Infinite Farmer

The man on the stone bench was muscular, despite his apparent advanced age. As big as he still was now, he must have been an absolute monster back in his youth. That might have been true too, if he was really a man, had really attained old age, or had ever had a youth. He wasn't and hadn't. This was just who that portion of him was, at that time.

He sighed as he watched another incarnation of himself walk the garden path towards him, a young adolescent girl moving with all the brisk hurry of youth in her straw hat and flowered dress. He suppressed the impulse to dismiss the image of the tenth floor safe zone and the accompanying data screens related to it. She'd bother him about them even if they were gone.

"I see you're still staring at the situation down there, gramps." The young girl sat down on the bench and scooted closer, leaning in front of him until she all but blocked the view of the screens. "And nothing changed, right?"

"No." The old man put his hand on the girl's shoulder and gently pushed her back. "It doesn't mean that I can't be watchful. That's who I am, to us."

"And I'm the one that tells you to stop. There's only so much monitoring that can help here. Anything new will be noticed, and soon. There's plenty of us on this particular instance, anyway."

"I suppose so."

"Actually, for the sake of conversation, and nothing else. Say one of us hadn't bothered to do the reading on this particular safe zone. What would be the bullet points they should know? Just the short summary, I mean."

The old man shook his head.

"Well, first, it's just at the beginning of the period. The contestants who didn't already encounter each other in the tower have been delayed or pushed forward in time to make the group more or less even, in a scheduling sense."

"Was that necessary?"

"Some of them might have been off quite a bit, otherwise. Five years, in some cases."

"Still, it's a lot of trouble. You could have just moved forward with a smaller group. Or different participants."

"I could have. But then when would we get another farmer? He doesn't know it, but he's the furthest a non-combatant class has ever come."

"Really? What about that blacksmith? You remember the one. The grumpy one."

"I do. He switched classes if you remember. A lucky break during an adjustment when we deemed his situation unfair and moved in his favor. And even he didn't get much farther. No amount of effort could be too much here, so long as it falls within the rules. We won't get a better chance to learn about how big of a difference this might make."

"And you think it will be that big?" The girl swished her arm, dismissing the old man's screens. They both knew he really didn't need them to know what was on them, as much as he might like the feel of having them open. "The difference. It's just some grain."

"Maybe. But even some grain is larger than you think. How much experience does each adventurer spend feeding themselves? Now that there will be game to catch, how much time do they spend hunting? It seems too cheap to almost every one of them, past this point, but a slight delay in gaining a level means life or death more often than you might think."

"Maybe." The girl looked doubtful. "The boy himself is nothing special."

"Nobody is." The old man patted her on the head. "And everyone is. Especially those that find their way here. We'll just have to see how far he gets and how much of an impact he makes, as with everyone. But I'm old. I can hope."

"All of us are old," the girl said. "Even when we are young."

"Then hope with me. Now, is dinner ready?"

"Yes. That's why I came."

"Then let's go." The old man rose to his feet, wincing as his knees punished him for the action. "I'll walk you back."

—

Tulland leaned on his hoe as he looked out over acres and acres of tilled land. Of course, he hadn't tilled the majority of it himself. The whole twenty people in town had come out to help him with that. But while many of them were very strong, none of them had what he considered to be a farmer's touch with the soil. He had gone over all their work again, breaking up clumps of dirt they had missed until the entire patch of soil was almost as loose as sand.

And that was the big patch, the one he'd be using to grow food. His actual farm wasn't even planted yet. He was still waiting for the effects of dozens of different fertilizer-suitable monster materials the townsfolk adventurers had gifted him to settle down in the soil there before he started that step of things.

"Still no green?" Necia walked up behind him and wrapped him up in her arms. "That's not like you."

"It's not ready yet. But soon. And you shouldn't be touching me after your bath. You'll get all dirty."

"Tulland, I turned that poor tub black before I was done with it. A little bit of clean soil is nothing compared to how clean I feel right now."

Tulland looked down at his hands. There was quite a bit more still on them than just soil.

"I should go myself." Tulland reached into his seed bag for one of his assortments of food seeds, broke it open, and scattered it. After laying five or six of the packets down, he hit them with an enhancement, watching as sprouts almost immediately appeared on the soil. "Can you water these? Or get someone to do it, I mean."

"I can." Necia put her chin down on Tulland's filthy hair and kept it there until he shook her off. "Just come back soon. I wouldn't want to get attacked while you're out."

Tulland didn't think there was much chance of that. As he walked towards the center of town, he took another look at how much different this zone was. Where the last safe zone had offered only the cast-off, ramshackle buildings adventurers had tossed up for themselves over the centuries, this settlement held to a higher standard of living.