Infinite Farmer

Chapter 22: Function of Bravery

Tulland kicked back from the wolf, hoping to get enough distance between him and the bite coming his way. At the same time, he stabbed out with his sharpened branch, something that had always turned out to be a good tactic with the first floor Lungers. He might not have hit with every single weapon strike he ever threw with his pitchfork or his now-lost club, but he had found that most enemies shied away from obvious pain. That distraction would give the vines more room to work.

Here, the vines weren't there to provide that synergy in the first place. Things had happened so fast that Tulland didn't have the moment it took to realize he should get them into action with Enhance Plant. And now, mid-lunge, avoiding the wolf's teeth was the only thing on his mind.

The wolf saw the strike from the spear coming and twisted out of the way in midair, which also forced it into a near-miss with its attack. It hit the ground to Tulland's side, pivoted faster than Tulland could keep up with, and attacked again, this time managing to come in high and fast enough to hit one of the points Tulland's armor didn't cover.

Tulland screamed as the wolf's teeth sunk into his tricep, and continued shrieking in agony as the monster hung in the air from his upraised arm.

As much as it hurt, Tulland didn't want to find out what would happen if he dropped his arm, let it plant its feet, and add extra leverage to the formula. Finally gathering his wits, he looked at the two vines closest to the wolf and sent a simple command.

Go.

Tulland had gotten so much into the habit of restraining the vines with mental commands as a type of training that he had almost forgotten how fast the briars could get into action if they needed to. The closer of the two briars loosened itself from his arm in no time at all, catching the wolf with the end of the briar that normally sat near his elbow while it unraveled the rest of its length from the other direction.

The vine on his other forearm made first contact about the time the bulk of the first vine finally reached the wolf and wrapped all the way from its cheek, around its neck and down to make a wrap on a foreleg for stability.

These higher level vines are smarter. Or something.

Tulland saw the wolf react to the Lunger Briars hitting, and almost prayed it wouldn't let go of his arm for another second or so. The wolf was good enough to oblige.

Without a strong knowledge of what the vines could do, it seemed to consider Tulland to be the more worthwhile target for the moment. It continued to press the attack, ripping wherever its teeth could find a gap in the thorns, apparently willing to tolerate the pain of the spikes in the roof of its mouth if that meant a chance at taking down his prey.

Before it could do more than that, Tulland managed to connect with the side of its head just once with his stick, sending it stumbling away with a yelp as it tried to find its footing for a final, fatal attack. It never quite got there. The last few moments had given the briars another moment to fully set themselves into a thorns-inward position, and to put the wolf on high alert as it started to move from discomfort to full-blown pain.

Only then did Tulland tighten the screws.

"Enhance Plant. Enhance Plant. Enhance Plant."

He wasn't aware he was saying it out loud before he heard his own voice loudly ringing out through the swamp and forced himself to stop.

The wolf more than made up for the loss of noise as Tulland got his own voice under control, yelping in surprise as the vines tightened all at once to drive their thorns deep into its neck, legs, and sides. It was only then that whatever vague wolf-math it was running finally prompted it to abandon all of its hopes for Tulland and turn its attention to freeing itself from the vines.

Tulland couldn't let the wolf do that. He really couldn't. The damage the wolf had done to his arm was seeping through his entire body, and he was still losing blood from the wound. He wasn't okay at all, and he was pretty sure another dose of damage like he just took would be enough to take him down for good if untreated.

Worse, the wolf was strong. Like the Forest Duke, the briars were slowing it down but not entirely stopping it. The vines were strong enough that the wolf's efforts weren't instantly breaking them, but Tulland could hear the briars straining and groaning against the pressure of the wolf's muscles. It could and would break them eventually if left to its own devices.

Instead of waiting for the wolf to tackle the vines on its own terms, Tulland went to work with his Ironbranch Sapling. The wolf had the wisdom to jerk back away from Tulland as he came in hard with the sharpened point of the makeshift spear, but even with its advantage in mud, it wasn't quite fast enough. Within a few steps, Tulland had closed the gap and stabbed the wolf in the chest just above its left front leg, then again in its right hind leg.

The wolf howled and tried to rear around to bite at the vines enveloping its movements, only to get two shallow stabs in the side of its neck for its trouble. Perhaps sensing that running away was a losing strategy, the wolf lunged weakly forward, mostly restrained by the briars as it did. Tulland got a very good attack in then, ripping the hide of the wolf with a long gash as the point of the branch and the wolf's weight in motion worked together to damage the animal.

This minor victory didn't come without a cost. The lunge strained the rearmost briar enough that even minor contact with the spear was enough to snap it. The wolf suddenly sped up as half of its shackles fell away, biting wildly at Tulland's legs as it became his turn to back away, stabbing again and again at the wolf in a somewhat vain attempt to keep it away.

