Infinite Farmer: A Plants vs Dungeon

Just after Tulland had finished rushing through his preparations for his farm and took just a moment to catch his breath, The Infinite began a countdown for the next wave. He didn’t know why he had been expecting something longer, but he had thought he’d get hours, or maybe days. This wasn’t even enough time to think.

“Five minutes? That’s all I get?” Tulland complained.

It isn’t meant to be fun. It’s enough time for the average class to heal and recover a good deal of their resources. Although I would caution you against assuming that five minutes will be a consistent break length between waves throughout your time here. It could be longer or shorter, depending on what The Infinite is trying to accomplish.

“Which would be?”

Before the System could respond, The Infinite informed Tulland of his lack of free time with its usual dry, matter of fact style.

The Infinite launched the second stage of the wave at Tulland right as the countdown ticked down to zero. A total of ten beasts that looked almost entirely like those before appeared, with one notable difference.

How much puncturing are these things going to resist, System? Can I count on the caltrops at all?

There’s no way to know for sure, but I’d guess they will still work, although much less reliably. You see, when a System adjusts something like this…

Sorry, we’ll have to cover this later. Too close to impact.

I understand. Do your best.

The beasts were still not the best at formation, which meant that Tulland was still able to pick his first unfortunate target. The Giant’s Hair vines were all still present, but looking a little ragged and worse for the wear. He had more growing, of course, but it would take a while before they were ready.

In the meantime, it was going to be a test of how much he had learned during the last wave. He was better at fighting the beasts, and what The Infinite was doing to him with the beast evolution mostly amounted to making him a bit less well equipped. His caltrops would be less now. And with his Giant’s Hairs getting a bit weaker, that meant he’d be doing more of the work himself. If he had learned something from the last wave, neither of these deficiencies would be much of an issue.

But if he hadn’t, it would be. There was just no way around it.

The collision with the first beast went very, very poorly for the unfortunate monster. Tulland aimed for the beast’s face, and learned that they not only disliked getting hit in the face, but that they actually had a weak point in the structure of their skull bones near the eyes and nose. The lucky tines got past the protective bones and into the vulnerable beast tissue behind.

Unfortunately, the weird way vitality worked at this level meant that this wasn’t a guaranteed kill. Tulland was disappointed to see the Silverfoot Beast struggling while its companions started to close in on him. But Tulland had still hit the weakest of the weak spots, dealing a tremendous amount of damage to the beast’s overall health, as well as hooking it in a way it couldn’t easily shake free from. Even better, his Clubber Vine was immediately going to work for him, bouncing the beast’s head around in ways that were hurting it both at the site of impact and as it pivoted around at the end of his pitchfork tines.

When the beast went down less than a second or so later, it wasn’t a surprise. It was just soon enough that Tulland was able to pivot away from the corpse before the main forces got to him and get a few seconds looking for his next soft target.

He found it easily. There were a total of three beasts who had picked up caltrops in their feet, two of whom were clearly less effected by the damage than the first-wave beasts had been. They were still slowed, and still noticeably distressed to have horrible metal stars piercing the pads of their feet, but the fruits hadn’t pierced nearly as far and weren’t anywhere near as difficult to dislodge. These two had only one caltrop each and would shake them loose soon, a little bit damaged but otherwise still able to fight.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The one beast who had picked up two of them was a different story. Tulland almost felt bad for it. They weren’t even both in front paws, or both in the back. It had picked them up on diagonal feet somehow, one in the front right and one in the back left. This left it so badly off balance it was entirely unable to lift up one foot or the other to dislodge the fruits. Given that the beasts were still uncommonly dumb compared to most, it had only just worked out that it needed to flop over onto its side to have any chance of getting the cursed things out when Tulland made it to its side, hopped up, and came down full force with a coup de grace overhead strike that nearly pinned it to the ground.

If that hadn’t been enough to take it down, the eight beasts who had taken no damage any worse than some Giant’s Hair vines hanging off their bodies stampeding over it in pursuit of Tulland’s soft human parts were more than enough to stop it for good.

