Infinite Farmer-Chapter 155: Farmer’s Wrath

Blight Dungeon Defeated! Rewards: Shining Arm of…

Rewards interrupted. Outside interference in adventurer reward calibration detected. Resisting changes to reward allocation.

Resistance resisted.

Resistance resisted.

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I can sense you are another system. I suppose we can talk here.

No. Not while allocations are underway.

It’s not even possible for you to be here.

And yet, I am and have a much better sense of my party’s needs. If you will simply look at my assessments of our largest deficiencies, you will….

No.

No?

No. I am the System of this world. You are not supposed to be here. No.

I’m not going to have this argument in human languages. It might take years.

Agreed. Switching to intrasystem language six.

What followed, near as Tulland could tell, was pages upon pages of arcane gibberish. He was sure it meant something to the parties involved, and he almost thought he could even see where the argument was getting heated. The details of the negotiation fully escaped him, except there seemed to be an awful lot of them. Eventually, he began to skim, flipping through dozens and dozens of useless screens of indecipherable nonsense until things settled back down and the conversation shifted back into normal language.

Agreed, then? A minor reward now, followed by a major reward after our greater negotiations take place, and you are able to come to terms with my offer.

Or you mine. It is interesting that my mere proximity to this man and woman amplifies my authority so. It is not my intention to interfere in your world more than that, at least. This is a vow you may have without repayment. Outside of the benefit they can bring, I have no desire to steal your authority.

Comforting, if a bit non-binding.

It is the best I can do at this time.

Understood. You may alert your charges to the changes to their rewards. I have no taste for it.

Tulland. I am afraid I’ve had quite the misadventure.

I read a little bit of it. Please tell me we have not made enemies of that System.

No. He is a decent, professional sort. He doesn’t appreciate my interference, but by the end of things I believe I made him understand a bit of why I felt it necessary.

Why was it necessary? I don’t understand. That shining arm thing sounded pretty good.

It was a club. For you. Not Necia. A metal one.

Oh. So something useful.

Not at all. You would have wielded it with all the skill of… well, you. I renegotiated it. Necia’s rewards I eventually agreed to let stand.

And what did we get out of all this?

Behold.

Produce Press

This press allows you to make a flat, uniform layer of produce grown in one of your staked farms. The thickness of the layer varies according to your preference from a paper-thin layer to one about the depth of your finger.

The press slightly compresses materials transformed to sheets in this way. As far as it concerns your storage skills, any compressed materials will take up storage space according to their new volume, not the number of materials compressed.

Any living or combat-active plants will be rendered unable to move or fight by this compression. For convenience, the press can be warped slightly to curve the sheets for easier storage in barrels.

I don’t get it. I don’t really have storage issues.

That’s part of why I was able to argue that bit into existence. The System has none of your history and only the vaguest idea of your capabilities. That club it tried to give you is evidence of that. I believe that, for that System’s purposes, you are treated as mine, as if I am your private System and you belong to no world at all.

I still don’t understand.

I thought you wouldn’t. Think about your plants. Wouldn’t some be especially interesting as slightly bent sheets? Especially if those sheets were compressed a bit?

Oh no.

Oh yes. Now get to work quickly before it realizes what it has accidentally done.

“Necia, I need to do weird plant things.” Tulland sat on the ground and started absolutely shoving Silver Suns out of his storage space. “Tell me about your stuff later, OK?”

“No problem.” Necia’s held her new gauntlets and boots with a slightly disappointed air. “It’s important?”

“Oh, I… I can’t talk about it. No time.”

“Then get to it. Tell one of your vines to do what I say first, though.”

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Tulland didn’t know if that would work until Necia was walking off towards the river with an obedient Chimera Sleeve in tow. He smiled slightly as he turned his head back to his work, materialized his new press, and got to work.

It turned out the new press did not want to compress the Silver Suns at all. It hated the job, groaning against the effort the whole time as Tulland worked the screw that brought the plates together. The System assured him that the item could not break, which was the only thing that kept him going as he added more and more stars to the mix until he had a layer of metal about as thick as his finger, ever-so-slightly curved to mostly match the curvature of his upper torso.

That was the limit of his manipulation of the material, it seemed, except that it then proved possible to compress the material into strips that didn’t quite fill the press, making slightly more curved bits for each of the places that would cover his belly, and his back. In the end, he had several strips of scales for both, as well as sheet after paper-thin sheet ready to be whacked with his shovel until they were bent around the armor protecting his upper and lower arms. And legs. And eventually, with trial and error, his helmet.

It took hours, looked shitty, and left more gaps than he wanted. That hardly mattered. There had already been plenty of gaps around the sides of the armor and at the joints, things that he was a good enough fighter to mostly keep covered. The way the armor worked was not just in blocking attacks, although that helped. It also mitigated damage he took everywhere, whether it was directly protected by the armor or not. At any rate, it was at least no worse than the unaltered wood armor would have been.

