Infinite Farmer-Chapter 158: Mind Revver

Tulland followed along after the man, who was nothing if not a consistent walker. Tulland got the sense that he could outpace the man easily, leaving him in the dust and never seeing him again if that was what he wanted. That said, he somehow also knew that so long as he matched the man’s pace, the man would eventually walk him to death. He had all the inevitability of a falling rock, putting one foot in front of the other in perfect rhythm without a single deviation from form.

“Are you a walking class? I thought you were a lawman, but…”

“But what?” The man looked over his shoulder. “You see something?”

“Your form. It’s perfect. It doesn’t change. I couldn’t have walked that perfectly at your level. It’s just I can’t see a lawman class having a dedicated walking skill.”

“Lots of classes have footwork skills.”

“Not footwork. Walking. It’s that precise.”

Necia says to stop bothering the poor man about his feet. She says it’s concerning.

Tell her she’s getting all of this secondhand. If she saw him walk, she’d get it.

She says she still wouldn’t talk that much about another person’s feet.

“I’m surprised you could see that much. High levels, I guess. Quite the thing.” The old man spun around at Tulland, iceberg slow by Tulland’s current standards. He was smooth though. There was no waste at all in the way he moved. “I was a trainer class, never a lawman until after I was the best choice left to do it. I work hard to let people assume otherwise. But that’s what you are seeing.”

“You can’t fight?”

“Oh, I can fight. I’m even strong by most folk’s standards. High-level trainers tend to be that way. Not at first, mind you. The early levels were weak enough, I’d say. It’s a class that rewards you if you get far enough in it,” the man said.

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then it rewards everyone else.”

Tulland wanted there to be some variety to the plants here he hadn’t seen yet. He really did want it, in a way that he knew was coming from his farmer’s class. He was on a whole new world, and should have been able to see all the new plants and learn from them. He should have been able to twist them into things completely other so that he could them bring into combat.

Instead, it was just the same low-quality, nearly dead grass everywhere.

“I hate this,” Tulland said. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I hate it too. This used to all be flowers. From here for miles out. They called it the Bloomway.” The man pointed to a hill in the distance. “I once asked a girl to marry me out there.”

“I didn’t know you were married.”

“I wasn’t. Good thing too. I would have made her miserable. Other way around too. We had fun, though. Even then. She made me understand what a bad idea it was without hurting me. She was good like that.”

“Was?” Tulland winced sympathetically at the old man’s back. “If you don’t want to talk about it…”

“Blight got her. She was in the capital when it hit. You couldn’t meet that description and survive it. At least not unless you got lucky.”

“Got it.”

“Point being, this was a pretty place. A good place to walk through. Farms all around it. Animals all through it. Plenty of meat, plenty of grain, plenty of everything. And now it’s just the liar’s grass.”

“Liar’s grass?”

“What we used to call it. It looks like it could sustain cattle, but it can’t. It doesn’t take very much from the soil, so it doesn’t have very much to give. I guess that means it survives where other stuff can’t.”

“Can’t you just put what’s been taken out of the soil back? I mean…”

“Shh.” The old man held his hand up, pausing the conversation. “Something’s moving.”

“Not much cover for it, if there is.” Tulland thought he might just be able to hear a quiet rustling, like the wind blowing a few leaves across the ground. If so, it didn’t seem like much to be worried about. “This something we have to care about?”

“It is if it’s… oh, of course. We’re dead, Tulland. Sorry.”

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Every one of Tulland’s nerves went on high alert, not least of all because of how sincere the old man’s apology seemed to be. There was a sure finality to it that made Tulland know that whatever was coming for him was undefeatable by most standards. He could only hope it wasn’t by his.

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Then the ground yawned open. It was the same thing he had seen when he was still fighting for his life, if a little less violent and powerful. The crack opened up to a fraction of the width it had with their dungeon, even while the darkness and general unnatural feeling of the thing was the same.

“It’s coming. Blight beasts. Further away and we could run outside of their territory, but this close… there’s no chance,” the man said.

“I mean… couldn’t we just fight them?” Tulland watched the entrance, his pitchfork at the ready. He sent one of his Chimera Sleeves to the entrance, just in case. Most monsters didn’t identify them as a threat unless they attacked, so he figured he’d be all right. “I’m at least okay to try.”

