Infinite Farmer-Chapter 173: Planting

Tulland didn’t want to waste a single moment, but without the ability to enhance the grass, he needed to optimize in other ways. His newly revamped Farmer’s Intuition turned out to be useful for that, at least. After spending what Necia later swore was an hour staring at the seed, he thought he had a pretty good grasp of what was going on with its nutritional needs.

Unfortunately, he lived on a planet with very little in the way of healthy, organic matter. He found himself in the odd position of asking random people for samples of their hair, gathering dead Liar’s Grass, harvesting sand from river banks, and even grinding fish bones to augment his magic bucket’s soil to give the Rebel Grass its best chance at growing.

“You’re going to grow it in a pot?” Necia asked. “That’s what you came up with?”

“Yes. I can move it, if it wants more sun. Or less. I won’t know until it asks.”

“You talk about it like it’s a person.”

“With my new farmer’s sense, it kind of is.” Tulland looked at the salvaged pot and the small indent in the dirt where he had pressed the seed in to just the right depth, and half-smiled. “It’s a bit like hearing a baby cry. I heard mothers can tell if they are hungry, or wet, or just upset.”

“I’ve heard the same thing. Just not about grass, usually.”

“Well, get used to it. Remember when I went to the bonus dungeon that first time?”

“When the old lady taught you about plants?”

“Yeah. She said she could hear what they wanted. I thought she was crazy, and I ended up going in a different direction. Now I have both. I can convince the plants to be what I want, and they can convince me of what they need. Like a negotiation.”

“Makes me feel better about our kids. I wouldn’t want you pruning them.”

“Our… what?” Tulland’s mind melted. “Kids?”

“Well, eventually, yes, I’d like some. Unless you don’t want any, I guess. I figured this was getting to be a pretty long-term thing. You didn’t?”

“I did, I just didn’t know if you’d want… me, I guess. You know I’m probably not going to be much better than this, right? This is probably about as good as I get.”

“This is fine. Even though you’ll get better. Different, at least. So will I.”

“Well, I hope so. Although we sort of have to save this entire world before I’ll really have the time to spend much energy on self-development.”

“Well, get on it.” Necia slapped his leg as they sat staring at his pot of dirt. “You have to redo your whole farm, right?”

“Something like that. I have those new bushes now too. It’s going to change the entire design.”

“Then do that. I’ll be out hunting dungeons with Amrand. We’ve noticed more of them popping up recently. Whatever the blight is planning, we want to disrupt it enough to get you the time you need.”

“You’ll be fine without me?”

“Sure. It’s really just babysitting, anyway. I’m taking a team of fighters Amrand claims could clear the dungeon pretty safely by themselves and just making sure they don’t get into trouble.”

“Then be safe.” Tulland kissed Necia, then nodded in the general direction of his farm. “I’ll probably still be working on that when you get back.”

Reorganizing the entire farm wasn’t something that was going to take a short amount of time. He had to make sure that the entire layout of the plot maximized what he got out of every plant. Some of the plants didn’t like the same soil as others, and some cast too much shade for other plants to grow well under them.

The effect of this got a little worse as soon as he realized that many of the plants weren’t exactly happy. His new skill gave him some insight into his old pruning techniques that he just hadn’t had access to before, and the practical upshot of this was that there was suddenly a lot of room for improvement, even ignoring his new bushes.

The solution for this was annoyingly simple in the worst possible way. He’d have to start over.

“Sir Farmer.” One of the village occupants approached him cautiously several hours into his process. “I can’t help but notice you are using the passive plot of the hero.”

“The what?” Tulland asked.

“The plot of the hero that rests. It sits unused. It has since we arrived.”

“Oh. Yeah. That’s my secondary plot. That bucket over there produces soil, and after a while it doesn’t help to add it to the old plot. I keep a second plot just in case I need it. And a third. There’s my main plot, my production plot, and this one.”

“Oh.” The man looked perplexed. “I thought it would be more magical.”

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“Give it a few weeks. It will be.”

Tulland had been dumping dirt on this plot for weeks, and now worked the worse soil beneath with various pieces of organic matter the villagers provided him. Once the dirt had sufficient fish guts in it plus all the other bits and pieces of things it took to make a good general soil, Tulland looked it over.

The layout was blessedly simple this time around. He knew what kind of pruning most of the plants would want, and he knew the compromise position he’d take on his needs and theirs. The first priority was the darkwood trees, as they cast the most shade of anything on the farm and also provided the most points. After that, he’d set up as many value bushes as he could.

Pushing growth turned out to be easier and faster than he thought it would be, once again due to his improved Farmer’s Intuition. The plants were now giving him a sort of feedback he could follow in the moment, a resonance of feeling he could match. Individual plants gave it very strongly, but the overall farm put up a sort of symphony of feeling that he could still try to fit his power into.

When he did this, things sprung up fast. Most of his easy plants were grown to acceptable sizes within the day, and while his value bush was still small, it put out three berries he immediately planted.

