“Tulland, snap out of it.” Necia shoved Tulland lightly and shook her head. “Where do you go when you do that? Is it an internal conversation again?”

Tulland shook his head, glad that she had the sense not to reveal everything about his relationship with the System to Ley at the moment. “No. Just a memory. Something our situation dug up. What’s up?”

“Look over there. I think we have our first battle lined up.”

Tulland followed Necia’s finger down the hill to a clearing where a number of beasts were congregated on the grass. At a slight nudge, The Infinite cooperated and gave up the goods on what he was facing.

Stumpers

Heavy, low to the ground, and moving with a devastating weight, Stumpers can attack in any horizontal direction simply by moving. Adding a pair of vicious, curved tusks to the mix further augments the devastating equation these enemies create.

In addition to their exceptional attack power, Stumpers are incredibly dense and durable enemies, absorbing large amounts of damage before finally falling.

Mass Hares

Fast and heavy, the mass hares do battle by launching into enemies with great speed and a surprising weight. What they lack in claw, fang, and venom is more than made up for by the sheer amount of force they can apply to any target they choose to collide with.

While fast in a leap even considering their great mass, the hares are highly specialized to allow for those jumps. This means that in most other contexts outside of straight-line attacks, they are somewhat bound by their own weight and not particularly strong.

“How many of the hares are there?” Tulland asked.

“Five, I think. And three Stumpers. The normal plan here is for me to try and make contact first, drawing attention away from you two,” Necia answered.

“And then you keep the enemies back while Ley and I do our thing?”

“No. At least not all of them. I can bait a few with skills, and maybe move to occupy one or two more. But this many enemies? Tulland, they’d bounce me all around that field. And that’s if I didn’t get hit by those tusks.”

“And ideally, I’ll be hiding trying to take out one of those big ones,” Ley said. “Which means crowd control is on you.”

There was no use in Tulland asking how he should go about doing that. Neither of them were going to be much more help than his best guesses about his own powers.

“Okay. And we are doing that now?” Tulland asked.

“Yes.” Necia hefted her sword and shield and strode forward. “No point waiting.”

The first collision between Necia and a Stumper was deafening. The big animals hit hard, and if anything she hit harder. A step or two away, Tulland was nervous as the second Stumper set its eyes on him and pawed at the ground to prepare for a charge. Before it could, Necia let out a burst of light and it seemed to forget him entirely.

“It’s baited! It will focus on me for a while. Get the rabbits, Tulland. Fast!” Necia called.

As Necia ping-ponged between the big enemies, Tulland finally saw one of the rabbits in the tall grass. He gripped his Farmer’s Tool hard and lunged at it at the furry little thing, only to see it disappear in front of him as it leapt towards Necia. He was too slow by a mile to stop it as it shot through the air, pinging hard across her helmet and sending her reeling.

She recovered from that hit fast, but not quite fast enough to really be prepared for the next collision of a Stumper on her shield. Tulland rushed forward after the rabbit, then had to dive into the dirt as it launched itself at him. Two of his vines had been curled around his wrists, both of which whipped out at the rabbit and missed badly. He heard another clang and then yet another as two more hares hit Necia and sent her to the dirt.

With the last Stumper pushed forward from close range with both tusks, it might have been over for her right then if Ley hadn’t suddenly surged forward from the tall grass, hitting the huge beast like a bolt of lightning and deflecting it just enough to make it miss, then run away squealing as it tried to get a handle on the source of the new danger.

Necia found her feet just as Tulland finally got lucky with his vines, getting both of them clamped around the same Mass Hare as it prepared to fire itself at Ley. The jump still happened, but the extra weight of the briars was just enough to throw off its aim, bringing the hare down just in front of the Spymaster’s sword slash. A head went flying, and the first kill of the battle was done.

“Tulland. You have to do more.” Ley dove back into the grass. “I can’t hit them and the Stumpers.”

Tulland nodded, then shot the entire rest of his briar stock at a Mass Hare that emerged from the grass just inside of his peripheral vision. Three of them made contact as another hare destroyed one of the two vines that had attacked its fallen comrade. Tulland rushed forward and got his pitchfork into the encumbered hare and sent a command to the remaining, non-destroyed vine near the other threat to attack, or at least try to keep them from jumping.

The strike worked. For once. Tulland was able to dig the pitchfork good and far into the hare, which seemed to either kill it or get close enough that he could ignore it for the moment. And that was just before all hell well and truly broke loose.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Tulland! Help!” Necia yelled.

Tulland had become deaf to the clangs coming from Necia’s side of the battle, and now turned to see she was getting absolutely pounded by the remaining Mass Hares and Stumpers. She was managing to keep her feet, but that wasn’t going to last. There were seconds at best before something went terribly wrong, and only Tulland was around to stop it. Panicked, he let out all his remaining stops.

All his remaining briars landed on the field near Necia, hitting the distracted enemies from the air as they reached towards the first signs of life they saw. One of the hares was immediately immobilized as two of the Lunger Briars wrapped it up, which was nice. The bigger thing, though, was something he hadn’t expected to work at all.

Giant’s Hair

As an improved version of the Lunger Briar, the Giant’s Hair retains much of the same function as the original plant. It will automatically reach towards any living thing it sees, wrapping its target up tightly and then attempting to constrict it to death.

