Infinite Farmer-Chapter 135: Plants

“Potter, White. Glad to have you.” In the ten minutes it had taken Necia to find the members of leadership they knew the best, Tulland had already tilled out all the space it would take him to plant his farm. “I was wondering if you’d like me to do something dumb. It would take everyone’s help and might not work.”

“Huh. Quite the sales pitch.” White leaned up against a tree and took a deep breath. “What do you need from us to try it?”

“We’d need to not fight in the first two phases. Probably. Just hunker down behind trees and survive the arrows.”

“That’s a big ask.” Potter scratched his chin. “We’d probably lose a few people due to bad luck anyways, you know.”

“I know. And we can still do almost everything I want to do while fighting the first two phases, but it would limit our upside,” Tulland said.

“Would it protect the downside? Would fighting in the battles help us survive if your plan doesn’t work?”

“Absolutely.” Tulland started scattering what seeds he’d need for the next part of the battle, empowering them for quick growth as he did. It was a long time since he could ignore quality entirely in terms of his enhancements, and the seeds felt more alive to him than any he had planted in a long time. “It’s just that the benefit of what I’m trying to do, if it worked, would be much more limited.”

“We can decide that once we have all the details. Tulland, what else would you need?” White asked.

“A very sneaky fighter. Someone who could get right up to the walls alone and survive.”

“Right up to the walls is doable. Surviving is harder. Necia, could you go find Licht? It looks like he might be needed,” Potter said.

“On it.” Tulland silently blessed Necia for falling behind him in support so quickly. Having someone who trusted him to work as the foundation for this whole process was impossible to over-value. “Did you see where he went?”

“With the other ranged fighters, talking strategy, if I know him.”

Necia walked off, and Potter took a long hard look at exactly what plants Tulland was putting in the soil for the first time. Tulland let him look, and White kept quiet for the next several seconds as the old scholar tried to reverse engineer the plan.

“I think I have the general idea of it,” Potter said after nodding his head a couple of times. “There are two elements that both have to succeed, correct?”

“To win big, yes.”

“And you aren’t sure of either of them?”

“They both should work. That’s the most I can promise.”

“Huh.” White said. “All right then. Let’s do it.”

“You said you were waiting for the details,” Potter said. “So did I.”

“You already understand them but didn’t object. And I’m not going to understand them anyway. Licht will help, and everyone else will jump at the chance of a big victory. Most of them understand they aren’t going more than a few more floors anyway, after that level description. That’s everything you need, right?”

“Actually,” Tulland said. “I need one more person. But he won’t mind.”

“Who?”

“Brist. I’ll probably need him to punch something.”

“Oh. Yes then.” White smiled. “He won’t mind at all.”

—

Each of the two sallies was harder to wait through than Tulland had imagined. Not so much for him, since he could hide out in his farm behind a tangle of Clubber Vines, or for defensive builds like Necia’s. For lighter-weight builds, it was a harder thing. He watched Licht take a dozen near-miss shots that injured him without actually putting him in danger, and heard a few screams during each of the two attacks that later on turned out to be fatal.

“Don’t worry too much. There were always going to be losses. It’s not easy, but it’s not your fault. Even if this doesn’t go well, it’s not your fault.” White patted Tulland on the shoulder reassuringly. “We all chose this. How did you figure out this was even possible, anyway?”

“Something a teacher told me once. About the power of plants,” Tulland said.

“In the bonus dungeon?”

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“I asked her about it too, but no. Even further back.”

It had been a sunny day on Ouros, dead in the middle of what amounted to their summer, and Tulland had almost tripped over a tiny crack in the road. The main road that made a ring around the city was paved in parts by big, flat stones mortared together. The initial work was perfect, but over time various stones had dipped while others had raised, which made it a bit more uneven than they had started out.

Tulland had tripped over a crack caused by none of that, or by weathering, or by temperature changes. Instead, it was a small flower that had pushed its way past the mortar towards sunlight, splitting the seal between the rocks as it grew.

“How does it do that?” Tulland had pointed to the plant. “I can squish it down with my hand if I want, but it’s strong enough to break stone?”

“Not quite stone, but yes. It’s an understood thing, in the sense that it’s been observed.” His tutor bent down to look at the plant. “We don’t really know how the plant does it, as you’ve mentioned. And so we don’t know how to stop it.”

“It just doesn’t seem realistic to me.” Tulland pushed down on the plant again. “I’m stronger than the plant, but I couldn’t break stone.”

