Infinite Farmer: A Plants vs Dungeon

“They didn’t use the trick ropes,” Tulland moaned as he watched the traveling carnival do its best job. The carnival that made the circuit between Tulland’s island, the mainland, and every other island on the way had missed the last year, victim of storms that had kept the entire island on half-rations of anything but fish for months. That meant that eight-year-old Tulland was, for the first time, finding himself a critic of what once had been a non-stop parade of wonders rolling past his young eyes. “Did they forget how?”

“Of course not, Tulland.” His uncle had patted his shoulder. “You don’t like what they are doing now?”

“It’s fine.” The carnival man was vaulting obstacles on the floor, sliding in the dirt under various large animals, and telling jokes. It wasn’t like it wasn’t fun. But it also wasn’t flying. The trick rope act took the man into the sky, and it was that part of the show that had stuck in Tulland’s mind for the last few years. “I like it. I just want the flying.”

“Hmm,” his uncle said. “Well, I’m sure it will be here. And it might turn out even better than you think. For now, can you guess what he’s going to try and jump next?”

The game of guessing what the man would or wouldn’t do as the next step in the performance held Tulland’s attention just long enough for something he really found interesting on its own to start happening. A man was in the support poles of the tent, near the top of the structure and throwing down clubs to the performer. As they came down from the sky, the man was catching them and effortlessly adding them one by one to a complex juggling pattern, putting the clubs up into the air, passing them around his back, and flipping them over his shoulder in a whirlwind of colorful motion.

Tulland’s breath was caught in his throat as the man, who was visibly at his limits, was thrown just one more club by the man on the roof. Throwing all his clubs high, he got hands on the new item, only to let every single club he had been keeping aloft fall clattering to the ground, juggled no longer.

Tulland didn’t care because it wasn’t a mistake. He gasped as he looked back up from the clubs to find the man was gone, then followed his uncle’s finger to find him once more. He was in the air, flying around the tent, drawing cheers from every soul in his presence. The last club was the trick rope, hooked to whatever manner of ropes, pulleys, and gears behind the scenes that made it do what it did.

“What did I say?” Tulland’s uncle laughed and clapped him on the back. “What do you think? Better, right?”

Tulland couldn’t argue. He was ready for the rope trick. He had been all year. But he wasn’t and couldn’t be ready for being surprised, and that had stripped off every bit of jaded mental preparedness he thought he had.

“Every year I think I’m going to know what’s coming next, and every year they change it.” His uncle’s eyes sparkled as he watched the man flip through the air and catch another rope that had just appeared from nowhere. “That’s why it’s worth the money, boy. It’s the showmanship.”

—

“It’s been more than two hours.” Tulland dumped another full tank of magical power into the farm, watching as his plants got that much taller. It just hadn’t been enough time since he got here for the actual points-value of the farm to matter, but he was too much a farmer these days to leave a plant less healthy than it could be. “How much longer, do you think?”

Impossible to say. I’d say it might want to catch you off guard, but it’s hard to see how that might happen unless you were to go to sleep. Otherwise, it’s likely something you should count in your favor. More rest is generally considered good.

I don’t know about that. With my stats, at this point I could go without sleep for days. My regeneration brings me back up to healthy in minutes, not hours. What do I need with rest?

Ahh. The classic question. It was once that this was the first lesson I made sure I taught.

Tulland resisted the reflex to roll his eyes. The System was going into a monologue. He fought off the reflex to stop it, mostly because there simply wasn’t anything better to do.

Do you recall that man? At the makeshift bar in the safe zone?

I do. The one who was drunk and tired.

Whether he’s killed by a beast or another adventurer, his cause of death will not be that thing. Do you know what it will be?

Tulland sighed. It was a tutor-riddle. He knew the answer to that kind of thing in his sleep.

The drink. The alcohol will have ruined him.

Wrong.

Wrong?

Wrong. Things like alcohol, Tulland, are symptoms. Every once in a while, a person just has too few defenses against the drink that their physical makeup is to blame, but as a usual thing, it’s something else. A troubled marriage. The loss of a child. A failure to find success in some other aspect of life, regardless of the effort spent.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

My uncle thought drunks were just men who refused to respect limits.

And by the time your uncle noticed they were drunk, that was true. What he didn’t see was a man who started his life as strong as anyone, and then failed to care for himself as he should have. Failed to take steps to prevent the creeping weakness until it was a thing your uncle could see as he passed the destroyed man in the street.

I have no way to know if that’s how it works, but even if it does, what does it mean for here?

