Infinite Farmer

The rest of the date went well. Really well according to Necia. Tulland hadn't realized it, but somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind, he was imagining that he'd be in trouble once he got out of the training zone. That he'd have transgressed some kind of hidden code having to do with the appropriate allotment of time between surviving a suicide run in a dungeon and taking care of his first boy-girl relationship. The feeling had gotten stronger and stronger as the time in the hidden arch zone had stretched on.

Synced back up with Necia's time, he was having a hard time not trying too hard to make up for the imaginary mistake.

"A river. That would be nice. If we could find a river to sit by." Tulland looked around desperately for any bit of romance the terrain had to offer. It was mostly just grass, unimpressive trees, and shrubs. "Or a tall hill. Or something."

"Or, Tulland, you could just walk with me and calm down. I'm having a good time. I promise." Necia grabbed Tulland's hand and squeezed. "Think about it. Do you need anything special besides me being here?"

"Not being attacked by monsters," Tulland offered.

"Point taken, but we already have that. I'm fine, really."

Necia's stomach chose that moment to rumble. Without her armor to blunt the sound, Tulland heard it loud and clear, and his stomach echoed the sound.

"Didn't they feed you in there? Don't tell me you got to feast while I was out here starving," Necia said.

"You didn't have time to," Tulland pointed out.

"I'm always starving. Now spit it out. What did you eat?"

"Absolutely nothing." Tulland lowered his eyebrows. "Which is confusing, now that I think about it. I was in there for weeks. I slept. I never really ate."

"Really?"

"Really. And I have no idea why." Tulland shrugged. "I guess it doesn't make sense to let someone die during a reward. Wouldn't be fair."

"Well, you are back in the world of the hungry now. Get to work."

Tulland was able to carry so much food in his Market Wagon that he'd likely never run out, provided he accepted that the System would sterilize any use besides sustenance straight out of it when he did. His cooking gear was small enough to carry in a pack, which left him in a good position to supply their picnic with the best food available.

Soon enough, they were laying on their backs, holding hands and looking up at a fake sky together.

"How long do you think we have before the next wave?" Tulland asked.

Tulland was hoping that he'd get at least a few days to put his newfound skill to use. If the butchering he had in mind went forward, his farm would take a serious power hit. Without time to recover from it, he'd be going into the next level weak. Weaker than he otherwise could have, anyway.

"Two days at least, three days at most. If you are asking me to guess," Necia said.

"How do you figure?"

Necia wobbled her head side to side uncertainly. "Just a feeling. We are all truly bad at changing formations at the moment, which means most of the sane adventurers feel vulnerable enough to keep at the work. The practice isn't fun, though. Once we are consistently getting things half right, most people are going to want to move on."

"You'd think they'd take any chance to improve," Tulland said.

"People like White and Potter will. But most adventurers aren't like them. The average adventurer here is someone who left behind all their peers a long time ago. Some of them never worked in teams to begin with. They are good at everything besides this. They'll be frustrated."

"You sound pretty sure."

"That's because I'm frustrated, too. If I wasn't teamed up with you, I'm not sure I wouldn't have registered my intent to move on with the arch myself already."

They spent another hour chatting and relaxing before Tulland's impatience to move on started to show, at least judging by Necia's reaction to it. She rose from the ground, straightened out her clothes, and offered Tulland her hand.

"Come on, you. I want to go see the show."

"The show?"

"Yes. There's an obsessive farmer I know who is about to take the knife to all his hard work while hoping he won't ruin the entire thing by doing it. He's probably going to cuss and whine the entire time. It should be fun to watch."

—

The big show, as Necia seemed to think of it, was about what she expected it to be. Tulland wasn't actually cursing, but that was only because he was so enveloped in his work that he wasn't forming full words in his non-stop, distracted mumbling.

Tulland had imagined that the process would involve a lot of chopping in the best farm he had ever made, and that he wouldn't like doing that much. He guessed it wouldn't be that difficult outside of the emotional toil. He was right about the first guess but couldn't be more wrong about the second. Every single plant, it turned out, was an entirely different challenge waiting to bend his mind in unexpectedly different ways.

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The modifications he was making purely to maximize the points value of various plants were the easiest. When he approached his first Lunger Briar, he felt the pruning part of Farmer's Intuition move forward based on his intent, instructing him to cut away all but a four or five inch segment of each vine, then to plant about twice as many in the same space. As he cut each briar, he could tell they'd never be the same height again, or any good at fighting. Still, they somehow felt leaner in a way he couldn't quite define.