Infinite Farmer

Tulland retreated to the relative safety of his living, writhing plants as he aimed his pitchfork squarely at the center of Necia's chest. Although his explosion of plants had caught her off guard, she quickly tore free of the briars constricting her. But she was too slow. His tines closed in, a bit closer and faster than she could realistically block.

And then Tulland realized an arrow was aimed directly at his eye. He hadn't even been aware that Licht was on the attack until it was too late.

"Okay! I'm out of plants. That's a loss."

Licht burst out laughing, withdrew his crossbow, and then flopped over on his back, chortling and holding his ribs.

"He's fine." Necia panted and wiped the last of the vines away. "It's just that it's hard to call what you just did a loss."

Tulland looked down at the shredded arms of his farmer's shirt and the dozen cuts that came along with the general change in his wardrobe. "You sure? Because I'm pretty beat up over here."

"Yes, but." Necia looked exasperated. "You've noticed there were two of us, correct? I kept a few things in reserve, and Licht didn't hide until the end there. But we also didn't simply slaughter you. That's good."

"Very good, even. One on one, you might have gotten lucky and taken down either of us. Of course, there's no chance of that now."

"No?" Tulland sat up and fanned his own shirt to displace dust. "Why not? My plants are going to get stronger."

"Stronger, but not different. We both know a bit about fighting them now. With me, at least, you had some surprise. I didn't know you could make a whole carpet of them like that. Now that I know, I wouldn't let you use them as effectively. And since your weapon skill isn't very good…"

"Then I wouldn't be able to hit you. And you could take your time. So after all that, we didn't accomplish much."

"Well, no." Necia sat and bumped into Tulland from the side, affectionately but with so much of her battle-form weight that he was almost thrown to the ground. "Again, you held off two thinking, trained people for minutes. And while you did that, you were holding back, waiting for a moment to strike. In a battle, you have options. And now it's our job to find out how best to use them."

Necia rocked her weight against Tulland again, then stood and pulled him to his feet.

"First, let's go back and restock. Then, we're going to eat again."

"And this training made a difference?"

Necia and Licht both nodded.

By the time Tulland was done restocking his plants and setting up their dinner, Licht was nowhere to be found.

"He went to the seventh floor, something about tackling it while he was still full," Necia explained when he looked at her questioningly.

"How long do you think he'll be gone?" Tulland asked.

"From what he said, several days. I guess he only just had the sixth cleared when he ran out of food last time. He seemed confident about the seventh, but it's going to take him time."

"And we'll be in the sixth by then. I hope I don't drag you down." Tulland poured some water from a bucket into his cooking pan and set it boiling. "Hopefully this particular farm helps with that."

"It will," Necia said. "And in the meantime, we can gather what information we can. Eight or nine days is a long time to be the bad guy, but I'll make it."

—

Seven days after the planting, Tulland was busy optimizing what he could in his garden. Grasses, it turned out, were dumb, cheap, waste-of-space plants. They took a lot of resources to grow without providing much at all in the way of benefit. He was sure there would have been a different story to tell if the grasses were in some way magical or useful, but these were only good for filling in the spaces where nothing else would grow.

The weeds and shrubs were only a little bit better. The first few of each were a big, noticeable difference to his overall power, and then quickly stopped being worth planting as he piled on the duplicates. In the first few days, he had pulled a bunch of them and planted more of his better trees, something he was now almost absurdly glad to have gotten a lead on. Those trees were growing well, while the trees from his original planting were almost tall enough to be visible from outside the house's mostly ruined walls.

And on all of those trees were mosses and flowers. Which exactly was growing where varied tree to tree. The Acheflowers steadfastly refused to grow on anything but the low-quality Achewood trees, while the various mosses he had assembled through his travels were willing to grow on anything but the Wolfwood. In fact, nothing seemed to like the Wolfwood, which Tulland almost understood. It was a tree that grew a furry quasi-hide. As much as he needed that hide, it was a tree you could pet, and he was far from used to that.

The way he thought about it, Tulland had three types of plants at the moment. The first type were battle plants like the Lunger Briar, Giant's Hair, and Acheflowers. These were plants that actively contributed to his combat ability. The second type were equipment plants like the Ironbranch, Giant's Toe, and Jewel Moss. These weren't plants that could hurt enemies directly, but Tulland could use them to enhance or build his armor and weapon. The third type were support plants like the Wolfwood, ones that didn't have a direct utility but could be leveraged in ways that benefited Tulland's growth.

Even when he planted the third type of plant, he was getting stronger. He could feel it, especially since his Farmer's Intuition was a big part of what made that kind of thing feelable in the first place. As the trees had filled out and the shrubs and briars had piled higher and higher around them, he had felt that power seeping in, able to quantify it more and more granular until finally, when his new orange-like-fruit-tree bore its first fruit, some barrier between him and knowing broke down, finally and permanently.