When he was finally done, he laid on the ground, eyeballing his new armor and hoping it justified a system notification when he finally put it back on.

Don’t sit still. You aren’t done.

I can’t get the armor any better than that.

Your weapon, you impossible fool. Put the compressed metal into your weapon.

Tulland was almost completely out of Silver Suns, a fact he ignored as he jumped back to his feet and started gathering all the messed up, too-large or too-small fragments of metal he had made during the process. He left one big sheet he had plans for alone, but everything else went into the weapon. As he had come to expect, the weapon resisted absorbing them, but eventually, they all went in. It wasn’t surprising. The tool had always been able to take more than it claimed before.

This time was different. Tulland knew that as soon as the thunderclouds started gathering.

Uh-oh.

Uh-oh? That’s what you have to say?

Uh-oh, yes. It seems I have another conversation coming. I’ll be back… later. Probably. Be safe.

That was the day Tulland found out what it was like to be nearly hit by lightning. He never took a direct shot, but even the near-misses were loud enough and powerful enough that he spent the night puking as his eardrums ruptured and rehealed. With Necia by his side complaining, he comforted himself with the descriptions of his new items every time the storm began to seem just a bit too excessive.

Silverbark Armor Set

This armor combines impossibly dense plates of frankly illogical organic metal with a backing of absorbent, self-healing wood. Exhibiting top-notch physical damage mitigation, unbelievable shock absorption, and even a normally class-gated ability to absorb magic not on offer to most warrior classes, there is nothing this armor does poorly and several things it does well beyond reasonable belief.

When worn, the Silverbark Armor set amplifies the power of any organic metal besides itself within an area fifteen times the wearer’s body length.

In no way does this description constitute approval of this armor, nor should it be taken to indicate the creation of this armor was sanctioned by the System of Aghli.

Farmer’s Wrath (Legendary, Spirit-Locked, Returning, Immutable)

After a rudimentary analysis of your farmer’s tool, the System of Aghli has determined it to be a standard-issue Farmer’s Tool modified by some sort of non-standard system reward to add a capacity-increase function capable of improving both the weapon and the bearer’s skill with the weapon, in conjunction with all of a skill, stat expression, and an interaction with farming that remains an unexplored mystery.

As none of this would be possible for the System of Aghli in the first place, it remains an open question whether or not what has happened here is even something that it can understand. The results, however, speak for themselves.

When this weapon was created, it was created with an absurdly high upper limit on what it could do, something roughly on par or even a little stronger than the strongest of legendary, cross-class creations of multiple masters. It seems clear that, at the time, this limit was likely considered generous. Now, you have reached it. This has a few implications, all of which will be explained in break-out notifications of their own.

In no way does this description constitute approval of this weapon, nor should it be taken to indicate the creation of this armor was sanctioned by the system of Aghli.

Tulland was beginning to feel a bit dizzy. He suddenly realized why the System had said it only might be coming back. To the extent he had ever seen a System message disapprove of something, it had never gone so far as to include disclaimers. Everything he had just got was very clearly not something he was supposed to have.

He’d ask the System about the greater implications later, while telling it what a very good and valuable team member it was already turning out to be. For now, he had more notifications to get through

Legendary Weapon Created!

Legendary weapons represent the greatest and most powerful arms that humans may bear. Once a legendary weapon is obtained, a human being may no longer improve on their combat capabilities except by improving their class or their fundamental understanding thereof.

In some ways, these weapons can be best understood in the same way the horns of a bull or the teeth of a carnivorous fish are part of theirs. The acquisition of a legendary weapon represents the end of a journey to harmonize the weapon-part of who you are with the rest of your being, and as such renders the difference between the end of your arm and the beginning of your arms in some ways moot.

Spirit Locked Weapon Created!

Your weapon may no longer be owned or used by any other entity, even if their class and skills would otherwise allow them to.

A spirit-locked weapon will flee to The Infinite for disposal upon the death of its owner. No worldly force will be able to stop it from doing so.

Returning Weapon Created!

As a legendary, soul-locked weapon, your Farmer’s Wrath will attempt to return to you when lost. You will always know its precise location even when separated by realm or world, and the tool will pursue its own course back to your hand utilizing the best paths available to it.

Immutable Weapon Created!

Being packed to the brim with settled, directed magical energy means your weapon can no longer be altered by any concentration of magic lesser than the weapon itself is comprised of.

In effect, the weapon can be destroyed by The Infinite, or some theoretical force greater than The Infinite. No other force can alter it in any way. Take note: this invulnerability applies to the weapon itself. Any damage that would otherwise reach you around it or through it is still capable of damaging your overall health.