Tulland yanked his pitchfork up and ran just ahead of the herd, getting nicked with teeth and claws as he did. His new armor was still doing great work for him, absorbing most of the damage even as it let a little bit sneak through. He pivoted around the cloud of them like an awkward bullfighter, getting turned around just enough to charge at one of the slower, slightly injured beasts that had gotten rid of its star caltrop earlier.

This one wasn’t killed on the first pass, but took a big, deep hit to its shoulder that would make it much easier to deal with later.

Not completely nullified.

What?

The stars. They still work pretty well. Better than I thought.

Well, yes. The Infinite couldn’t take away your tools entirely. There are ten waves to this level, Tulland. If it took away that tool in one go, and your vines in the next, it would be a death sentence. The Infinite likely doesn’t hate anyone that much.

So things will get just a little bit worse ever wave?

It won’t always feel like that, but yes. And by the time several waves build on one another making these monsters more fearsome, you’ll be in trouble no matter how small each incremental change is.

I have…

Quiet now. Here they come.

As a group, the beasts were not anywhere near as coordinated as they would have had to manage something like turning as a group with grace and speed. Tulland had taken full advantage of that, dealing grievous injuries to two of them before they forced him back on the run. The saving grace of the day was that the caltrops never really went away, meaning that with enough circling he was able to still use them as a slight delay that separated one of the animals from the pack. He’d then take down that animal, and then repeat.

Soon enough, the first ten were taken care of, giving him just a few seconds respite before the next ten came, and the next.

That was… not great.

Fool. One does not complain about survival.

Still. My materials got scattered over the battlefield as things went on, and I lost track of them. The Giant’s Hair vines are just gone now. I felt them break, and I won’t be able to use them anymore.

What of your garden?

Some of the lungers are just about done. They won’t be ready in five minutes, though.

It was either lucky or a sign that The Infinite was playing softball that he got closer to fifteen minutes after the second wave. With how fast he could push Lunger Briars up out of the ground these days and the quality of fertilizer he was able to draw over to his garden patches, that meant he was able to harvest a full complement of them and designate them to the same compartment he had once kept his Giant’s Hair vines.

He was going to need every bit of them too.

This is going to be terrible, isn’t it?

Much worse, yes.

With the caltrops reset and his pitchfork in hand, Tulland was ready. Still, for the first time, he wasn’t able to do much initial damage to the ten beasts who led off the first wave. They stayed much tighter together, which meant from the beginning he was on the run, barely able to clip the herd as he turned, took pot shots, and ran. The caltrops still helped, but the sheer amount of running he had to do to keep ahead of the herd meant that after he had killed the first three beasts, he had also lost track of every one of his little metal landmines.

He managed to keep just ahead of the difficulty curve with his Lunger Briars. After seeing how quickly the beasts were able to shred the outdated vines after he left them in place, he took to shooting two of them at roughly the same place in the herd, letting them sting their targets for a few seconds, then commanding them to stop and drop to the ground. This preserved them while still distracting a beast or two with enough pain to get them to break formation.

It took a while for that tactic to accumulate to anything significant. It was dozens of minutes into the fight before the first of the beasts fell, but by then nearly all of them were in tatters, having taken repeated glancing blows from Tulland’s pitchfork as he maneuvered and dodged. By the time three were killed, the group couldn’t put up much of a fight anymore.

The Lunger Briars had seen better days. Even at a Primal Growth and beast-blood induced maxed level, they just couldn’t keep up with the rigors of this fight to any performance past serving as a momentary distraction. Luckily, they grew back fast, and he had a nearly endless supply of them. Better yet, the Clubber Vine was dealing just as much damage as before, and Tulland had found a trick where he could kite around the beasts and position his vine to whip out like a mobile turret.

How long do you think you can keep it up? As difficult as this already is…

I’m still getting better. Unless the next changes are really big, then I should be fine, even if it takes longer. Just so long as it’s not a drastic change, I’ll be able to keep up.

After the next forty beasts and a full hour’s rest in which Tulland pushed as much magic as he could into his farm, the next variation made itself known.

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