Chapter 33: Rocks

Tulland did see. He could hardly miss it, once he got anywhere near it.The ant mound turned out to be half-hill and half a mud tower that stretched its ill-built bulk much higher into the air than he would have thought possible. Everywhere on its surface, ants were at work. He could see hundreds of them.

Conventional tactics for getting through a fight like that weren't hard to understand. Fast people would simply run in, dodge all the attacks they could, and blaze through the corridors, hoping to get to the end before they were chipped down by lucky shots. The strong would wade in slower, killing what was in front of them while maintaining their own health.

Both would go in through the big, obvious entrance, and both would stand a pretty good chance of making it. But Tulland was neither of those. He was slow compared to speed classes and weak compared to strength classes, able to take down a few ants if conditions were right but also perfectly capable of being killed by a single ant if things went poorly for him.

You see now, I suspect. Your stats contain not a single tool that would help you get through this gauntlet.

Tulland couldn't contradict that. It was simply true. He had no ability to tank the kind of damage the ants could do. He could probably outrun one on open land, but not when he was weaving through random tunnels underground that they understood and he didn't. And although he could kill one with enough time, nothing in his arsenal was strong enough to fight dozens or even hundreds of ants swarming him.

I can't shoot fireballs. I can't teleport. I'm just a man with plants.

Which means you must acknowledge this is pointless. What do you have? Ten or so days left in our wager?

Something like that. It'll have to be enough, I guess.

You still plan on trying?

Of course, you idiot. You thought you'd be able to talk me out of living?

It was worth a try.

Tulland shook his head and spent another twenty minutes or so observing the ants. They were running patrols, from what he could tell, and that was in addition to the hundreds of ants that were going about other business, but would probably drop what they were doing right away to attack him if they knew that was an option.

It was a hard problem, but as the System had pointed out, he still had several days to prepare for it. And diminishing returns or no, he might as well use those moments.

—

Three days later, the Swamp Aches in Tulland's farm finally stood taller than their admittedly stunted brothers in the swamp proper. Every one of them, glowing in the bright sun, had yellow flowers galore. Whatever limitation the parasites had from growing on the trees in any real numbers in the swamp apparently didn't apply here, where the sun was brighter, the soil was better, and Tulland's magic was in play. His farmer's intuition had told him he could put more flowers on each tree. The exact cause didn't seem that important, so long as it worked. It was more than that; it was a roaring success.

Tulland used his knife to trim the last little unwanted bits from his new pack, provided courtesy of the three Wolfwood trees inside his farm and the five or six he had managed to grow outside of it. The pack was a work of art. The System still called it a simple bag, but it was a full-on hiking pack as far as Tulland was concerned, complete with a fur-lined mat for him to sleep on that rolled up nicely to be tied to the bottom of the pack itself.

Besides that, he had another two smaller bags of pretty respectable size on each side of his belt. Carrying a lot things wouldn't be much of a problem for him with the extra stats. He just needed to make sure he chose the right things to carry.

The farm itself was still growing, and even occasionally gaining levels courtesy of Tulland-greedy wolves who attacked during the night. It was slow-going with the cap, but he was going to squeeze every possible minute of growth he could out of it, not only to give him his best chance on this floor, but to prepare him for the next.

Once his daily growing was done, it was time to find rocks. Tulland spent a lot of time finding rocks these days.

More of this insanity.

"Yup. For at least a few hours. Then throwing practice."

You cannot possibly believe you can slay those ants with a thrown rock.

Tulland just smiled. Finding the rock with the right size and shape was important. He had found that the best ones were about the size of a briar fruit or perhaps just a bit larger, and as round as he could get them. With his shovel in hand, Tulland went to the swamp and poked along happily, letting the head of his shovel cut through the muck and gross beneath the water until it clinked on something hard, then fishing it out to see what he had found.

Seven out of ten rocks went straight to the discard pile, but that still meant he was building his good rock arsenal by at least three rocks, and sometimes four or five.

Today was a really good day. By the time he had burned up his allotted time, he was the new owner of six rocks, which he immediately took to his throwing range.

Tulland had found that the trick to throwing a rock very far was not about being strong. Instead, it was about being willing to tie a vine around the rock, give it several very good spins, and then let it go when it was aimed where he wanted. This was a surprisingly consistent way for him to get distance, and he had learned the trick of hitting within fifteen or twenty feet of his target distance every time fairly quickly. What was harder was getting the direction right, especially while spinning.

He had about five days to practice that, but it wasn't something he was willing to leave to the last second. He was spending multiple hours a day on just that one task, to the bewilderment of his System.

