Infinite Farmer-Chapter 137: Dark Steel Cedar

The next day, Tulland decided to distract himself by experimenting.

“I think this is going to work best if you hit me when I fail. So it’s as close to a real fight as possible.”

“You don’t gotta ask me twice, kid.” Brist flexed his big meat-paws at Tulland. “I’ve been wanting to find a way to pay you back since you had me hit that wall.”

“In a good way, or a bad way?”

“Both.”

Tulland smiled and stepped back, his Chimera Sleeves wrapped around his arms like monkey tails. Normally, they’d be up by his wrists, giving them the most advantage from his reach as they tried to club at his enemies. Right now, he had them further back, wrapped around his biceps.

“Don’t let me hit you, okay?” Tulland warned. “I’m going to do all straight thrusts. If you know what’s coming, you should be able to get out of the way, right?”

“Of course.”

“Then here I come.”

The pitchfork shot forward at high speed, aiming directly for where Brist’s chest would have been if the superior fighter didn’t twist out of the way at the last second. Normally, this is where Tulland would be out of position and he’d have to get tricky. Actually beating Brist at his own game was so far beyond Tulland, he couldn’t imagine a universe where he’d land a shot Brist knew was coming.

This time, he was trying something different. As the pitchfork flew into empty space, Tulland tried to get the Chimera Sleeve to do on purpose what it had accidentally done the other day, adjusting his aim for him to make the near-miss into a full hit.

The vine came down hard on Tulland’s elbow, pushing his whole arm to the side. To some extent, it worked. Tulland watched the blow line up exactly with Brist’s moving form before overshooting the fighter entirely, leaving his entire left-hand side exposed to what was possibly the most painful slap to the ribs Tulland had ever felt.

“Why didn’t you close your fist?” Tulland wasn’t damaged, exactly, so much as the bit of flesh Brist had touched was burning with unholy pain. “Why would you slap?”

“Doesn’t do as much damage, and it hurts more.” Brist looked at his own red palm, which hadn’t walked away from the impact unscathed. “Do you want to learn this thing quick, or not?”

“Quick. Fine. Keep slapping.” Tulland rubbed his wrist. “Just know that if this works, I’m going to stab you so hard you never forget the wrath of the farmer.”

There turned out to be very little risk of that. The older man was not only fast, but also much more competent at physical melee than Tulland on his best day. This was not Tulland’s best day. The Chimera Sleeves were trying. They really were. They just didn’t have the fine coordination necessary to make what he was trying to do work. The best Tulland could make them do was a full-force slap to change his strike’s direction, and when they did anything else, the amount of force was almost completely random. They managed to accidentally correct his aim once or twice, but it was nowhere near consistent enough to rely on.

“You want to keep doing this, kid?” Brist looked at Tulland, who was mostly handprints by now and scowling harder and harder with each failed attempt. “Not that I mind hitting you, but even I’m starting to feel bad.”

“I think that’s enough of that. They just can’t do it.”

“Did it a couple of times.” Brist cracked his neck. “Even if it’s accidental, you could keep it in your back pocket for when you don’t have any other choices.”

“Pretty grim situation if that’s my best bet.”

“Hey, we all roll the dice sometimes. You do what you can do. Nobody can ask more.”

They spent another hour trying out another idea Brist had, something along the lines of letting the vines slap into the back of Tulland’s elbows to make his hits that much stronger. The same kind of problems kept it from working. First, Brist had explained that it shouldn’t work at all. The vines should have had to push about as hard as they pulled, which should have neutralized almost any power they added to the mix. Some subtle System thing was keeping them from following that rule to the letter, but it meant any power they added was diminished.

Second, they just sucked at it. Tulland couldn’t blame it all on them, but they weren’t great at what he was trying to do. It was another hundred or so slaps before Brist got truly guilty, told Tulland he didn’t feel right about beating him up anymore, and sent him on his way.

Still, Tulland was smiling. The same sixth sense that had been telling him he was headed towards the end of the vague era he was living in was in an even higher gear now, telling him he was onto something. What exactly he was on to he had no good guesses for, but there was something in the way his farmer’s sense and fighting skills had worked that just felt uninspired. Like the usual rivers of insight and growth he could tap into had dried up.

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Now more than ever, he wanted to figure out that last little bit of cheating and break out of the little, appropriate allotted space The Infinite was trying to keep him in. But he wouldn’t get there today. He had other things to work on, and he had put them off long enough.

