investment worthwhile

Royal Road

SomethingOtherThanRain

Infinite Farmer: A Plants vs Dungeon Progression LitRPG by R.C. Joshua

Chapter 9: Bludgeon

A note from R.C. Joshua

1 more chapter!

Advertisement

Report

In his enclosure, Tulland was already working on his next project. He had spent the better part of a few hours the day before building the pit trap, but that was a necessary risk. It took time to dig a hole, and more time to plant a cultivated briar seed at the bottom, juice it with magic, cover the whole thing with enough briar thorns to look like semi-solid ground, and leave a single cultivated fruit as bait.

The investment was worth it. He had picked up two levels worth of experience just today, setting and resetting the trap with his excess of cultivated fruit and the briar branches. He had worried that the monster corpses left in the pit would warn the others off, until he had gone out to clean it out for the first time and found it clean except for an exceptionally vibrant, healthy looking briar.

"Even if I could, I won't ask any questions about what happened there," Tulland said to the briar. It might have been his imagination but the briar seemed to twitch at those words.

Now, Tulland was busy clipping off several feet of his briar tangle and wrapping it around the strongest branch he had been able to safely find in the forest. His best idea for a weapon so far was to make a briar-wrapped club and see how that did on the local wildlife.

"Hey System. You around?" Tulland asked after turning off the communication barrier.

You know I am. Where would I go?

"Good point. I have a question for you."

One I would answer for what reason?

"Because you have nothing better to do."

The System went quiet, but Tulland wasn't fooled. It had been lying to him for months, but some things were harder to fake. It could tolerate endless periods of nothing happening, but it was vulnerable to the kind of boredom where something demanded attention then didn't justify the need. It hated services from the Church, not just because they came from his enemies but because they droned on. It couldn't stand Tulland's sessions with his tutor either.

And most of all, it hated waiting for a response. It couldn't tolerate being ignored.

Tulland sat placidly, working thorns into the wood of the stick while trying to make his makeshift spiked club. He knew it was only a matter of time.

What is your question?

"I thought you didn't want to answer."

I am generous. Ask.

Tulland kept his face straight as he waited a moment, then let the System know what he had on his mind.

"The beasts here. Are they especially resistant to the attacks of people without a class? If a very strong man came here with a knife, but no class, would they be more difficult for him to kill than they should?"

An interesting question.

"I thought so. Do you know the answer?"

I do. And it's yes, in some ways. It would matter who made…

The System went quiet.

"Keep going. I'm listening."

No. I've wasted my own time here. I'm done.

"Oh, come on. Don't be like that."

The System wouldn't speak again, no matter how Tulland asked or cajoled. But Tulland thought he might have an answer anyway. He was fairly sure that the unfinished thought the System decided not to share was that it would matter who made the knife. Tulland's farming tool was not powered by his own class, at least in its function as a weapon. And it wasn't made by someone with a class, despite being a System-built item.

But if a blacksmith with a smithing class made a knife, it would carry a might of its own. As a product of some system or another, it would be made to interact with other things created by and for the class and leveling system. A very strong man wielding one of those knives could kill one of these monsters. Tulland was almost sure of it.

Tulland didn't know how to work metal and didn't have any skills for making bows. But he did have plants grown by a true Farmer class, using system-granted skills. He wouldn't have believed there was any chance that things would work this way if he hadn't already had some confirmation, courtesy of several dead monsters who had failed to make it out of his pit trap.

And even if The Infinite doesn't think this monster-fertilized vine is different enough to give it a new description, it sure seems like it's gonna work at least a little bit better.

Before Tulland tried it out, he made sure he had contingencies. He set up his collapsible rope thorn trap again and dug a few pit traps that he covered in a way that was obvious to him but hopefully less so for the monsters. Once that was in place, he stepped out, stood at the entrance of his compound, and waited.

He didn't have to wait long. It was less than five minutes before one of the walking balls of territorial rage spotted him and made a beeline for what looked like easy prey.

But in many ways, Tulland wasn't as soft as he was when he had first arrived in this forest.

