And so the bet was set, and done in a way that Tulland suspected wasn't reversible.
That, in itself, was the first win for Tulland. He had another piece of information about the relationship between his System and The Infinite that he wouldn't have ever gotten from the System itself. It had to, as near as Tulland could tell, do what The Infinite said in certain situations.
At the very least, it seemed The Infinite could bind the Ouros System to certain kinds of agreements it had made. If that's all it was, The Infinite's Dungeon System wasn't necessarily an all-powerful entity. But it was a way for Tulland to get things out of his System that it wouldn't otherwise give, or to get it to pay out where it might otherwise cheap out on him.
If there was a way for Tulland to get any kind of real victory over the System, it would have to involve something like this. Some kind of clever loophole he could exploit when trying to down a literal god. He had nowhere near the power to do that alone, but by calling on the strength of another god? It just might be doable.
Of course, that's making quite a giant assumption that their whole relationship and everything I can see isn't some kind of cruel, elaborate prank. But if that's the case, I'm going down anyway. This is the best bet I can make.
Tulland had turned off the System as soon as the bet was finalized. He had planning to do, and he didn't particularly want the System influencing him with honeyed words while he tried to do it.
The way Tulland saw it, he didn't have an absolute overabundance of cards to make his hand out of. But he had some, and if he learned one thing while watching his uncle play betting games, it was that you didn't always make your bets when it was sure you'd win. By that time, other people would have ways to figure out the strength of your hand and wouldn't commit. Instead, you started betting early, got them in deeper than they wanted to be, and hoped your hand would improve as the game wore on.
The first card Tulland had was an unlikely sort of ally in The Infinite. It wasn't necessarily on his side, but it did at least seem impartial, and the terms it had stipulated for him on the bet were more generous and better thought out than any he would have negotiated himself. It wasn't anything he could count on, and The Infinite hadn't provided him with the rule book it used to mediate those kinds of things, but it was better than having a hostile entity in cahoots with his arch-nemesis.
Tulland's second card was a bit harder to quantify. His new skill made his plants stronger, and it made them grow faster, and seemed to imply some characteristics plants held, like value, that he didn't understand yet. He imagined that the actual effect of the skill would be pretty weak on a per-plant level, but there were a couple of things that made him hopeful.
A normal farmer would be limited in terms of the total amount of land they could access. Tulland had heard of some pretty big farms on the continent, even some bigger than the entire island on which he lived. But those were worked by big groups of agricultural specialists, unclassed but skilled. There was a limit to what one person could do themselves, even if they had a class. They would have to till the soil, fertilize, weed, and harvest, as well as a dozen other things an expert farmer would do that Tulland had no clue about. They would only claim so much land because there was only so much land they could actually work.
Tulland had neither of those limitations right now because the plants he was growing simply didn't need that much help. Even unenhanced, the seeds of the briars seemed willing to sprout anywhere, on any soil, with any amount of moisture available to them. They were weeds that hunted, and once a seed landed somewhere, the plants seemed entirely capable of taking care of themselves.
To the extent Tulland was limited in this place, it would be by the total size of this floor of the dungeon and how much time he could dedicate to scattering seeds.
Which isn't much of a limitation at all. Let's get to work.
Since the briars no longer tried to make life hell for Tulland, he could pick more seeds in a few minutes than he could carry. The first job would be fixing that limitation. Scythe in hand, Tulland harvested several vines, then cut them to length before beginning to weave them together into an unbelievably crude, brutal-looking fabric.
If he wasn't immune to the damage his own plants could put out, it would have been a dangerous job. Even in a situation where he couldn't get pricked to death, the thorns were still a big problem, getting in the way constantly as he rearranged the plants again and again until they fit relatively close together.
Once that was done, the thorns became an asset instead of a liability. The completed weave couldn't have come apart even if it wanted to, given that the thorns either acted as pegs to keep the vines from sliding or went completely through them to more or less nail them into place.
Once Tulland had a makeshift, half-meter-square tarp with two sides weaved together, he took a few more vines, wove them through in a slightly different way, and managed to create two rope handles of sorts that would pull the bag mostly closed as he lifted it.
Then he got to work in earnest. Running around his space, he grabbed as many fruits as he could, tossing them into of the bag. There was no shortage of fruits growing in his original cut-out briar area, and after a minute or so, he had dozens of the things. He started to move towards the outside world, pulling fruits from his gate-keeper briars as he went.
