.

Tulland knew that for a fact. He was slower than this thing, less durable, and less able to hurt it than the other way around. Unless it was a lot closer to death than it looked, fighting it was a death sentence. He slid back on the handle of the pitchfork, holding it out between him and the beast to create distance as he considered his options.

In the end, there was only one. Tulland ran, hoping the thing was slower in a sprint than it was in combat footwork. And it was, if only just. Tulland managed to keep ahead of it for several eternity-long seconds as it huffed along behind him, swiping at his legs and missing by the barest margins possible.

He wasn't fast enough to get away. The sprint meant the Razored Lunger didn't get many chances to add more gashes to Tulland, but it did get some. One stumbling step across uneven ground slowed Tulland for just long enough to let the animal swipe at his other leg, leaving him bloody on both sides as he ran. Another couple swipes would do more than leave Tulland bleeding and in pain. It would injure him enough to slow him, which would mean almost instant death.

Given the level of threat, it wasn't really a decision when Tulland saw the briars growing ahead. At least that's what they looked like, though the thorns were longer and the stems were thicker. They were a vicious, terrible looking plant, advertising nothing so much as horrific pain and torment to all that fell into their domain.

But they were thick and covered a lot of ground. It was his only chance.

As the Razored Lunger blazed after him, Tulland managed to close the gap on the briars, then turned as he ran along the border of them, looking for any gap he could exploit. Here and there, a longer than average thorn or a branch that grew out farther than the others would catch him, ripping his clothes and his skin as it did.

But the monster was running a step further away from the briars than it needed to, which Tulland took as a good sign. If it didn't want to bother with them, he might just be able to escape through them, provided they didn't impale him as he tried.

Sooner than he liked, that was no longer a choice he could put off. Ahead of him, the shape of the hedge changed, growing out into a sort of hook that blocked his path forward. He simply didn't have the time to run around it. It was either going through the thorns, or facing the sure-death the monster represented.

He had no choice.

Tulland jumped out of the frying pan, and immediately began screaming as the briars provided their own sort of fire.