Infinite Farmer-Chapter 152: Grass

“Ready?”

“As ready as I’ll be.” Tulland looked around their little nest with regret. “I guess we really do have to go, huh?”

“We do.” Necia grabbed his hand between hers. “We had a good excuse to take some time to get ready and healed up from The Infinite, but any more delaying and people might die that we could have protected.”

“Which I guess I have to care about.” Tulland sighed overdramatically. “These people. When will they learn to protect themselves?”

“You don’t fool me, softie. Now come on. We’ve got a lot of walking to do.”

They began. Outside of The Infinite and not apparently on any small island, it shocked Tulland just how long they could walk for. There weren’t any obstacles to just going on forever, or at least it seemed that way. Not having invisible force fields was a given, but he hadn’t realized how omnipresent the sea was in his estimation of what normal terrain was like in a normal world. Necia seemed unbothered by the edgelessness of all of it, while Tulland had an uneasy sense that he was about to fall through the terrain.

And that wasn’t the only uneasy thing.

“I don’t understand why you keep grimacing at the ground. They are plants, Tulland.”

“They aren’t very healthy ones.” Tulland’s farmer sense worked a lot less well on the average plant growing in the wild than one of his own, but it still worked, especially when he focused. And over the course of a long walk with little else to do, he had been focusing a lot. “They’re all barely holding on. Which is weird. Because there’s water here. There’s dirt. That should be all they need.”

“Maybe there’s less water than usual. Or more. Or a dozen different things. You don’t know these plants, right?”

“Not well. But it was the same back at our campsite. I didn’t think much of it because anything could have been wrong right where we landed. But this is all over. It’s every plant.”

That’s not all, either. There’s more you aren’t seeing.

Can’t tell me about it? System restrictions?

That’s correct. Any further details…

The System hung for a moment, like someone had stopped it midstep with a thrown brick.

I can tell you. That’s odd.

You made a mistake? It always seemed like you should be able to tell me about plants anyway.

No. It’s difficult to explain, but the edges of what I can and can’t explain are determined by a complex combination of things. Many, many things that combine in ways that are natural for me to understand, but that you couldn’t possibly calculate. Nonetheless, they are sure. The borders of my restrictions have simply… moved.

Moved?

“Tulland, you went quiet,” Necia asked.

“Yeah, things just got interesting with the System. One second.”

Moved. Or disappeared. I do not know.

Try telling me something else. Some knowledge no mortal man should possess. A deep, dark secret of the universe. That sort of thing.

Well, there’s… no absolutely not that, even now. Or that… Or that. There are, it appears, still some restrictions. Yet, they should not have moved. I am meant for certain things, and not for others. As the System of an entire world, there are irrevocable restrictions on what I can do. Or there are supposed to be.

But you aren’t the System of a world anymore. I don’t like to bring it up, so sorry about it. But you do know that, right

I… suppose it hasn’t sunk in completely yet. Of course, you are right. Do you think that’s what’s causing this? That I’ve been… What’s the term?

Fired? Banished?

Both. I suppose you wouldn’t know if even I don’t. But it makes a manner of sense. And from your perspective, it’s a good thing.

How good?

I don’t know. I’ll have to probe around the limits of it. I hope to have a list of things to tell you soon. Do you consider yourself to be in immediate danger now? Would I be being a bad friend if I delayed?

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

The way the System said friend stuck in Tulland’s mind. It was an unfamiliar word to it, clearly, at least in a use that was particular to it as an entity. It was like a kid trying out a curse word, looking to see if he would get in trouble for using it, or if he was finally old enough in his father’s eyes to use the word of adults.

Tulland was curious as to how long the System had been holding back with that word. Had it been months and months of knowing that nobody could trust the stated friendship of a predator who couldn’t survive without consuming their friend as prey? He decided not to actually make it awkward for the System by probing for the answers. What little he knew of its history was that friendship had been a hard, complex thing for it in the past. This was only its second try, and fresh off a big gesture of giving up certainty and power in favor of giving Tulland a real, safe chance to trust it.

No. If it’s easier or better to spend some time figuring this out before trying to explain it, that’s fine. I think you know enough to tell me bits and pieces as I need them, if it becomes necessary. Thanks for doing it.

I… You are welcome. I am going to go away now if that’s all right.

It was the first time the System had ever asked before it went away.

Yes, that’s fine. I’ll leave the communication channel open. But before you go, you were going to tell me something.

