Infinite Farmer

Chapter 38: Gnawing Ambusher

The river being adjacent to the farm was nice, in that the soil was good and moist without being overly wet, and more water was just a scoop of his bag away. But it also represented a sort of risk, given that the river might flood at any time. As soon as Tulland had placed all the seeds in his initial planting, he got to work shoveling dirt from deeper in the forest, hefting it over to the opposite side of his staked farm area into a huge pile for flood resistance.

It took the better part of the day to do, but by the end of the day, Tulland had built something like a berm around the two sides of the farm that would protect it when the river flooded. The wonder of stats meant that the berm was almost as high as his shoulder, representing the better part of a few big craters he had dug out of forest floor unlucky enough to be conveniently adjacent to the project.

He wasn't sure it would absolutely hold when the flooding came, but he had it packed down as firmly as he could and hoped it would prove to be enough. To increase the chances further, the entire wall was studded with briar seeds, planted without fertilizer and little hope of growing well. But they had a different advantage. Numbers. If there was one thing there was no shortage of in his pack, it was briar seeds. He had hundreds of the seeds without their fruit flesh, tucked away in their own little sack waiting for whatever use he could find for them.

Tulland had also been busy with his magic, taking any spare power he had and applying it to the plants, regeneration cycle after regeneration cycle. The recent increases to his stats were really showing their worth now. Every time his magic pool regenerated and was applied to the work, he was able to see an actually visible bump in the growth of the briars, and over time, even a noticeable growth in the usually much slower-growing trees. It was gratifying, especially as he watched the root structures of the briars take hold in his berm like a kind of organic, creeping glue that added structural integrity to the protective barrier. By the time he had reached a point of diminishing returns so small any more applications of magic power would be truly useless, he had a good foot and a half of briars. And an idea.

Command Plant, right? It has to do more than I'm using it for. I've had two ideas for ways it could be useful and both have worked, but I've hardly tried to stretch the limits. And if I could… it could be big.

Dropping his shovel into the back of his pack, Tulland sat on the dirt, closed his eyes, and focused. He basically understood what he wanted from the briars, but figuring out enough ways to communicate it to them that he wouldn't be misunderstood or ignored was a job in and of itself.

He imagined the briars stretching out, growing past the length they were ever intended to be. Of stretching towards the sun, of reaching prey that would have evaded them before. Of spending whatever they had to in terms of their normal strength and thickness to be in all ways longer, taller, and farther-reaching.

Tulland wasn't sure if they heard him, but after spending twenty minutes on the task and seeing no difference, he figured they either had or he was doomed to fail, no matter how much effort he put towards the task. Turning towards the high, eroded bank at the forest end of his farm, he moved on to the task of giving himself enough shelter to survive whatever the next wave of terror was that this forest had planned for him.

As much as he had pumped power into the berm, it wasn't as if he had ignored his farm entirely. In reality, the majority of his power had still gone to the farm proper, and the back edge of the area was studded with good, strong, and soon-to-be adult briars ready for use. Just on the other side of an intentionally thick patch of the vines, he carved away at the soil, carefully removing just enough dirt to make a Tulland-sized tunnel beneath the forest floor. Luckily, the dirt was packed hard and dense past the first several inches of digging, and it would be stable in everything minus a mighty shaking of the earth.

Of course, that's a possibility here. But it's only one risk out of dozens. I'll take that bet.

Tulland dug until he had a few feet of shelter, then curved the tunnel around to make an exit coming out of the same wall several feet away. If someone was to attack him while he was in there, he didn't want to have no way of escape at all. And having both outlets to his sleeping-place in his controlled, briar-covered farm was a relief.

Not that it was enough. Before going to sleep, Tulland decided to throw a few handfuls of briars out over the ground on top of the tunnel, hoping to hold it together just that much better with roots. Hitting them with a quick burst of Enhance Plant, he crawled into his tunnel, set his remaining body-vines on guard mode at his foot and head, and settled down for a long-overdue and much-needed sleep.