Unlike the Lunger Briar, it offers little in the way of venom or the creation of puncture wounds that might fatally injure an animal. To balance the loss, it offers a much stronger and much more durable restriction, one that can survive some level of slashing or clawing and hold down bigger, tougher enemies without getting torn apart.

The less verbose description of the Giant’s Hair reinforced what Tulland already knew. These were a hold-things-still-briar, not a killing-things-briar. What he hadn’t expected was for them to be able to stand up to something as big and strong as the Stumpers. But when both of them landed on a single Stumper, something he hadn’t expected happened. The big, boar-like enemies weren’t the most flexible, nor were they sharp anywhere but their teeth or the very ends of their tusks.

It might be strong enough to break those vines, but it can’t get to them.

Tulland pumped his Primal Growth enhancement into the Giant’s Hairs, which made things that much better at the same time it drained every last bit of his magic power. The boar bellowed as the vines took its legs out from under it, trussing it belly-down on the ground. Necia, watching this happen, responded by rebounding off the next hit from a Stumper, flat-out ducking two hairs, and then raising her sword high as she leapt at the Stumper for a downward slash.

It tried to get out of the way. It really did. There was just nowhere for it to go, and no way to get there. Tulland grinned as he watched it struggle against the vines, then grinned harder as Necia cut it nearly in half with one overpowered strike. The same hit took out one of his vines, but that felt more than reasonable considering what they got out of it.

Telling the vine to disengage, Tulland rushed in and grabbed the remaining Giant’s Hair and chucked it at the Stumper. He didn’t wait to see if it hit as he lunged at the restricted hare on the ground and put an end to it just as Ley flew out of the grass, put his sword through the second Stumper’s eye and ended the heavy-damage part of the battle for good.

After that, he didn’t bother to stealth again. He and Necia advanced on the remaining Mass Hares as Tulland took ineffective stabs while awkwardly dodging away from them. Mostly due to Ley’s speed, the whole thing was done in a few more minutes, after which Tulland opted to lay on his back for a while, recovering magic and generally breathing in whatever air he could get his lungs on and appreciating his brand-new growth in strength.

Level Up!

“Dammit, you.” Ley walked back while whipping the blood off his sword. “Why didn’t you do that earlier? You want her dead?”

“Relax, Ley.” Necia came to Tulland’s defense first. “He probably didn’t know he could. Still, that was close. Another few seconds and I would have been in serious trouble.”

“Yeah.” Tulland imagined a bit of what that would have been like, then found himself unable to go any further on that particular train of thought. It was too much. “It’s also… I don’t know. I tend to think of my better plants as more expensive. If I shoot all of them out at once, I’m out. And then I’m in trouble. I’m not that good with normal weapons.”

“Oh, I get it.” Ley nodded at Necia. “He’s an idiot.”

“Hey now. You have to explain why I’m an idiot for me to accept that.”

“No, he’s right, Tulland. You aren’t alone right now. If you blow all your resources at the beginning of the fight, but it keeps us alive, then we can keep you alive. If you hold them back and the party breaks, we are less than three people in a three-person dungeon.”

“Although that only has to do with running out during a fight. Running out in general could be bad. We planted that garden this morning, right? How long until the briars there are done?”

“Oh, that.” Tulland’s dropped his eyes. “I’d say they are probably done somewhere around now. A few more hours, at most.”

“Really?” Necia slapped her head. “Let’s get back there then, before we end up in another fight. Ley, are you thinking what I’m thinking as far as battle plan?”

“Yeah. But like you said, let's get him reloaded first.”

—

Tulland’s battlefield garden was already going fairly strong, which made him feel quite a bit safer. He didn’t need it yet except as a source of weapons, but two days into this excursion he was going to lose the benefit of everything he had grown at home, and he had to be ready for that. As devastating of a loss of strength as it would already be, it would be even worse if he had no replacement ready at all.

To minimize that, he had a seed for just about everything he could grow in place, matching his home farm as closely as he could. There was only so much that would do, and farms still took time to grow. But with a bunch of monster meat and blood to go around, he was hoping to kick-start that process.

The Stumper meat in particular seemed to be a big hit with his Farmer’s Intuition. He ended up burying a good chunk of it at the feet of all his trees and both the Giant’s Hair and Lunger Briars. He tried to give them as much influence as he could, during that. Just once, he had managed to grow some very, very long vines by simply willing it so. Today, he was asking whatever farming gods might be nearby to help him create some kind of brutal, killer vine. Something that would make him useful. Something that might make him strong.

It didn’t seem to be working yet, but there was no limit to how much he was willing to try if it had even a small chance of making him stronger. He didn’t just want it to survive. He owed it to the others.

“Just about done? We should really be back out there. We’ll walk in a spiral this time, and try to keep you close to a restock if we can.” Ley shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like this. You’re your own blacksmith and grocery store. Taking trips to restore your fighting power isn’t great, but at least I’m learning a lot.”

“Well, I’m glad someone’s getting something out of it.” Tulland moved around the farm cutting briars, then checked his pack to make sure his flowers were still in good condition. Now that he remembered they were there and that his Achewood trees were getting closer to being able to accommodate growing more, he was planning on using them liberally.

“All right. I’m ready when you are. Are you two going to let me in on this plan?”

“On the way, Tulland.” Necia gave him a kiss on the cheek, making him go red as he realized there was someone else there to see it. “And I promise you’ll like this one a bit better. It’s right up your alley.”