Infinite Farmer: A Plants vs Dungeon
Chapter 185: Adulthood

A quick check of Tulland’s status screen showed that wasn’t true at all. He gave her a confused look, knowing she’d explain it eventually.

“When you plant a seed, Tulland, do you instruct it how to grow at every single moment? Can you take a seed for one of your trees and bend it into a berry bush, just like that? Or do you leave most of the instruction of the plant up to the plant itself?”

“The second.”

“This is somewhat like that.” The woman quaffed the rest of her drink, then set down the cup. “I think that you know what you’ve learned here today isn’t another neat trick when working with plants. And you won’t think of most of these things I’ve taught you, most of the time. The way I’ve taught you to think isn’t something I even think about much myself, unless I have to teach them.”

“Then what are they for?”

“They are like the nutrients in the soil. They are the philosophy that guides your thoughts on a new matter, whether you try to make it do so or not. They are the knowledge of seeds, waiting to express themselves and grow into their larger forms. You should continue to study plants, but what you’ve learned today should guide what you do in the future. It should allow the chaos and wisdom of the plants to come forward and for you to read them. Everything is saying something, it’s just a matter of whether you’re paying attention or not.”

“Funny you should say chaos. The Infinite called that energy I saw before the chaotic energy of growth, or something like that,” Tulland said. Then, realizing that he hadn’t really given her the context, he scratched his head and explained. “Since we talked last time, I did something and that helped me understand plants better. It was a ball of energy. I don’t really know how else to describe it.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. I wouldn’t even be surprised to find there were several more energies driving growth. One of order, one of chaos, others. The plants have always seemed to follow rules, at least to my eyes. It hardly seems like one would be enough,” the old woman asked.

“So how long do we have? Before The Infinite takes me, I mean,” Tulland asked. He took another look at the lush green space in front of them.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course. Just nothing that will take a long time to answer, I’m afraid.”

“Was it worth it? Working with plants your whole life. Wasn’t there anything else you’d rather do?” Tulland refocused his gaze to his new tutor.

The old woman sighed and raised her hand. Tulland winced, but instead of hitting him, she just placed it on his shoulder.

“I think it was for me.” The old woman sighed. “It was worth it. True, I would have been good at many things, I think, but I loved the plants, and working with them came easily to me. On the other hand, I think you wouldn’t have been a farmer if you could have chosen something else. This was something that you had to do, not one that you wanted to do.”

“That’s probably right.”

“Some of the value I got will be lost to you. But there’s another way to think about it. You told me about your Liar’s Grass and the changes you made to it to make it thrive in that world. You know what I saw in your eyes when you told me how green it made that village?” the old woman asked.

“What?” Tulland asked back.

“Pride. Satisfaction. And that’s good, Tulland. It’s very good. People like you and me aren’t just for the plants to use, Tulland. We help people use the plants as well. That’s the other half of things.” The old woman looked down at her hands, which were beginning to grow faint. “If you remember one thing I say before I go, remember this. Almost every plant wants to help people. I don’t know why, but they do. If you interpret everything I’ve taught you through that lens, you might find common ground with them. And then, yes, I think you will do wonderful things.”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

—

A moment later, in the white room, the man with the pad of paper eyed Tulland cautiously.

“Am I forgiven, then? Even a little?” The Infinite asked.

“A tiny amount,” Tulland said. “I’m not sure we’ll ever be fine now, unless you let me spend a day or so killing you over and over.”

The man laughed. “You wouldn’t.”

“I might.” Tulland reconsidered and shook his head. “I wouldn’t. You are right. But I certainly have friends that would. Let me tell Necia what you did and turn her loose on you. Wear a fragile human body. Then we might call it even.”

Imperfect understanding of humans or no, The Infinite seemed to understand what an astoundingly bad idea that would be.

“I think I’d just as soon pass,” the man said. “What’s a little grudge between friends? I can live with it if you can.”

“I thought you’d say something like that.” Tulland stretched his legs out. “Let me ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

“What that old woman said about there being more than one fundamental energy of growth. Was she right?” Tulland asked in his most innocent manner possible.

The man’s eyes darted down thoughtfully. Tulland gave him some room to think for a moment or so.

“No,” The Infinite finally said. “Not exactly, anyway. I can’t confirm or deny much about the energies that underpin the universe. You shouldn’t even really know about the one you saw. But I can say she wasn’t wrong in the sense that going with her words as if they were true would get you into trouble. Big trouble. There really are patterns in things, even how plants choose to grow. There are things that drive them. But the fact that the understanding of how they work is beyond even that woman doesn’t change the fact that her practical understanding of the thing was flawless. You can understand the practical implications without knowing all of the theoretical assumptions.”

Tulland filed that knowledge away. He wasn’t surprised there were things The Infinite wouldn’t tell him about. He hoped having the confirmation would help him interact with plants a little better, in the same way the woman was telling him her knowledge would.

“So what’s next then?” Tulland asked. “A trial of getting cut in half with a big saw? The trial of getting eaten by a very large insect?”

“Oh, no. Nothing that bad. I can’t tell you what it is, but I’ll tell you that it’s going to be something that will actually make you forgive me, no punitive Necias required,” The Infinite said.

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Fine. But I did answer your question, to an extent. I hope you will answer one of mine.”

“We can see, I guess.”

“What do you think all this is for?”

“All this? You mean life, or The Infinite, or this dungeon?”

“This dungeon. What do you suppose you are working towards?”

“No idea.”

“Not even a guess?”

Tulland thought back over the several trials, and saw almost no common thread between them. Two had been about fighting, but so different in what kind of fighting they were that almost no similarities existed between them. Two had been learning, but again weren’t linked by much beyond the mere general sense of the word. All of them were somewhat correlated in that they were challenging, but then again, every dungeon that Tulland had ever heard of was meant to be a test of the adventurer’s skill in some shape or form.

“No.”

“It’s like this. When you get done with the dungeon, you won’t carry out much besides what you’ve learned and experienced.”

“You are really going to be cheap, now?”

“No. It’s just that this was always for a different purpose. Once you are done here, the dungeon will dissipate, strengthening the soil around your town. That’s reward enough, considering how little help you’d have with that otherwise. But we wanted to give you something different that we thought you were missing.”

“Which is?”

“Think about it like this. Almost every culture has some kind of ritual that helps one ascend to adulthood. In some cultures, it’s attached to marriage. But in most, it’s just some difficult trial. Some feat of strength or of mind that signals that one is stepping out of childhood and into adulthood.”

“You don’t think I’m an adult after all I’ve been through?”

“Frankly? No. And I don’t think you do, either. The end of your childhood was robbed from you, Tulland. We wanted to find a way to give it back.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Maybe. But you can make that decision after your last trial.”

Tulland shook his head. “And the System couldn’t have been here for this?”

“No. Unfortunately. This is something you needed to go through yourself. If you are still mad at us after this, there’s nothing we can do about it. But you are about to go through challenges and a life that you deserve to go through as an adult instead of a scared child. We wanted to help with that, if we could.”

Tulland paused, thoughtfully.

“And you think this will work?”

“Honestly? No idea. But we are giving it our best shot. You won’t see us after this, Tulland. Not until your next reincarnation, at the earliest we would hope. Good luck.”

Tulland’s eyes were open as the white room blinked out of existence for him for the very last time and was replaced by the sea. Not just the sea, either. He had seen bodies of water in The Infinite that were large enough to be called oceans, but none of them looked like this. The way the waves hit the beach and the shape of the beach they were hitting were so familiar that there was only one place in the entire universe it could have been, no matter how many worlds might exist in it.

This was home. This was Ouros.