Infinite Farmer-Chapter 130: Scythe

“Whoa there.” Brist hauled Tulland back over the ledge like a sack of potatoes, then slapped him hard on the back. “I wouldn’t go down there if I were you.”

“I don’t want to!” Tulland tried to tamp down his sudden surge of adrenaline and failed miserably. “What even is that?”

“It’s a pitfall trap. You see them sometimes. Usually, they make a noise first, or something. I never saw one that was all silent and instant like that before.”

Tulland glanced back at the pit. “What are we going to do? If you had fallen, I wouldn’t have gotten to you on time. You barely got me.”

“Oh, that’s not a problem. Adventurer’s grasp. It solves everything.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Adventurer’s grasp. We hold hands.”

“I’m not doing that.”

Brist pulled a fragment of something out of his pack and dropped it down the nothingness-hole, listening closely as he did. Tulland stopped and angled his ear towards the pit, listening for a distressingly long time without any sound of the fragment of whatever hitting bottom.

“Fine. But you aren’t telling anyone about this,” Tulland said.

“This? I’m telling everyone.” Brist grabbed Tulland’s hand in a meaty palm and strode over to the edge of the pit before leaping over, Tulland in tow. “You can’t let people know stuff like that bothers you if you don’t want it advertised. It’s a rookie mistake.”

The adventurer’s grasp worked very well, in a sweaty, man-handed sort of way. The pit traps kept on coming, as well as a sudden dead-drop of several boulders which suddenly materialized above them. In all cases, the hand-holding meant they could pull each other out of the way before disaster struck, barely avoiding each hazard in turn.

“How much longer, do you think?”

“Not much. Looks like we are coming up on another wall.”

Tulland and Brist inched forward, hitting no more traps on their way to the terrain change. The next corner took them through a short hallway and then to a much more open space, one almost to the scale of outdoors places. Tulland could see the edges of it in the form of stone walls much like the rest of the maze sported, but he guessed they were miles off.

“What’s this? Sporting arena?” Tulland guessed.

“Kid, what kind of sport needs this much room?” Brist said.

“I don’t know. It’s just the first thing that popped to mind. Now…”

Tulland walked into the room, letting go of Brist’s hand as he did. Less than five feet in, his face smashed up against something cold, hard, and entirely clear, like a wall of solid glass that dazed him on impact and sent him reeling.

“Whew. Hold on there, boy.” Brist walked up and banged on the wall, hard. “Looks like this isn’t normal glass. I’m going to see if I can break it, but you might want to stand back.”

Tulland got his bearings back and took a few steps behind Brist to what he hoped would be a safe distance. Brist wound up his fist like a ball in the hand of a thrower and let rip. The concussion was deafening, but seemingly ineffective. No rubble seemed to fall, or at least Tulland didn’t see or hear any. Brist had been unable to affect it in any way. The opposite was not true. As if all the energy in his punch was reflected backwards, Brist’s fist went flying backwards from the point of impact, carrying him a few yards in the same direction with it.

“Nope. Looks like that’s a bust. What are we supposed to do? Dig?” Brist said while shaking off his hand.

“Maybe. But probably not.” Tulland walked up to the invisible wall carefully, placing his hand on the smooth surface and walking down it. “If I’m right… here.”

“What?”

“A gap. The maze is continuing. We just can’t see it now.”

“Well, damn.” Brist looked out over the open expanse thoughtfully. “Is that going to make it harder, or easier?”

“Harder, I think. But we’ll check. You walk that way and I’ll walk this one, and we’ll count the entrances to get started.”

—

There were six entrances overall. It took them several minutes to be sure, but there were six ways to start this maze, none of which were sure to have an exit in them.

“I don’t know that this is worth it, anymore.” Brist grimaced at the empty space that held the nearest entrance. “Give me something to fight. Hell, just give me something to punch. But this? This is just scrambling around in the dark.”

“I feel you. But don’t you want to get stronger? So you can survive?”

“Kid, ain’t none of us are surviving.” Brist scoffed. “I came in here because I was getting old, and I didn’t want to. Thought I could have some fun before the end this way. That’s how it is when you run out of wars to fight at home.”

“How do you run out of war?”

“You punch enough, you can run out of anything.” Brist shrugged. “And that’s all I ever did. Never ended remembering to have a family. This is what I had left at the end. So I’m pretty raw about this maze business. Where’s the fight?”

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

“It’s after dinner.” Tulland thanked his lucky stars his pouch made it in with him. “And then we pray that we can get to the end of this thing before I get weak. I’m a pretty good farmer, but even I can’t grow this stuff on bare stone.”

They sat and cooked up dinner. Brist seemed surprised at the portions Tulland was willing to give him, but didn’t complain as he took seconds. After that, it was into the maze, where Tulland prayed things would go quickly. The first sign that they wouldn’t came from a bloody-handed Brist, who frowned at the wall as the first part of their plan faded to nothing.

“Dammit. Would have thought that would still work.” Brist and Tulland watched as the blood from his hand soaked into the nothingness of the wall, leaving no mark at all. “Gonna try the ground.”

There was no difference, Whatever tricks they had used so far would apparently not work here. The Infinite had planned for anything any normal warrior could bring to this part of the puzzle. The walls were unmarkable, either by residue or weapons damage. It took Tulland an hour of unfruitful, unproductive wandering through the maze to figure out the alternative, something he should have realized right away.

“No. Dumb Tulland. Dumb, dumb.”

“What? You’re just realizing that now?”

“Brist, just shut up for a second.” Tulland summoned a small handful of grain from his storage container. He had tons of it to spare. Dropping it on the floor, he waited to see if it would get sucked up like the blood had. It didn’t.