Tulland Lowstreet

Class: Farmer LV. 6

Strength: 24

Agility: 20

Vitality: 16

Spirit: 10

Mind: 10

Force: 10

Skills: Quickgrow LV. 4, Enrich Seed LV. 3, Strong Back LV. 2

As the Lunger got close, Tulland held his swing as long as he could. He had options if he missed, but he didn't want to use them if he could help it. Luckily, the animal sensed something was wrong right at the last moment, and skidded to a stop not quite entirely out of Tulland's range. He swung as hard as he could.

The end of Tulland's new club was studded with pounds of briar vines and dozens of finger-long, razor sharp thorns. During the construction process, Tulland had reflected on all of the pain that his initial encounter with one of the monsters brought, and added more and more weight to the club until it literally couldn't hold any more thorns or vines. It turned out that, in the process, he had drifted dangerously far into overkill territory.

The club didn't just penetrate with its thorns or entangle with its vines. The weight of the thing crushed the animal at the point of impact, bludgeoning it to death at the same time the thorns punctured through it.

Tulland took a second to process what just happened.

"Holy crap. Did you see that, System?"

I… did. I did not suspect that things would work like that.

"Really? After all your centuries of doing what you do?"

It's not as if Farmers end up in dungeons often, boy. How would I learn this, besides watching your situation?

Tulland nodded. That seemed probable enough. Which meant that, for now, he had a way of destroying the enemies who lived in this forest. Farmer didn't seem to be a class that needed a lot of experience to level. The requirements would probably get higher and higher as his level got higher, but he probably could get at least one or two more levels out of this area before he topped it out.

While that was a victory of sorts, it was limited. On some level, Tulland knew that these terrifying little animals were the weakest, least-threatening beasts that this dungeon had to offer. They were a tutorial, something anyone with a sword and a sword-handling class would have mowed through without a second thought.

For Tulland, after days of pain and near-death experiences, he could just about fight them evenly. But after this floor, there would be another stronger and faster enemy, and another beyond that. Even this floor had threats he hadn't seen yet, probably bigger ones too. A club covered with kinda-magic vines wouldn't be enough to keep him safe forever.

Tulland would have to think of something else. For now, he had a little time until his traps caught enough of the Lungers to cap the experience he could get out of them. He had a vague hope that the traps would never give out, that they would be close enough of a thing to farming that the Dungeon System would reward him for them forever.

It wasn't meant to be. As soon as he hit the next level, the Dungeon System let him know the gravy train was stopped. Worse, the experience he was getting from farming each individual briar was now next to nothing. The leveling requirement was enough that it would take weeks and weeks before he hit the next one. It was too much time to wait and hope nothing went wrong in this place.

Tulland almost dumped the points he had gained from his new level into his physical stats before he stopped himself.

Farming. Huh. He hadn't thought much about the skills he got from his class except to bemoan them since he got here. But it was Enrich Seed and Quickgrow that had given him all the progress he had managed. While it would be nice to swing his club a little harder and faster, it wasn't going to save him from anything truly big and strong.

From what the tutor had said, mind was a mental defense stat, while spirit had to do with how fast magical force was restored. But force directly impacted how strong a skill became when it was released, how effective it was at doing whatever it aimed to do.

There was more to it than that, but those details weren't worth considering at the moment. This was a broad-strokes kind of situation, one where Tulland needed big changes, and couldn't afford to spend his limited resources on anything that didn't cause them.

Mental defense could wait, and Tulland had nothing but time to wait for his magic to restore itself. What he didn't have was any way to improve what he did, to make stronger plants.

And stronger plants is… it might be nothing. But it might be something, right?

Tulland looked at the club in his hands. It was something, but sooner or later, it would fail. That was certain. And when that happened, he needed something better. The chance of farming actually making a difference was slim, near enough to nothing to almost make no difference.

But not zero.

Tulland closed his eyes and put all five points into force, then went to dig a new pit trap. He was going to enrich a seed more than he ever had before, and he would be damned if it wasn't going to be well fertilized.

