Infinite Farmer

That was reasonable enough as requests went, but Tulland was far too occupied to do anything with it. Just keeping out of the range of trees meant constantly moving, and the vines were coming at a faster and faster pace now, like they had been holding back their true speed until they got a better idea of what Tulland and his group were capable of.

Finally, when a tree got close enough to burst several yards towards them at ten times the speed it had moved before, Necia was forced to jump out ahead to keep it from disrupting Tulland's flow. She knocked it clean out of the ground with a shield bash and managed to kill it with several strikes from her club, but her distance from Tulland prevented him from keeping the vines off her as well as he could have. By the time he fought his way back to her, she was covered.

He raised his Farmer's Tool to cut the vines off of her only to be ambushed himself and more than half of them sprung from her towards him. He ashed most of them, but a few luckier vines managed to get through to his arms before he could neutralize them. A few moments after that, both he and Necia were struggling under piles of the blighted plants, maintaining some level of freedom but unable to get completely out of their grasp.

"Bad." Necia gasped. "Really bad."

"Should I hit you? Revenge strike?" Tulland asked.

"I used it on the tree. And Yuri is… where is Yuri?"

"Over here, idiots." It took Tulland a moment to realize Yuri was talking to the plants and not him. Her hand was glowing, holding on to a spark just like the ones she usually pressed into Necia to enable her to fight more. "Come and get it."

That might work. It depends on what the plants want. If they only sense the magic force… they do. They are moving. Make the most of it, Tulland.

Necia looked positively sick, but the vines quickly retracted from her in favor of chasing after Yuri and freed her enough to stand.

"Necia. Protect Yuri. Sorry. I have to…"

"I understand. Give them hell," Necia said.

Tulland trusted Necia would be able to get to Yuri, but she wouldn't be able to hold off the blighted plants for long. If he wanted to come back to anything besides one or more drained corpses, he'd have to make this quick.

The other System had already given him the key. He chopped a tree clear in half as he ran towards the treeline where most of the vines had been coming from, not waiting for it to dust out as he moved at his new, absurd top speed. If what the other System had said was true, there was a source of these things somewhere.

It took no time at all to find one. He could have hardly missed them. Now that they had revealed themselves, the source of the vines looked like writhing masses of snakes or worms on the ground, sending out streamer after streamer of constricting death towards the grove.

Tulland got the hoe out and struck at the center of it. He figured if he could chop enough of it, he wouldn't have to look for the delicate stalk that held it all together. He was wrong, at least in the sense that he assumed he'd be able to chop a lot of it. The stalk didn't break in one hit, instead stopping his hoe mid-swing. He had got better than halfway through it, though, and another swipe took it out of the ground entirely. The streamers fell limp, making it halfway to the ground before they dissolved into fog.

The second tangle of brush didn't take nearly as long. He pumped more energy into Primal Growth, pushing his chimera vines to their limit but busting the stem in a single hit. After that, it was a race against time. He was sure Necia and Yuri were giving it their best, but this was an enemy that was simply beyond them. Every second, he ashed a new plant to nothingness, and prayed it would be enough.

Quicker than he could have imagined, he made a complete cycle around the grove. Most of the plants had been huddled on one side, and the second half was more of a sprinting, spotting, and destroying game. It felt like an eternity. By the time Tulland hand neutralized the last plant, he had worried himself so sick about Necia that he felt like he was going out of his mind.

When he broke the treeline to the clearing again, he saw Necia and Yuri huddled on the ground, the latter completely motionless while Necia weakly cradled her in her arms. Around them were several dozen trees, all of which were seconds from getting into their attack range.

Something in Tulland broke.

He felt a bone in his foot crack from the force of his lunge towards the fight, something he hadn't known was even possible. The Chimera Sleeves should have been maxed out, but for some reason were responding to his need and overdriving further than he thought they could. Several of them registered as damaged in his farmer's sense, but it was all worth it as he moved faster than he ever had before. Somewhere, some monster was roaring. Tulland realized, with a shock, that it was him.

By the time he realized what he was doing, three trees were down, and the others had all changed their targets from the two girls to the healthier, more energy-packed madman that had burst onto the scene. The way Tulland was feeling right now, that turned out to be a mistake. He overdrove the Chimera Sleeves again, stabbing through two of the trees at once and sending them tumbling into a third.

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Just like that, the battlefield was cleared.

"Scary." Yuri slurred on the ground. "Serious. You weren't kidding."

"No." Necia flopped into the grass, which ashed from the collision with her armor. "I wasn't."