Infinite Farmer: A Plants vs Dungeon
Chapter 183: Arena of Reaction

“So what did you think?” the man with the paper asked before Tulland could sit down. “Still confusing?”

“I get what each individual stage was for. It’s not like I’m worse off for having done them. I just don’t know what you are working towards.”

“I can’t tell you. I can tell you it’s something. I just can’t tell you what, or it will ruin it. You can get by with the gist of it, I promise. New message incoming, by the way.”

Stage Completed! (Trial of Intellect) What would a trial of intellect be without some sort of grade? The Infinite is pleased to say that your “please read these for me and summarize them” approach to learning was particularly effective here, essentially topping out the information you could have learned in that time. For someone looking for a more granular understanding, what you did would have been a tremendous waste. For someone simply trying to catch up, as you were, the use of Potter as a kind of knowledge-processor was a stroke of accidental genius. As previously stated, the knowledge gained here is its own reward.

“At least it’s all been pleasant so far.” Tulland dismissed the window. “How much time has passed outside?”

“Two days. This is a cheap dungeon in a lot of ways, but time desync always costs something. Necia is very annoyed at you,” The Infinite said.

“Will she forgive me?”

“Her call, but I’d say probably. She laughs about it more than she scowls, though she does appear to be worried.”

“Good. And, like I said, it’s not like this hasn’t been fun.”

The Infinite winced a little at that.

“Well, just remember that fun was never a promise for every stage.” He smiled thinly at Tulland. “I just hope you are in as good of a mood after the next one.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Tulland found himself saying the sentence he meant for The Infinite at a dark forest, empty of everything but trees, cold wind, and himself. “Oh. I guess this.”

“That, and me.” A familiar voice sounded from behind Tulland, just before a knife stabbed all the way through his neck from behind. “Nice of them to set us so close together. It makes this first kill easy.”

First… kill?

As Tulland’s vision went dark, the quicker-reading type of system announcement imposed itself on his mind. He had just enough time to hate it before he collapsed.

Arena of Reaction (Private Dungeon Space 3 of 5) You have learned how to fight, and how to think. Now you must learn to act on both things quickly. The arena of reaction is a space that tests your ability to observe, react, and protect yourself. In this place, you will be restored to full health and transported to a random location after every death up to your tenth. Your eleventh death will be your last, both in this place and before your next reincarnation. To provide the danger, the a feared figure from your past has been simulated in great detail, down to his intense hatred of you and desire for your continued suffering. He has been granted the ability to move as fast as you can at your quickest, and to kill you with a single strike should it hit. Be courageous, and use every skill you can to survive.

—

Tulland was spending a lot of time thinking of the exact definition of fair. Some things certainly felt unfair to him, just then. He was wallowing in literal mud, covered in as much grime as he could cake on himself just to try and take away the slightest possibility of being found among the brambles and other sparse plant life in this swamp.

He felt powerless, but it was hard to say that was anyone being unfair to him. He was strong, stronger than all but a handful of people who had ever lived if he was getting his guesses right. He had survived a dungeon that nobody else had ever escaped from at least once, and had come through dangers and terrors that would have made greater men buckle at the knees over and over again.

Was it fair that he was strong? If it was, wasn’t it also unfair that he had to be?

He had met the love of his life on accident. That couldn’t be fair, but if it was unfair, it was in his benefit. Sure, he had to do a lot of stuff to keep both of them alive, but a lot of people didn’t get that chance. Illness and accidents just took people, sometimes. He had seen it happen multiple times even in his short life on the island of Ouros. He got a chance to struggle, and had even come through.

Up to this point, everything had been a tradeoff in some way or another, and he was still alive after everything. Considering that tumbling headfirst into the universe’s most dangerous dungeon was at least partially his fault, he didn’t feel too put out about what he had to go through to get to a pretty good outcome.

He didn’t even feel angry that it was still ongoing, that he still had a lot of uncertainty to resolve before he’d ever be able to feel safe and build a life without worrying if next week would finally be the one that turned out to be too much to survive. Most people got that, but he wasn’t most people, and if he felt a bit of responsibility to help the other people involved even if it came with real risks.

