Infinite Farmer-Chapter 169: Wolfbear Hybrid

In the time it took him to come to terms with all the horrible news in the message, Tulland had cancelled the spawning of two more monsters. It was clear he wouldn’t be able to keep ahead of that process for long. There were miles of pillars all beginning to shatter and gel into dark, amorphous forms, and only one of him.

“What do we do?” Tulland asked.

“We run. We find the real pillar. And we keep each other safe,” Yuri said. “It’s our only choice.”

They took off running, with Tulland in front and neutralizing anything that got close enough to pose a threat.

“This isn’t going to work.” The forms were now starting to grow what looked an awful lot like stocky, powerful legs. “How do we find the pillar?”

“None of them look different,” Yuri said. “And they don’t feel different. Not to me. Necia?”

“No ideas. Except we can’t keep running in a straight line,” Necia said.

“Why not?”

“Because if we do, and the pillar is something we can only recognize from up close, we might miss it. I don’t want to run in the wrong way until it’s too late.”

Tulland began to curve as the others followed. He wasn’t getting anything from his senses either, and the monsters were becoming more and more numerous. He put down as many as he could, sometimes even chopping through the pillars before they broke apart to try to make sure they couldn’t later.

Then the monsters started to move. They were like the bears from before, except smaller and tighter-framed, looking almost canine despite still being more ursine than anything else.

Wolfbear Hybrid

Some kind of jumbled concept driven by the explosion of chaotic power and the general warp the blight brings to all things, the Wolfbear keeps the most effective parts of each beast while fully breaking balance with a beast that’s as fast and strong as the better half of each.

As you have already seen, they fall to damage only slightly greater than their standard, unmixed forms would. The larger problem is the seemingly infinite amount of them this room seems ready to produce. While not literally without end, there are enough to overwhelm you if you take more time than necessary to find a way to resolve this matter.

Find a way to resolve this matter. As if you have a disagreement on the price of bread at a bakery.

Right. I’m sure it’s trying. Do you have any ideas here?

No. This is unprecedented. Somewhere, I’m sure The Infinite is taking notes.

And it doesn’t think this is unfair or breaks rules?

That applies when it is doing things to you, not because of the natural consequences of something people did to themselves. The Infinite is already trying to correct this, through you.

The Wolfbears were finding their feet now, and would be rushing them any moment. There wouldn’t be a lot of time for Tulland to correct this, if he could at all.

And can I?

I’m not sure. But my hope is that The Infinite knew what it was doing when it sent you particularly. If anyone can solve it, you can. Through either your strength, or those things that make you special.

There was no time to talk after that. The animals were on them from every direction, snapping and snarling as they went to take the invaders down. Tulland and Necia were ashing as many of them as they could, with Tulland taking four or five with every swipe of his shovel. There were always more.

Eventually, he lost track of everything but moving, killing, and Necia, even just trusting Yuri would keep herself out of trouble. He didn’t have time to make sure of it. And then, in the fog of all the fighting, he finally found something.

“Keep them off me.” He spun the shovel wildly, clearing a bit of room. “Something’s different.”

The pillar in front of him was brown, like the entire room. But this one was made out of something enough like soil that his Farmer’s Intuition was responding to it. Unlike the rest of the room, it was blighted.

Why is this the only thing that’s poisoned? Everything should be.

Nothing here is for giving power, I think. It’s for using it. There’s no reason to blight the means of production here.

With the room left to him, Tulland reared back, brought his shovel around, and broke the pillar completely in half.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Dungeon Complete!

You have destroyed the pillar….

Before completing, the notification flickered, then closed. Tulland watched in horror as the pillar reached out hundreds of hair-thin tendrils of blight, grabbed onto all the scattered pieces of itself, and pulled them back into position.

“What the hell?” Necia swept through like a bulldozer, pushing dozens of Wolfbears ahead of herself as they tumbled, panicked, and disintegrated from the impact. “You broke it. It’s healing?”

“I’ll hit it again,” Tulland responded. The pillar was not quite healed, and the next hit reduced it almost to dust. The tendrils snapped out, repairing it in seconds. It was eerily fast. Tulland turned away from the pillar as it happened, sweeping through a few dozen enemies while he tried to think of what to do. “Yuri, are you still alive?”

“Yes.” Yuri’s voice came from his blind spot. “There’s nothing I can do here. It’s not the same as the orb. The energy is coming from other places, it’s just that it’s dedicated to healing this. And it’s a lot of energy, Tulland. This isn’t supposed to be possible. The blight is brute-forcing it.”

“It’s the same energy the room is running off?”

“Right.”

“Necia, can you break the pillar?”

“I can, I think. It doesn’t look that tough.”

“Then break it. And keep breaking it. I’ll clear out the enemies and keep thinking.”

