The man was a rogue, probably.

There were a lot of different builds, but they fell into a few general categories. Ranged fighters used bows or things they could throw. To beat them, Tulland knew, monsters would rush in faster than the ranged fighters could shoot them down. Heavily armored classes like Necia could take just about anything in a one-on-one close quarters fight, but could be out-paced, out-numbered, or out-ranged.

Rogues were the middle ground between the two. Some rogues replaced the loss of ranged attacks with stealth, and all of them had a heavy emphasis on speed. They survived by hitting hard and fast, ending things before their opponents could react and fighting in evasive, sneaky ways when that failed.

Tulland didn’t have to consciously think about all these things, since it was reflexive knowledge he possessed just by reading books and talking to people with a good grasp of the lore. That was a lucky thing because there simply wasn’t time to think at the moment.

He swayed back out of the range of the man’s daggers, activating all of his vines at once and letting them shoot forward. As leveled as the briars were, they probably wouldn’t provide much defense against the rogue’s glinting weapons. It seemed like a better option for Tulland to go on the offensive instead of waiting to see whether the rogue would penetrate through gaps in the armor or shred the briars entirely.

It worked in a sense. The rogue had been on a hard collision course for Tulland’s neck, but pulled back fast when he saw the briars move. Unfortunately, his dodging ability was far more than the briars could compensate for. The man landed a good foot away from the briars, which continued reaching for him until Tulland gave them the order to stop. It seemed better to have him not know what they could do and to maybe assume the briars couldn’t attack again.

Because without a ruse, there’s no way I’m hitting this guy. He’s just too fast.

“Nice trick, that.” The rogue regarded the vines with disdain. “I didn’t expect them to move on their own like that. If you had anything like a real class, that might have worked too.”

“Still might.” Tulland tried to bluff. “Plenty more where that came from.”

“Sure.” The rogue grinned. “And they are really dead on the ground there. Not like you could just reactivate them with an order, right? I should just step right over them.”

Damn. Tulland tried not to let the grimace show on his face.

“Point is, I’m giving you a compliment. You should appreciate it. Because this next hit isn’t going to miss.”

The rogue went diagonal first this time. Tulland tried to move to put the vines between him and the rogue, but he might as well have been standing still for all the good it did. He could just barely track the movement of the assassin as the man ricocheted off the ground then headed straight towards him.

At high speeds, there was only so much Tulland could coordinate. In this case, he found his attempt to dodge far enough backwards became just an uncontrolled fall away from the danger and towards the ground before he could correct it. The rogue was unbothered, tracking perfectly as the slash of his sword and the point of his dagger both made a beeline for Tulland’s unprotected face and neck.

The worst part was that this was the most Tulland could have done. He just didn’t have enough time to get at his weapons or the trickier plants in his arsenal. He couldn’t stab forward with a spear because it just wouldn’t do anything. He wasn’t fast enough or strong enough to make a dent in the capabilities this man was showing, and that was before Tulland had forced him to show a single hidden card from his hand.

As his back hit the dirt and the blades closed in, Tulland rolled and kicked against the ground, sliding through the dirt on his stomach past the rogue. At the same time, he felt a dagger cut into his leg and slide down, demolishing everything from pants to muscles as it did. He ignored it, pushing diagonally away as he felt two daggers strike his right shoulder, just where his neck had just been.

He wasn’t faster than the rogue, but unless the rogue hit him enough times or in a vital enough spot, he could survive a few seconds. It was now a deadly game of rock paper scissors, one where the rogue was guessing where Tulland would go next and striking there. A single right guess would mean Tulland was dead.

But if he guesses wrong for just a few more steps…

Tulland felt his overall health dropping lower and lower until his entire body felt cold and thin, like he was made out of winter air. But in front of him was a patch of green. One that he was counting on.

After one final dodge, he was done, his legs running out of strength and sending him toppling forward as daggers whizzed over his head.

“What the hell?”