But this dungeon? It felt unfair. The dungeon was a reward. It was something he was given for work he did, something that felt entirely positive until he was given no choice at all about whether he entered or didn’t enter. If the description of the dungeon was accurate, this floor was one that just might kill him. It was no longer something he would have chosen for himself, not with all that he had at stake.

During his second, third and fourth lives, he had tried fighting. There was nothing he could do to make that productive. At his most attentive, he was dying with a knife through his heart by the time he saw what hit him. He thought it was only due to his attacker’s sadistic nature that he even got that. Even the description The Infinite provided seemed to indicate he was being toyed with in a way that simple brute force couldn’t defy.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Simulated Halter, the Rogue Chaser Famed on his world as a killer of kings and generals, Halter was an unstoppable force of death. He went where he wanted, took the jobs that seemed to him to provide the most excitement, and grew his legend until parents a continent away were able to use it to frighten their children to sleep. The sheer probability of surviving a life like Halter’s was low. His own insanity drove him to take on assassination missions with little hope of success, pushing against challenges that should have killed him instantly. Time and time again, luck proved to be his friend. His daggers struck true where they should have been parried, and his poisons took hold where they should have been purged. He defied probability again and again, gaining the outsized rewards that outsized risks promised until he simply could not be detected or defended against on an individual level. It took a group to take him down. The combined resources of four kingdoms came together to mark and track him. The combined armies of each country marched as one, driving him ahead of them until his options were to swim across an ocean to escape or to turn and fight. He turned and fought, and just that once, the probabilities came out against him. Only one last bit of luck and a convenient exit arch to The Infinite allowed your path and his to cross. The version of Halter you fought and defeated was nothing like this. He was young in his class, not yet anything like he had been on his own world. What you face now is Halter how he was, an undetectable, unstoppable power who never faced defeat in a one-on-one battle until he met you. He retains his memories of that time, however, and with them comes an unslakable thirst for your suffering. He cannot be persuaded or reasoned with. He wants your blood, and he will have it.

The Infinite did not exaggerate. Halter was simply not something Tulland had the tools to deal with. He had no hint at all of when Halter would attack, no chance to react to the rogue’s much superior speed, and found that his regeneration was completely negated by the dripping, burning poisons.

After three attempts to work around this resulting in three quick but painful deaths, Tulland had changed tactics. He had to.

The fifth and sixth attempts, he had tried just running away. The space he was in was absolutely huge compared to most dungeons. He had cleared dozens and dozens of miles at a flat out sprint after his first reincarnation, only to be caught and stabbed in both legs. Halter stood over Tulland, apparently unable to speak but perfectly capable of sneering in joy before plunging his dagger through Tulland’s ribs.

The attempt after that, zigzagging and being evasive, had made no difference. The Chaser had simply chased, identifying where Tulland was in ways he couldn’t begin to understand before killing him.

For the seventh and eighth attempts, he had hid. The space had trees, and Tulland had climbed one, and hidden on an interior branch seemingly made for his purposes. He thought being off the ground might be a solution, but it hadn’t worked. Halter had found him and ended him before he could even get down the trunk.

The eighth attempt had taken him through caves in a hill. He had wandered silently through the dark, counting on his reflexes to save him if he hit a pitfall within the space. After several turns and a couple tight squeezes through cracks in the rock, he couldn’t imagine the haser following him. The Chaser did. As soon as he stopped moving, he was slaughtered in the dark so easily it would have been impossible to tell he had a class at all.

The ninth attempt tried to use water in several ways, but mainly to hide his own scent while revealing Halter’s movement. Tulland didn’t even know how it was possible, but there had been not so much as a drop of water disturbed when he was killed that time.

This was his tenth attempt, the last consequence-free death The Infinite said he’d see, and the best idea he could come up with was to hide in the mud, camouflaged in a surface he already knew wouldn’t reveal Halter’s presence.

