Infinite Farmer: A Plants vs Dungeon

“I’m just saying. If we could figure out something different to eat for breakfast, it would be nicer,” Tulland complained.

“Sure,” Necia said as she gestured at their new garden. “The problem is, Tulland, that you only have two kinds of fruit and so many vegetables and grains. There’s only so much real variety you can get in there.”

“Granted, but I think if we went heavy on the fruit and lighter on everything else, we might be able to change that.” Tulland mimed a chopping motion with a knife above his bowl of normal, boring food. “Especially if we diced every….” His voice cut out as something far more important began to take his attention.

“Tulland? You just stopped talking.”

“One second. I have a notification that I think needs my full attention.”

On the tree, shining by itself, was a single fruit. It was nothing if not horrifyingly dangerous-looking, hanging off the tree looking actively malicious. It was, Tulland could tell, a hand-cutter of a thing.

“What new terror is that?” Necia tracked Tulland’s gaze to the fruit, then walked closer and eyed it suspiciously. “There’s no way I’m eating that.”

“There’s no way I’d let you.” Tulland was now close up to the fruit, hoping it would be big enough that he could experiment with it right away. It wasn’t. “I wish there was another one.”n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

“There is.” Necia was circling the tree. “A couple more of them. Growing on this side, deeper in.”

Tulland parted the branches and found that Necia was right. Carefully, he palmed the first fruit, hoping it had the same quality his briars did and wouldn’t hurt his hand. He was wrong. The little needles were razor sharp, barely blocked by his Farmer’s Gloves and incredibly uncomfortable to handle.

Carefully, he managed to pull all three fruits and pile them on the ground.

“What now?”

“This.” Tulland pulled his Farmer’s Tool off his back. “The whole tool is still shattered. It should be just about ready to be reloaded. Cross your fingers for me. If this doesn’t work, I’ve just wasted a whole lot of resources.”

Tulland brought the tool down to the fruits and closed his eyes. It was easy enough to roll the dice back when he had enhanced the seed in the first place, but now that the die was settling and he was about to see the results, he felt all the tension at once. If this didn’t work, he was toast. Maybe not today, exactly, but some time soon, if anything anyone had told him about staying ahead of the difficulty curve held true.

Wish me luck.

Sure.

Willing the fruits into the tool was easy, usually. This time, Tulland felt the slightest resistance as he did it, like he was stretching out a new bag to accommodate a larger-than-average load. But they went. He watched as the head of the tool started to reform, replacing the dull, generic metal it was made of by default with a shinier, much more substantial looking material. The head of the tool dipped with the new weight, unbalanced as it was by a lack of enhanced handle materials.

“That looks nasty.” Necia poked the tine of the pitchfork with her finger, lightly, and came away with a spot of blood when it pierced her vitality-enhanced skin. “That is nasty. What is that?”

“Whatever that fruit is made of.” Tulland resisted the urge to hug the tool and mess himself up in the process. “It seems like I won the bet.”

You did. That material is… unusual. I can hardly understand it. It’s living, or at least has the structure of a living thing. But otherwise, it’s bizarre.

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How so?

It’s difficult to explain. Find a moment alone. I wouldn’t want to worry your friends.

The System had a point. Necia had never quite come to terms with Tulland’s conversations with the System. He didn’t blame her. She was the reasonable one on the subject. He was the one playing with fire, allowing the System to guide his actions while knowing it had tried to have him killed and still stood to gain a lot when he finally fell in this place.

“Necia, I’m going to go on a walk in the woods. Clear my head,” Tulland said.

“Oh, yeah?” Necia asked.

“Yeah. It’s been a long few days inside. I think I just need a stroll.”

Necia nodded, still looking at the bizarre tree. “I get it. You spent a lot of time just getting this to grow. Go get some air, before you crack. I’ll clean up after breakfast.”

It took several minutes to find a good place to talk, somewhere close enough to the city that he was pretty sure someone would hear him if he yelled, but far enough that nobody would hear his speaking voice.

Don’t be a fool. You don’t have to speak to me out loud. Go to the tavern. There’s nobody in this town that wants that to become a place of war.