Necia saw him coming and came out with a hopeful look on her face, only to shrug as Tulland shook his head no and told her he hadn’t figured things out yet. After that, she slapped some food in his hands, shooed him towards his farm, and told him not to come back out until he finished his next project. She’d wait for him.

Truly a better thing that you deserve, in this place. I understand why you worry.

It does make my job a little harder. However I save myself, I have to save her too. Or none of it’s worth it.

Harder, yes. Maybe less than you’d think. If you find some crack in the way things have always functioned large enough to sneak out, it might not be much harder to take her with you.

Or it might be the hardest thing in the universe.

That too.

Tulland sighed and pulled out his scythe. For harvesting purposes, it didn’t really work as normal anymore. Any of his conventional plants, if told to cooperate, would let it pass through them like a razor, with almost no resistance at all. As he approached the Dark Steel Cedar, he hoped it would be as easy. The description of the thing had changed to indicate it probably wouldn’t.

Dark Steel Cedar

Named after a mythical tree famed for its appealing scent, the Dark Steel Cedar is a powerful evolution of the Ironbranch tree. Having returned to that ancestor of the Giant’s Toe and combining it with a long-forgotten fragment of metallic beast carried through the floors by a fellow adventurer, you have created a truly durable plant entirely of the System and bent entirely to the task of stopping attacks.

Stubborn and supernaturally tough, the Dark Steel Cedar resists all attempts to cut it, smash it, or otherwise change its shape. The only exception to this rule is granted to the master of the tree, who can carve it as easily with a conventional knife as he might whittle a plain, non-system stick.

This particular tree has been guided towards concepts of toughness by repeated applications of your intent. It is now so durable that the conventional-knife language above may not apply as the tree struggles to work against its own nature.

Defensive equipment made from this tree, even if made poorly, will be above-average quality compared to what you have worn in the past.

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Tulland’s first task was assessing if the wood gave him any different vibes through his Farmer’s Intuition and Produce Armament than it did while it was still small. It didn’t. He could sense that using it as a handle on his pitchfork was a good idea in general, since the main thing there was making sure it wouldn’t break.

The offensive skills weren’t really all that excited about that compared to the prospect of using it as armor, though. This stuff wanted to be armor. It wanted to go over important things and make sure they didn’t break. It wanted to get hit by things and win.

Tulland started the process of letting it do that. Chopping down the tree turned to be surprisingly hard. He cut into the bark then got stopped flat, unable to use the wedge of the scythe to push any further through the wood. He took to sawing, which took forever. An hour later, Tulland had a squat, five foot tall tree that needed to be split into useful-sized pieces. He had no illusions about doing this in an efficient way, instead hacking and levering with his hoe until he had several big chunks.

Then things got harder. Carving with the belt knife Necia had given him worked, but it worked slowly. The advantage of this was that it forced him to work incredibly thoughtfully, holding the armor up to each piece of his body as he carved out the space he’d need to occupy it and move in it.

Once it was carved, he had leg guards, arm guards, a helmet that covered everything but the area around his eyes, and a skirted chest plate that came down past his waist to cover everything before his thighs.

It was heavy. There was no mistaking that, even without the armor on. He needed a durable way to keep it on while he was wearing it, which came in the form of using briar spikes to secure big sheets of Wolfwood to the outside of every segment, with strips of the same hanging off to be slipped through slots in the opposing armor piece, lacing them shut like a pair of boots.

He couldn’t figure out boots at all, and he didn’t try to build a pair of gloves. His Farmer’s Gloves were still doing their job, and with fighting vines on his arms at all times, his hands had never proved to be all that much of a weak spot.

Getting the armor on was surprisingly easy. The Wolfwood slipped into place, Tulland tied it off, absorbed the remainder of the chunks of wood and chips lying around the farm into his farmer’s tool, then sat down to let the notifications roll in.

Farmer’s Tool Handle Reaches Top Tier!

The handle of your farmer’s tool prefers a wood material, and with the addition of the Dark Steel Cedar it has achieved the theoretical maximum of material quality as concerns the weapon’s effect on your fighting skills.

The exceptional weight-to-toughness ratio of the wood means that while other materials might be lighter and some others might be tougher, there is no likely scenario in which you further improve the overall quality of the handle.