Once Tulland was outside, he started chucking the damn things to lighten his load. He very honestly didn't care where they landed so long as they landed by themselves, and with enough points in strength, that was easy to do.
Once he had thrown out what he had, Tulland returned to his area, made sure to get whatever remaining fruits there were, then exited and started doing rounds of the more distant, sparse areas. He took along a few new Lunger Briar vines in his bag in addition to the few he had around his arms, just in case. As he passed the little clumps of briars he had planted earlier, he stripped them of fruits, hit the plants with Quickgrow and seeds with Enrich Seed, and threw them as he went.
Tulland could move faster now than he had ever been able to at any point in his life. Even carrying a big, awkward bag that kept snagging on his clothes, he could cover a mile in mere minutes. It only took him an estimated few hours to make a full circle as big as the one he made in the days before.
His increased spirit was doing a hell of a job keeping him topped off, too. Even short gaps between clumps of plants that took a few minutes walking regenerated enough magical power to push a few charges of Quickgrow. Longer walks meant he could use the more expensive Enrich Seed, which seemed to drain him more than anything else he could do physically or spiritually at the moment.
By the time he got back to home base, some of the higher level briars he had magically enhanced before he left had already pushed out new fruits, which he immediately planted. Then, after resting for about an hour, he picked what new fruits he could find and began to leave.
And then he saw the damnedest thing.
Well, isn't that interesting. I didn't plant you, did I?
Just outside of the entrance to his briar fortress, Tulland saw a briar sprout that had taken hold near the base of another plant. It wasn't anything special. A quick inspection told him it was a level 1 nothing, a seed that didn't seem to have gotten any benefit from Tulland's magical abilities or fertilizer.
But it had grown on its own. At some point, one of the briars had dropped a fruit, and it had taken root all by itself. That was Tulland's third card in his rapidly improving hand against the System.
Tulland laughed, and flipped on his communications with the System.
"Heya, System. What do you think of this?" Tulland asked.
This? I don't see anything interesting in the area, except your little thorn bushes.
"That's what I mean. This one in particular, right here. What do you think of it?"
There was the usual System's-pregnant-silence Tulland had come to expect, either before it mocked him or when it was at a loss for words.
I don't understand what you are getting at.
"No, I bet you don't." The System had no idea about Tulland's recent biome skill, and the sheer confusion in its voice confirmed that it hadn't even begun to figure out what Tulland was up to. Without that skill as context, the things Tulland had spent the last few hours doing probably looked like sheer insanity, like he was wasting time growing lower quality plants when he could have tried to figure out how to cultivate better and better ones. "Just know that I'm going faster and doing better than you could possibly imagine. I'll talk to you in a week, okay? Keep your eyes open while I work. You might see some interesting things."
Tulland worked for another five or six hours until he found he was finally too tired to make any more rounds. It was only when he sat down to eat some fruits and rest that he finally started to see the results of his hard labor.
Skill level up!
Tulland smiled and went to sleep. He saved the satisfaction of looking at his new, survival-crucial numbers until after he woke up.
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Skill level up!
Skill level up!
Skill level up!
Looks like something's going on. I'd better take a little stroll.
Tulland loaded up his bag with seeds again before he set out. There were hundreds of the fruits to pick now, compounding at an incredible rate. He tossed full handfuls of them at any open spots of ground as he walked out of his more established territory, picking what he easily could as he went. All around, there were starting to be little sprouts at the bases of long-established plants, springing up and tangling with their older siblings as they grew.
I guess it makes sense. Tulland ran his hand over one particularly dense clump of four or five plants. The briar patch I jumped headfirst into was huge. These are plants that grow to fill fields if you leave them alone.
Even when Tulland got out of what he considered his home territory, he found he was still surrounded by briars, if a little sparser. They were springing up from places he had chucked seeds into, getting thicker and stronger as time went by.
He hadn't gained any levels outside his skills, but it was easy to see what the propagation speed was benefiting.
Tulland Lowstreet
Class: Farmer LV. 12
Strength: 25
Finesse: 25
Vitality: 20
Spirit: 20
Mind: 10
Force: 20
Skills: Quickgrow LV. 8, Enrich Seed LV. 8
Passives: Biome Control LV. 4, Botanical Engineer LV. 2, Strong Back LV. 2
Tulland did his best to control his expectations for future leveling. It seemed like there was only so much any particular activity could do for him before the Dungeon System caught on and capped him. He guessed that for a regular dungeon class, that just meant they pressed forward to find the next tougher monster. Or for a farming class outside of the dungeon, they would try new crops or else be okay with just waiting around for a few growing seasons' worth of experience to accumulate.