“The hell? Why didn’t it take it?”

“Probably because The Infinite considers it to be an object, not a mark.” Tulland pulled another small pile of several grains from his storage. “I figured it probably wanted to make this maze next to impossible if we didn’t have some way of marking things. But it wants that to cost something. Most of you warrior types don’t carry much with you, right? So an archer would eventually be leaving arrows. You might leave your fist weapons. Things like that. You’d have to get creative because you don’t have many.”

Tulland put the handful of rice down by the corner of the hallway.

“But me? I’ve got lots of stuff. At some point, this storage got to where it holds enough food that I’d never have to worry about it again.”

“How many times can you mark things?”

“More times than there are corners in this place, guaranteed. So long as we always put the grain at the corner, I can use a single grain. That’s thousands and thousands of times.”

“Good. We’ll make short work of this, then.”

It still took forever. Each of the entrances, it turned out, were perfectly comfortable leading to nothing but dead ends. If they had been lucky, they might have found the one true entrance right away. They didn’t. By the time they were through with confirming four of the false entrances led nowhere, they had burned almost an entire day.

“I’m going to run out of power,” Tulland said. “Unless we sprint through and get really lucky, I’m going to be no help at all in the last fight.”

“Don’t worry about that too much.” Brist flexed his fist. “I can fight for two. Just… I don’t know. Distract the boss, if there is one. Do your weird stuff. I’ll take advantage of it. Even if you aren’t doing much damage, hitting should help. So long as it’s not a fair fight, I think I can take almost anyone one on one.”

They ate and slept, with Tulland dreaming of impotence in combat getting them both killed. He woke up uncomfortably unrested, ate some leftover grain mix, and joined Brist in eliminating the rest of the false entrances.

“I can’t believe we are this unlucky.” Tulland faced the last of the entrances, the one that was almost surely the right way through. “We really picked the right one last?”

“Maybe.” Brist cracked his neck and checked his weapons. “Or maybe we always had to clear all the bad options before it would give us the good one. The Infinite doesn’t have to make it easy on us.”

They were getting pretty good at clearing hallways now. They both took a side, walking with an arm on the wall until they hit a gap, putting down a predetermined number of grains to indicate their initial deviation from their path, and clearing out each unproductive section before moving on to the next.

“This is taking forever.”

“We must be almost done, kid. There’s just not that much area left. And we haven’t hit a gap for a while. Do you remember having a straightaway passage like this in the invisible section?”

The most uptodate nove𝙡s are published on frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓.

“Not this long. And… oh, I just hit a gap.”

“Me too. Same time. Which might mean…” Brist took off one of his fist weapons and tossed it several meters forward. “Yup. Thought so. We are out.”

Tulland had to suppress a little dance of joy. In front of them, not so far off at all, was the apparent exit to the big invisible-wall arena. They had seen it several times over the last few days, silently mocking them with its inaccessibility. Now they walked straight up to it, ready for the next section of challenge.

“No telling what’s through there. You still powered up, kid?”

“I am. No telling how much longer, though. We’d better get moving.” Tulland walked forward to the gap, pulling his farmer’s tool from his back. “You ready?”

“I’m ready. Actually, before that.” Brist held out his hand. “Can I see that tool? Make it that scythe you mentioned.”

Tulland shrugged and handed the weapon over, morphing it into his least favorite combat option as he did. Brist balanced it in his hand, swiping awkwardly a few times with it.

“Yeah, thought so. It’s not much good as a weapon for the reasons you said. Off balance, and the angles are all wrong. But…” He pushed it out in front of him a few feet and pulled it back, nodding. “Kid, have you ever kneed someone in the face?”

“I can’t say I have.”

“Your loss. The trick of it is to get them behind the neck like this.” Brist put down the farmer’s tool and looped his big arms behind Tulland’s neck. “Then do you know what you do? You can’t reach them with your knee yet. How do you get their head down?”

“Pull it down?”

“Nope. Watch.” Brist put downward diagonal pressure on Tulland’s neck, which he resisted bending to. Even though Brist was stronger, he was able to keep his head up. “See? Your whole body is built to keep you standing. I have to fight against all of that with a body that isn’t built to push down on necks, exactly. Doesn’t work. But if I do this…”

Brist took a quick step backwards, pulling Tulland with him. Like magic, Tulland’s body bent at the waist to compensate for the movement. A split second later, he had a knee in his nose.

“See that? Your body is built to bend over and pick stuff up, and mine is built to take steps backwards. So there’s much less resistance from you, and much more power from me. Physics is on my side.”

“What’s that have to do with the scythe?”

“Way I figure it, you probably don’t hit every time you poke with that pitchfork. I’ve seen you transition that weapon lately. Has it been getting faster?”

“It has.” Tulland grabbed the weapon and cycled it through the four forms. “Something about upgrading it, I think.”

“Thought so. My thinking is, not all of those misses have to be wastes.” Brist pantomimed a poke with the weapon, then waited a split second before jumping back, hard. “Since the blade is on the inside, you might be able to surprise someone. Think about it, anyway.”

It’s not a bad idea.

He’s probably seen things like that before. The System had been quiet almost the entire time they were in the labyrinth. Tulland hadn’t had much to say, and had let that ride. It was still good to hear another voice, even if it was in his head. Anything you can get out of him is going to be a boon. This is a man of great experience.

“Thanks for that.” Tulland shifted the weapon to the scythe form and gave an experimental stepping-back pull on the handle. It felt strong. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“You do that.” Brist pointed towards the door. “You ready?”

“Ready.” Tulland nodded. “Let’s get this done.”