Infinite Farmer

The man on the stone bench was muscular, despite his apparent advanced age. As big as he still was now, he must have been an absolute monster back in his youth. That might have been true too, if he was really a man, had really attained old age, or had ever had a youth. He wasn't and hadn't. This was just who that portion of him was, at that time.

He sighed as he watched another incarnation of himself walk the garden path towards him, a young adolescent girl moving with all the brisk hurry of youth in her straw hat and flowered dress. He suppressed the impulse to dismiss the image of the tenth floor safe zone and the accompanying data screens related to it. She'd bother him about them even if they were gone.

"I see you're still staring at the situation down there, gramps." The young girl sat down on the bench and scooted closer, leaning in front of him until she all but blocked the view of the screens. "And nothing changed, right?"

"No." The old man put his hand on the girl's shoulder and gently pushed her back. "It doesn't mean that I can't be watchful. That's who I am, to us."

"And I'm the one that tells you to stop. There's only so much monitoring that can help here. Anything new will be noticed, and soon. There's plenty of us on this particular instance, anyway."

"I suppose so."

"Actually, for the sake of conversation, and nothing else. Say one of us hadn't bothered to do the reading on this particular safe zone. What would be the bullet points they should know? Just the short summary, I mean."

The old man shook his head.

"Well, first, it's just at the beginning of the period. The contestants who didn't already encounter each other in the tower have been delayed or pushed forward in time to make the group more or less even, in a scheduling sense."
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"Was that necessary?"

"Some of them might have been off quite a bit, otherwise. Five years, in some cases."

"Still, it's a lot of trouble. You could have just moved forward with a smaller group. Or different participants."

"I could have. But then when would we get another farmer? He doesn't know it, but he's the furthest a non-combatant class has ever come."

"Really? What about that blacksmith? You remember the one. The grumpy one."

"I do. He switched classes if you remember. A lucky break during an adjustment when we deemed his situation unfair and moved in his favor. And even he didn't get much farther. No amount of effort could be too much here, so long as it falls within the rules. We won't get a better chance to learn about how big of a difference this might make."

"And you think it will be that big?" The girl swished her arm, dismissing the old man's screens. They both knew he really didn't need them to know what was on them, as much as he might like the feel of having them open. "The difference. It's just some grain."

"Maybe. But even some grain is larger than you think. How much experience does each adventurer spend feeding themselves? Now that there will be game to catch, how much time do they spend hunting? It seems too cheap to almost every one of them, past this point, but a slight delay in gaining a level means life or death more often than you might think."

"Maybe." The girl looked doubtful. "The boy himself is nothing special."

"Nobody is." The old man patted her on the head. "And everyone is. Especially those that find their way here. We'll just have to see how far he gets and how much of an impact he makes, as with everyone. But I'm old. I can hope."

"All of us are old," the girl said. "Even when we are young."

"Then hope with me. Now, is dinner ready?"

"Yes. That's why I came."

"Then let's go." The old man rose to his feet, wincing as his knees punished him for the action. "I'll walk you back."

—

Tulland leaned on his hoe as he looked out over acres and acres of tilled land. Of course, he hadn't tilled the majority of it himself. The whole twenty people in town had come out to help him with that. But while many of them were very strong, none of them had what he considered to be a farmer's touch with the soil. He had gone over all their work again, breaking up clumps of dirt they had missed until the entire patch of soil was almost as loose as sand.

And that was the big patch, the one he'd be using to grow food. His actual farm wasn't even planted yet. He was still waiting for the effects of dozens of different fertilizer-suitable monster materials the townsfolk adventurers had gifted him to settle down in the soil there before he started that step of things.

"Still no green?" Necia walked up behind him and wrapped him up in her arms. "That's not like you."

"It's not ready yet. But soon. And you shouldn't be touching me after your bath. You'll get all dirty."

"Tulland, I turned that poor tub black before I was done with it. A little bit of clean soil is nothing compared to how clean I feel right now."

Tulland looked down at his hands. There was quite a bit more still on them than just soil.

"I should go myself." Tulland reached into his seed bag for one of his assortments of food seeds, broke it open, and scattered it. After laying five or six of the packets down, he hit them with an enhancement, watching as sprouts almost immediately appeared on the soil. "Can you water these? Or get someone to do it, I mean."

"I can." Necia put her chin down on Tulland's filthy hair and kept it there until he shook her off. "Just come back soon. I wouldn't want to get attacked while you're out."

Tulland didn't think there was much chance of that. As he walked towards the center of town, he took another look at how much different this zone was. Where the last safe zone had offered only the cast-off, ramshackle buildings adventurers had tossed up for themselves over the centuries, this settlement held to a higher standard of living.

