Infinite Farmer-Chapter 170: Dungeon Seed

Dungeon Reclaimed!

Against all odds, you have seized control of a blighted dungeon. By lacing the soil of the pillar with plants, you have frozen the flow of blight to the dungeon and allowed the System of Aghli to regain what appears to be permanent control of the space.

The dungeon itself is a lost cause and will be destroyed, but a thing has been learned today, a weapon that can stand against the blight. Your reward will be great, in a way, and likely a key component of resisting the dungeon. Use it wisely.

And the world went black.

When Tulland came to, the dungeon was gone. Not only were they back in the stone church, but the crevice leading to the dungeon itself had closed. He, Necia, and a very loudly snoring Yuri were all deposited on top of it side by side.

“That was weird,” Necia said. “And I didn’t even get any rewards for it.”

“Not one?”

“The Aghli System said to ask my party leader about the group reward. I think that means it cheated me in your favor. What did you get, anyway?”

“Good question.” Tulland could feel a stone about the size of a peach pit in his hand. It took looking at it to get any information on what it was.

Dungeon Seed

To The Infinite’s champion is gifted the essence of a dungeon, to be planted and nurtured. Though it will not be so grand as the dungeon this city once boasted, it will bend itself to your will.

Any action taken with this seed goes beyond what is precedented in this world’s history or this dungeon’s experience and knowledge. While allowable, the actual experience of using the dungeon may be volatile, but carries a significant potential for good to counter the possibility of ill.

“Well, that’s interesting. A dungeon seed,” Tulland said.

“Which is?”

“Ask the System.” Tulland closed his eyes slightly. He was just beginning to have a trickle of magic in his system, and it was far from having made up for the damage to his body yet. “It should know.”

Necia went silent for a minute, then giggled. “It says it doesn’t and had choice words about you saying it did when you know full well that’s impossible. I kind of like it now, you know.”

“Yeah. Me too.” Tulland turned to face Yuri. “What should we do with her? Wait for her to wake up?”

“No, I think she was serious when she said she might be out for days. I don’t want to go that long without a bath.” Necia levered herself up off the ground, pulled Tulland to his feet, then tossed Yuri over her shoulder. “I thought it was stupid to bring her, you know.”

“We had to take the chance.”

“Yes, it turns out we did. Make sure people know it was her that did this, Tulland. When we get home. We really couldn’t have done it alone.”

—

It was less than a day before Yuri woke up. They had been taking turns carrying her, which was fairly easy to do, if a little awkward. She snored loudly the whole time before suddenly stopping and squawking in outrage.

“Calm down,” Necia said. “I’ll put you down.”

“It’s not that. Have you seen these rewards? What even is a Stake Extension buff?”

Both Necia and Tulland turned slowly to face her.

“Yuri, it’s very important you read that notification to us right now. Verbatim.”

“Sure. No problem. Hopefully you can make some sense of it.”

Somewhere, Necia had found a paper and charcoal pencil. She scribbled furiously as Yuri read, then handed it to Tulland so they could both review what they had just heard.

Stake Extender

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

You can now extend the range of effect of a staked territory. As a permanent buff, being within line-of-sight with a class holder under the positive influence of a territory they control will extend the length of their ability to rely on their territory as if they were in the presence of the staked area itself.

Once a week, you can extend the amount of time they can rely on their territory away from it by up to two days. Doing so will expend the maximum amount of magical power you can contain.

“It sounds like something that would help a governor or a king, but I don’t know any of those. Any ideas, you two? Because…”

“You just woke up, so you’re thinking slow.” Necia pulled the girl into a hug. “But you just destroyed Tulland’s one weakness. His farm is a staked territory.”

“You mean…” Yuri’s mouth moved noiselessly as she processed what Necia was saying. “You mean that if he had this, I could have skipped this trip entirely? Do you know how many times I almost died?”

—

It took longer than it should have to get back home. Even if she had let them carry her instead of consistently refusing, Yuri was still always going to slow them down. She needed frequent rest stops to sleep and eat, and was only slowly regaining the ability to look like something besides a dried-out corpse.

“Sorry, guys.” Yuri finished her most recent meal and flopped back into the dirt, dust in her hair. “It doesn’t seem like it, but I’m in a lot of pain. I really shouldn’t have put that last drop of energy into the mix. There are whole paragraphs in the skill description about how stupid it is to do that.”

“Don’t apologize.” Necia patted their downed friend on the shoulder. “You probably saved the world. You definitely saved us and everyone in town. That’s not the kind of thing you say sorry for.”

