Infinite Farmer

When the notification said generic, it meant generic. The Infinite was not exactly imaginative, as endless amounts of furry animals attacking Tulland quickly proved. Ley and Necia had both informed him that was a normal feature of most dungeons, which moved from the familiar to the unfamiliar over time.

Parts of the first wave went beyond that. The animals rushing him were like a child's drawing of an animal made into reality, indistinctly quadrupedal things somewhere between the size of a large dog and a small bear. They were a bit squarer than made sense, and had sharp looking teeth and sharp claws. But trying to get a bead on any danger they posed beyond that wasn't possible. There just wasn't enough there to latch onto, visually.

"At least It's not fifty at once. What do you think? About ten of them?" Tulland asked aloud.

Close enough.

"No use running, I guess. I'll get to work."

Any hope that this being the easiest wave would make it easy in some absolute term was dashed from the first clash. Tulland hit the foremost animal hard, putting everything he had into a strike of his pitchfork at the same time the Clubber Vine came down on it again and again, pouring in blunt damage over time as he held it somewhat still. In the meantime, he shot every Giant's Hair he had at individual targets. Half of them hit what he was aiming at, and the other half presented hard-to-pass obstacles to the other beasts that they seemed just smart enough to actively avoid.

The hit from his pitchfork was far from nothing, and as soon as Primal Growth was coursing through the veins of all of his plant, the Clubber Vine's hits went from painful-sounding to audibly bone-shattering. Before he could put an end to the first animal for real, another four of the strong, meaty monsters were on him.

Tulland took a more defensive tactic after that, stabbing the beasts as he backed up and keeping them at bay by piling on the punishment from the Steelgleam. Every time one got a bit closer than that, the Clubber Vine would punish it for trying. Still, they were getting closer for a reason, and every now and again would rasp their claws or teeth against his armor.

The armor hadn't been tested in any real way at home. It was a named product, something he was proud of, and stronger than what he had been wearing before. What Tulland worried about was that stronger than his old armor might not be enough, considering most enemies he had met recently could easily shatter what he had been wearing.

This armor was different. Where the old armor was rigid and broke apart under enough strain, this armor moved with the blows. He suspected it would let a lot of blunt-force damage through, but none of these ill-defined little field gremlins actually dealt anything besides poking, tearing, and cutting kinds of pain. Facing those, the seed pods didn't even seem to care. The claws slipped over, leaving little scratches on the pod but barely touching Tulland's flesh underneath.

Without a single strong strike that could hurt the animals once and for all, this was going to take a while. He was shocked at how much little his more defensive moves were doing to hurt the monsters, and moved to correct for that. Dropping a hand from his weapon, Tulland drew out a few of the spiky Steel Star fruits from his trees, resigning himself to a cut hand as they poked through his glove,

As the monsters moved in, he dropped them on the ground in front of him and kept stabbing as he backed away. The big animals weren't stupid, but they also weren't coordinated enough to deal with both types of attacks at once, and erred on the side of stepping on the fruits rather than facing the known threat of the pitchfork. This was a mistake. Two of them went down howling, their feet perforated with dozens of tiny steel spikes.

Keeping the thrashing, caltropped beasts between him and the remaining threats, Tulland managed to bide his time until he could land two heavier, meaner thrusts to each of their heads. That was all it took to put them down.

This is going well.

Poorly. Much more poorly than you'd think. But kill these animals first. Quickly. Before more come.

Tulland shuddered as he realized that he was facing was a mere fifth of what was ready to attack him at the moment. He went into as much of a frenzy as he could, stabbing the beasts as quickly as he could from as close of a range as he could manage. That closeness let the Clubber Vine go to work, and a few well-timed lucky grasps from his Giant's Hair vines gave him even more room to make the most of his offensive capabilities.

He was down to just two of the first group of the wave when the second group hit, this time with one extra animal in tow. They were every bit as generic as the first group, which was only to be expected from beasts from the same wave. By now, Tulland had gotten almost all of his caltrop fruits out onto the ground, and patiently finished off his last two enemies while the new group charged in, bellowing in a sort of uninteresting, uninspired war cry.