It means you need to take steps to keep your mind in the battle. Even now, as you are doing well, one moment of carelessness or boredom could mean your death. Your body requires rest, yes, but so does your mind. You require entertainment and relationships, which, very frankly, you get from the same source. A lucky coincidence.

Necia?

I have known men who would have paid every bit of experience they had ever accumulated to have a relationship like that. Unfortunately for them, it was never the kind of thing that could be bought.Just found by luck, as you have.

That was much more value than Tulland had ever expected to hear the System assign to human relationships. On Ouros, it had dismissed most of Tulland’s friendships with a disdainful laugh. There wasn’t much time to consider what had changed, though, not with a new description choosing that moment to drop.

Wave Adaptations Complete! (Wave 10) As per the rules of this challenge, The Infinite is limited in what kind of data it can put into the tactical calculations it uses against you in its wave-by-wave adjustments. It can’t or at least doesn’t take into account its greater knowledge of you as it has observed it throughout your stay in The Infinite Dungeon. Instead, it has observed only what you have done in this place, and adjusted based on that. You’ve noticed it yourself. Tactics you held back until later were not adjusted for at all, or not adjusted for as thoroughly as they deserved. Cards you revealed late were truly treated as surprises, at least in a tactical sense. But that doesn’t mean that The Infinite isn’t keeping tricks. What you see in this next wave is the worst you will see in this level. If you defeat it, you win. But it carries surprises of its own, cards that were not yet revealed to you. Whether or not you possess what it takes to nullify these new advantages is left to you to determine.

Tulland was disturbed from reading between the lines on the notification by the sudden impact of the beast on the ground behind him. It was just one beast, this time, but what a beast it was

Perfected Beast Taking in lessons from each of your battles with its predecessors, this beast is improved in every aspect of its being to counter every aspect of what your class can do. Only using your abilities to their utmost will grant you a chance of surviving its terrors. The perfected beast is resistant to most forms of physical damage, and while it can be destroyed by those means, it will take a massive amount of effort to deal enough damage through its various forms of armor to end things once and for all. It is much stronger than any individual beast you have taken on so far, which is only slightly balanced by the fact that there is just one of in the entire tenth wave to deal with. It is only comparably fast to the beasts, but its increased size synergizes with that speed to make it a much more fearsome form. Perhaps the most significant change, however, is one that The Infinite hadn’t adjusted for in the last few waves. Your current build gives you a large advantage over group-type enemies as opposed to strong individual targets. May you rise to this last challenge.

That’s a big beast.

And it’s moving. Get your eyes open, boy. Fight.

The beast was as big as a very large wagon, or perhaps a very small house. Every inch of it was covered with fur, which was entirely inadequate at hiding that every bit of the animal’s body was driven by bulging, rock-hard muscle. If it got so much as a claw on Tulland, he’d be dead. There simply wasn’t enough room in the formula for any other outcome.

Tulland immediately gave up on conventional tactics. Instead, he reached into his Market Wagon storage space and emptied out the newest addition to his weird arsenal. Once again, this was a new thing that he tried after his farm was set up and his skills leveled. The skill didn’t treat the Steel Star fruits as weapons, even though Tulland had been using them as caltrops. Probably because they were seeds that would eventually grow into things. Either way, it meant Tulland had a nice surprise lined up for the beast sprinting at him.

The monster ignored the caltrops as it galloped towards Tulland, something that made complete sense if the caltrops were the same sharpened pieces of metal as before. These, however, were enhanced by Primal Growth for the first time.

All that added up to a much bigger enhancement to the seeds than the beast’s improved form had added defenses for. As the beast galloped over them, it picked up three of the caltrops, each of which cut through the pads of its reinforced feet like butter, embedding two-thirds of their total mass directly into the flesh of the monster. Given the monster’s huge size, it was still to the caltrops’ credit that this cut down its speed at all. Tulland closed the distance with it, using that tiny bit of breathing room to hit it in the ankle, slamming it with the hoe form of his Farmer’s Tool before pulling back and going for a different leg. He had found the hoe was incredibly hard to use in battle. But as there was no way to miss here so long as he found the time to swing it at all, his thinking was that chopping damage might work better than stabbing or clubbing damage would.

And he needed it to.

Tulland was just fast enough to fight with this thing, but his Clubber Vines were doing basically nothing to it, even when enhanced with Primal Growth. He needed to get at least one of its legs in bad shape for the next part of his plan to work, and he got the feeling he wouldn’t have multiple chances to maneuver it where he wanted it.

And, of course, he had no way of knowing just how damaged that would be. He held on for as long as he could before ducking away from a lunging attack. Luckily, the beast was off balance enough that it stumbled straight into his auxiliary garden that was mostly for growing combat briars.

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