Tulland kept working on the droves of monsters while Necia knocked big chunks out of the pillar again and again. Slowly, over the course of minutes, the flow of the Wolfbears seemed to slow, ever so slightly.

It’s working, but it won’t matter. Even if we knocked out every one of the bears, the pillar might still be able to heal itself.

Maybe. It might eventually crumble. It’s just dirt. Dirt and blight. It’s the power that keeps it going.

The dungeon is so screwed up now, though. I’m not even sure the System could get us out of here.

Neither is it. I asked. It says the blight is so fully in control of this place that it’s questionable. But what choice do you have? It’s not as if you can seize back control. Your only bet is to destroy the pillar.

Tulland tried not to despair as he continued hacking at the monsters. Most of the time, when things were destroyed, they stopped working right. With a dungeon so completely in control of the blight and so massively damaged from what amounted to an explosion of pure power, they were as likely to stop existing with it as anything else.

One thing stuck in his mind, though, something the System had said. It was a bad idea and it wouldn’t probably work, but it was better than letting all of them die to clear one dungeon.

“Necia. Keep knocking out chunks. When I say, switch with me.”

“Got it. Weird stuff?”

“The weirdest. Ready? Now.”

As Necia took Tulland’s place keeping the horde back, Tulland jumped to the pillar, activated his storage, and withdrew several vine seeds. Before the pillar could fully repair, he jammed them into the cracks. There was a chance they’d just get pulverized to nothing, but instead the dirt sealed over them, leaving a visible bulge in the pillar. Tulland yelled for Necia to change again, getting back on top of the horde just in time and beating them back as he sliced and diced his way through.

“Tulland, are you ready? I have more chunks out,” Necia yelled.

“Switch now.”

After several repetitions, the entire pillar was studded with seeds. Tulland let Necia keep on the beasts for just a second longer, lifted his hand, and pumped every bit of power he had left into the pillar. He had been running on fumes for a while now, enhancing the Chimera Sleeves as much as possible but more or less relying on his regeneration to provide him the power for each new enhancement.

Now that he was trying to use his magic power for something big, it just didn’t work. He felt the seeds try to grow, and even while his briars were the lowest-draw combat plant he had, it simply wasn’t enough. He felt them try to take root, and failed. He felt them try to sprout outwards in vain. It was as if they were being drained and suppressed at once, like he was fighting off an energy deficit he just didn’t have the gas to make up for.

“I hope this works.” A voice sounded out from his blind spot. “This is my big one. It will overdrive you for a few seconds. After that, I won’t be able to help for days.”

“What?” Tulland asked.

“Just trust me. And before you ask in a few minutes, I’m not going to be dead. It just takes a lot out of me to use this one.”

Tulland felt the sensation of a red-hot coal being pressed on his soul, then found himself absolutely filled to the brim with magical power. It felt like it was stretching out his capacity to even hold the stuff. He let it happen, feeling his reservoir stretch like a balloon before the refill skill finally stopped. As Yuri slumped to the ground, he put his hand on the pillar and gave it everything he had once more.

This time he had a lot more to give. A unified scream came from the mouths of hundreds or thousands of monsters as they all began to ash and the seeds faltered. He kept pumping energy as their blight-dust stormed the pillar, feeling all the magic drain out of him and leaving him with less and less to fight with.

“Keep going! They are almost gone,” Necia said. “You killed… oh, hells. I don’t know how many. Just keep going, Tulland.”

He did. He pushed out every dreg of energy in him, finally coming to a stop as the last of the blight smoke eased into the pillar. There was no more magic to be had, and no more enemies on the field. He wobbled a bit and felt Necia’s hands on his shoulders, steadying him as he stared at the pillar. Nothing had sprouted.

“Did it work?”

“No,” Tulland said. “It will recover. We will still be stuck here.”

“Like hell.” Yuri spoke directly into the floor. “This next thing isn’t good for me. Just remember I’m not dead. Carry me home if you have to.”

Her hand came out and brushed Tulland’s foot. She gave him a drop of magic, just a thimbleful of power that wasn’t enough to accomplish anything at all in normal circumstances. It was a truly pathetic amount of energy, a joke of a gift given to a desperate man who could have used buckets of power.

He put it in anyway. Suddenly, with a crack, the pillar shook, and all over it small cracks formed before the barest hint of green escaped from within them.

The room began to shake as every pillar crumbled around them, and the floor in the distance began to fall away. Where there had once been the illusion of infinite space, the dimensions of the world began to draw inward like a constrictor snake, replacing the visible with a thick curtain of black nothingness that drew inward and inward until there was nothing left but the ground they stood on.

“Hold your breath, I guess,” Tulland said. “And if this is it, Necia, I lo…”

“—ve me. I know. I love you too. But we’ll be fine. Check your notifications, stupid.”

Tulland knew that tone. Everything was all right.