Infinite Farmer: A Plants vs Dungeon

The planting of the garden went pretty quickly after that. It wasn’t exactly barter, but everyone on the floor was more than happy to empty out the useless bric-a-brac they had accumulated in their packs, giving Tulland anything he could use to balance the soil in his main plot. Most of it was useless, but almost everyone had one little fragment of something he could use.

Tulland didn’t use it all in one place, either. After digging soil out of a blessedly long-unused latrine trench, he planted his plants one by one, descending from the highest value plants he had down to the lowest. This let him add what bones and monster parts to the soil those plants needed first, not wasting them on lesser vines, bushes, and grasses that wouldn’t improve no matter how much he fed them.

He was given a full day to do just that, plus as much manual labor as he could have asked for. Luckily, he didn’t need much, since he now knew better than to let anybody but Necia anywhere near the main farm. By the time he went to bed the next night, he had the food farm done, most of his vines almost fully grown, and a good start on all his harder to grow stuff. Dumping as much magic as he had left before he finally laid down to go to sleep meant waking up to a lot of new green the next morning. It was a good start.

The beginning of his next project was less clearly heading in the right direction.

“Oh, the farmer.” The fist man slammed a heavy hand down at the soil, popping his entire body up off the ground and landing upright on his legs without using them in the actual action of getting up at all. Tulland understood what the man had done, and even suspected he could have done something similar himself, if not entirely as smoothly. Though it was still bizarre to see it in action. “I was wondering who they’d send.”

“I was wondering who I’d get.” Tulland set down his bags in the dirt, stretching out a bit before what he expected was going to be the most unpleasant kind of exercise. “How do you think they chose?”

“My guess? They put the guy who doesn’t know how to teach with the guy they aren’t sure knows how to learn.” The man slipped the metal plate off of one of his fists and held out a meaty hand to Tulland. “Brist.”

“Tulland.” Tulland’s hand disappeared into the big man’s fingers and palm like a fish into a net, but reappeared a moment later unharmed. “So how do we get this started?”

“The training, you mean? Like this.”

Tulland had been hit by some very big, strong monsters since he entered The Infinite. He had been shattered, sent flying, bruised and broken by some of those hits. Each and every time, it felt like hell. As far as he knew, everyone else in this dungeon had years upon years or decades upon decades to get used to the idea hard fighting. He had had months, at best.

So when he found himself almost literally flying through the air, he felt he was the worst person in the local area to actually cope with the emotional side of things. On the physical side, he was just glad that his armor was a little better than it looked, and that his farm was at least sprouted enough to take the edge off the damage.

None of that really mattered. Tulland was even less ready for the big man to glow and blur while he was still tumbling through the air, run faster across the ground than Tulland was flying and get underneath him again, pulling back his fist for another big hit.

Do I really want to waste all my ammo on this next part? Tulland looked down at the grinning, bulked-up barbarian underneath him, felt the pain from his hurt ribs for the first time, and decided that yes, he would like to spend resources here. Stuff can be regrown. But losing your pride is forever.

Tulland reached into his Market Wagon magic inventory and, for the first time ever, dumped out every single thing in it. After the tenth floor boss fight, he had completely restocked from his farm. After beating down the rogue who had chased him through a half-dozen floors looking for easy experience from his death, he had recovered most of the plants that hadn’t been out-and-out destroyed. He had plenty for what was coming next.

And for once, I don’t have to aim. He’s just below me.

Like the actual magic it was, dozens of dangerous plants appeared above the boxer. He reacted by punching away a surprising amount of it, but couldn’t even stop all the Clubber Vines, let alone the explosions from Acheflowers and Acid Bulbs in the mix. Tulland enhanced them to the absolute maximum he could, then watched as they created a cloud around and above the boxer.

It won’t do as much as I want. A build like that has a lot of vitality. But it buys me a moment

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Thankful that Tulland didn’t have to think out every single word of his internal dialogue as he pulled out his Farmer’s Tool, activated it, and used the last few fractions of a second in his flight to orient it underneath his falling weight. ŖÂΝỖ𐌱ĚS̈

And somewhere in that moment of readying his weapon and enhancing his plants, he felt something he hadn’t felt before, a resistance from the Acheflowers as his command moved through them. It was vague but firm, an undefined stopping point he couldn’t quite push through. A notification he had no time to read popped up in that moment, shunted away in favor of getting ready for his strike.

The cloud was blasted away a split second later by another punch from Brist, but if anything that just made things better. With his arm extended and his weight committed, Brist couldn’t do anything but watch as Tulland extended the pitchfork past his outstretched arm, increased its speed, and stabbed him straight in his gigantic chest.