It wasn’t fair. There wasn’t any question there. Not only was nothing he did the slightest obstacle to his enemy, but he was being forced to face it alone. His System was gone. His friends were gone. Support was one of his resources, something he had fought to develop and preserve, and even that was gone.

Was this all anything was for, Infinite? You just want to me to lay down and die?

All around him, under the mud, Tulland had vines stretched out like the whiskers on a cat, waiting to be stepped on so he could be alerted. This was his longest survival yet, a situation in which Halter might finally have had some difficulty. He sat still, barely breathing, covered in mud and bugs, waiting for any signal at all. Halter was specialized. He had to be. There was no way he could beat Tulland so long as Tulland could pull him away from that specialty.

This was his best shot at doing that, the best idea he had so far and the only one he could see working given what he knew. There weren’t even trees above him to fall out of. It had to work. And it might have, for a little longer, if a flying insect hadn’t chosen that moment to crawl into his nose mid-breath. He twitched, just for a moment, and hard enough to puff and expel it. It wasn’t much, and it wouldn’t have mattered at all unless Halter was right there, just looking for the barest bit of movement to strike at.

When Tulland felt the knife sink into the back of his neck, he despaired. There was no escape.

Tulland woke up in a field of flowers just outside the forest and laid on his back for a while, wondering what to do. There were no counters for this threat. There was nothing he could do to detect Halter, no armor he could wear that would stop his daggers, and no strike he could throw that would have more than a hair’s chance of hurting the rogue. There was no point in trying, no point at all. It was futile.

He still forced himself to his feet and began to travel a spiraling route back towards the swamp. By some miracle, he got there. He implanted every plant he could under the mud and waited. This time, the bugs were even more merciless with him. He knew Halter was out there, somewhere, just a small ways away, waiting to zero in on any movement at all. That was his weakness, Tulland thought. He could find you, no problem. It was probably why they called him the Chaser. But if he couldn’t see you once he was in your general vicinity, he had to wait for some sign, however subtle.

He was careful. He wouldn’t go poking around until he got it. Tulland was still at a disadvantage. Halter had all the time in the world.

Watching from the outside, it would have been obvious what had to happen. Eventually, the observer would have seen Tulland twitch the slightest amount, either because of an insect or simple fatigue. And then, if they could have pierced Halter’s stealth, they would have seen him fly across the mud like a thunderbolt towards the movement, his dagger held in an arm coiled tight to his chest, ready to strike.

What was less obvious was just how many exploding things Tulland had been able to get under the mud in that time. They all went off at once, barely injuring Halter but breaking his stealth for just a blink’s worth of time. That was long enough for Tulland to strike, sending all his vines leaping at Halter at once.

Halter moved like a blur, shredding most of the plants. Just one found purchase on him, clinging to his foot like a beacon. Even after Halter restealthed, which took no time at all, Tulland could see him through the location of the plant.

Tulland had a lot he could put into a strike. His weapon was a big part of it. The materials that made up his weapon determined how good he was at using it, and he had used the best the weapon could take. He doubted that made him as good with it as an all-out warrior of the same level would have been, but it was close enough that he was a dangerous, dangerous man with his weapon in hand.

The Chimera Sleeves took that to another level entirely, and beyond. Every bit of strength he could pour into the strike was amplified by the sleeves pushing on every part of his body precisely the way they needed to. The sleeves, in turn, were amplified by his farmer’s skills. Tulland’s farm value had never been higher. His sense for his plants had never been more detailed.

His pitchfork sped unerringly towards the rogue, as sure to hit as anything could be.

I’ve got him. I’m going to live.

Suddenly, Halter blurred. Where he had been a moment ago, there was now nothing but a faint distortion in the air. Tulland wheeled around, but not fast enough. His whole body froze as the rogue’s dagger pierced through his liver, pumping him full of system-enhanced poison.

“Come, now.” Halter’s face was smug and triumphant, like nothing had ever been so funny as what he was seeing now. “Did you really think I only had one trick?”

As Tulland fell, the least fair part of it was how easy it had been. The rogue hadn’t even really had to try.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.