Chapter 16: Ironbranch Sapling

The only thing standing between Tulland and getting speared on a half dozen antler-points was his fragile, mindlessly loyal vines. They weren't very strong. Even though one member of the briar corps had killed dozens of Razored Lungers, that only meant Tulland had a slightly less mooky mook fighting on his side. He had only created a weapon that could consistently take out the lowest-level threat living in the first floor of a supposedly infinite tower.The Forest Duke was probably the weakest boss the tower had to offer. Compared to the Cannian Knight that Tulland would find on the fifth floor, it was like fighting a down-stuffed pillow. But the big deer-like thing was still a boss, and an optional challenge boss on top of that. It was strong enough to effortlessly break even the strongest of Tulland's briar army. It charged past the first one, then past the second, and then the third. As they grasped on, it slowed only slightly and only took the shallowest of scratches from the thorns.

And not that it was a good bet, not that it was how Tulland wanted to find out exactly how far the whole biome density concept could go, but there were a few things the elk hadn't thought about while it accurately assessed that each individual briar wasn't a threat. The first was pain.

Stings, huh? Tulland grinned through the bloody teeth he had gained from getting smacked around by the elk, not pitying it one bit. One characteristic of the briars was that they hurt like hell, something that probably didn't add much to their general lethality but was, in Tulland's direct and personal experience, distracting as hell. Annoyed and slightly agonized by the newfound pain, the Forest Duke stopped to retaliate against a few of the briars, trumpeting and snorting as it did.

That was a mistake. The elk hadn't considered that Tulland kept hundreds of briars in the deep hallway he had built around his exit. While both the Forest Duke and Tulland fully agreed that it could take on as many individual briars as it wanted, this wasn't a one-on-one duel.

Tulland had been paranoid that some smart monster would sneak in during the night, and his solution had been to overpopulate his home camp to an extent that it would kill a Razored Lunger a hundred times over. The math didn't necessarily make sense when comparing one very large, very strong enemy against what amounted to a bunch of very sharp badgers, but it was still a lot of briars, much more than he suspected the boss had any kind of experience with.

When the Forest Duke moved to retaliate, a dozen more briars found themselves in position to strike. When the monster broke away from those too, it got into range of a dozen more briars, all ready to spend out their life force trying to take him down. The monster wasn't stopped, exactly. It was making slow, steady progress towards Tulland. But it had slowed down to a crawl as it fought with thorn briar after thorn briar in an endless hallway of annoyance and pain.

Tulland decided to make it worse for the elk. Struggling back to his feet, he rushed around the complex cutting down his oldest and toughest Hades Lunger Briars, dropping his tool after each cut to use his good hand to pick up the harvest and chuck it either at the Forest Duke or in the way of its advance. As he did, he felt Strong Back very slowly working to reorient his bones and get him back in shape for what the skill likely thought of as a hard day's work on a normal, completely conventional farm.

After the first fifteen chucked vines, something shifted hard in Tulland's shoulder. The bone clicked back into place, almost knocking him out with pain but also bringing his left arm back to some semblance of function. He roared, letting the agony drive his adrenaline as he cut and chucked as many briars as he could get his hands on.

The mere fact that the briars were now flying from a higher angle made the pain worth it. The Forest Duke had to worry about its neck and eyes, which meant that those briars were getting most of its attention. It was surprisingly flexible and good at sussing out the right angle to twist its head against each new grasping projectile, but it was still slowing down that much more.

And yet, it wouldn't be enough. Tulland could see that. He was shit at fighting. The briars could do their absolute best and it still wouldn't be enough to take down the Forest Duke. It was going to take forever, but the monster was eventually going to get through the briar hallway, and then Tulland would have nowhere to go.

He might have even tried to fight it too, if he had only kept his club. Now he had nothing to work with but his Farmer's Tool, which wouldn't do much. And he had briar vines, which weren't long enough to be used as a whip and might have done something beyond a distraction if Tulland had a way to mount them on a chassis that would let him attack in any way besides chucking them in the enemy's direction. There was no way he could do that.

But is that true? I do have at least one stick.

Every day, religiously, Tulland had pumped multiple charges of Quickgrow into his tree seed. It had sprouted and put the magical power to use, albeit slowly. It was never going to be a full tree while Tulland was here. He had long since accepted that he'd either move on or die before the plant got big enough to look like anything besides a very young sapling.

It was a very young, very green, and very healthy-looking stick with precious few branches coming off of it, but it was a stick. Tulland threw the last few briars he had cut and rushed over to it, giving it a quick inspect to see what he was dealing with.