Tulland walked towards the center of town. Everything the Dungeon System had claimed in the message had been confirmed by White, as well as a good chunk of positive news the System hadn't seen fit to mention. The tenth floor, it seemed, was a much safer place, not just because of the nature of the challenges ahead of them but also because the more erratic, criminal types of tower participants tended to be more or less cleared out by this level of competition.

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White claimed that his peacekeeper's intuition had identified almost every member of the town as more or less peaceable, and that even those it thought of as less than ideally lawful were not so bad as to defy the will of the group. Unless they were particularly good at hiding it, White thought that the area was about as safe as a town outside the tower would be. Not perfectly so, but enough that a person could take a stroll and a bath without too much worry.

That was what Tulland intended to do. He was covered in three or four different kinds of blood, all safely sealed in under a thick layer of dirt he had picked up in his farming. Necia was probably lying about turning her bathwater black, but he thought he could accomplish the exaggerated thing in earnest.

The bath house nearest to them was a simple affair, a large stone building with several independent entrances that all led to single-occupancy rooms with towels, soap, soaking tubs for dirty clothes, and bigger vessels for people to clean themselves off with. White and his new friends had confirmed that it was all free to use, and that the hot water never seemed to run out. Tulland stripped down in record time, determined to put their findings to the test.

He didn't turn the water black, but was close enough within a minute or so of soaking that he got out to let the water drain and refill as he rubbed an enormous amount of soap into his armor and clothes, dumped out the already sullied water they had been wetted in, and put them in a new cycle of liquid to soak once more.

Back in the tub, he soaped himself up again, scraped some of the more stubborn grime off with his fingernails, rinsed himself off, and repeated the cycle before calling up another batch of clean water. By then, he was as clean as he had been in months, but saw no reason to stop. He was an accomplished adventurer now. He saw no reason not to also be a damn clean one as well.

An hour later, he finally managed to get his clothes and body clean enough that they had no effect on the hue of pots of hot water, and stood in the room in his still-damp farmer's clothes contemplating his armor. The self-crafted armor wasn't exactly comfortable, which hadn't kept him from wearing it at all times in the last safe zone. Here, he wasn't supposed to actually need it. If he trusted White, and he did, the local adventurer population was more than safe enough to not force him to fear attacks on his walk back home. Putting on the armor would be silly.

He did anyway.

You don't need that.

Maybe not. Just give me some time to adjust, and maybe I'll be more comfortable without it.

Or you could work on it now. There's no use putting it off.

Possibly. But there's only so much change I can stomach in a day, System. Telling me to feel safe is a big thing to ask for.

And I am not asking for it. You should not feel safe, simply because you aren't safe at all here. But there are real dangers, and imagined ones. One type deserves your focus and the other does not.

Maybe tomorrow. Maybe then. Tulland stated in his mind, trying his best to put an end to that particular conversation. He was more tense than he liked to be.

I'll remind you.

The System was good enough to let the matter drop, then. He walked the rest of the way home, considering how he'd explain the necessity for armor to Necia, who would almost certainly laugh at him for it. But as he came into view of the house they had picked out, he saw she was in her armor as well. They looked at each other for a while, gave each other weak smiles, and went on without mentioning the issue.

"Good bath?" Necia asked, stirring some food in Tulland's cooking pot. "You look better."

"I feel better. Lighter. And my elbows don't stick to my stomach anymore."

"Gross, Tulland. Come sit down. The food is almost ready."

Tulland sat as Necia put the finishing touches on the food. There wasn't much in the way of spices yet, but they had each gotten pretty good at mixing the available grains, vegetables, and fruits just so to get a palatable meal. She was not skimping on quantity, either. Both of them had a big day, and only now were starting to feel the fatigue and hunger it had generated.

"So are you going to do it? Spend all of the experience from Halter, I mean."

"Yeah." Tulland reached out his bowl and let Necia throw a couple of scoops of food into it with the ladle. "It's not like he gave me a full level, even. But it's just too important to skip."

"You could just buy the stuff you bought before. It should be enough." Necia took a bite of her own food, letting the almost boiling food cool in her unburnable mouth. "It's safer here. You don't need to spend all of it."

"No, I do." Tulland took a bite of his own food, then another. "You understand why."

The safe zone store's expansion had come with a better option for home security, one that cost more than four times as much without doing much more. But what it did do differently felt important.

<+

Supreme Privacy (Improved Privacy Expansion)

Your home is meant to be a place of rest, and this enhancement makes it doubly so by ensuring your absolute safety while inside its confines. While improved privacy allowed for near-perfect security within your own home, supreme privacy improves on it in several ways.

First, no sound, smell, or other indication of your activity inside will be visible to any party outside of your home. Even substances like smoke from a wood fire will be rendered invisible to all detection when crossing the veil between your house and the outside world.

Second, no entry will be granted to any party without your express permission. This permission can be revoked at any time for any reason, and will transport the newly deemed trespassers outside the building at that time.