It took three days of walking to get back to town, during which Tulland’s strength kept growing higher and higher. That was great for the normal reasons, and every drop of power he could pour into keeping people safe was a big deal. But more than that, it meant his garden was still growing, something he couldn’t imagine happening if the settlement was leveled.

When the walls and rapidly regrowing briars came back into view, he wanted to run towards the baths. Instead, he was interrupted by a conversation he decided was best to handle right away. He waved the girls forward and sat down on a roadside boulder to have it.

I’ve been talking to the other System. It is perplexed.

It seems like it’s perplexed a lot.

It’s hard to blame it. But I think that it is probably justified here. You didn’t destroy the other dungeon, and yet it was destroyed. It didn’t exactly do this, yet it retains control of it nonetheless.

Is that all nonsense? It sounds like it.

The closest it and I have been able to come to figuring it out is that the default state of a dungeon is pure and under the control of its world’s System. With that control, the System can do a great many things. It can move them, grow them, destroy them, and alter them in both subtle and unsubtle ways.

Then the blight moves in, blights it, and takes control of it somehow.

Yes, but that’s not the point. The point is that since the default is pure and almost nothing can change it, there are a number of abilities that a dungeon apparently carries that the system wasn’t aware of. I didn’t know about them either. For instance, have you noticed that a dungeon hasn’t appeared almost under your feet for days?

Yes.

That is because the ability to make pop-up, temporary dungeons is seemingly an offshoot of having control of the biggest permanent dungeon nearby.

Wait, it has control of that again?

No. Absolutely not. But neither does the blight. It’s currently up in the air whether the blight has a response for this. My hope is that it does not. And I think you can probably guess what’s likely to have the largest influence on whether we have something to say on the subject or not.

This seed.

That seed. As much as I hate to delay you from work you’ve been intending to do or rest you are intending to have, that seed needs to be figured out sooner rather than later. Today, if you can.

I’m taking a bath. Non-negotiable.

I wouldn’t try to negotiate it. I can smell you from here.

—

After the bath, Tulland and the rest of the team took stock of their spoils. He was still palming a dungeon seed, something he neither knew how to use or felt safe using in blighted soil. Without much in terms of guidance, he brought together the whole town to see if anyone had any arcane knowledge that would help with this particular dilemma.

Nobody knew much, but there were a few people who had been around a long time, lived through a lot, and had then seen the coming of the blight with old, wise eyes. They remembered things the younger people hadn’t necessarily taken note of.

“I saw a dungeon turned,” an older woman said. “Well and truly turned. It popped up healthy, and then was blighted. The monsters changed with it.”

“You are sure?” Amrand asked. “I know you tell the truth, Yubea. But it’s important.”

“I’m sure. For a time, the healthy beasts fought off the blighted ones, then were overwhelmed. That’s not a thing that would be easy to forget.”

Tulland took note of her testimony, and several others like it. It was as he had already expected. For the permanent dungeon they had conquered to have been corrupted, something like that had to be possible. Confirming it was true for pop-up dungeons confirmed it was true for probably any type of them.

“That means I can’t plant this seed. At least not as-is.” Tulland was disappointed, but not anywhere near so much that he’d make a foolish decision over it. “Which means we need another solution. Some other way to use this.”

“You could eat it,” Necia said. “Just swallow it down.”

“You think that would work?”

“No, but it would be funny.”

“I think we had better find a different way,” Amrand said. “This is a big opportunity.”

“Maybe if we could find a way to clear the soil,” Yubea said. “In just one place. For just a time.”

“Our best runes don’t do that completely. They can’t. And they don’t last long. One mistake, and we’d be driven from this place.”

“His plants aren’t like that. They hold.”

“Yes, but they don’t clear the soil. They simply exist despite it. We’ve confirmed it.”

Tulland wasn’t sure how they knew that much, but he suspected everyone was right. There still was probably a way, though. And the quickest road to that possibility had been a long time coming.

“I might be able to alter a plant so it does that. Clears the soil, I mean. None of the plants I’ve ever made were actually for surviving the blight. It’s just a good side effect. If I could make something different, it might work,” Tulland offered.

“You can do that?” Amrand’s eyes widened. “Something that grows despite the blight?”

“Maybe. It’s not an easy thing to do, and not something I’d spend a lot of time on if I didn’t have some advantages. But it’s possible. The main thing I need is time. That’s been in short supply, lately.”

“You’ll have your time, then.” Amrand turned to the townsfolk. “We should have some breathing room, since you took down the rest of the dungeon. The rest of what you need, we’ll buy for you.” freewёbnoνel.com