Tulland considered unleashing another briar at the animal, but reconsidered. The wolf was smart enough not to bite directly at the vines on Tulland's lower legs, which limited its targets enough that it only periodically made contact with his flesh. If he didn't have the shin-guard briars, Tulland suspected it might have already torn his shinbone out by now.

Instead of letting any more of his defense go towards attack, Tulland got more aggressive. Backing up the wolf had worked just fine before, and the direction the battle was moving seemed to be almost entirely a function of bravery at this point. If the fight required Tulland to be more ferocious to be winnable, then that's what he'd do.

He doubled down on attacks with his spear, letting the wolf cut up his legs a bit in return for more and better strikes with the weapon, until a lucky shot went deep into the top of the wolf's shoulder and demolished what mobility it had left. It ineffectually tried to get away then, not just backing up but trying to escape entirely.

Tulland might have let it, too, if one of his vines hadn't been attached to the wolf. He couldn't afford to lose those just now, especially if this animal was a good indication of just how much harder the second floor was going to be.

He went crazy with his stabbings, forcing the wolf to attack him again. Those forced bites mostly missed, as Tulland put hole after hole in the wolf. At this point, the damage he had done went well beyond what it made sense for the wolf to have survived. He thought he knew why.

A normal warrior would have magical force in every hit. He would be shaking the wolf's life force out of it, blow by blow. And on top of that, he'd be doing more physical damage to the wolf's body. These things weren't meant to fight with someone like me. The Infinite can't get the visual right when I'm basically stabbing things to death with a sewing kit.

But even a thousand strikes from a needle could add up to enough damage over time. As Tulland's head began to swim and he seriously worried he might fall unconscious before he could finish the job, the wolf finally took one more hit than it could weather, whined piteously, and collapsed.

Tulland dumped fully half the points into his vitality without even looking to see what the skill level up was. Retrieving his vine from the corpse of the wolf, he hefted the wolf's body across his shoulders and staggered away through the swamp. He couldn't afford another fight right now, and assumed the noise from the fight might be drawing in more monsters even then.

If another wolf shows up, maybe it will accept the body as tribute. I can hope, anyway. System?

Yes? That fight was pathetic, by the way.

I appreciate the vote of confidence. Tell me what you know about this area.

Are you ready to believe what I tell you? That seems unwise.

I can believe you or not. But I'll still have whatever story you feed me to mull on.

Ah. You believe you can outfox me. Double-guess my assertions. That sort of thing.

Are you going to help or not?

If it suits you. This swamp is not endless. Like the last floor, it appears you have been deposited on the border of two biomes. One is the wet, mucky terrain you see, and one is… rockier. Like the base of a mountain, in many ways.

And you know this how?

Because in exactly one direction, I can see it. I'm sure eventually The Infinite will restrict my vision to a field similar to what you can see, but for now, I can sometimes see in a direction unrestricted by the dozens of rules The Infinite has in play by default. If you make a right-hand turn, you will be on dry ground within a half minute or so. Now, if you please, turn off my ability to communicate. You have bigger concerns.

Tulland did just that, and briefly considered turning left instead of right. He didn't really think the System would lie outright for one simple reason. If he died, it was unclear in the terms of their bet that The Infinite would pay out at the seemingly enhanced rate it would for the skill, or if it would just give the Ouros System what it already expected from his death in the pre-wager sense.

Turning right, Tulland kept running as fast as he could. The wolf would have been heavy before he had a class, but now he was mostly just held back by how awkward the load was. Shifting it into a bit more balanced of a position helped, and within the half-minute or so that the System predicted, he finally felt the crunch of dry earth replace the squelch of mud as he moved out of the vines and into a much more open, barren terrain.

It was what Tulland thought of as a badlands, at least from the books his tutor had forced him to read about for his geology and map-making classes. It was an uneven, boulder-strewn mess, something that didn't offer a lot of cover that Tulland could use.

But it does have some. Over there.

Tulland sprinted towards the best chance he could see himself having, a sort of semicircle of boulders that backed up to a short, earthen wall, creating a small closed-off space that was still relatively open to the outside world. It wouldn't be much, but there was at least a chance that monsters walking by might miss him, so long as he was very quiet and they didn't have that good of a sense of smell.

Once Tulland was there, he got to work as quickly as he could. Segmenting the flesh of the wolf, he planted briars all around the edges of the space, including up on the earth wall that lined the back of it. This was a dry area, but he hoped the moisture in the wolf-meat would keep the briars going anyway.

Once Tulland had a place of safety to retreat to, he could take his time and really figure out the whole moisture issue. But he couldn't survive without a farm. That would be impossible for a farmer.