Ironbranch Sapling (Semi-Cultivated)

You have not cultivated this plant from a seed, but your involvement in its growth grants you access to some enhanced knowledge about it.

The Ironbranch Tree reproduces by means of large herbivorous animals which feed off its bark. As they do, they carry indigestible seeds with them, eventually depositing them in some other location with a generously provided dollop of fertilizer to go with it.

It uses this initial burst of energy to throw a deep root structure through the soil, gathering some small amount of organic material and a great deal of inorganic material into itself. The resulting wood is irregular and tough in a way that makes it unsuitable for most forms of refined woodworking. It is, however, exceptionally hard and heavy.

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Tulland prayed that "ease with which you can harvest from it" stretched so far as to encompass "cutting down the entire plant," and was pleased when his very best scythe swing managed to put a half-inch notch in the tree. He didn't wait to see if he could slice the same spot again, and instead just threw all his weight into his good shoulder as he more or less tackled the tree. Tulland heard a satisfying crack as it cleaved mostly at the point he had pre-cut into it, leaving him with a mostly uncracked, only slightly pointed stick about as thick as his wrist.

He looked over at the Forest Duke, which was now steadily pushing through the last quarter or so of his briars. There wasn't any time to mess with the stick any further. It would either be enough of his creation to do decent damage to system-things at his current level of skill, or it wouldn't.

Tulland ran as fast as he could to where the Forest Duke was restrained, planted his lead foot heavily in the dirt in front of it, and swung at the elk's head with every last bit of his strength he could muster. He missed, then almost fell on his own backside as the monster snapped out its teeth at him, ignoring the briars for a moment to attack the bigger, softer target.

Tulland reset and swung just as heavily again, then again. He missed each time, as he might have expected when fighting a much superior opponent.

And then, just for a moment, the sheer pain of the thorns got to the monster. It reared it's head up to scream in frustration and rage, terrifying Tulland despite his knowledge that it couldn't get to him at the moment. But, amidst all the noise, it also made a mistake. For just a moment, it closed its eyes.

Tulland heaved the stick forward with all the power he could. He was hoping to knock it out, although he suspected that was a pipe dream. What he did not expect was to get enormously lucky and connect the swing almost entirely with the Forest Duke's closed right eye, which popped like a grape as the stick slammed into it.

The Forest Duke trumpeted in panic and thrashed its head around, which turned out to be an error in and of itself, as one of the few briars that still had its roots in place shot up and wrapped around its bloody snout.

Is it... drinking the blood? Tulland had pulled the club back to smack the Forest Duke again and again, but couldn't get a clean shot on it as the animal thrashed through the briars. As a notification popped up, he spared the bare minimum amount of time to see the headline and figure out if it was anything at all that could help him. He hated the fact that The Infinite's Dungeon System didn't seem to come with his System's instant communication feature.



Crop Milestone Reached!

One of your cultivated plants has reached level ten. For this first-time milestone, a significant amount of experience is granted.



Level Ten? That's massive. Tulland's plants had been doing better and better as they brought in more prey and he gave them better starts with his skills and fertilizer, but he was pretty sure the highest level plant he had seen was level six. This one was either doing better than he thought or had just gained several levels from plugging into the nutrition of the floor boss' blood.

It wasn't something Tulland needed to think a lot about, but as he continued to ineffectually swing his club at the Forest Duke with his stick, he was considering the fact that everything he could do for a plant tended to build on everything else.

Enrich Seed seemed to work better on plants that were put down with fertilizer to burn for energy, at least here in this forest where the soil was about the worst he had ever seen. And enriching a seed would lead to a plant that dealt better with Quickgrow. Those enhanced plants would then capture and convert more monsters to fertilizer and increase their growth. Now, Tulland was trying to find the next step for his plants to give it that extra edge.

The Forest Duke reared its head and pulled the ambitious level ten briar out from the ground, but with so much force that the plant was still clinging to most of the soil it had grown in. It might, just might, be enough to make what Tulland was about to try work, if it would work at all.

Tulland held the stick out in a warding motion as he switched to a one-handed grip, then pointed his finger at the spot he wanted to focus on. It was where the blood was hitting the lucky Lunger Briar at the highest concentration, and something in his farmer's intuition told him this was where the plant was getting the most benefit.

Of course, it probably doesn't matter, as long as I hit the plant at all. It's sort of a by-the-unit deal.

Taking a deep breath, Tulland focused as much of his attention as he could muster and activated his only farming skill that could be applied multiple times on the same plant.

"Quickgrow. Enjoy it, buddy. And good luck."