Infinite Farmer-Chapter 144: Supposed To Do

It’s more surprised than I thought. Can you see any other elites incoming?

I can’t. This one appears to be alone, for the moment. I also don’t think it’s as surprised as you think.

I blocked a full swing from him. How did I do that?

Fifty stat points, Tulland, is a lot.

Tulland was able to talk to the System for that moment as the elite and he grappled for leverage, but stopped immediately once the dirt warrior slid his sword down and thrust at his gut, easily shifting out of the way as he spun the rear of the handle into the swordsman’s face. That was a Brist lesson, of course. He had two sides to his weapon, which meant twice the strikes if he handled it right in the right situation. That was at least what Brist said, and if it wasn’t quite literally true, it was still a good enough philosophy that he hadn’t entirely ignored that lesson.

The biggest advantage of a two-sided weapon wasn’t really damage dealing, since the handle was a poor club in a lot of ways. Really, the utility came from setting up shots differently. As the handle bashed into the back of the warrior’s head, it shifted forwards, which caused an equal-and-opposite reaction to jerk back to its full stature. But by that time, Tulland had turned the Farmer’s Tool into a hoe and hacked back hard on the backswing.

The blade of the hoe came in at a sideways angle to the dirt man’s face, hacking it clean off in one go. It wasn’t enough to disintegrate him, but the dirt men did follow some of the rules of their human equivalents, and that appeared to hold true to little rules like “you can’t see without eyes” and “massive damage makes you stagger for at least a bit.” Tulland managed to keep himself from pausing in wonder at the fact that he was doing so well in close combat, and hacked down again and again until the dirt man stopped moving and broke apart.

Thoroughly out of breath, he was shocked to see killing that one elite was enough to justify another ten-point stat potion all on its own. He dumped it all into his strength and dexterity without a second thought.

He ran off before other troops could find him, still confused as to how just one elite troop had gotten away from the others.

It could have been wounded while they were chasing. Licht still has arrows, you know. Or it might have been on the bridge when it first collapsed. Climbing out of there was no simple thing for you, and you had eight arms to do it with. The other elites wouldn’t have waited for it.

Both things made sense, especially the second part. His time in the water and climbing up the rocks had really shown Tulland how little use he had been making of his vines in unusual situations. They could help him climb, cramming themselves into cracks his hands couldn’t manage and hooking into the crevices in the rock before lifting him up. The sleeves expand-to-constrict action was much more versatile than he could have imagined, and allowed them to turn into almost any simple shape he could think of within reason. They could coil, sheet, or billow as he needed them to, retaining almost all of their strength in almost any form he could manage.

Of course, they were still primarily a combat item, and fighting was most of the situations Tulland found himself in. His thinking was clouded by worry and panic, but even so he could tell that the fact that he had always needed them to act like either melee weapons or little, inefficient summons had narrowed his thinking on them to those two categories.

It was another piece of the puzzle, he realized. Tulland felt like if he just had ten minutes of safety to work with, he could figure it out once and for all. But he’d never have that so long as he was on this floor with Necia in danger. He needed to resolve that first.

He wove through the trees until he found a patrol and decimated it, then found another. He was ten small patrols deep into learning the massive extent his new stats had filled out his class when he fell asleep standing up.

That’s not good. How did that happen? It hasn’t been that long.

You had to heal, and then you had to run for your life for almost a day while worrying, fighting, and thinking as hard as you could. Your mind is exhausted.

What can I do about it? I can’t sleep in a tree. These troops are too smart for that.

Agreed. You at least need to find some sort of place you’d get some advance warning. Could you sneak into one of those shacks?

No good. I’d be trapped in there if the elites opened the door. That’s if I could sneak in there in the first place, and I’m no rogue.

True. If only you had an ally, you could… Oh, we are being fools. Your Chimera Sleeves can guard. They are more than capable of taking an order like that.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Yes, they could. That’s genius. Except that I just had an even better idea.

You did?

I did. Why settle for a couple chimera sleeve when we can have an army?

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—

Tulland managed to keep himself awake long enough to cover the hour or so back to his farm. Mostly, this took the form of talking to the System, which worked for the first half hour. The next ten minutes were spent worrying about Necia, which bridged a bit of the gap until even that time-honored pastime started to fail.

The last twenty minutes got weirder. The feeling that somehow this was it and he was heading towards the end of things in some way or another had never been stronger. Whatever was going to happen, he knew, was going to happen soon. If there was a way that could have meant anything but death, he couldn’t imagine it at all, which as far as he could tell meant he was probably dying that day, or the next day if he managed to get a long enough nap in first.

