“Whew,” Tulland sighed.
“Whew?” Necia turned around and started poking Tulland in the chest. Even though his weird fruit-pit chain mail, it kind of hurt. “Whew, he says, having made me wait until the very last minute before I’d either have to abandon him or die to not abandon him? Whew?”
“I mean, I made it,” Tulland tried, defensively.
“And poor White. The man is two hundred years old.”
“He’s not.”
“Close enough. He’s old and just trying to help his planet with his last little bit of life and you made him think he might have to give that up just to keep you alive. You should have seen him. He was fretting. Fretting, Tulland.”
“Where is he, anyway?”
“Probably already fighting for his life. His tenth level is different than ours because of the way his class works. But it’s a hard transition to have to make that quick. I hope he’ll be fine.” Necia shook her head. “It’s hard to imagine him not being fine, honestly. He’s a tough old man. But still. What do you have to say for yourself? How could you possibly justify that?”
“I got a lot of new plants. Like a lot, a lot,” Tulland said.
“How many is a lot?”“Almost eighty. And I think all of them are potentially useful.”
“No.”
“Yes. It’s a big deal.”
Necia huffed.
“I guess.” She picked up a big rock and threw it to the side. “Let’s get them planted, then.”
“Here?” Tulland looked around. There was a small stream just off to the side of where they were standing, and the soil wasn’t terrible. “I mean, I could. The problem is that I only have one of most of these plants. If they don’t make it to a point where they are producing seeds, then…”
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. Read your notifications,” Necia said.
“On it. Although this might take a second.”
Floor 9 Complete! You have completed this time-weighted challenge with a terrible performance, far below the average of what most surviving adventurers display. While The Infinite understands you were pursuing other goals, the fact that you may have done well on those self-imposed tasks means nothing to its assessment of your results here. ɽåΝŏᛒƐŝ While no challenge dungeon is truly without rewards, you have reached the lowest possible categorization and thus receive only a small amount of experience to compensate you for your efforts. Level up! x3 Skill Level Up! |
“Floor rewards?” Necia asked.
“Yeah. I got barely anything. Which I guess I expected. The plants should be enough of their own reward to keep us going. What about you?”
“Oh, Tulland. You might wonder exactly why I was willing to wait for someone who would get so wrapped up in seed-gathering that he almost killed us all.” Necia picked up another rock and chucked it. “The biggest reason is that I made out like a bandit is thanks to your weird plant navigation skills. I got an entire active skill out of that floor. A good one. Something I’ll be able to use forever.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s called Shield to Shield. It’s a bash skill.”
“I’ve seen you bash tons of stuff with your shield.” To Tulland, that was the majority of what Necia did. Her shield was as important as her sword to her damage dealing, with a lot of enemies. “It’s like your hobby.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I have a lot of shield abilities. It’s the nature of the class. But this one? It’s a cut above. Actually, I’ll show you. Turn your hoe into a shovel and hit me. I mmean,really try to hit me. Don’t worry, I’ll block it.”
Tulland pursed his lips in mild dismay, but obeyed. The shovel was his least favorite combat option, given that he didn’t have enough strength to make the most of blunt force attacks and they left him the most open compared to his other Farmer’s Tool formats. Giving it his best shot, he ran towards Necia, planted just inside his own swing range, and sent the shovel-head on a horizontal collision course with her shield.
As he did, Necia bent her knees, adjusted her shield angle and pushed forward. It was already enough of a change that Tulland knew things were going to end uselessly for him, that she’d effortlessly block the blow. What made it sure to end badly for him, in his opinion, was the pinpoint of glowing light that appeared at the point of contact between the shovel and the shield in the exact moment he hit.
In the next moment, tuland found himself spinning back on the exact same trajectory he came in, except without all the planned balancing that had made the first strike work. He wobbled awkwardly, trying to catch up with his own momentum. By the time he was even close, Necia had bashed into him again, sending him flying into freshly hoed dirt.
“What in the hell?” Tulland’s voice was muffled by the upturned soil, even to himself. “I really do mean it. What the hell?”
“It’s a stun, kind of. How well it works is proportional to how much the person put into their last strike. If they went all out, then it’s going to knock them silly for a bit. Of course, I have to win the clash,” Necia explained.
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“But you would against almost anything, right?”
“Right. Deflecting attacks with a big shield is easy, compared to most things. And most people don’t go all out with every attack, where I’ll go all-out every single time I use this.”
“Why doesn’t that make you invincible?” Tulland asked. “What’s the downside?”
“It’s a long cooldown. And if I miss the block or the person pulls out of the strike, it won’t work. I’ll have about one chance to use it every battle. Honestly, it’s better for people and weak enemies than big tanky ones. But even where it’s bad, it should let me land a couple hits I wouldn’t have otherwise, free of charge.”
“And that’s not enough to make you owe me a bit?”
“Tulland, you arrived on the scene with two seconds to spare before both me and White had to fight the rogue all by ourselves. This skill is just enough to have convinced me to take you on this little journey. Now read your next notification, dammit.”
