Infinite Farmer-Chapter 129: Maze

“What in the world are you doing? Are you punishing the vines?” Necia toed one of the coiled Chimera vines under Tulland’s feet. “For his own good, I’m sure. You have to raise them right.”

“No,” Tulland laughed. “It’s just that I was thinking about what might be the secret of these things. I tossed one of them at the dirt men the other day. I was thinking I might be able to do the same thing here.”

“On yourself?” Necia asked.

“Yes. Like a bow and arrow.”

“Except you are the arrow. And you called me to see this, why?”

Tulland looked around the room again. Just as before, all the floors and walls were the same very durable, very painful-to-collide with rock.

“I just need someone to catch me,” Tulland admitted.

Laughter squeezed from between Necia’s lips before she could catch it. If there had been water in her mouth, Tulland was sure there would have been no dodging the spray.

“Catch you?”

“Yes, Necia. I don’t want to bash into the rocks, okay?”

“Then do it outside! Where there’s grass!”

“I can’t.” Tulland dropped his eyes. “I don’t want anyone to see.”

“Oh, for the love of my-father-the-king. Boys and their embarrassment. You know there were young men in my training who never got certain things right because of only that. Too embarrassed to try in front of me.”

“I can’t blame them. Have you seen you?”

“I have. And thank you.” Necia held out her arms. “Just for that, I’ll catch you. Let me know when.”

Tulland centered his feet over the vine. Getting it to coil had been simple enough. Lately, he was beginning to wonder if there were any orders the higher-leveled Chimera vines couldn’t take. They seemed to understand what he was asking even before he finished the order. His hope was that they’d get what he was asking here, too.

Taking a deep breath, Tulland caught Necia’s eye. “Ready.”

“Okay. I’ve got you.”

Tulland sent the order. With no delay, the vines uncoiled, shooting him not quite but almost entirely in the wrong direction to actually give Necia a chance to catch him. Even with her giving it everything to catch him in time, she wasn’t able to do anything when he slammed the back of his head into the rock wall.

“Tulland! Are you okay?”

“I’m not dead!” Tulland was crumpled in on himself in a way that took a moment or two to figure out, and another second to untangle. Once he was finally seated, he verified he wasn’t actively bleeding, he stood up. “Okay, I’m fine. Ready for another try?”

“Are you sure? You probably have a concussion from the first one.”

“Stats. Nature’s medicine.” Tulland told the vine to re-wrap itself into a coil and stepped back up to his ready position. “Maybe stand behind me this time?”

The next launch went almost perfectly forward, sending Tulland into yet another rock wall. After another ten throws and the single spectacular launch that put him straight into the ceiling, he realized the problem wasn’t with his instructions. There just wasn’t enough understanding in either him or the vine about how this should work to make it happen. Both of them were doing their best, but neither of them really understood how this worked besides putting a lot of energy into the equation.

“There are only so many hits you should take, even with stats.” Necia looked down on her bruised boyfriend. “You should probably give up.”

“Yeah. I realized that on the ceiling. I was just hoping.”

“For?”

“There’s something with these Chimera Sleeves. I feel like I’m getting closer. They can do anything I want them to, it’s just that nothing I’ve told them to do is the right thing,” Tulland said.

“I don’t even see how they could be anything amazing. They can eat little things. They can whack things. It’s not that different from anything you’ve always done.”

“Well, yeah. But it’s not like I don’t have some confirmation. Even The Infinite is worried about these. It’s like…”

Tulland blinked, and Necia was gone, replaced by Brist.

“Oh, it works like that.” Brist nodded. “I figured I’d have to go get you once I told it that you were the second guy.”

“Where am I?” Tulland looked around. He was in a room of some kind, still. It was even still a stone structure. Other than that, it was foreign. There were torches on the wall, aflame with blue fire. Not a window was in sight. “Seriously, Brist. Where are we?”

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“I found one of those arch things you were talking about. Just a different colored patch of rock in a rock wall. Hell of a thing to clear it.” Brist held up his big hand. “Broke like four bones in this thing. Luckily, they heal up pretty quick.”

“Brist, couldn’t you have…” Tulland’s stomach suddenly dropped. “Oh, no.”

“What?”

“My plants. I hadn’t restocked. I have…” Tulland checked his dimensional storage. “Not much. A few Acheflowers and Silver Stars. Some Clubber Vines. All of my Chimera Sleeves were out on the floor.”

“Why?” Brist cocked his head to the side. “Cleaning them, or something?”

“No, I was… never mind. The point is that I’m underarmed. You couldn’t have given me any warning?

“I didn’t realize it would be so fast. Sorry about that.” Brist pointed at the ground. “But doesn’t that thing count?”

Tulland looked down and realized he was actually not as badly armed as he thought. Under his feet, still coiled, was one loyal Chimera Sleeve.

“See?” Brist beamed. “Not as unarmed as you thought. Should all work out.”

