Infinite Farmer

Tulland found himself in the flickering entrance room of the dungeon, and snapped his head back, barely in time to keep the glowing teeth of the weakest and slowest dungeon beast in existence from closing around his neck. He was still woozy enough from the teleport into this place that he wasn't sure he knew up from down, but he knew he couldn't let an entrance mote separate his head from the rest of his body.

In the histories, being laid low by the entrance motes happened so rarely that it was usually only mentioned as a joke. "He couldn't pass his motes" was something you said about the most absentminded, useless characters you knew. It was an implausible thing to assert, like saying that someone couldn't lace their own breeches or lost track of which side of the spoon was for scooping.

Even though Tulland almost lost his life a moment ago, he had a wide smile on his face. Dungeon classes were the rarest of the rare. The most costly. The most glorious. If the System had sent Tulland here, then his future was looking brighter by the moment.

The mote trying to rip his throat out didn't know any of that. Tulland forced himself not to flinch as the floating, fist-sized ball shot towards him again. He managed to steady himself just enough to leap to the side and barely make it out of the mote's range in time.

That was concerning. Tulland wasn't faster than normal, and he certainly didn't feel any stronger. He had read every book on classes there was, and was fully aware that he should feel and see differences in both stats, even if the class he had didn't focus on physical combat. But he didn't. He didn't feel different at all.

What in the ice-cold hell is going on here?

Tulland's head ached and throbbed as he tried to recall the events before just this moment. It was no good. Not only was it not working, it was distracting him from the immediate danger. He glanced around the floor for anything he could use as a weapon and came up empty. The entrance room was made from tightly fitted stones, each made to look as if they had been carved to near perfection. They were far too large and far too closely packed to pry loose and use. The rest of the room was bare.

As the mote turned and lunged again, Tulland reflexively slapped at it. He made contact, too, which surprised both him and the mote. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he heard the droning voice of his world mechanics tutor reminding him that this wasn't too far-fetched. The man had been unbelievably boring, but he had also read his tomes.

There are those that say that the purpose of the entrance motes is to remind those chosen for a battle class of their newfound strength. Scholars have calculated the power of the motes to a high degree of certainty, and while their distribution of stats differs from ours, the total amount is virtually identical between each mote.

They are creatures as strong as a human would be without a class, greeting those who have just acquired one. It is as if the System itself is saying, "Here is one such as you once were. Glory in having surpassed them."

Tulland would have loved to feel the glory. Unfortunately, he felt not even slightly different than he was used to. He had heard tall tales of first fights from dungeon delvers before, and while he didn't believe most of what they said, he did believe them when they talked about the rush they felt when their battle skills first guided their hands.

If there was any doubt in his mind that he was not experiencing the same thing, the wide, awkward strike he had just delivered to the mote was proof. He was somehow alone in a dungeon with no weapon, with the same stats, and without so much as a single skill to help him fight.

That didn't mean he had to lay down and die though. If the tutor was right, the mote and him were on even ground. And in an even fight, there was always at least a gambler's chance of surviving.

For starters, avoiding the teeth seemed like the most important thing. Tulland ducked around a pillar as the mote surged towards him again, then tried to round the entire stone column to get behind it. He wasn't nearly fast enough. The mote was quicker than him, if a little unfocused. It had floated away and turned by the time he circumnavigated the pillar, and lunged at him again.

Now.

Tulland sidestepped the lunge and punched as hard as he could, bringing his right fist in a wide haymaker. He missed. The mote was turning as he struck again with his left fist, trying his hardest to keep the motion from going wild as the adrenaline in his body tried to trick him into wild clawing and clubbing.

This punch hit, but a second too late to avoid disaster. The mote, seeing its target so close, chirped with joy and opened its mouth wide to reveal all of its jagged, glowing teeth. If there was a way to undo a panicked punch, Tulland didn't know how. His fist impacted with the back of the mote's throat, not hard enough to do any real damage but certainly with enough follow-through to allow the mote to clamp down on his entire hand, all the way behind his thumb.

Tulland screamed. The mote's teeth almost sizzled with unfocused mana as they worked past his skin to his muscle and bone. Although entrance motes had no skills, that didn't mean they had no power at all. Where humans came into the dungeon to slay them with weapons and armor, the beasts that populated the dungeon had thick hides, strong muscles, and magic-reinforced claws and teeth. Humans might have their tricks, but the monsters were at least their match.

The mote's bite didn't just damage the point of contact. Its mana worked its way through Tulland's body, slowly damaging the internal organs in its path. Given a frighteningly short amount of time, this nothing animal could and would kill Tulland.