—

The System watched as Tulland threw his club back over his shoulder and moved back to his camp. He must have realized what the System had always known. There was a chance Tulland would climb a few floors with his own abilities and desire to live. And if he did, the System would profit from it. But the chances of Tulland actually clearing his way to the safe zone were nil. Standing in his unarmed and unskilled path was a real challenge. The kind that even the most talented warriors equipped with full System's gifts would barely overcome.

The Infinite was an elite dungeon, for the brave and successful. It was a place they came to prove that they were not just among the best, but the very best there was. The Infinite was where heroes went to gamble their lives on getting the power that their worlds needed to survive, thrive, and reach entirely new levels.

It wasn't a place for the weak. And if there was one thing the System was sure of, it was that Tulland was weak.

Advertisement

Royal Road

SomethingOtherThanRain

Infinite Farmer: A Plants vs Dungeon Progression LitRPG by R.C. Joshua

Chapter 10: Swords and Hoes

A note from R.C. Joshua

Last chapter for today!

Daily schedule starting from tomorrow.

Advertisement

Report

As Tulland hefted his pack full of fruits, he was glad that he had put points into strength. A couple days worth of applications of Quickgrow added to the already aggressive growth rate of the vines meant lots and lots of fruits, and he had some experimentation to do.

He brought the pack over to the new, much bigger area he had cleared in the briars. After dropping them on the ground for later, Tulland commanded his Farmer's Tool to transform into a hoe and got to work loosening the soil.

What Tulland had in mind would require a lot of work, as judged in the conventional way. He would need yard after yard of tilled rows, all carved out of hard, clay-heavy soil. All of that work might amount to nothing, but Tulland was stubborn that way. Even if there was a tiny chance of success, he was willing to swing his hoe and shed his sweat.

Stats hurried the tilling along just fine, and the speed and power he moved with now was a bit intoxicating all by itself, in a way that made him want to work a bit faster and push a bit harder.

Within another hour, he had plenty of soil prepared, with each area he planned to plant marked with a cut to separate it from the others. The first section got one briar seed, all by itself. Tulland's Enrich Seed skill was higher level than it had been at the beginning. Along with the extra magic power he had to dedicate to the process, he was eager to see what differences he could now make.

The next briar seed was planted in a bundle of the fruits themselves, de-seeded and pulped so that their nutrients would only benefit that single seed. Tulland's thought was that even with magical power, conventional farming rules probably still applied here. The soil that the briars had been growing in was clearly enough to sustain them to some extent, but it was also flat-out the worst soil Tulland had ever seen. It was hard, angry stuff that was so devoid of nutrients that it looked bleached.

Just looking at it grosses me out, and I couldn't say why.

"Hey, System?" Tulland said out loud as he eased the communication restrictions.

Yes?

"Does this class give me… I don't know how to say it. Do I know more about farming now?"

More? Did you know a single thing before?

"No, but that's hardly the tone you should be taking. I could turn off your communication channel again."

Don't. It would make this conversation a waste of both our times. The answer to your question is yes, to a very limited extent.

"How limited?"

You are now a farmer. The changes that a class makes are not just to a person's capabilities. It is to what they are at a fundamental level.

Tulland tossed two seeds together in one growing area, and three in another. There was no shortage of ground to do experiments on, and he was going to try anything and everything he could.

"That doesn't tell me anything."

Think of a Paladin. In your storybooks, what are they like?

"Noble. Noble and brave. Self-sacrificing. They can't all be like that, though."

No?

"No. Because people just aren't. Most people are selfish. I am." Tulland shuddered a little as he remembered what his selfishness might eventually do to his home world. "And people get scared. Not every Paladin is going to be an exception and noble beyond normal."

That's where you are wrong. Think about it for a bit.

Tulland did, taking a few minutes to consider it as he duplicated every experiment he had set up so far, but this time adding a shovelful of water to each mound.

"You're saying that they start out average." Tulland dumped another shovelful of water. "That the class changes who they are."

