Infinite Farmer

"Heya."

"Oh, hey!" Tulland waved from his farm, where he was working a fresh load of ant-flesh into the soil as best he could without disrupting his plants too much. Mostly, this involved poking a hole in the soil with his spear and just sticking the meat into it. In real life, he doubted that would have helped much. But the monster plants didn't seem too picky about where they got their food, and he doubted there would even be a sign the food had been there when he checked back in a few hours. "How was hunting?"

"Pretty good. I was able to stay out a bit longer, and not buying food means I'm almost caught up with the time I spent on you already." Shrinking as she crossed the border of Tulland's farm, Necia glanced around. "Is this place bigger? It seems bigger than it was when I left."

"Yeah, I may have done some expansion. I thought it would be a bit safer."

"I'll say. I saw your briars growing by that ant pit, by the way. I made the mistake of getting close before they started waving around. Why didn't you tell me they could move like that?"

"Oh, you know. It just felt like I should have some secrets." Tulland laughed. "Not really. It just didn't come up. Did they look like they were holding their own, at least?"

Necia shrugged her shoulders and dumped her pack on the ground. "Hard to tell from a distance. But they're not dead yet, at least judging by the sounds coming from the pit. They kept tussling the whole time I was walking by."

Tulland had used the lull in the pit's repopulation time to get some new briars going, and was still waiting on The Infinite's notifications to let him know how that was going. Necia would have passed them a few minutes ago, which meant there was at least still a chance they might win.

In the meantime, he had a deal to make good on. Walking around his farm, he pulled down a couple handfuls of fruits from his higher-level briars, then tossed them to Necia.

"These seem bigger," she said after catching them and feeling the weight.

"They are bigger. The briars are doing really well here. That translates to the fruits too."

"Sweeter." Necia had dug in immediately, and nodded approvingly at the fruit before finishing it off with another big bite.

"Slow down. There's no hurry. At this point, I have more of the fruits than I can deal with."

"What happens to the excess?"

"It rots. Or I use it as fertilizer for the rest of the plants. The trees could use the food. Greedy little buggers, those."

"Oh, wow." Necia lifted herself to her feet, walking over to the newly planted Swamp Ache trees. "I'm surprised you can even grow these. They seemed so…"

"Crappy? Yeah, I agree. But they've taken to being grown. They must be two feet tall now."

"Closer to three. I feel like I'm watching them get bigger even now."

Necia walked around the farm looking at the new growth, and Tulland reflected on the odd way it felt to realize the most interesting thing in his life could themselves be bored enough to find a small, ugly farm interesting. He watched her with interest until The Infinite pulled him away with a few good-news notifications he thought were just wonderful.

It was the same old message as before, but with the added benefit of a new bonus-experience indicator he thought he wouldn't see again. What he had thought was a one-time addition to his experience gain turned out to be either a per-floor bonus or maybe even something that applied to every new enemy type.

There was another achievement to take a look at, but before he could actually get to it, Necia motioned him over in a way that indicated something else was happening.

"What is it?" Tulland glanced around in confusion. "Is something wrong with the plants?"

"You tell me." Necia poked at one of the Swamp Ache saplings in confusion. "Why is this tree growing fur?"

"Oh, hell." Tulland immediately dropped his hand to the tree, which did for all the world look to be growing a thick layer of coarse fur out of its bark. "I have some notifications to read. Can I have a minute?"

"Sure. But on second thought, I don't think I don't want to know about why. It's highly weird."

Tulland nodded and looked at his first notification, which was a very welcome surprise but not something he had to handle that exact moment.

Tulland read the notification with satisfaction. This was an achievement that he was glad to see and would help in the future.

But I'm burying the lede here. I need to know what this new plant is. Not that it's exactly thrumming with energy and purpose, but it's new. New can't be bad.

Without further ado, Tulland dug in to the last of his notifications.

Both of the skill level ups applied to Tulland's Botanical Engineer skill, while the level ups were just normal level ups. He took all the upgrades without complaint, although it was odd to see that none of them triggered before he actually stood in line-of-sight of his new tree. He would have to figure out if there was a limitation like this. It wouldn't do to be gone somewhere and then find out he had been passing on big chunks of progress until he finally decided to come home.

"Yeah. It's hard to explain, but this furry tree is actually really good news for me." Tulland poked the fur with his finger. It was not great fur, exactly. Even living on an island, Tulland had felt better. But it was a material of sorts, and one he would gladly experiment with later. "Farmer stuff. I'm not sure you want to understand."

"Smart. Because I don't." Seeing that it was safe, Necia dropped her hand downward along the tree's trunk. "I just want to pet your tree and marvel at the weird."

As Necia messed with the tree, Tulland took a risk and poured all of his new unassigned stat points into the force stat. Right now, his farm was about as good as it could be without adding new varieties of plants to it, and those varieties would only come from surprise finds or raw magical power. And he couldn't wait to grow more varieties.

"You're smiling. To yourself." Necia made hard eye contact with Tulland suspiciously. "It's creepy."

"Fair. It's just level ups, for the record. But fair."

"Oh, if it's level-ups, I get it. Those are the only thing keeping me going through this terror." Necia pet the fur-tree one last time, hummed in a satisfied sort of way, then turned to the farm. "Not to be too abrupt, Tulland, but I didn't exactly return for the fruit and conversation. I need a safe place to sleep. Can you help with that?"

"Sure. Provided you are willing to go to war if anything attacks our base."

"Deal."

"Then let me show you the amenities." Tulland turned her towards his farm, which was overgrowing with violent plants but still had a small, two-person-sized gap in the center for the purpose of sleeping. At first, Tulland had a hard time justifying that space since it cut into valuable real estate for his skills, but had convinced himself by overemphasizing the very real truth that he was worse at most things when he was ill-rested. And the extra two-foot expansion to the center clearing had come in a hopeful moment, one in which Tulland had entertained the small chance that a certain blonde, very heavily armored warrior might join him there. "First, we have this space at the center of the farm. We'd have to sleep pretty close together, but…"

"Pass." There was zero hesitation in her refusal. "What are the other options?"

"The tree." Tulland tried to salvage his broken pride with the very real success he had accomplished in his efforts to fortify Necia's favorite sleeping tree. "I've planted a ton of briars around the trunk. It's going to be a pain to get into, but once you're up there you'll have pretty good automatic guards while you sleep."

"And you think that will work against wolves?"

"It should. At the very least, even if it's a particularly strong wolf, you'll have plenty of time to just reach down and bonk it. It's a much safer situation."

Necia nodded. As Tulland did a last once-over on his farm before lights out, she confirmed that he really meant she could eat as many fruits as she wanted and went to town on the garden, eating another five or so before she rolled over onto her back and held her stomach.

"Good?"

"The fruits are fine. But being full? Really full? It's a big deal, Tulland. I haven't been completely full in… oh, months, at least. And it's almost always a bad idea when I do."

After patting her stomach and sitting up, Necia went to her tree, eyeballed the distance to the trunk over the briars, and gave a mighty leap upwards to grab one of the branches and heft herself up into the safety of the boughs. Within a few minutes, she was audibly snoring.