Tulland woke up feeling much better. He was starving and entirely sick of the one safe food source he had on hand, and thirsty enough that his entire throat felt like it was lined with sand. But his bones felt better, if not quite right yet, and he had survived. It wasn’t a bad state, all things considering.

The thirst was the first problem to get solved as Tulland drank deeply from his makeshift well before heading to his briars that had survived the ordeal and eating several of their fruits. They weren’t bad-tasting things, especially once he had become used to them. They were, however, something he had become unbelievably sick of in his time here.

It took less of them to be full than he liked, even as hungry as he was. His stomach was heavy after a few fruits, but he knew he would have to come back to them several more times before he had enough total energy for the day.

After that, he picked quite a few more of the fruits as seeds. By now, the process of using parts of an animal as fertilizer for his vicious briar children was starting to become rote, although the Forest Duke was much larger and the variety of different parts Tulland had available to him meant a little more work. He hurried through it, as the last thing he wanted was for the meat to spoil in some way before his seeds had their shot at it.

After he was finally finished with the grosser part of his day, Tulland settled in for a long bout of reading. And there was plenty to read.

Level up! x4

Skill level up! x8

The levels and skill levels weren’t that unexpected. Tulland welcomed them, but set aside actually doing anything with the points he had gained until he figured out the entire lay of the land. The skill level ups had mostly gone towards Enhance Plant and Broadcast, both of which were at level four now. It looked like the levels he already had in the skills they replaced hadn’t carried over, but he would decide how he felt about a bit later.

The last two skill levels had settled into Strong Back, which Tulland felt like he deserved. He had paid for it in his own blood, more or less.

After that, things got wacky.

Optional Boss Defeated! (Forest Duke, Tower Level One)

You have defeated an optional boss and opened the way to a new level of the tower. Your victory was achieved with a small number of optional difficulty modifiers, including:

Unarmed: You defeated the boss without the use of a conventional weapon.

Unarmored: You defeated the boss while wearing no combat-sufficient armor.

Surprised: The boss forced combat onto you, rather than the other way around, and despite your attempts to flee.

These modifiers will be considered when your rewards are calculated.

That, Tulland thought, felt like the kind of thing The Infinite wouldn’t let stand. The Ironbranch Sapling didn’t really count as a weapon, but the fact that he had won the fight was testament to the idea that he was right on the edge of being armed. He couldn’t imagine that he would be allowed to get that kind of premium on every achievement he ever made in combat, forever. Something would eventually change.

That guess was immediately confirmed as the next notification window cycled into his view.

Calculation Offset!

Some of your recent achievement modifiers have spurred a system adjustment to how future awards will be calculated. The changes are as follows:

1. When you use a plant you’ve grown as a weapon or as armor, they will be considered as such even when inadequate for the task.

2. Some achievements for exclusively using your own produce in battle might be possible to attain.

The rewards for this particular event stand as-is, and will be given unaltered.

Reward List!

1. Lesser Stat Potion

2. Farmer’s Gloves (Undefined Rarity)

3. Skill Pack

You will receive all of these items, and do not have to choose between them.

Tulland had expected more items, or at least flashier names. That seemed to be the kind of thing his uncle would have made fun of him for back home though. He held off on his judgment until he read the actual descriptions.

Stolen novel; please report.

Lesser Stat Potion

Consumable, One Dose.

Grants five stat points to a stat of your choice. As this is a lesser potion, the points cannot be split between stats.

Farmer’s Gloves (Undefined Rarity)

These are possibly the best Farmer’s Gloves to have ever existed. By work-gear standards, they are impossibly tough. They grant five points to your vitality, and are both self-mending and self-cleaning. They are comfortable, greatly enhance grip, and are specifically fitted and lined to protect your hands from wear over a long day’s work.

They are, however, still work gear and are limited in the ways you’d expect from work clothes.

“Hey, System,” Tulland called out.