“There are different kinds of strength. This one has been studied, and one of the things we do know about it is that this strength allows plants to grow in ways they otherwise couldn’t, moving small objects out of the way of their roots as they search for better soil and water. It’s something every plant has, to my knowledge. Part of their own strength, which as you’ve noticed is an entirely different kind than ours.”

In the bonus dungeon, his plant-master teacher hadn’t understood this occurrence much better, except to note that it had something to do with the availability of water, since plants in a drought were worse at it. Here in the tower, he was relying on both of his teachers being right as well as a good, solid boost from his powers to accomplish something that should have been impossible.

“Is it working?” Necia looked towards the tower. “I can’t tell.”

“It might not be.” Tulland pumped another load of power towards the seeds, feeling them take it in even at a great distance. “I don’t know how long it should take. Do we have time?”

“A few more minutes.” Potter looked at the sun. “Not more than that. After that, it becomes too much of a risk.”

It was the last application of Primal Growth that did it. It wasn’t a grand effect, and the wall didn’t crumble. Instead, everyone was treated to a single loud cracking sound that reverberated through the forest, and no movement from the wall at all.

“Time to go?” Brist was chomping at the bit. “I can hit that big rock?”

“Yes. Don’t lose your way. Thanks, Brist.” Tulland clapped him on the back as White ordered their troops forward. In front of them, the wall was loaded with archers who were once again reduced to the normal range they should have always been able to fire. “Don’t die, all right?”

“None of your business if I do. I’m a grown man, Tulland.” Brist whooped and sprinted forward. “I’ll see you on the other side!”

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The first volley of arrows should have turned Brist into a pincushion. He had a good ability to dodge incoming attacks and sky-high vitality, but even he couldn’t deal with the concentrated attack of an equally leveled army. The fact that he was still alive was almost entirely a matter of bombardment, not from the castle walls but from the accumulated throwing arms of the safe zoners.

Being leveled was a hell of a thing. Tulland couldn’t throw well at all, since his combat skill was so centered around his weapon use. Almost everyone else could, from the ranged fighters down to the lowliest melee warrior class. And at very high levels, they could all throw much farther than they were supposed to.

Necia had brought up that Tulland could only use so many plants, but that had only reminded him that some of his plants didn’t need orders to work, or needed less than others and only at certain times.

The moment he realized that, he started growing Achewoods, more than he had ever grown in one plot before, and attached Acheflower buds to them. By the end, he had produced hundreds and hundreds of Acheflowers and piled them up for the taking. Everyone had some, and as Tulland gave his first order to explode, there were hundreds of them in the air around the front of the castle, bursting until the air in front of the castle was a thick, irritating, and most importantly, opaque curtain of yellow.

Under the cover, Brist still took several arrow shots to his arms and legs. It was nothing that could stop him. He weathered the damage, made it to the wall, and hit it with every bit of magic-enhanced, glowing, tripled force he could muster.

Now was the time for grand, impressive changes. Buoyed upwards by the force of dozens and dozens of vines whose seeds Licht had planted the day before, the wall’s mortar had cracked in several places, and was unable to deal with the incoming force of Brist’s one big hit. A section of wall as wide as a street groaned horribly as it tilted backward, then dragged itself free of the greater wall before crumbling to the ground.

Any initial attempts by the uncrushed enemies in the castle to come through the gap and surprise their assailants were met by a carpet of Clubber Vines not quite sufficient to kill but more than up to the task of delaying them for a split second. In that timeframe, they were hit by dozens more Acheflowers, all of which exploded in the small cavity and halted any progress outwards until Tulland’s people got there.

There were still casualties. A small-ish magic user whose class Tulland had never really understood was grounded by three unlucky arrows, all of which hit him randomly through the fog. A few others fell in the rush, either injured or dead. Tulland kept moving forward with the group, and yelled for the rest of the flowers they had to be thrown. Some went over the wall entirely, while others settled on the parapets. All blew up, giving them a few seconds of precious cover to breach the wall.

When they were in, the greater part of the group went after the warriors on the ground while Licht led a combination of speedy ranged and quick melee fighters to the wall to take down the archers. After that, things got chaotic. Tulland stabbed out with his pitchfork, hardly ever finding targets through the yellow fog and hardly injuring them when he did.

His Chimera Sleeves did a little better. Their instinctual way of fighting was even better than the Clubber Vines, killing and ripping through targets he couldn’t even see. Once, a vine on his arm actually caused him to kill an enemy by attacking at it, pulling the weapon-arm it was attacked to a fraction to the left, and lining up a shot Tulland would never have made by himself.

That’s something. I wonder if I could train them to do that on purpose.