Over time. Slowly. Each stat you apply while holding a Farmer class makes you more farmer, in some way. And a farmer understands soil and plants.

"Isn't that… insidious? The class changing their minds?"

All experiences do. A beaten man learns fear. A triumphant man learns confidence. Why should having a class be any different?

Tulland could almost buy that. He decided to let it lie, for the moment, and focus on the matter at hand.

"How much should I trust it? The new knowledge, I mean."

What is it telling you?

"That the soil here is bad."

The System went quiet for a moment, enough that Tulland double-checked to see if the communication channel was still unrestricted.

That, at least, seems probable. Now, I would advise you to…

Tulland knew that tone. He had heard it a lot over the past few days. The System was about to forget itself and talk. It would go for hours if he let it. But it also, he had found, really hated it if he cut him off before he could finish those speeches.

He mentally flipped the switch without a second thought, wiped the sweat off his brow, and went towards the exit from the hedge. Unpiling the briars he used to block the way in, he uncovered his pile of animal corpses.

The Razored Lungers, it had turned out, were slightly stupid. After his first few kills that weren't instantly absorbed by his vine traps, the blood had drawn in more of the beasts. Enough for them to actually attempt entering the briar patch, and meet the cultivated briars with all of their agony thorns. And when the monsters were weakened enough, Tulland had cut them away before beating them to death with his club. In the process, he noticed that unlike the living briars, the dead vines did nothing to absorb the corpses.

For the first time since entering the dungeon, Tulland had too many resources. The fruits and groundwater meant that he wasn't desperate enough to eat the Lunger meat raw. And he didn't want to gamble his life on starting a fire, even if he could figure out how to do that.

There was nothing productive to do with the corpses except to see if his plants would appreciate a little extra food. He had seen what it did to his already-growing vines, and they appeared to like it just fine. Now he would see what he could get out of the seeds if they had a different, richer growing environment from the start.

Tulland set up a number of experiments with the corpses, all of which involved more cutting and pulping of the animals than he liked. Some of the flesh was mixed with more soil, some with less, some with more water, some with less, and some with multiple seeds just in case he had added too many nutrients.

By the time he was done, Tulland had about twenty different planting zones, all running some configuration of farming or another.

Then it was time to enrich them. It took hours of pushing magic power out and recharging to get it done, but Tulland wasn't in a hurry. He had food and water, and for now, he was safe. When he felt the need to sleep, he slept, and once he had finished enriching the seeds, he even tried to double up on the skill, only to find that an already-enriched seed wouldn't engage with a second skill application.

After that, he started using Quickgrow, pushing out all of his power over the next few hours. Neither of the skills had leveled during the experimentation. That wasn't surprising. Tulland was pretty sure they wouldn't, unless one of his experiments actually worked and produced something new.

Even with Quickgrow active and the obscene speed with which the briars seemed to grow, the next phase wasn't something that would happen in just a few minutes. Exhausted again, Tulland dropped to the ground to nap.

—

"The economy is more important than any of you understand," Tulland's tutor had said, walking them through the market. "Even for war. Tulland. Tell us how to make as many swords for an army as possible."

"Lots of smiths would be my guess. Lots of fuel for the forges, and lots of ore to smelt into metal. That kind of thing."

"And how would you feed them?"

"Grain?" Tulland scratched his head. "Do smiths eat special food?"

"No, just the same things you do. But imagine you are the leader of a border town. Where do you get the grain?" the tutor asked.

"Farmers. I buy it from them."

"Using what?"

"Tax money."

The old man nodded. "That's correct, except I believe you might underestimate how much money forging takes. A good sword is a product of several workmen, each using expensive materials and a lot of space. That eats up your tax money, and you don't have money for farmers anymore."

"But it's wartime," one of the other boys objected. Tulland remembered the boy, but somehow couldn't remember his name. He was a larger boy, built for heavy work if not actual fighting. He had always been bloody-minded, compared to the others. "Just force the farmers. Take the grain. Feed the blacksmiths. Spend the money on materials."