Brist’s eyes went wide as Tulland was momentarily suspended in the air by the handle and tines, which were themselves anchored to Brist’s super hard skin.

Tulland opened his mouth to talk some limited amount of trash, then immediately regretted it as Brist recovered, pivoted on his toes, and backhanded Tulland so hard he left a furrow in the ground as he slid to a stop. He wasn’t truly hurt, despite the blood in his mouth and the sense that several of his teeth were looser now. He popped back up, pitchfork at the ready, only to find himself pinned to the ground by a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Good!” Brist was shouting an inch from Tulland’s face, so close that Tulland couldn’t help but smell his breath. “Most of my students just let me hit them the second time. Even when they don’t, I haven’t had anybody actually land a hit in years.”

“You teach? Like this?”

“Had to. Part of leading an army.”

Tulland took a moment to decide if he really wanted to goad this particular maniac into more conversation, and settled on the side of just having to know.

“What kind of idiot puts you in charge of things?”

“That’s what I said!” the man laughed. “I kept a man who was good at the tactics of things around. They said I could do that, and then just step in when the men needed help. Said that having the strongest be in charge was good for morale.”

The man let go of Tulland, finally, and sat on the ground as he scooped the acid off himself with the blade of his hand and flung it to the ground.

“Stuff’s itchy. Anyway, that’s my teaching style. I hit people until they get worse at getting hit. Every once in a while someone manages to hit me. I think that might be easier now.”

“Because you are older?”

“Because I lost all the levels I got beating up armies for a few decades. Those helped.”

Tulland walked over to where he had launched all his plants at Brist, recovering what he could.

“Did any of that actually hurt you?” Tulland asked. “I mean that. In a way you’d have to care about.”

“No. The acid was a little itchy, though.”

“That feels like a problem to me. How does someone like me even have a chance against someone like you? I hit you with my best shots.”

“Someone like me? You have a chance. Me? Not much of one. But that can change. Tell me this, farmer. What do you think my highest stat is?”

“Strength?”

“Nope. Vitality, then agility. Lots of strength in that mix, but nowhere near as high as my primary.”

“Then how do you hit that hard?”

“How? Figure it out.” Brist stood up again, shook off the rest of the acid like a dog, and put his fists back up. “Fight back and pay attention. You’ll see eventually.”

With his big surprises spent, the rest of the afternoon was mostly just Tulland getting launched through the air, never taking that much damage. He attributed that to Brist’s merciful nature and kept watching. During that time, he got a little bit better at figuring his way around Brist’s defenses, mostly by figuring out the man’s guard wasn’t very good at dealing with multiple threats at any one time. If Tulland just had his pitchfork, he wouldn’t have had a chance. With his Clubber Vines in play, he could land some shots here and there.

Otherwise, it was that merciful nature of Brist keeping him alive, as far as Tulland could tell. It was late in the afternoon when he suddenly realized the problem with that assumption.

“You are going for distance, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Gotta keep my head in the game somehow. That last one was the longest yet. I’m getting pretty good.”

“I thought you were going easy on me.”

“Really?” Brist looked honestly perplexed. “What about me made you think I’d do that?”

“Nothing. It was a mistake. But that means you are hitting me as hard as you can, hard enough to launch me, and not hurting me somehow. My armor isn’t that strong. So what is it?”

“Angles. Timing.” Brist held up his hand and started counting off fingers, giving up after those initial two items. “Other science I don’t understand. I’m big and heavy, and a little strong. You are light, and I’m hitting you from directions you aren’t good at defending. I’d actually be doing more damage if I wasn’t trying to launch you because the ground under your feet would keep the force from escaping.”

“But launching me means that there isn’t enough damage to hurt me?”

“Not in a single shot. Your armor is doing quite a bit for you, and I’m not a one-big-hit kind of fighter.” Brist’s fists blurred out in a long combo, something different from his big wind-up hits that he had been using through the afternoon so far. “There’s no nicer way to say this, but I’m able to launch you because you aren’t very good at fighting. Not at all. Launching you throws you even further off balance.”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“I’m not.” Tulland shrugged. “I’m a Farmer. Before I was a farmer, I was a student. My uncle was a fisherman. There was no way to learn. And I don’t have much skill to compensate. These here are the main way I fight.”

“Those vines?” Brist rubbed his forearms. “Yeah, those hit pretty good. Not enough to hurt me, though. Anything you can do about that? You’d have a much better chance if I had to respect those a bit more.”

“Not yet.” Tulland grimaced. “But I’ll work on it.”

“You do that.” Brist flopped back down onto the ground where he had been when Tulland had first walked up. “And think about the fighting today. I’ll see you tomorrow, and we can start for you to learn a damn thing about how to hurt an enemy. Be ready.”

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