No. Not today. And not like this. It might be as powerful as a human, but it's not as strong or heavy as one. I have this.

Tulland fought through the pain and swung his clenched left fist as hard as he could into the stone pillar at his side. The mote's teeth tore through his skin that much more. He clenched his jaw and swung again, and again. If there was one word Tulland would use to describe himself, it was stubborn. And this seemed like the exactly right time to be stubborn.

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He could hear his own bones breaking as he slammed the insubstantial, almost dust-built frame of the mote that failed to shield him from the impact of his own punches. The fear and adrenaline racing through his body meant that hardly mattered. But as the bite from the mote worked deeper and deeper, it began to drain Tulland of his vitality.

It's going to be close.

Tulland's eyesight started to fail as he continued to pound his fist against the pillar. It had to stop soon. It had to.

It… has… to.

Stop.

And just like that, everything did. The light in the room stopped flickering, and the mana of the mote stopped eroding Tulland's life force. And Tulland flopped over to the floor, unconscious.

—

Tulland woke up sometime after that. Whether it was a minute or an hour was hard to determine, although the fact that his hand was still bleeding made him guess closer to a minute.

The mote's teeth had stopped glowing. Outside of that, the only indication that something very odd was afoot in this dungeon was that the torches on the wall had ceased to flicker. Their flames were frozen in place, as if they were paintings of fire instead of the real thing.

Tulland took a moment to reach into the pocket of his coat. His uncle always made him carry a cloth, something that he usually thought of as a troublesome custom. He was glad for it today as he bound it tight around the long gashes on the back of his hand and palm, then knotted it off.

"You stopped time?" Tulland asked. "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting."

Time is never an issue for me. And if I might say, you've had a hard enough day to deserve a moment.

The System was a quiet thing most of the time. When Tulland spoke to it, the System usually kept its tone devoid of most emotion. It turned out that was a lie, or at least something the thing had put effort into making happen. Right at the moment, its voice was brimming with emotion.

And of the worst kind. It was mocking him. Sneering, even.

Tulland stood, careful to push off his uninjured right hand. He straightened his clothes as well as he could in the dim light, glad he couldn't see the details of the mess he had surely become. If this was to be his first honest conversation with the System, he would give it all the decorum he could manage. Even if that wasn't very much.

"So I'm betrayed," Tulland said out loud. There wasn't much point in keeping his conversation with the System secret anymore.

That's right.

The System seemed pleased to confirm that. If he could have struck at it, Tulland would have, consequences be damned. The only thing he could do at the moment was to conceal his own feelings on the matter as much as possible, hopefully robbing it of its satisfaction.

"If I can ask, how much trouble am I in?"

Not a small amount, I'm afraid. The combat restrictions have ceased, so you should be able to open your status screen now. Start there.

As dizzy as the standing was making him, Tulland could manage that. He brought up his screen and glanced down at it, immediately wincing in dismay.

"No."

I'm afraid so. I'm sorry.

"I doubt that."

"I'm dead," Tulland said as a matter of fact. There was a reason that the tutor had repeated the fact that motes were just about as strong as an average human. That reason was simple. Everything Tulland would meet past this point was more than that. Stronger. Faster. Tougher. More effective in whatever way it chose to do its killing.

Two of the skills he had would be no help at all. He knew them because everyone did. Quickgrow was an agricultural skill that made plants grow faster. Enrich Seed was a planting skill that helped plants take. In the outside world, they were skills that meant a life of hard, poor paying labor. In the dungeon, they were important only in that they had displaced combat skills which might have otherwise let Tulland defend himself.

Strong Back, at least, had some implications for survival. A person with that skill could lift a little more than their body stats implied, work a little longer, or recover a little faster from the wear and tear that hard work inflicted on a body. But alone, it wasn't enough. It was meant to lengthen a day's labor, not keep someone alive in battle.

In any other dungeon, Tulland would turn and use the door. But in any other dungeon, there would be a door to go through. The fact that there wasn't one here meant there was only one place Tulland could be.

If you are saying you are dead, then you must know where you are.

"I do. But if it's true, you might as well confirm it. I know you have to anyway."

I do.

Tulland felt the information enter his mind. Part of why the Church had deemed the System evil was because of how the System supplied information when time was short. Like opening their status screen, a person would remember the information as if they had paused and read it from a transparent screen that appeared in front of them. Unlike their status, that memory was an illusion.

If the System willed it, the acquisition of the knowledge took no time at all, something that made it possible to learn and understand various effects on one's status during work or battle without even a moment's pause.

The System's message was outdated and confirmed that he had always been a liar, but didn't change a single other thing for Tulland. He was doomed.