Through the haze, Tulland could feel dozens of vines whipping towards the rogue. He could also feel them dying, but not nearly so fast as they should have been. He imagined a perfect world where the rogue was fully encased in the damn things, held still long enough that Tulland could get at him with his weapon and force him to talk. One where he was riddled with thorn holes and helpless.

Tulland forced his eyes open in sheer hope and desperation, and the sight that greeted them ended up being closer to the truth than he had thought possible.

“Dammit. You really are a farmer?” The rogue strained to keep up with on the onrush of vines, pushing his incredible speed to keep up with them. It wasn’t working. It was all he could do to keep the vines that were wrapping around his legs at bay. Tulland had rolled several feet into his farm when he collapsed, which had more than enough plant density to keep the rogue back. “That counts as a craft-class? This is cheating.”

Tulland laughed internally. The rogue really hadn’t seen everything yet. As he prepared to detonate enough flowers to make both him and the rogue very unhappy indeed, he watched the madman’s eyes shift from enraged to disappointed and his vines suddenly grasp at nothing as the rogue pulled free.

“I guess that’s really that then.” The rogue shrugged. “I guess you got lucky. Have fun in here. It’s not like you will live very long anyway. And guess what? I already know where that gate is. I hope you didn’t need through it any time soon because I’m more than ready to wait for you there as long as it takes.”

Tulland’s muscles all went slack as the fighting ended anticlimactically. This wasn’t how he expected his second encounter with another person in The Infinite to go, but also made perfect sense at the same time. Where Necia was a pure warrior, the rogue was a calculated hunter. He was cutting his losses as soon as his prey took too much energy to take down.

Tulland watched as the rogue turned and walked away. He had survived this moment, if just barely. The victory, if that’s what he could call it, felt cheap and unearned. But he had survived. If he was smart, he’d just let the rogue go and hope he never saw the man again.

“Hey. You,” Tulland said, feeling stupid for taking the risk. “That bag.”

“What?” The man turned around, his face briefly contorted by rage. “What are you talking about?”

“That bag. Under your robe. The fur one. Where did you get it?”

“This?” The rogue reached his hand down and bounced the purse a bit. “Ah, I see. You know her. The blonde. A friend, or something?”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Something like that.”

“And you want to know how she is. If I killed her to take this. That’s about right?”

“About.” Tulland kept his face clear of emotion. As angry as he was, he didn’t want this person to get the satisfaction of seeing him react.

“Ah. I understand. Reasonable.” The man’s face contorted into a look of pure, cruel joy. “Make me.”

Tulland clenched his fists and hoped the rogue would choose to walk through his farm by accident. He had no such luck. He had been hoping the rogue would want to brag, but he couldn’t force the information out of the man if he didn’t want to talk. There was, in a very literal sense, nothing he could do about it.

—

You should count your blessings, Tulland. Even beyond having a combat class, that man was the worst possible matchup for you. Even in terms of psychology.

“Psychology?”

Ways of thinking. He is ready to kill. You are not. He is used to it. Used to aggression against other thinking, real beings. You are not.

“I could be.”

Tulland was angry. For the first time since he got here, he was really and truly angry. Even what the System had done to him paled in comparison to this. In that scenario, he had to at least acknowledge that a lot of what happened was due to his own pride. It was because of his own misjudgment.

What had happened with the rogue was the absolute worst-case scenario, one that he did nothing to bring on. Even with the rage, he could admit that he had been on track for at least some sort of bad outcome. At some point, some other delver was going to have bad intentions. It was a miracle Necia hadn’t. And Tulland had done next to nothing to prepare for that eventuality or to protect himself from the violence other humans might bring to his doorstep.

Only his farm had saved him. And even it couldn’t get him what he wanted.

You couldn’t. At least not as fast as you think. You would be trying to practice on your very worst nightmare. You’d be starting your amateur career against a seasoned professional. You just couldn’t fight him on his own terms and win. There wouldn’t be enough time to adjust.

“Not his terms, then. Mine.”

Your terms are plants he can easily dodge. Not much better.