“No, you don’t understand.” The man rubbed his face. “A normal dungeon can be cleared. Before the blight, it used to be an annoyance when they ran out of beasts. It meant less experience. This dungeon will spawn hundreds of beasts. Thousands of them. It will circulate them through the surrounding area, sapping what power it can from what’s left of the soil. Everything it takes, it will feed back to the blight.”

“Sounds bad.” Tulland scratched his face. “Real bad. But the numbers are the main problem, right? If someone could handle those, they’d be able to destroy the pillar as usual?”

“Sure. But you’d have to be absurdly powerful to do it.”

Just then, the first monster issued from the mouth of the dungeon, as dark as pitch and obviously influenced by the blight, whatever it was. Somehow, though, it didn’t seem to carry the same punch the ogres had.

Blight Needlehog

As an emissary force of the blight, this abomination is an ogre in both form and function because the blight willed it so. At its core, it is something other, a darkness representative of the illness that is the blight, following its mindless commands as it works to render the territories into which the blight wishes to expand more vulnerable.

It is otherwise a conventional needlehog, a mid-grade dungeon threat. This variant deals elemental damage related to the blight, both through its spines and its razor sharp teeth…

Tulland stopped reading and sent a command to his vine. As the spiny pig-thing charged forward, the sleeve opened, let it pass into its constriction-area, then snapped shut, dissipating the monster into a cloud of black gas. It took some damage from the experience, but not much. Tulland sent a few of its friends over to help it guard the entrance, and patted the shocked old man on the shoulder.

“Just stay here if you can. Run if you need to. Not much should be getting past me, and this shouldn’t take long,” Tulland said.

“But…”

“Just trust me. I’ll be right back.”

The ogres had been pretty sturdy, high-level enemies to face. Tulland could tell these were different from their first contact with his plants, and the System confirmed that feeling immediately.

Honestly, just run back and forth with your scythe on the ground. They won’t be able to stop it, and they won’t be able to hurt you much.

Tulland obeyed, dragging the sharp end of the scythe horizontally behind him, turned outwards to make a foot or more of razor sharp, ankle height death. It turned out that he didn’t even need to run back and forth, as the body of the dungeon was little more than a big circle. He took a little damage clearing a swatch of territory around the outside, then flipped the scythe to the other side as he made a tight, overlapping spiral towards the center.

The whole thing took about a minute. Chopping up the pillar took even less.

Stat potion? Equipment?

You know what? Surprise me.

Deal.

When Tulland reached the outside, he was the proud owner of a small, single-use mental stat potion. The system swore up and down it would be helpful for him.

Mind Revver

This potion grants an increase of approximately 20% to your mental stats for a period of ten minutes. While the effects vary slightly, a minimum of a 15% increase is guaranteed.

Due to the massive nature of the increase, these potions cannot be used in combat or in relation to primary class functions. Other uses may be possible, but often creative thought on the fly is necessary to get the most out of this potion.

I’m trusting you here. Because, off the cuff, this potion looks a bit underpowered.

Trusting me is the right move. I used to offer these, back on your world. Hardly anyone ever picked them up. I can’t blame them because I couldn’t give them the guidance they’d need to make them useful. But here, in this place, you are an exception to an almost universal rule. I can tell you anything I want to at all.

So spill it.

Not yet. I want you to sweat a little. It wouldn’t be useful here anyway. Now go have mercy on that poor man whose name you never bothered to learn.

Tulland trotted out through the dungeon to the dumbstruck mustached man, who seemed none the worse for wear. Honestly, he would have been disappointed if the older guy couldn’t handle that much. He seemed pretty tough, if not anywhere near the caliber of the friends he had made in The Infinite.

“I just remembered. I never asked your name.” Tulland held out his hand. “I’m Tulland, which I think you know by now.”

“Yes. I’m…” The man appeared to blank out on his own name, but only for a moment. “I’m Amrand. Or Rand, if you want. After what you just did, you can call me whatever you want.”

“I didn’t want the monsters leaking out and killing villagers somewhere. It didn’t seem like it would be polite,” Tulland said.

“I guess not. I suppose that puts a stake in the whole is-this-kid-for-real discussion. That shouldn’t be possible for one person to do. We lost whole teams to dungeons just like this one.”

Could it be as easy as that? Clear the dungeons before they do more damage?

I’m inclined to say no. So is Necia. She says, “As if anything could ever be simple around that guy.”