Necia continued her rounds with the team, finding and destroying one or two dungeons a day within walking distance of the town. Tulland took one trip with her to make sure she was behaving safely, only to find the process of clearing a dungeon with a pretty strong team and one demigod was so riskless that he was wasting everyone’s time. After that, he focused in on his farm again in earnest, no longer worrying as much about whether or not Necia was perfectly secure at all times.

The time for pruning eventually came.

“All right, trees.” Tulland eyed the trees suspiciously. “What is it you really want?”

Does talking to them help?

It helps me not be bored. That’s something. I only really get one chance at pruning them.

Then please do talk to them. I’d much rather you were paying attention.

Tulland began his cuts. The darkwood trees were trimmed into cones, with the thickest part at the bottom. The trees weren’t exactly conifers and their branches were far from uniform, so this ended up looking bizarre and uneven. It did, however, mean that the trees cast less shade, despite what shade they did have at the bottom being thicker and darker.

The briars were mostly unchanged, with a few exceptions. The Lunger Briars were fine being trimmed to minimal proportions, minimizing the space they took to grow. The Clubber Vines asked for most of their length to be kept while they were surgically thinned, making them more flexible and whip-like overall. Tulland suspected that if they were still relevant to his fighting style, they’d be much stronger. He could imagine the faster, sharper vines bashing through enemies, and it would have made a lot of hard things he went through much easier.

The other trees wanted various alterations of their own, none of which made much sense to Tulland but that mostly made for better designs than what he came up with himself. At the same time, he made minor alterations to every single request, prioritizing the farm as a whole over the exact wish-fulfillment of plants he was pretty sure weren’t exactly thinking.

Days passed, with him carefully optimizing every part of the farm while closely monitoring his grass. It grew fast, and after several days, finally brought forth seed.

“Wow.” Necia took the heaping handful of seeds from Tulland and bounced it in her hand. There were dozens of them. “What do we do with these now?”

“I prepared a plot for them.” Tulland pointed behind him, where a bare patch of land was waiting for its new occupants. “Go ahead and plant them. I’m going to take a few and put them in my main farm, to see what happens with my points.”

“How is that going, by the way? It looks bizarre compared to what you had before.”

It was true. Each of the plants wanted such different things as far as trimming went that the overall visual effect was chaotic and random. Tulland actually hated how it looked, though he would never tell the plants so.

“It’s going well. I moved my stake this morning.” He moved his hand through the air, assisted by the chimera vines. It was quick. “I’m over 150,000 points.”

“WHAT?” Necia yelled. “Why didn’t you lead with that?”

“It didn’t seem as relevant.” Tulland gently pried the seeds out of her hand, making sure she didn’t crush them during her bought of frustration. “We aren’t going to win this one with brute force. If there’s a way forward, it’s these seeds.”

“I guess that’s fair.” Necia took a deep breath. “Still. How strong are you now?”

“Strong. I cut myself today and it sealed before I could even look at it.” Tulland took out his farmer’s tool and made a few experimental thrusts and cuts. “I think the ogres from before would have to hit me for a while before enough damage stacked up that it mattered. Which actually brings me to my next point.”

“What’s that?”

“Once we get these seeds really growing, we’ll have more of them than we can handle on our own. I think that I’m going to take a little trip after that.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning the next time I use the splicer, I’m going to try something stupid. I don’t want to do it without enhancements.”

“Fine. I guess.” Necia patted him on the shoulder. “It wouldn’t be you if you didn’t at least try to be dumb.”

Tulland’s grass seeds took another few days to bear a new round of seeds, and he added what he could fit onto his various improved farming spaces. The rest of the seeds were scattered around the town onto tilled but unimproved soil, left to grow at their own rate.

Without his help, there were another three harvests of grass before the generally scattered grass around town began to bear seed. That was when the supply of seeds exploded.

“I’m going out,” Tulland said. “To find dungeons. A whole hunting run. Every time I kill one, I’m going to scatter some of these.”

“Do you have reason to believe that they’ll grow better on recently cleared ground?” Amrand looked at the seeds with reverence. All over town, the Rebel Grass was now growing green and healthy without assistance. Both Tulland and the few other farmers in town confirmed that they were slowly improving the soil, putting energy back into the ground that the blight had long ago stripped out. “It seems as if it would be the same.”

“It’s not about growth rate. It’s about spacing.” Tulland pointed at a few seedlings at the edge of town. “See that thinner green, there? We didn’t plant those. That’s from seeds that fell off the plants naturally. I want a bunch of different starting points for these. Hundreds of them, if I can do it. Then, when the scouts go out, they can gather seeds from there…”

“I think I understand. Exponential growth, of a sort.”

“Right. I think if we are planning on weakening the blight with this grass, we are going to need a lot of it. Necia, can you hold down the fort at home? Make sure the grass keeps growing and the people keep living?”

“Of course. How long are you going to be gone?” Necia asked.

“Plan on about a week. How are food stocks?”

“Fine. Now take a break for a while. I want at least one normal night before you leave. That involves you not being covered in weird-smelling soil. Go. Soak. As long as it takes.”

Tulland did. It took hours.