Fine. Tulland walked down the street, opened the door to the tavern, and walked in to a full room of mismatched tables, chairs, and magical liquor-producing objects. It was empty except for an adventurer he knew by sight, but not by name.

“Welcome.” The man raised a stone mug with an unsteady hand. “Forgive me if I’m not much conversation. I’ve had… a lot of these.”

That man has lost himself to the drink. He won’t last much longer. I’d advise you to steer clear of the contents of these items if you want to avoid the same path.

“No problem. I’ll just be sitting. I needed a place to think.”

The man nodded, then laid his head down on the table, and was snoring within a few moments.

Okay. We should have a bit.

Yes. What I was getting around to saying is that the materials you are making don’t exist. Or at least hadn’t existed.

Well, yeah. I just made these.

It doesn’t matter. On your old world, there were materials called Dark Iron. I say materials because it was possible to get the metal in ten different ways. Most materials are like that. They are duplicated under different names, and available from different sources.

I never knew about this.

There was no reason you should. Even some types of crafters wouldn’t. But this star you’ve grown is a new sort of thing.

That good?

Good or bad doesn’t enter into it. It’s simply not available under a different name, that I know of. And that’s before getting into the idea that nobody ever grew anything like this back on your world. Or anything like most of what you grow, for that matter. Your briars would have been impossible.

They aren’t hard to grow.

They aren’t hard to grow here. But farmers on your world weren’t working inside of dungeons. Adventurers would occasionally bring them seeds from there, but unless they were specifically earmarked for being taken outside of the dungeon, the plants generally wouldn’t grow.

But since I never leave the dungeon, I can?

Something like that. You aren’t doing anything incredibly different or much more complex than a normal farmer would. But every single material you use is, by definition, a system-thing. A dungeon-thing. I previously had no reason to think that would make a difference.

But it does.

It does. And the material you’ve made is also… not bad. Not incredible, but interesting.

Tulland eyed the liquor cups jealously. He didn’t drink on Ouros, at least not outside of the occasional sip of his uncle’s wine on holidays. There was no valid reason for him to start now. When the System dragged out an explanation, however, he found himself tempted. Instead, he just shook his head and waited for the System to finally get on with things.

The magic in the flowers is a bit different from what you’ve made before. Less aligned. Less aligned than most things I’ve seen.

Meaning?

Meaning that the sticks you make have magic that is influenceable. If you made it into a chair as a chair-crafter, it would align that way. Into a weapon, another way entirely. Your metal stars are flexible in the same way, but more so. It was invisible to me until you integrated them into your weapon.

It seemed harder than usual.

Perhaps it was. I don’t know about that part. But I do know that the metal in your pitchfork head changed completely to suit itself to the task. And the pitchfork itself… I won’t say it changed, exactly. It’s bent. The nature of your Farmer’s Tool has flexed to accommodate the material as well. When the material goes away, it will snap back. But until then, it’s more of a weapon as well.

So I’m growing a super-material?

I wouldn’t go that far. There’s more to materials than the sheer amount of magical power in them, or how it’s aligned. The total amount of magic power in your star is nothing special. The base material under the magic doesn’t appear to be, either. And I’m not sure if the magic in the fruits would align as easily or completely for anyone else. But for you…

I won the bet?

I should say so. The metal is much better than what you’ve been using up until now, at least. And I’d bet you can load the handle with it too.

Tulland hadn’t gotten that far in his thinking before the System managed to get him out to the bar, but he supposed that its words were probably true. And if the Steel Star really was much better than the Jewel Moss and the Ironwood, he’d be better at using the pitchfork moving forward. Between the Clubber Vines and improved melee, he had made a significant jump forward in his combat prowess. Probably. He’d check it out later. Right now, there were more important things to figure out.

System.

Yes?

Tell me more, about the Church.

Why?

Despite being a short question, it was a hard one. Tulland didn’t have an easy answer for it. He didn’t exactly want an excuse to trust the System more. He was more worried that the System would lie to him and confuse him into trusting it more than he should. But he needed to know very little about life back on Ouros now, especially an ancient Ouros he had never seen in the first place. He decided just to go with the obvious answer, however unsatisfactory it was.

Honestly? I’m bored.

Some time passed before the notification popped again.

Without much hesitation, Tulland punched the mental yes button and found himself in another memory.