Third, the granularity of your permissions has increased. You can set strictly defined limits on what objects in your home can be touched by whom and for what purpose. These limitations can be varied object by object, and will in effect make it possible to render any object stored in your home invulnerable to any kind of damage by anyone unauthorized to interact with it in a broad way.

As a bonus, the protection on owned objects provided by the privacy upgrade extends past the actual veil itself, applying to any objects on the property in general and not just those stored within the house itself.

+>

Tulland was paying a lot for very minor differences in the function of the filter, but also couldn't imagine life without it once he realized it was an option. The last time his security had failed, Necia had almost paid the price for his carelessness. That couldn't happen again. It wouldn't happen again.

"It's because of me, isn't it?" Necia shook her head, and Tulland was surprised and alarmed to see her eyes misting up. "It's a waste, and you are doing it because of me."

"Not just because of you," Tulland said. "But yes. I can't feel safe out there if I'm worried about this, Necia. You being safe means I can focus on my own fights. It's for both of us."

Necia shifted closer to where Tulland was sitting, her head down.

"I get that. I understand. It's just…" Her head came down heavily on his shoulder. He could feel her shaking. "When are we going to feel safe, Tulland? We should feel safe, right? Why don't we?"

Tulland didn't have a good answer. Maybe nobody did. They were kids who had never known real danger until they had a full plate of it every single day. They had been chased by assassins. They had fought ants the size of ponies. The air itself had tried to burn them to a crisp. And all that had happened in a single season. It wasn't natural. It certainly wasn't right.

"I don't know. I really don't," Tulland said. "Maybe we don't get to have that. Maybe we shouldn't, even if we could. It's not like we won't have to move forward, soon. But I'll be here, okay? I'm going to be here. The whole time. I promise."

Necia didn't say anything more. They sat close together in silence as they finished their food, then ducked inside the safety of the house. The new accommodations were much better than the ones they had before, both cleaner and better put together than what they had in the last safe zone. It didn't come with blankets or sheets, but there were wooden platforms of sorts meant to keep them off the ground as they slept in their bedrolls. Tulland and Necia turned in early, and he stayed as still as he could until he finally heard the welcome, familiar sound of her snoring.

Do you know?

Know what?

How long it takes people to feel safe. After something like what we've been through.

I'm not sure anybody could. It depends a lot on what you are willing to put into it. It's much like rebuilding trust after a betrayal. It can only come from taking risks that go unpunished. And it will take time, if it works at all.

Ah.

Tulland was almost asleep when he heard the System's voice again, carrying a tone a bit different than he had ever heard from it before.

Tulland?

Yes? I was almost asleep.

I know. I'll be quick.

Go ahead then.

There was a pause.

I'm sorry.

And then the System was gone, retreated to wherever it went when it didn't want Tulland to be able to find it. He decided to let it. Trying not to think to much about what it had said, he rolled over and finally went to sleep.

—

"Tulland? Wake up." Necia, still in her full armor, shook Tulland's shoulder. "It's time."

"Already?" It felt like he had only slept for a few minutes, but the bright light outside proved the lie of that feeling. "Give me a minute."

He rolled out of bed and used some nearby water they had scooped out and stored the night before to rinse his mouth. He had taken off his armor in the safety of his own impenetrable home protection, and it was just to the side of his bed now. He looked at it, thoughtfully.

It's your choice. But if you really want to feel safe, you have to give the safety a chance to prove itself.

Tulland didn't say anything. He just stared at the armor for a few more seconds before finally wrenching his eyes away, and with great effort turning to leave without it. Necia was there, by the door, watching every moment of the struggle.

"I slept in mine." She looked embarrassed. "I just… don't feel ready to do that, yet."

Tulland smiled weakly in sympathy.

"I get it. I really do. No judgement here. But if I can…"

"Yes?"

"I'll check with you tomorrow. Just to make sure you don't forget it's an option."

Necia smiled back.

"Thanks. Do that."

They left the house, seeing a few people already on their way to the biggest of the town's meeting-places.

"I don't know why he feels like he needs us. Nobody is going to be able to organize this better than White," Tulland said.

"You are only saying that because you know he'd include you in the decision already. If he was trying to withhold it, you'd be suspicious as hell. Me too, for that matter."

"Fair, I guess. Do you think it's going to take long?"

Necia laughed. "Honestly? Yes. I've been in a lot of meetings like this and the details take much longer to pound out than you'd think. Even the ones that don't matter, and especially when anything important is at stake. But it's worth it, Tulland. Just having everyone agree on something is worth more than you could imagine."

Tulland took that in, then turned towards the road.

"Fine, then. Let's get in there. We might as well be ready for whatever's coming next."

Necia nodded, slipped her hand into his, and walked with him to make plans to survive the next floor.