"That might work, once. But just once. As soon as the farmers know their labor will be seized, what do you suppose happens?"

"They stop working," Tulland said. That was easy enough to know. Nobody would work without pay.

"Then send armed men to make them work," the boy said, finding yet another application for violence. It was a habit of his known to everyone in the class.

"Each of whom requires a sword," the tutor said. "And time and pay of their own. And even the most frightening of guards can't make someone work as hard as they will in their own interests, with their own pay on the line. Production can and will drop. It's been observed in many places."

"Then what?" Tulland was interested despite himself. "You said the economy fixes this?"

"No solution will net you unlimited swords. But a thriving town can make more armor and arms than a starving one. A city can make more than a town. If you focus on prosperity, the rest of it will come. And that is how you build a strong people. Swords are only part of the answer."

Advertisement

Report

Tulland woke up on the ground, thankful to have just enough points bolstering his vitality that this was only uncomfortable as opposed to actually hurting his muscles and bones. He kept his eyes closed for just a moment, wishing he could talk with his tutor in some way or another right now. The old man might not have been young enough to help much with the fighting, but Tulland was eighty percent sure he knew about things like farming.

He knew about a lot of things.

When Tulland finally opened his eyes, he was in a weird jungle. Every one of the plants had sprouted, which wasn't surprising. He half suspected that once juiced with his farming powers, these briar weeds would have grown on a pane of glass. At least for a while anyway.

He stood and walked over to the least interesting of them. The briar seeds that were only enhanced by his skills were a bit bigger and a bit stronger. Something about how they looked rubbed him the right way, at least to the extent normal plants could. They were a little bit hardier and healthier. If they had been food, he would have assumed they would feed people better. As deadly spiked plants, they seemed like they might spike things a little more sharply and viciously.

Nothing amazing. Next.

Watering seemed to be generally good for the plants, and all the plants he had watered were doing a bit better than the ones without water. The ones he had planted in their own fruit pulp did even better than that, and kept improving with more pulp until they had access to two or more fruits worth of the stuff. More fertilization of that kind didn't seem to help. These vines were thicker and greener, and when Tulland reached out and touched them with his hand, they were also just a bit more flexible. It was almost to the point that he could have used them as a rope as-is, without cutting or twisting any strands together at all.

But it was the monster-fed vines that changed the game. Tulland had seen the moving things after he woke up, and verified that they couldn't actually move from their rooting spots before approaching them.

It is foolish for you not to have looked at this first. The others are just briars. These are something new.

"You think I don't know that? It's incredibly boring in here, System." Tulland was going to milk this entire experience for all it was worth, entertainment-wise. If that meant turning back on the System for a bit, so be it. It likely knew something Tulland didn't as well. "Now, what am I looking at here?"

I have no idea at all. This is not something that would have been possible on our world, I think. Over the centuries I was in control, farmers tried many things. They accomplished at least some marvels. None of them were… this.

"Give me something, at least."

I'm not your System anymore, remember? Check to see what The Infinite says about it.

"Fine. Be that way." Tulland had been putting off looking at The Infinite's notifications, but there was no reason to do that now. Annoyingly, The Infinite had yet to show the same preference for automatic, instant communication the System had. Every screen had be manually read and dismissed. He started at the boring end of things and worked his way up.

Hades Briar LV. 1 (Cultivated, Improved)

The Hades Briar is the most basic and common of barriers to movement in flora-heavy tower floors. Its omnipresence has spelled the doom of monsters and adventurers alike, as it presented them with a painful distraction or blocked an otherwise open avenue of retreat.

Your cultivation techniques have improved this briar past what it would accomplish itself even in ideal growing conditions. It is stronger, more flexible, and bears more potent thorns. The briars are passive hunters at all times, gathering their own fertilizer through unlucky beasts. These would gather more while spending less, putting down prey that wandered into their territory with less chance of breakage.

That was good enough to have justified this work all by itself. Even if all the farming meant his clubs were a little better, it would be a very big jump in his surviving-this-floor chances. But the inclusion of levels and the idea of improved crops in the description was something else.