Here, reason and fairness were out the window. New enemy types meant Tulland would level very quickly after the initial encounter, if the trend after facing his first two enemy types was to be believed. After that, he was getting a little bit of experience from farming, with bigger chunks coming in from achievements.
He wasn't okay with that, but there wasn't much he could do but grow more things and hope his plants eventually found their new types of prey. And that he got credit for those kills while he was nowhere nearby.
Tulland did his rounds, marveling at how fast things were going and speeding up the process where he could. It was when he had just about finished the loop that he noticed something.
Droppings. New droppings.
If this place was fake, The Infinite had done a pretty good job simulating it. Tulland had become pretty familiar with leavings of the Razored Lungers over the last several days, especially since they seemed to usually leave some out of sheer fear when his briar vines caught them. These were different. Mostly, they were larger. Whatever had put down the pile was a bigger animal, if the evidence was any indication. But they were also just different enough that Tulland was pretty sure he wasn't looking at the same type of animal as Razored Lungers. He didn't know a lot about droppings or tracking, but these were quite a lot larger than anything else he had seen.
It's worth looking into, at least. Tulland reached for his tool and turned it into a shovel before making any final decisions about what he would do about the animal. Whatever he did, it was no use letting good fertilizer go to waste. He scooped up what was there and walked it over to the nearest briar, dumping it on the ground where the stalk of the plant met the soil.
Putting his tool away and grabbing his club, Tulland dropped his bag on the ground and started walking through the woods.
Tracking wasn't really a thing on Ouros, mostly because there wasn't much to track. Good fishermen had a sense of where schools of fish might be found from day to day, but that was about as close as they got to the tracking that ranger classes might do. As such, he had no idea what he was doing at all. He kept his eyes peeled for anything unusual and otherwise just moved in a fairly straight line directly away from his territory, hoping he got lucky.
Come on, prey. Let me find you and kill you. Good ol' Tulland needs the experience. I'm sure you understand. Tulland's eyes lit up as he found a broken branch with a bit of fur stuck to it. It wasn't Lunger fur, at least, which helped him keep his hopes for more experience up as he crept quietly through the woods, his club up and ready for action.
Action found him soon enough. He was pushing quietly through some brush between a stand of trees when it suddenly gave way. Catching his forward momentum with a quick stumbling step forward, Tulland saw the animal standing across the field.
His mistake, Tulland immediately knew, was assuming that whatever he was chasing would end up being prey. Almost everything was prey for something, but Tulland had forgotten that almost nothing was prey for him personally until a week or so ago. The general inability of the Lungers to deal with any of his various vine-based attacking options and the fact that the vines around his base dealt with most threats before he even saw them had done more than just give Tulland a false sense of security.
It made me stupid.
The fact that he was dumb was hardly in question. The antler animal in front of him was huge and muscular, clearly built for long-distance speed in a way the Lungers weren't, and had antlers that literally glowed near their spiked tips. This was a different tier of animal entirely, something that might have been technically killable, but was absolutely, positively not prey.
Objective Change!
You have failed to locate the exit of this floor before running afoul of its ruler. The stair to the next floor has been rendered undiscoverable until either you or it perishes.
New Objective: Kill The Forest Duke
Forest Duke
This large hoofed animal rules over its territory with impunity, attacking any animal with the temerity to get close. It is vicious, powerful, and has encyclopedic knowledge in regards to the layout of this floor.
The Forest Duke represents a powerful challenge for any adventurer new to The Infinite, and promises similarly outsized rewards to those that defeat it.
Tulland took off running. If there was any question whether the antler monster would chase after him, that was immediately answered by the soil that the thing ripped up and threw behind as it launched itself towards him.
Tulland was fast, much faster than he realized. His strength and agility were pushing him further on each stride than he would have thought possible if he wasn't accomplishing the feat in that moment. The Forest Duke was still much faster. Even with the head start of an entire forest clearing, it only took about ten seconds before Tulland could hear the monster a few footsteps behind him.
Tulland turned on a dime and swung the club back and forth, wild enough that the Forest duke had to take note. He was almost completely sure the weapon wouldn't do much to the monster, but the forest duke certainly didn't know that yet. It was better than getting skewered immediately, in any case.
