Infinite Farmer

Cooking only a took a moment, which left some time for Tulland to take stock of the farm before Necia actually made it home. The first move was to plant the Clubber Vines, which would be a little burst of new strength just from farm quality. That took longer than Tulland liked, just because there was a deeper hole to dig than he was used to.

"Decent of you to give him a burial." Ley watched as Tulland rolled the body of the archer he had killed into the hole, stripped of all of its equipment and most of its clothes. "Can't say he deserves it."

"I don't think so either. But this is something different." Tulland was doing his best to ignore the gravity of what he was up to, but he couldn't afford to waste resources. If his Farmer's Intuition had gained a full level just from telling him that basically all of his vines would enjoy human fertilizer, then it was an important thing. Subtly, and so Ley couldn't see, he cut off a bit of flesh from his enemy to save in a bag and use later. It wouldn't take much to run a couple of batches in the splicer and see what popped out, and he didn't want to think more about how to store it until he could do just that. "This is for the farm. Don't ask."

"I won't. Doesn't take a genius to figure out why that might work. You can bury him all in one place like that?" Ley asked.

"The skill I use for farming says it would be better to… split him up. I don't want to." Tulland shook his head. "This will eventually work its way through all the soil. And I can plant briars right on top of it. It will be enough."

"Can I be honest with you?"

"Sure."

"You look like hell. You look like I did the first time I took someone down. If you think I'm judging you for not following that farming advice, I'm not. I'm impressed you even remembered to take the equipment off."

"About that. Anything here you can use?"

"Some of it. Mostly just the shoes. I already got a few pieces from the rogue I was fighting." Ley looked at the rest of what was left with a critical eye. "The rest of the armor isn't much, but the bow is something. You want me to see if I can sell it?"

"You can't use it?" Tulland asked.

"No."

"Then yes. Put out the word that I'm looking for weird meats or plant seeds. Not just for the bow. For food, if people want it. No use hiding what I can do now, considering we're already being hunted."

"So you're trying to get every bit of strength that you can. Smart. No use doing it halfway."

After the grains were done, Tulland and Ley gulped down a bowl apiece and still found themselves with some time before Necia got back. Tulland pulled out the splicer, then looked at his farm, thoughtfully.

"So. I can probably make one aspect of what I do stronger," Tulland said. "I have to decide what."

"That new plant, the slappy one. No question. It's already strong, for what it is," Ley said.

"No good. That one's already as strong as it can get. What I'm doing won't work on it."

"That's harder, then." Ley reached down and unlaced his shoes, sighing as they came off for the first time in days. "The usual wisdom with choose-your-own-benefit buffs like that is to find whatever the weakest part of the combat capabilities you regularly use and bring it up to snuff. For you, I said to do that vine because if it got much better, you'd almost be safe based just on that."

"But if I can't?"

"Then we're right back to the weakest thing. And that's that weapon of yours. Is there anything you can do for it?"

"Maybe."

Tulland's pitchfork was stronger and worked better when his stats were higher, but there were some steps in between. High mental stats let him grow better things, which he could then load into the weapon to make it stronger. The better and better suited the plants were, the more durable and damage-dealing it was. But he had noticed it went further than that. When his weapon had become better in the past, he had become slightly better at using it as well. Or at least he thought it had.

Is that even possible? That my weapon makes me better at fighting?

Rare, but possible. It's likely how Licht's class works, and why he uses monster parts in his bolts.

So my mental stats feed back into how well I can physically fight?

Possibly. And even if they do, it would be at a lower rate than warrior classes.

But not the kind of thing I can ignore.

Likely not, no. How much attention you should put into it as an exact thing is over the line, though. I can't tell you about that.

Not a single one of Tulland's briars was a good match for his weapon, since all of their utility came from being partially alive and the process of converting them to a weapon would kill them. That left his trees and mosses. The Ironbranch was a good option, as was the Jewel Moss. Any increase in quality there would transfer to his ability to fight directly, either by making his weapon shaft harder to break or the tines of his pitchfork sharper and tougher.

Between the two, he would probably go with the Jewel Moss. But that was only if it was between the two. And before he decided, he wanted to experiment with just one more thing. Since he and Necia had grown the Stonefruit tree, he had been thinking about uses for it. While they were on the last floor, it occurred to him that he was potentially being very dumb. He had been thinking of the ultra-tough pits the fruits bore as too small for most kinds of crafting, but that wasn't necessarily true. His Farmer's Tool didn't think of materials like that. It could uptake whatever it wanted in whatever quantities it wanted, pulling in the material and crafting it into the needed shape.

Tulland split open several of the fruits and removed the pits, then held his breath as he lifted them up to the tool. If this worked, he could probably make the whole damn weapon out of the things, given enough time.

It didn't work.