“Sure.” Tulland beamed back. “Do me a favor, though. Come stand on this vine. I learned a new trick I want to show you.”

After Brist’s own personal launch and Tulland’s quick loss in the subsequent duel, he finally took a moment to read his notification about the new realm. It didn’t look great.

Stone Labyrinth

In this place, every hallway looks the same. Every turn is one you may have made before. Getting turned around is the status quo. Once you enter, make no mistakes that you can prevent. If you get turned around enough, you might never make it out.

Lucky for you, there’s a time limit on this challenge. Once the clock runs out, you will find yourself back whence you came without a single reward to show for it. That failure holds true unless you manage to twist, turn, and wind your way the entire distance of this maze to the exit. Once there, you might find the exit is open and easily accessible. That your prize is easy to claim.

Or you might find it guarded. The risk is yours to take.

“Uh-oh,” Tulland said.

“What’s wrong, kid? Afraid of a monster?”

“Yes. Obviously. But much more afraid when I don’t have all my weapons. Thank goodness I had time to get my Farmer’s Tool loaded out.”

“How’s that work again?”

“Better stuff makes it better. Like if it ate it.” Tulland cycled the tool from a pitchfork to a shovel, then a hoe. “I haven’t tried it out since I got the handle filled out with the new metal.”

“Looks shiny. I didn’t know you could make that hoe with it. The shovel I’ve seen.” Brist rubbed the outside of his forearm as if remembering absorbing shocks with it. “Three different weapons is fun.”

“Four, actually.” Tulland shifted his weapon into a scythe, feeling the uncomfortable balance of it in his hand. “I never got the hang of this one. I hardly ever use it for anything but harvesting.”

“What’s wrong with it? Looks sharp enough.”

“It is. It’s just that it’s off-balance. Drags me with it when I swing it. I stopped using it about the fourth time it got me bit by some random monster.”

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“Huh.” Brist looked out the hallway leading from the room they were in. “Well, let me think about that. I might have something for you later. For now, we better get walking.”

For the better part of an hour, they wandered through the maze, taking the turns semi-randomly as they went. The Infinite hadn’t been kidding when it said that the hallways all looked the same, though. There was nothing that Tulland could see that differentiated one from any of the others, besides other nearly identical hallways intersecting with them.

“It’s okay to just wander like this?” Tulland continued following Brist, who was walking as confidently as he would down the street towards his own house. “You aren’t fooling me. I know you don’t know where you are going.”

“Of course I don’t!” Brist laughed. “Why would I? It’s still better than sitting still waiting to lose.”

“How long do you think we even have to do this? The Infinite mentioned a clock ticking down.”

“No idea. I even tried asking the damn thing. Doesn’t make much of a difference when it’s just you and me walking, though. Either we make it or we don’t.”

“Well, kind of.” Tulland held up his plant. “This little guy is powered off my farm back home. If more than a couple of days pass, I lose that advantage.”

“Damn. That’s not great. How much of your power is it?”

“Most of it. More than enough to make me pathetic without it. Remember when I was getting stronger as we trained, before? That was the farm. I was getting better from the training, but most of it was plants sprouting and growing.”

“Hmph.” Brist tapped on the wall with his fist. “You think I should try to break through this thing again?”

“No. Absolutely not.” Tulland pushed the bigger man forward. “You can’t do it. And I don’t want to wait for you to heal up from shattering your arm again.”

After a few more hours, they finally saw their first distinction in any of the rooms they had been in, a brown smudge on the wall several feet off the ground. Brist walked up to it, laughing like a maniac.

“See, kid? I told you we’d find something sooner or later. Now what do you think this is? Some kind of code?”

“It’s your blood.” Tulland kept his voice as flat as he could. “See how it’s a dead end up above? This is where you hit the wall when I launched you. We’re back at the beginning.”

“Still, that blood thing is something. Got a knife?” Brist smiled again. “Because I have an idea.”

Marking the walls turned out to be much, much more useful than Tulland expected it to. They hadn’t been walking for five minutes before it helped them avoid their first redundant travel. After another ten, nearly every pathway they could take was marked, and they found themselves moving down a much longer hallway, one that seemed to stretch for miles uninterrupted by potential deviations from the course.

“This is weird.” Tulland said. “We shouldn’t have found this so easy.”

“Maybe. I don’t know much about mazes. But keep your eyes peeled. If there are no turns, there must be something making it dangerous we can’t see.”

“Like what?”

The pitfall did not have comic timing, and didn’t immediately open under Tulland’s feet after the fateful question. But he let out a startled little yelp as the ground under his feet disappeared in a split second, leaving him hurtling towards an uncomfortably black nothingness beneath his feet. Only the sheer strength of his intent managed to get the Chimera Sleeve on his arm to catch the edge, and only Brist’s supernaturally fast reflexes managed to get a hand on the vine before it slipped over too.