Infinite Farmer

After the first several seconds, it became clear that the Razored Lunger wasn't following Tulland into the briar thicket. It was what he had wanted. It should have been good. It should have been an unquestioned win.

The victory would have been easier to remember if Tulland's entire body wasn't being perforated by thorns. He was cut in far more places than he could count, stabbed in others, and completely immobilized by the pain and terror of moving any further. For a few long minutes, he sat there in agony and tried not to writhe. He was completely filled with fear that he'd just die there, impaled by thorns as he slowly bled out.

Quite the showing. I'm very impressed.

Oh, god, shut up. Be quiet. Tulland refused to talk out loud so the thorns couldn't work their way further into him. Don't you have enough from me?

What's enough? As it stands, I'll barely get enough energy off you to subvert a small territory, or to push a few divisions of monster troops through the ever-cursed shield that your precious Church put in my way. I was hoping you'd at least show me the tiniest bit of competence.

Rich, considering what you gave me to work with.

It is a poor soldier who places the blame on his sword. You've already given up. Believe me, there are those who would still be pushing through the pain.

Oh, yeah? Who?

Altreck, for one. I considered him for your role, you know. The only reason I didn't go for it is he had a certain simplicity to his moral fiber that would have prevented me from making much headway. But he certainly wouldn't resign himself to death without even trying.

It shouldn't have worked. It was a simple, transparent ploy aimed directly at Tulland's pride, meant to make him act where he otherwise. The System was throwing a cheap shot, a jab with a jagged knife at an already open wound. Tulland should have dismissed it out of hand.

But he couldn't. As unfair as it was, Tulland couldn't stand to imagine Altreck doing better than he was. He risked his eyes by opening them, only to find one of them already didn't work. And, a few feet in front of him, there was a small gap in the thorns. Not a big one, but a place where he might just be able to lay down with only a few thorns in his body instead of hundreds, and give his vitality-induced regeneration the hours it would need to patch him back together.

The small distance looked like it was a thousand miles away, and he would still be trapped when he got there. But the System was right. Altreck would try to get there. The terror of the pain to come wouldn't matter to him because he wouldn't even be able to imagine it. He'd just do it. And he would survive, at least for a while.

Tulland closed his eyes again, braced himself, and shoved his body as hard as he could towards the clearing. The thorns tore away chunks of his skin as he screamed again and again. They couldn't stop him from pushing forward with his feet and pulling with his arms wherever they could find purchase. The leather boots and his now ragged cloth garb stopped some of the thorns, and if they had been conventional plants, Tulland thought his gear might have stopped nearly all of them. But against the monster briars of the dungeon, there was only so much that they could do.

He never knew when he made it. Tulland woke up a while later on ground soaked with his own blood, but out of the worst of the thorns. Almost immediately, he started pulling fragments of the spikes out of his skin, passing out from the pain and blood loss more than once before he finally woke up, feeling terrible but mostly healed. His left eye still didn't work, and he had no idea if it ever would again. And he was still bleeding from more places than he could count. But all in all, it seemed he would survive.

Tulland laid there, watching the world spin as his body tried to replace the blood it had lost and was still losing. He made no attempts to move as the hours passed until he finally felt more or less himself.

Only then did he open his right eye and took a look at his surroundings. There wasn't much to see, but the System gave him descriptions for the few things it could latch onto at that distance.