I wondered if you had forgotten I was here.

“Not quite. I have a question for you, though.”

State it.

“Work gear. How is it different from proper battle gear?”

The System sighed.

I forget that you knew little of any class before coming here. Even a crafter would have known that.

“Well, I wasn’t a crafter. Help me out a bit.”

I will, I just need to think of where to start. You’ve tried killing things with your Farmer’s Tool. What was your impression of that experience?

“It hardly worked. It was like the thing resisted being effective.”

That’s right in a way, while being almost entirely wrong. The first thing you should understand is that system equipment is defined, broadly, not by the materials it is made of but by the nature of the magic that inhabits it. When a System’s forces flow through an item, they enhance it beyond what could ever be possible in a mundane world.

“Even work stuff?” Tulland asked.

Just so, but another aspect of the magic infused in the item is that it can be put to work in very specific ways. You hardly had experience with farm tools before this, but let me tell you that the Farmer’s Tool you possess is actually very good. It’s more than adequate as a starter item for a beginner farmer.

Tulland was starting to get it. “But none of that energy is used for attacking?”

Correct. The item has a purpose that the item itself knows, and it does not deviate from that purpose. On the other side of things, the monsters you have done battle with are magical as well; they are system creations that allot some of the magic in them to defense.

“And so my magical shovel does almost nothing, since it’s attacking a system-thing with what amounts to mundane power. Because none of its actual power is meant to be used that way.”

Exactly. The same applies to armor. It should apply to your plants, but does not for some reason I have not myself determined yet.

“Good enough. Thanks.”

Tulland shut off the System. He was fine with it seeing what he was up to, and even knowing that he was getting generally stronger, but the less he could let it know about his overall build, the better. He went to the next window, which might have been the most impressive of them all.

Skill Pack

Creates one skill which is automatically assigned to the user. The skill is determined using a combination of the user’s class and what types of activities the user has been engaging in recently.

Tulland sat back, uncorked and drank his bottle of stats, and dumped the points into strength. While he was at it, he went to work assigning the power he had gained in this last growth spurt. He did his best to assign them in a way that would just barely keep him alive while still juicing his magic as much as possible, and thought he got fairly close.

Tulland Lowstreet

Class: Farmer LV. 16

Strength: 30

Agility: 25

Vitality: 30 (+5)

Spirit: 25

Mind: 10

Force: 30

Skills: Enhance Plant LV. 4, Enrich Seed LV. 8

Passives: Broadcast LV. 4, Botanical Engineer LV. 2, Strong Back LV. 4

Tulland was pleased to see that the system window broke out his equipment-provided stats in the way it did. Right at the moment, it didn’t matter, but it was nice to not have the illusion that all of his vitality came from him personally.

The gloves themselves were a wonder, supple and great to wear. He would try his best not to stretch their defensive capabilities, but even though he knew for a fact they’d be limited in that respect, he felt much, much better with them on than he had without them.

That left the skill. Tulland wasn’t incredibly pleased that he would have no say in what it would be, but The Infinite seemed pretty careful about pointing downsides to things that it gave, and it hadn’t said there were any that would come with the addition of this new power. If this was a plus without a downside, he’d absolutely take it.

Tulland willed the skill to generate, closing his eyes as the Dungeon System did its thing. A few moments later, he felt different. Not stronger, not more capable, but just a little bit different. Specifically, it came in how he related to his crops, he felt like more of a boss of them. More authoritative. More like a ruler than before, even though he was still arguably somewhat of a servant to the things he grew.

Opening his eyes, Tulland saw the first line of the skill and smiled, weakly. It was incredibly lame, as skills went. Other classes got things like smites, cleaves, and dead-shots to play with, skills that made them stronger and faster than what their stats said. He was a farmer, and thus got farmer things. It was what it was, and he had to accept it.

That was especially true since the skill, while lame, was unarguably something he needed.

New Skill Generated: Command Plant