When they hit the caltrops, chaos ensued. Unlike before, Tulland's first strike was a big one, almost completely disabling an animal. But even before that had hit, several animals had made rolling dives into the dirt, trying to protect their own feet from further damage and hoping to dislodge the caltrops at the same time.

It wasn't enough. Half of the fighting force of the group was neutralized before they even figured out what was going on. Tulland was better at fighting them as well. He had learned that these monsters really didn't have anything interesting to surprise him with. They could bite and claw well. But that was it. Outside of those capabilities, there was very little variance to worry about.

There were ways he was disappointed on his side of things as well. The Giant's Hair vines were occasionally managing to hinder one of the animals, but barely. The Infinite was throwing generically strong beasts at Tulland, and even when they were caught, they tended to be more slowed down than actually grappled. It helped, of course, but there were so many fewer of the briars than enemies on the field that it was only a small percentage of the trouble Tulland was generating.

Even so, the wave fell. Tulland hustled to get the caltrops out of beast feet and to clearer, better terrain before the next group hit, and took it on in much the same way. That and the next group both had ten monsters in it, leaving him with a last ten to go before he beat the wave entirely.

And then, in an obvious preamble to horror, the next wave had nine animals, one short of the total he needed.

"This is bad, right?" Tulland was mopping the floor with the remaining beasts, but that hardly mattered given what he knew was coming. "The Infinite didn't mention wave bosses. Is this normal?"

What's normal? It can do so if it chooses to. It's not unheard of to wear adventurers down as a sort of endurance test.

"But it didn't warn me! It doesn't seem fair."

There is no fair. There is simply living, or not living. Kill this group, gather your weapons, and prepare. You can only, as Ley said, control your controllables. He's a smart one, really. You should listen to him here.

Tulland did. As he absolutely shredded the remaining animals on the battlefield, he did his best to take note of where his caltrops were. He found, to his delight, that he had just enough skill in commanding his plants to actually get the Giant's Hairs to inch towards him all on their own and began to call them towards himself in an effort to get all his force together.

Finally, winded, he put the last of the normal beasts near him down, then waited for the last beast to show himself. This place was relatively plain, at the moment, a sort of bare-earth wasteland on which the monsters were materializing into view rather than popping out from cover. Tulland spun in place, slowly, waiting for the boss to show itself. At the first sign of motion, he reached out to fetch the description of the animal coming into being in front of him, to gain even a slight amount of information with which he might get an upper hand.

"It's just a normal one!" Tulland yelled.

So it is. Count your blessings, I suppose.

Tulland almost felt bad as the beast hit the ground running, then seemed to realize all at once that it was alone. There was nothing for it. Tulland moved towards it.

"Wruu?" the animal said, almost plaintively. Tulland had a moment's thought of mercy before the thing tried to bite him anyway. After that, it went quick.

Now, boy. You don't know how long until the next wave. Get your garden planted now. As many plants as you can get in the soil. What does your farmer skill say about the blood of these beasts?

It likes it fine.

Then plant there, where the corpses are concentrated. It will save time.

Tulland got to work. If he only had one minute, he at least needed to make sure he got one minutes worth of plants growing. If he was lucky enough to have more time, he could do more. But given what he now knew about the level he was facing, he chose to adjust his plans somewhat.

By now, he had plenty of Clubber Vine seeds, and he put these down in a quantity larger than what he had planned before. Tilling the soil like a maniac, he picked up and threw enemies out of the way as he mixed in their blood and scattered seeds, pumping Primal Growth into every new group as they hit the ground. His trees would take the longest, and only the Clubber Vines were sprouted by the time he had finished the plot.

Plant the rest, do you think?

Yes. In a clump, I would imagine.

The System had a point. By itself, any one of these plants would be taken down by any one of these monsters. But together, they had a chance, especially as they picked up levels from growing and absorbing the remnants of their prey.

Once he was done, he summoned his Clubber Vine back to his wrist and leaned on his pitchfork a ways away from his farm, inside a large ring of caltrops. They were holding up admirably, something he hoped would continue as the fight went on. He had other tricks to show, but he would hold them back as long as he could.

There were a lot of waves to go. Stay updated through empire