And death, somehow, brought memories with it. For the first time in a long time, he found himself thinking of home.

—

Tulland didn’t know it at the time, but the day he and his uncle went to the funeral was the last day he’d ever spend without the System sharing space in his head. The man who had died was old by Tulland’s standards, another fisherman his uncle had worked with enough to qualify him as something like an unofficial business partner. He wasn’t a man who cared much for kids, which meant that Tulland had been on friendly but not overly close terms with the deceased. He had known the man, but only as someone who mattered to his uncle.

Tulland would have been lying if he said the man’s death had broken his own heart, but he could at least feel some sympathy for his uncle, who really was mourning a lifelong friend.

Both of them had sat in silence as the clerics blessed the corpse, and stood just as quietly as they put it in the ground. Tulland had accepted hugs and condolences as various people stopped to commiserate with him and his surrogate father, and then was surprised to find his uncle was made just as uncomfortable by it as he was. Long before Tulland would have thought of asking to leave, his uncle was dragging him out by the elbow.

They walked around the streets of the village for a while, silently, watching people do their work and go about happier, less mournful business. It was Tulland that broke that silence first, both from the sheer discomfort of knowing his otherwise invincible uncle was hurt and his own discomfort at long stretches without conversation.

“I’m sorry I didn’t know him better,” Tulland had said. “I could have… I don’t know. Mourned with you more.”

“Don’t be sorry about that. That’s stupid,” the old man scoffed, smiling weakly but genuinely for the first time in days. “That old goat hated kids. And anything under thirty was a kid to him, especially at the end there. He used to apologize about it, how he never did anything for that kid.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. I’m not sure he even knew your name.” Tulland’s uncle laughed. “I mean, he must have, right? But I don’t think I ever heard him say it.”

“He didn’t have kids of his own? He was married, right? Or was that a later thing?”

“No, he got married young. Found the right woman, pinned her down before she knew what a mistake she was making. I’m mostly joking about that, but he took good care of her for more than one reason. I think he had to make sure she never had reason to question the whole thing being a good idea.”

They both stopped and watched the island’s noisiest wagon roll by, both of them resisting making the same tired joke about whether or not the owner ever greased any part of it.

“It bothered me. When they said not to pity the dead,” the uncle said quietly.

“You think they should?” Tulland looked up at his uncle inquisitively. He had never been religious to any substantial degree. It surprised him that he had any opinions on this at all. “Really?”

“No. That’s the point.” His uncle nodded at a wall. Tulland knew what he meant. This was the only wall in town his uncle ever rested on. “They only say that because they know people are doing it. Thinking about that person not being able to spend any more time with their family. Not being able to do more of the things they liked to do.”

“There’s the last place. Where people go when they die,” Tulland said.

“Sure. Even if there wasn’t, though. I know you think about me as an old man, but you know I’d be awful young to die, right? We were the same age, until he passed.”

Tulland hadn’t known or at least hadn’t thought about it, but his uncle’s friend had been a bit young to die.

“I guess. They said he died of old age, though. That’s what they said when they came to tell you,” Tulland said.

“It was true in a way. His wife died last year. You remember. He spent that whole year taking care of her and fishing, both jobs at once, neither easy. And he wore himself out.”

“I think I do pity him, then.” Tulland kicked his feet back against the wall a bit. “If that’s why he died.”

“And that’s what bothers me. He wouldn’t have regretted that. That woman was what he did. More than fishing, more than having friends, more than anything. Taking care of her was what he would have said he was for.”

“It wasn’t hard?”

“It was hard. But it was what he was supposed to be doing. He knew it. I knew it. Even when he couldn’t fish anymore, and even when he died. The real thing to pity wasn’t him working out the last of his life on his wife. It would have been if he couldn’t do that. If he had missed out on the thing he was supposed to do.”

Tulland didn’t think he got it. For once, he was prepared to admit he was too young to understand something. That he hadn’t lived enough life.

“I know none of this makes sense. It’s just something I have to tell you for when it does.” His uncle patted him on the shoulder. “When the time comes, and you have a chance to do whatever it is you are made for, do it. Even if it means things are going to be hard, and even if it means you are going to be in danger.” His uncle looked up across the street then, sniffing. There was a reason this was his resting wall, after all. “Now that I’ve said that, I think I owe you something. How about some pastries?”

“From the bakery?” Tulland’s stomach rumbled at the thought. His uncle hardly ever spent the money on them, but the bakery’s desserts were the best on the island. “Yes, please.”