—

Waking up in The Infinite had, until now, been a mostly uninteresting thing. But on this floor, there was an actual day-night cycle. Tulland had arrived in a sort of near-night light condition and relied on a pretty bright moonlight to see far enough to find his new farm plot. But now, it was a bright, cheery atmosphere.

Almost too bright. What the hell?

Even deep in his tunnel, it was bright enough that opening his eyes was a bit shocking. As Tulland shimmied out of the darkness to the light, it got endlessly worse. His garden was doing well, even shockingly so, but part of the reason why was that no amount of forest canopy cover could have possibly cut the vast amount of light coming from the sky. It was like the place had doubled up on suns, even though only one shone in the sky, as per the usual way of things.

Worse, the temperature was going absolutely crazy. It was early morning, at least judging by how long Tulland thought he had slept. But it was already hotter than it had ever been on Ouros save the very deepest parts of the sunny season. And the leaves of the two trees above, as well as most other trees in the area, were closing, giving little relief from the sun's rays. Tulland opened his System's connection again.

If this is going to get worse, I'd better be ready. Right?

Why would I care? Do as you will.

Smiling at the return of the System he knew and distrusted, Tulland started taking a look at his vines, finding something truly shocking had happened. Whatever he was trying to do with his intent had either worked, or had prompted The Infinite to take pity on him. Either way, he was staring down some very, very long vines.

"Ah, too bad. I was hoping to be a cloud of vines, eventually. A ten-foot death zone of thorns."

Maybe one day. These monstrosities are pretty much useless.

"I was going to use them for the cloud of death. But now? They have a very important job. Shade." Confirming both of the new levels to his Botanical Engineer skill, Tulland grabbed one of the vines and dragged it from the far side of the berm all the way to the wall backing his farm, where he stuck it into the raised ground. Satisfied that the vine would stay put, he went and got another and another until he had built a kind of perverse, sharp lattice over the whole grounds.

By now, sweat was stringing in Tulland's eyes. His clothes were soaked, and he was annoyingly sticky. He had no idea how his raised vitality would interact with more mundane human concerns like dehydration, but he doubted it would be a very good idea to try and find out.

Once Tulland's new lattice was built, the unfiltered sun's rays were actively beginning to hurt his skin, burning it red as he worked. He took another few minutes of concentrated shovel work to divert a small amount of water from the river, brought to his farm through what would normally be a counter-productive, land-hogging channel. Today, he figured any amount of evaporative cooling couldn't hurt. Bringing the flow of water as close as he could to his tunnel, he ran and dunked himself in the river before diving back into the relative cool of the tunnel.

Outside, the temperatures began to rise. The stream was soaking the soil around his farm, which was all well and good, but Tulland watched as his vines began to wrinkle and wilt. The lattice went first, dying before his eyes as the sun dehydrated the vines almost to dust.

"Come on. You have wet soil. You can make it." Tulland was pumping use after use of his Enhance Plant skill into the farm. It helped, but just wasn't enough. The plants were wilting and failing, starting with the edge of the farm and working their way inward. Tulland wasn't doing much better, but frequent trips to the make-shift irrigation channel to soak his clothes were at least keeping him from passing out. It was a couple degrees cooler in his farm than anywhere else, including the miniscule shade at the trunks of the trees. "You can do it, plants. I need you there, to block the sun."

Just when he thought all was lost, help for his plants came from an unlikely source. Out of nowhere, a small furry animal bolted into his plot, apparently looking to take cover in the same shade Tulland had created for himself.

Tulland was not eager to fight anything at the moment, but it turned out there was no need to. As soon as the weakened, woozy animal got anywhere near his vines, it was immediately snatched off the ground in a storm of reaching, grasping thorns. Tulland watched it get torn apart as yet another Ambusher hit the borders of the farm, then another. None of them put up much of a fight as the vines ripped them to shreds, but each seemed to be contributing a bit of strength to the plants that killed it. Individually, they wouldn't have made much of a difference. But when dozens and dozens of animals fleeing the heat were taken as a whole, his plants were not only surviving, but thriving. Anything the heat could take out of them, the deaths of other monsters could apparently put right back in.

And the opportunities to kill were just getting bigger and bigger.