Infinite Farmer

Chapter 37: Shock

Tulland thought he knew what being in shock was like by now. He had been through life and death combat, fled from near-certain death, been suspended by spikes in a briar patch, and had broken bones. Compared to his life before coming to The Infinite, he was living in a constant, horrible waking nightmare that hit him like a sledgehammer from unseen angles at unexpected times. He thought, reasonably, that he was starting to get used to it all.

This was different. This was much worse. Head swimming for an entirely different reason now, he shot back from the helmet, only to rear forward again almost immediately as he lost the contents of his stomach. Wiping his mouth without thought, he looked back at the glinting metal, now almost in shadow again. His torch had gotten lost in the shuffle somehow, and Tulland had no motivation at all to know how and where it had gone.

"No. No. I just saw you," Tulland said into the dark. "I just saw you. How did you do this? How?"

He was aware he was not making much sense, at the very least because he was talking to someone who couldn't possibly talk back. He also just didn't have the vocabulary to talk about what he was feeling. She had just been with him a few days ago. She was just not only healthy, but healthier than he had ever been able to imagine a person being. Strong. Invincible, even. She was a literal giant built to survive things. She couldn't just die.

And yet there her helmet was. Cold. Bloodied and broken. Contorted in a way that simply could not allow for life.

"No. No. Absolutely not." Tulland said. He could not accept this. He would not accept this. And he simply didn't. He sat, for a while, not accepting it. "No."

You've been there for hours. Are you aware of that?

Tulland wasn't aware, actually, even though he saw the fire had burned itself down to the soft glow of embers and even though his eyes were now red from exposure to the smoke.

I was aware. I'm just thinking.

Lies. You are lying.

You are one to talk.

Fair. And yet, you have been sitting there for hours, staring a helmet. Why?

You know full well why. You know what this means.

There was a specific feeling to when the System was thinking about something. It was different from how things felt when it was done talking, or when it was without the words with which to reply. Consideration left a certain taste in the air between them that Tulland had long since become familiar with.

I do, and I am sorry. But you must be aware that it does not necessarily mean that. It's a likelihood. A probability. It's far from a proof.

Then what's your explanation of what happened here?

That I'm sure of? Nothing. But imagining a situation where your friend was being chased so closely that she could not recover her helmet after some misadventure knocked it from her head is not difficult. This place is chaotic, Tulland. This floor in particular is so. In a place where anything can happen, anything else can happen as a result.

Tulland mulled that over as best he could through his shock and despair. The System wasn't wrong, exactly. It wasn't overplaying its hand, demanding that he accept Necia was just fine in a situation where it was clear she probably wasn't. That made it harder to simply dismiss the idea that something had happened besides her dying and getting dragged off by some horrible monster. It was possible.

So how do I find out then? How do I prove she's alright?

Frankly, you can't. Not unless you see her out there. Not unless you find her by happenstance. And you may not be able to do that at all, depending on the reality of the situation.

The System paused here, as if being careful with its words. For what it was worth, Tulland appreciated that more than he liked to admit at that moment.

But you certainly can't do that here. Unless she comes back to here, that is. You need to be on the move, as soon as the weather allows you to. To establish your farm here. To push forward. As you have before.

Tulland nodded reluctantly. He couldn't find any fault in what the System was saying. In the way that had become more and more odd to him as time stretched on, he was finding that the System at least occasionally actually tried to help him and gave him advice that was, in the moment, solid advice.

Alright. Then what's my next move?

First, you need a plan to leave this place. If Necia did run into a force that could injure her here, it is a risk to you as well. Likely more so. You need the safety of shelter. And if you are to have that, you must build your own farm.

And then the System was gone. Tulland had cut the connection in case the System tried to leverage this moment for some kind of gain. Days ago, he had realized the System didn't actually have the ability to see him during the times he did this, at least not in any way that mattered. He had confirmed as much with The Infinite, who was more than willing to answer when he asked.

Tulland sat by the mouth of the cave for an hour or so, until the light started to cut through the clouds and illuminate the area just a bit. There was no use mopping around. The thing to do right now was exactly what the System had said. He couldn't help anyone or anything by doing nothing.

Instead, he gingerly picked up Necia's helmet and placed it into his pack, tucking it at the bottom. He wasn't sure why he did that, but it felt like the right thing to do. Once that was done, he looked outside and found that the weather in this area had patterns. He could see leaves with what looked like frost damage, and bark that had been scorched. Much more than he would have expected from a normal forest, there were fallen trees scattered around, some which looked like they had been ripped in half by the wind.

But there were plants. Plenty of them. Mosses that looked hardy, shrubs that looked quick-growing. And one towering, thick-trunked type of tree that stood guard over it all. They all had seeds, and Tulland had the levels to make use of them.

Tulland was standing at the other exit, the one he realized must exist from the fact that there was a place for the smoke in the tunnel to go. It was in a lower spot, perhaps a course the river had once taken in some ancient time. But it was as large an exit as the entrance on the banks had been. Necia had chosen her hiding place well, in that way. She couldn't have been cornered there.

While waiting, Tulland took in what he could and finally the hail began to taper off. Slapping his face to try and shake off the remainder of the trauma to his mind, he took off running as soon as the size of the hailstones shrank below what would injure him. It still hurt to be pelted, but only for the time it took him to run a few hundred feet away and climb into the boughs of one of the larger, more lushly leafed trees.

He climbed. If he was going to find a place to be his farm, he needed perspective on the surrounding area. At his current strength, something like climbing a tree was absurdly easy compared to what his subconscious mind expected it to be. Letting his body take over, he moved from branch to branch, establishing and reestablishing balance and leverage at each new position until he was finally high enough to take a serious look around.

Mostly, he was seeing more of the same compared to where he was. Most of the view was blocked by the tops of other trees, while the majority of the terrain he could see was clearly ravaged by various kinds of harsh weather. Most of the soil was cratered by hail and covered in wilted plants that looked like they had been damaged by blistering heat, extreme cold, or both.

But one place held more promise. As the last little bit of the hail-fall diminished to nothing, he saw a place far in the distance that just might work.

As strong as his body was, Tulland couldn't bring himself to jump down from the top of the tree. Carefully and quickly descending, he took off at a jog towards the area, keeping as much cover between him and prying eyes as he could.

The target was a small clearing, not nearly big enough to be considered a field and barely growing plants at all outside of a few of the hardier types of mosses Tulland had seen. What made it special was that it was under the cover of two of the largest trees Tulland had seen here so far, one of which was naturally leaning slightly above the clearing. The other appeared to have suffered a break in its trunk at some point, which bent it at an unnaturally sharp angle over the area from the other side.

And between the two of them, they look like they are letting in a bit of light and not much else. There's only a few hail-dents in the soil, and it's right by the river. I can grow stuff there. I know I can.

On the far, forest-side of the clearing most distant from the river, the ground rose sharply into a kind of dirt wall, probably representing the edge of where the river was able to erode away at the ground during floods. It represented both a chance and a danger. There was plenty Tulland thought he could do with the terrain, but it came with the risk of being washed away. Still, he thought he could grow there.

His Farmer's Intuition skill was telling him that he wasn't wrong, and although he was unsure how much he could trust the new skill, it was still by far his best, most apparently reliable source of information about such things.

Once he got to the area, there was no time to waste. Outside of the area that the river cut through, sunlight was at a premium in this place. This was the best chance he was likely to get at a growable area, and that meant he needed to throw almost everything he had at it. Holding back only a tactically small amount of seeds, he tilled the ground in a hurry, then began to plant.