Does that mean… Tulland began to think.

Likely. The System sounded surprised, annoyed, and impressed all at once. Just be quiet and look at the others.

Tulland nodded and turned to the notifications for the rest of his conventional vines. The best he had done with any of them was a level two variant, which came from one vine that had been fertilized with monster meat but not watered. It looked truly nasty to Tulland's not-entirely-untrained eye, and he immediately decided to upgrade his club with this new briar when he got a chance.

But then it was time to get down to the really weird stuff. He stood and walked towards the one very concerning, much more vine-like plant, standing a few full steps outside of its reach as it writhed and reached for him.

Lunger Briar LV. 1 (Subjugated)

Where the Hades Briar exists as a passive hunter, this briar is active. It is capable of lying stationary for years, only to activate and reach towards prey when they come close. Once in contact with prey, it attempts to wrap itself around them.

When locked around prey, the Lunger Briar works its thorns into them to reduce their chance of escape, then holds them in place with its own weight and root structure.

The Lunger Briar is durable, but strong enough enemies can pull them from the ground. Once pulled, the briar will die, but will continue to act as alive in the presence of prey until its energy resources are depleted. Destroying a prey animal will restore some of that same energy, although at a slow, level-dependent pace.

"That's not normal. It took the monster fertilizer's name," Tulland said.

Like a bride at some sort of perverse wedding. Keep reading your notifications, fool.

Tulland decided that while he would continue moving through the new information, the System had probably learned more than enough about his new capabilities for one day. He didn't believe that the lying betrayer was just taking everything at their word instead of making educated guesses about what was happening, and if it didn't want to share them, then there was a limited amount of knowledge he would let it have. The fact that it was defanged for the moment didn't mean it would be harmless forever, and keeping the System in the dark did Tulland no harm so long as it wasn't repaying him with knowledge.

He was immediately glad he did so. The next notification was a game-changer in a way the others weren't.

Subjugated Crops

Some crops were never meant for human cultivation. While growing almost anything is possible given the right soil and light conditions, most truly hostile crops resist any significant domestication and improvement attempts.

That does not mean that domestication and improvement are impossible, however. When these enemy plants are successfully changed from their baseline forms, they provide bonuses to experience, represent a new category of cultivable plants which provide their own unique levels of experience, and often establish a different kind of relationship to their grower.

You have subjugated a new crop for the first time, both in the sense that you have subjugated your first crop and in the sense that the crop you subjugated has never been tamed before. For that, you'll receive a large, level-adjusted amount of experience, a large portion of skill experience to the skills used in creating it, and other bonuses as a result.

Lunger Briar Bonuses

Based on your current skill levels and the best Hades Lunger Briar you have been able to grow, you gain the following bonuses:

At your will, the Lunger Briar will cease to see you as prey.

At your will, you gain a permanent immunity to damage from briars you grow, so long as they are of the quality of the Hades Lunger Briar or lower as a species.

Tulland immediately willed the briar to ignore him, then stood open-mouthed as it went limp, slumped to the ground, and became indistinguishable from any other briar he had grown. Walking a tiny bit closer, he very gently moved his hand towards one of the thorns, putting just the slightest amount of pressure on it.

The thorns were very sharp, and that should have been enough to immediately puncture his skin. In this case, it simply failed to do so. He pressed even harder, and found he was still safe. Pressing as hard as he could and rubbing his hand back and forth on the blade of the briar showed he was still safe. The Infinite's system hadn't been lying. Tulland couldn't be hurt by these plants.

None of his more conventional briars could hurt him either, though he verified through some substantial pain that any briars he hadn't cultivated were still dangerous.

Which brought him to the last of his notifications, ones he had sensed at the beginning of this process but kept back until he knew exactly what he had done to earn them.

Level up! x5

Skill level up! x6

New Skill Earned!

Botanical Engineer LV.1 (Passive)

In creating a new form of life, you have proven yourself as something beyond a mere sower of seeds. This passive skill increases the range of situations in which you will be able to successfully create new plant hybrids, and increases the quality of their new characteristics when you do.