The antlers whistled through the air as the animal swung them side to side, which gave Tulland just enough warning to duck and turn before they impaled him on the head. He managed to dodge four of those attacks before he caught his foot on a root, lost a mere fraction of a breath's time, and felt the antlers crash into his left arm from the side.
Tulland went flying. He managed to land on his feet, but his offhand arm was a mess. Something important for holding it up had broken below his shoulder, and it hung limp at his side. Aware that he now wouldn't be able to swing his club well with his balance gone, Tulland threw it sidearm at the animal as hard as he could.
It wasn't a good throw, but it still meant trouble when the Forest Duke didn't even appear to mind the hit. The club thunked into the animal, failing to penetrate far enough into its hide to bother anything, then fell to the floor. The animal looked at the weapon, snorted, then brought its rage-filled eyes back up to gaze at Tulland.
That delay saved him. It was just long enough for whatever primitive targeting the briar vines used to figure out where the threat was and start launching themselves. As the huge elk took a step forward towards Tulland, it was suddenly snagged around the ankle by the end of a vine wrapped around Tulland's now useless club.
The Forest Duke roared with rage when a lucky twist let the thorn penetrate a bit into the animal's ankle as the briar worked back and forth, trying to wrap the animal up. But what little bit of length it had managed to unwrap from the club wasn't enough for a full loop. With a quick motion, the elk brought its rear legs up before kicking them out and sending Tulland's club flying into the distance.
While that happened, the two vines around Tulland's arms were already in motion. The first flew from his good arm while it was outstretched from the club-throwing, and hit the animal low. It managed to get around both of its forelegs while the beast was dealing with the threat behind it, and made another loop for good measure as it squeezed like a boa constrictor.
For just a second, Tulland had some hope that his plants might work. If the Forest Duke didn't have a counter to the threat of the Hades Lunger Briar, it just might be enough to slow it down, hurt it, or even kill it over enough time.
It wasn't meant to be. Shaking its head in rage, the monster lowered its jaw to the vine, bit down, and severed it in two. That was too much for the vine, which went limp immediately.
The last vine was an overachiever. As Tulland started running again, it had already taken the opportunity to latch around the Forest Duke's neck, which was about the least convenient angle Tulland could imagine if the monster was going to bite through it.
Tulland didn't wait to see how that briar fared. Given what he had seen so far, it was almost certain that the vine wouldn't be enough to stop the monster for more than a few seconds no matter how well it was situation. He needed as much distance as he could get, as quickly as he could get it.
He got some too. It took the Forest Duke almost a half minute to catch up to him once it started after him again. Out of weapons, injured, and still a good distance from home, Tulland steeled himself for death as he kept running. He might have led it through the briars, but they were far from solidly grown out here, and the thing was smart enough to avoid them during the chase. He could turn and fight, but there was little question who would win.
At least it doesn't seem like it will take it very long to finish the job. It's pretty strong.
In the end, it was Tulland's makeshift bag that saved him. Tulland didn't lead the Duke over it on purpose, but the mere fact that the fastest way towards home took him past the bag meant that they both crossed over it as they ran. Neither of them were expecting anything from it, and both were about equally shocked when the entire bag, powered by its Lunger briar parts, bounced off the ground, wrapped around the front leg of the Duke like a long plant-based sock, and began to squeeze.
Tulland ran like he was being chased by the devil himself. He might as well have been. And thankfully, the bag was made out of so many different segments of vine that the Forest Duke had trouble getting rid of them all. Every time it bit through one, another few would untangle and start working on the monster. Tulland moved as fast as he could while the elk monster trumpeted in rage behind him, closing the distance to his home as fast as he could.
He managed to make it with the Forest Duke following close behind. His territory was thick enough with briars that they began to slow the elk down, either by outright attacking or making the monster take a less-than-straight line that allowed Tulland to maintain his lead.
Finally, Tulland found himself at the entrance to his camp with a lead of several strides. His arm was screaming in so much pain that he thought he'd puke, but he launched himself through the air, leaping headfirst into his enclosure and rolling as he made it past his own guard briars.
The Forest Duke looked at the space in confusion. It seemed to have no idea that anything like this was here, which was reasonable enough considering the patch hadn't been this developed several days ago. Its angry eyes came up and looked at Tulland wildly as it considered the new scenery.
Come on. Don't step forward. Just go away. Don't step forward. Please.
It took it a few more seconds to decide, and Tulland looked on in resignation as the elk snorted, put its hoof forward, and began to walk into his camp.
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