10th floor challenge - Cooperative Floor! You have entered this floor with a team of two individuals. The difficulty of the floor has been adjusted accordingly. On this level, you will find yourself facing strong, individual threats. Each beast will seek you out, and defeating any individual threat will cause another to spawn at a random point in the zone. Each new beast is “born” with the knowledge of the last, including your last known location. Every individual monster you will face here is geared to force your entire team to pull out the stops to put it down. Your success will hinge on your ability to heal up and recharge your batteries between beasts, as well as on your long-term endurance when facing a seemingly endless chain of ferocious animals. When the last beast of the typical beasts appears, a notification will alert you to the fact. This notification is necessary. Once it is put down, a harder variant will appear. This variant will be balanced in such a way as to be expected to kill one or both of you at the strength level you displayed on entering this zone. As such, this floor tests your potential for growth. If you are unable to defeat this floor, it’s likely your potential would not be great enough to sustain you through the next few floors anyway. Objectives: Survive and defeat all threats. |
“Simple enough.”
“Nothing is ever really that simple with the infinite,” Necia said. “Which is why I want you to get your stupid garden growing. It sounds like this level is going to take a long time. Endurance levels generally do. And we both know you didn’t get just one seed of each plant. So plant.”
Tulland nodded and got to work. Hoeing out the square didn’t take long anymore. There were some plants he hadn’t brought with him on this two-dungeon loop, but most of his old standards had small enough seeds that packing them had made sense. With his recent optimization efforts, he had at least somewhat of an idea of how many Clubber Vines it made sense to plant, and that knowledge encompassed almost everything else that wasn’t new.
The newer plants were harder, or would have been if he didn’t have so few of them. He put down one of every new plant, finding that the basic thing most of them wanted was an above-average amount of water He had Necia cut a channel from the river that he wound through part of the farm, and resolved to fertilize them as much as possible later if the monsters in this realm ended up being any good for that.
While there was still time, Tulland ran a pattern of Primal Growth over the entire farm, encouraging whatever growth he could get. Usually, the first time he grew a seed took a little longer than subsequent times, and these plants all seemed to be of fairly high quality, which would take a little bit longer still. Even so, his two-day grace period of drawing power from his primary farm in the safe zone had been refreshed for the tenth floor thanks to his short stint in the zone.
Two whole days was a long time to apply magic to a farm, even if he only did it periodically. They’d come along, and by the time his grace period was over, he’d be plenty strong, very likely much stronger than he had been when he entered the floor.
“Heads up,” Necia said. “That’s not a normal sound.”
In the distance, there was a sound of air being beaten. Finding the source took a bit, since the animal creating it almost perfectly matched the color of the sky here. In the distance, rising into the air with great difficulty, was an animal unlike any Tulland had ever seen.
Unlike any entire animal I’ve ever seen, anyway. The system notification on this one is going to be a doozy.
Azure Sphinx With the head of a human, the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle and talons from a total of four mismatched birds of prey, the sphinx is a varied beast capable of a variety of angles of attack. Their most common mode of assault if from the sky, diving down with great weight and force after laboriously climbing to an attacking altitude. But while their attacks from the ground may lack the spectacular power of their dives, they are faster, better aimed, and overall just as lethal. Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of these beasts is not their attack at all, but their near-human levels of intelligence. Adaptable and tactically advanced compared to other animals, the Sphinx is capable of changing strategies on the fly to meet the needs of the moment. |
“Can you block the dive?” Tulland tried to imagine what it would feel like to try to stop that much mass in free-fall. “I don’t have any tools for that.”
“Oh, Tulland.” Necia was smiling ear to ear. “Didn’t you hear me earlier when I described my skill? I get more out of it the more committed to an attack my opponent is. I don’t know if you know how dives work, but…”
“Oh, wow. Yeah. I almost feel bad for it now.”
When the Sphinx dove, it would have been terrifying if it wasn’t so clear what was going to happen. The impact with Necia’s shield was incredible. It sent her staggering and even injured her. There was only so much force she could absorb, and this had vastly exceeded what she could take in a single hit without getting at least a little hurt.
If the hurt Necia took was significant, the pain the Sphinx felt in comparison was monumental. It slipped off Necia’s shield like an arrow shot from a bow, slamming into the ground and skidding for yards before it stopped. As Necia staggered under the aftermath of the hit, Tulland was already on the sphinx. He stabbed out with his pitchfork again and again, barely penetrating the tough hide but doing a bit of damage with every hit. The joints of the wings soon revealed themselves to be a weak spot, and he focused his hits there while his Clubber Vines pounded down on any flesh they could reach.
The beast was tough, to be sure, but by the time Necia was able to shed the shield from her broken arm and drag her sword to striking range, Tulland was almost through putting it down.
“Just let me handle it.” Tulland swept the broad side of the pitchfork tines across the beast’s head, keeping it off balance and on the ground where it belonged. “I’m making good progress.”
“You sure?” Necia asked.
“I’m sure. Just heal up and I’ll…”
Tulland’s next hit glanced off the bird. It had been a full-force hit that he expected to finish the monster once and for all. Instead, it simply clanged off of its fur, leaving not even a scratch on his enemy. At the same time, the healthy thunks his vines had been making whenever they hit suddenly became much quieter.
That’s not good.
“A skill?” Necia rushed forward. “It’s guarding?”
“No.” Tulland stabbed again, doing just as little damage as before. “Something worse. Could you…”
“Got it.” Necia brought her sword around in a tight arc, taking the weakened sphinx’s head clean off. Flicking the blood off her sword, she sheathed it and began massaging her shield arm. “That really hurt. I’m glad you could take the heat off me for a second.”
“That’s… I don’t think I can, anymore.” Tulland was panicking. Even glancing at his farm gave him confirmation of what had happened, as impossible as it was. “Something’s wrong.”
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