Oh. Yes. The plants here are all very much the same. Even in places with little diversity of plants, there are usually many species which grow and cooperate in the same space. Here there are none. There is a variety of grass that is doing well, and one variety of shrub, and absolutely nothing else.

Tulland asked the plants about it, to the extent he could. Unfortunately, it seemed his farmer’s sense wasn’t strong enough to get into the correct mix of plants for this particular area. At the plant-by-plant level, he was getting just a bit of data. For the greater area, he could only see what the system saw. Now that he mentioned it, most places did have a lot of plants. Even in most The Infinite levels, there would be a lot of different kinds of flowers and places where one grass dominated before giving away to other types of plants. This was an endless sea of sameness.

Got it. Talk to you later about what I find out.

“It says it’s weird that all the plants are the same,” Tulland summarized.

“Lots of plains are all grass.”

“All grass, yeah, but usually working together or against each other, More kinds of brushes and shrubs. Little plants that grow in the shelter of the big ones. You know how there are plants in my farm that grow under trees?”

“Yes.”

“That’s because they are supposed to grow under the trees. Actually, you know what? Look here. See this?” Tulland walked over to a big, fallen log on the ground. “See this? It’s weird.”

“How’s it weird? There are logs like that all over. We’ve been walking around them here and there all morning.”

“Yeah, that’s right. But where did they come from? Maybe that river floods out much more than it seems like it would and floats them down from somewhere, but otherwise, guess what?”

“What?”

“The other option is that, not too long ago, there was a forest here. And now it’s just gone. All at once. This wood isn’t that old, right? A couple of years ago, this place had trees.”

“And what do you think happened to them then?”

“I don’t know.” Tulland bent down to look closer at the logs. “I don’t know what burned trees look like after a forest fire, but these don’t seem to be all that charred. I guess a big enough storm might have knocked them down.”

“All of them? Would have had to be one big storm.” Necia bent down with him. “Why does it matter, though? You were able to grow plants here. Even if something is seriously wrong with this big plain, it doesn’t seem like it’s your problem.”

Tulland wobbled his head a bit, not committing one way or another. Over time, his farmer’s class had made him more and more aware of plants, but it had also made plants more and more important to him. When he was a kid, they were just food, and not even the best, most favorite foods available to him. Now that his travels had made him a man, he had soaked up enough influence from his system-assigned job that he judged almost everything by how much it did or didn’t have to do with plants. They were a much more fundamental part of how he saw the world now. In a way, he was for plants. He had changed that much.

“I don’t know for sure, but I think this might be what we are here for. This, or something like this. The Infinite never told us what we were coming here to solve. What did you have in mind, when you thought about what we’d face? You must have imagined something.”

“Me?” Necia blushed. “I suppose a dragon. A big one.”

“You would. Shiny armor and dragons. I think if you had been sent to a world alone, you would have been reborn into a position to fight something like that. It’s who you are,” Tulland said.

“But this is your world.” Necia seemed to be figuring out what Tulland was getting at. “He chose it for you. I’m just tagging along.”

“Not just.” Tulland reached over and squeezed her hand. “I have a feeling I’m not going to be able to do anything worthwhile without you. But the problems are here to solve are probably going to be… I don’t know. Botanical in nature.”

There was more examination of the tree trunks, which were far too old and dead to tell Tulland much about their history. After gathering nothing more definite than the fact that they were a bit more malnourished than he’d expect, they moved on. Necia and Tulland kept following the path of the river for hours before Tulland finally let his impatience get the better of him.

“Those hills aren’t getting any closer, Necia.”

“Sure they are. Look how much taller they’ve gotten.”

Tulland couldn’t see it. They looked exactly the same size to him.

“Just trust me, okay? Sometimes things are further away than they look. We are moving pretty fast, but that just means that the hills are probably a lot bigger and further than we thought they were. We’ll get there,” Necia said.

“What if you were wrong about a town being at the base of them?”

“I might have been.” Necia shrugged and threw down her pack. “It’s not like we had a better direction to head, though. Now catch me a fish. It’s time to rest for the day. We can get an early start tomorrow and go even farther.”

Tulland sent his vines out, securing a few fish before cooking them up with other food from his stored stock of grains, vegetables, and fruits. He didn’t ration. They had more than enough to keep the two of them going for weeks, and he could always grow more if it came to that.

The source of this c𝓸ntent is freewebnøvel.coɱ.

Despite the comfort of company and a growing sense of safety, Tulland went to sleep that night thoroughly bored. It was only later on that he thought about how bad of a sign that probably was.