Tulland took a deep breath. This seemed like a truly shocking number of levels to get at once. He immediately dedicated just a few of the newly gained points to each of his body stats. Plants or no, he still had to survive out in a very hostile world, and he had no idea what he would be facing as he pressed out from the safety of his base.

The rest he applied to his magical abilities, adding five points to his force stat and also spirit to speed up his regeneration a little bit. His mind stat was the only one that got no love, seeing that Razored Lungers didn't exactly do mental damage outside of his earlier traumatic memories with them.

Tulland Lowstreet

Class: Farmer LV. 11

Strength: 25

Agility: 25

Vitality: 20

Spirit: 15

Mind: 10

Force: 15

Skills: Quickgrow LV. 7, Enrich Seed LV. 6

Passives: Botanical Engineer LV. 1, Strong Back LV. 2

The new passives section interested him. It apparently needed some minimum level of entries to show, and had immediately moved Strong Back once it did. Eventually, he'd have to work on leveling both passive skills, although Tulland hated the thought of what he would have to do to convince his regeneration skill to grow.

He ran in place and jumped a few times, then found his club and gave it some experimental swings. He wasn't much stronger or faster from the extra stat points, but each little addition was a noticeable help. At the same time, he reminded himself that as strong as he might feel, he was infinitely weaker than what a real combat class would be in the same situation.

If I'm going to live through this, I need more plants.

Tulland sighed and began gathering fruits from his new hybrid vine. He was almost to the point where he would have to go explore the greater space around him, leaving more than a few steps from his terrible, thorn-based home. But if he didn't want to die the moment a new threat popped up, he was going to have a couple days worth of farming ahead of him.

It was going to be boring. There was no way around that.

—

Two days later, Tulland was out of breath and swinging his club like a maniac. He had retrofitted the old club with new, improved vines, and it was much deadlier now in a way he had yet to really test on prey. He was a bit deadlier now too, if not much. If he couldn't improve his fighting through actual skills, he could at least improve it through practice. He had been working on that every moment his vitality allowed, filling the hours between infusions of Enrich Seed and Quickgrow with sweating, grunting, and general incompetent training.

Fully winded now, he slowly jogged a circuit of all his new plants. The Hades Lunger Briars, it turned out, grew just fine from just seeds. He had slowly replaced the big, tangled plug of briars that served as his door with two closely planted rows of the Lunger Briars. At rest, they outlined what looked like a safe and open hallway that led directly to delicious, monster-nourishing human meat.

Over the course of the last several hours, they proved that they were anything but safe. Every few hours, a Razored Lunger had wandered by, seen Tulland through the entryway, and charged. The moment they entered that hallway, the briars woke up, tangling the invaders with deadly constrictor strengths, binding them to the ground, and sapping their life force to supplement their own.

To his surprise, the Lunger Briars could apparently level by doing this. The one closest to the outside world had benefited the most from the trap, reaching level three and being able to demolish the average beast that wandered in all by itself now.

Tulland rested for a while, then turned on the System.

"Hey, System. I was thinking about walking around a bit."

Oh? About time, I'd say.

"Well, yes, but you want me dead."

I do not deny it. What is your question?

"Do you think I'm ready?" Tulland asked. The System responded with silence for a long time.

No. I think you will likely die. But you are at least as ready as you'll ever be.

Tulland nodded. Grabbing his scythe-form Farmer's Tool and thorn-and-vines club, he went to the front of his enclosure, planted some new vines, and leveled the blade of his tool at the strongest few vines of the Lunger Briars. The Infinite's Dungeon System had claimed they would retain some of their function for a while after they were cut, using their remaining energy when they moved and attacked.

Tulland wasn't sure they'd work like he hoped they would, but he wrapped them both around an arm each anyway. Any help out there would be worthwhile, but even if they didn't work, having a couple loops of thorny vines on his body wouldn't exactly hurt.

He took a deep breath and stepped away from his prison. It was time to learn more about this new world.

Advertisement