Tulland hadn’t forgiven the System. Not even a little. But the emotions Tulland felt toward the thing were a sort of dull distrust, a desire to triumph over it as best he could.

The rogue was a different story. This man might have killed Necia. Tulland didn’t know how it could even be possible, but he was going to find a way to get even or at least make the man talk. He was going to unleash everything he had. Even if he got killed himself in the process.

And even if the System highly advised against it. Which it did.

If you try to attack the man, it will be your end. Your farm isn’t a way to fight someone who could end you in a second. You will disappear the moment you meet that man again. This is a fool’s errand, Tulland.

“Then it’s a fool’s errand. If you care that much, hope I find wisdom before I’m done farming.”

If there was one thing that Tulland knew, it was still farming. It was growing weird mosses on his increasingly strong trees, planting shrubs that didn’t seem to do anything but would provide him with some much-needed diversity in his farm to make his plants just that much stronger, and would give him that much more punch when he exercised one of his few options for fighting.

Most of the plants he was working on growing were wastes of his time in any other respect.

Useless Shrub

A shrub with no crafting, combat, or medicinal uses. It’s not particularly pretty or hardy. It occupies an ecological niche, growing places most other plants can’t or in conditions where other plants would fail. Outside of that, it’s a sort of living filler for places that would otherwise be even more barren.

Standard Grass

This grass is just that. Grass. It grows on the ground and grows quickly. It has little nutritional value for beings with only one stomach, and isn’t long enough or strong enough to make into rope or fabric. Outside of inventing a use for this plant, you won’t find it to be particularly high on the utility front.

Moss Variant

This is a variety of moss.

Moss Variant #2

This is another variety of moss.

Moss Variant #3

This is another variety of moss.

Boring Algae

Algae are plants! That’s a fun thing to know, but beyond that, you aren’t going to get much of interest out of this particular phytoplankton.

Most plants, it was turning out, were absolutely useless outside of providing diversity to his farm. Tulland had been lucky to find as many helpful plants as he did at first, and now that luck was thinning. Yet among all the trash plants he was finding left and right in this forest, there was at least one of interest.

Jewel Moss

Given sufficient time and a beneficial enough growing environment, this moss will morph into an amber-like crystal of exceeding hardness and toughness.

That was interesting enough, especially if it could be molded into a usable shape. He could make something very interesting. And he now had just the thing to grow it on.

Ironbranch Sapling (Enhanced, Weaponized)

While the original Ironbranch was tough, that was its only characteristic. It grew in a system environment, and interacted minimally when you tried to speed up its growth. But in terms of the mechanics of the directionality of the magical forces in it, it “wanted” very little besides to be tough. It had no purpose. No goals.

This enhanced Ironbranch was grown by a seed enriched by an individual who thought of the Ironbranch wood as absolutely nothing but materials for weaponry. It, in all facets of wood, thinks it is for killing things, which means that it’s a good deal more effective at doing so than the original, unaltered wood.

There are, however, limitations to how effective this makes it. A conventional weapon made by a crafting class, such as a sword made by a smith, has its magic enhanced, re-enhanced, and refined by the process of making the weapon. This item’s magical power is rustic and primitive, similar to its physical form. Its performance will track accordingly.

All the warnings were what they were, but Tulland wasn’t in the least discouraged. Planting more Ironbranch trees with a few different kinds of attempted intent, he carefully carved a slot near the end of his current tree and threaded the jewel moss through it. Over the next few days, he would feed the moss following his Farmer’s Intuition suggestions, whether that was juice from the briar-fruits or blood from unfortunate beasts that wandered into his garden.

After that, it was a waiting game. He needed every bit of potential energy he could muster to have a chance at what he was planning. If that took days, it would take days. If the rogue escaped before he could catch the man, that would just be fate. Corners would not be cut here. He would not allow himself to fail because he simply failed to plan.

Pumping every plant with every scrap of power he could, he took a nap, woke up, and did it again. And again. It was only after all the plants were as full of power as he could possibly get them that he moved on.