But if it wanted to go on believing that he was training in hopes of braining individual ants to death from a distance, that was just fine. It would get its surprise at the same time the ants did.

—

When five more days had passed, Tulland didn't feel ready. But it was in a lot of ways like jumping into a cold body of water. When he had made the bet with the System, he had committed himself to a true and full effort within a certain time frame. There was no way he could escape that now, just like someone plummeting towards an icy lake couldn't turn back time or reverse gravity.

That morning, Tulland spent as much time as he wanted to just relaxing, eating food, and stretching out. He had already packed out his bags with all the armaments, tools, and seeds they could carry. Anything else he would be using that day was already waiting at the appointed spot for him, ready to go. If he made it to the exit arch, and he hoped he would, he'd be as ready for the next zone as he could be.

Even his status screen agreed. With both of his experience sources completely capped, he wasn't getting any more progress there anymore.



Tulland LowstreetClass: Farmer LV. 23

Strength: 30Agility: 30Vitality: 35 (+5)Spirit: 30Mind: 10Force: 50

Skills: Enhance Plant LV. 6, Enrich Seed LV. 8

Passives: Broadcast LV. 5, Botanical Engineer LV. 5, Strong Back LV. 4



He was more than glad that he pumped up his agility after his fights with the ants. His vague intuition in wanting more speed was completely spot on. And for now, he was even fine with his spirit being lower than it could have been. Magic regeneration was nice, but he had enough of it to do most of what he wanted to actually accomplish in a day.

Being able to enhance his plants that much better with force or command them a little more with spirit was all-important now.

Tulland stood up from his mat in the dirt, rolled it up, and tied it to his pack before shrugging the whole assembly onto his shoulders. Pushing one last charge of Enhance Plant into his weird fur-trees as a goodbye, he smiled, pet them, and moved on towards the briar-infested ant pits.

At the first pit, the briars on the lip of the hole had yet to advance past the level he had seen them the last time. The ones inside the pit, however, had been busy.

Lunger Briar, LV. 9 (Cap!)Lunger Briar, LV. 9 (Cap!)Lunger Briar, LV. 9 (Cap!)

The idea of his briars hitting some kind of leveling cap was new to Tulland, especially since at least one of his briars had hit level ten before The Infinite took a personal interest in his class. This felt like a new change.

"The Infinite, care to explain this?"



Creature Level Caps

All system-created creatures have limits to what they can do and how much they can grow. Plants are no exception to this rule. The briars you are observing have hit the natural limits of their species, and are as strong as any creature simply labeled "Lunger Briar" will ever be.

Note that this limit does not apply to any strength granted to them by your Enhance Plant skill or to other, higher-quality variants of the briars you might later create.



"Well, damn."

Tulland hopped down into the pits with the briars, keeping his eyes peeled for any surprise ant attacks. He mostly felt secure, since he now knew that anything this pit could put out was something his vines could handle. None came as he carefully trimmed his level-capped briars into long, deadly ropes and made the normal adjustments to thorn placements that he did for all his armor pieces. Covering his arms and chest, he climbed out of the pit and headed towards the next one.

A cap on his briar's strength instantly shattered any dreams he had of incrementally raising one of the vines to unstoppable heights of strength, but it wasn't entirely unexpected. The other option was if the Lunger Briars could react to the wolf and ant meat he fed them, but no matter how many instances of Enrich Seed he had pumped into the experiment, they had stubbornly refused to play ball and become a new species.

Eventually, I'll find something they like, and I can move forward that way. For now, this is what I have.

The next pit was about as uneventful as the last. Tulland put on his last three pieces of armor, rolled the rest of his briars into a big coil, then headed towards the ant fortress.

Nervous, I see.

"Yes. Of course."

I believe I've figured out some of your plan. I don't believe it can work.

"No? Why not?" seaʀᴄh thё Nôvel(F)ire.nёt website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Too many things would have to go right at once. Reality is rarely that forgiving.

"Maybe not. But this also isn't quite reality, right? I've talked to The Infinite. It seems like an okay group of people. You don't think it likes me enough to chip in here?"

It doesn't like anyone. Or dislike them. If you listen to nothing else I tell you, hear this. Systems are often compared to gods of their worlds, but at most we are prisoners of them. Slaves to them, in some ways. The Infinite is as far beyond us in power as we are to you. Perhaps farther.

"And what's beyond that?"

I have no way of knowing. Or of even asking. But it is as close to a living god as you will ever encounter. It does not chip in to the affairs of mortals as you suppose.