Infinite Farmer

Six hours later, both Tulland and Necia were laying on their backs in the safety of the tall grass, looking up at the suspiciously blue sky.

"There should be at least, I don't know. The fragment of a cloud." Tulland groaned. "Something to look at to take my mind off what we just did. Necia, that was way, way too much, way, way too fast."

"Agreed," Necia said with a content sigh. "But you can't just grow a field full of rice and vegetables at a girl and expect her not to try and eat them. Do you have any idea how long it's been since I had normal, fresh food? Months, Tulland. Months and months. Ever since I left home."

"See, that's what I don't understand. Why did you even leave?" Tulland asked.

"To come here." Necia lifted her arm to smack Tulland's shoulder, realized she was too full to actually make that work, gave up, and flopped back into a neutral position. "You know that."

"No, I mean. You are smart. Pretty. All that stuff."

"Thanks."

Tulland kept going. "I mean it. It seems like you could have done anything. And it's not like you're old. Even that rogue guy seemed like he was ten or twenty years older than us. I know why I'm here. I just don't get why you are."

"Oh, so… hmm." Necia thought about it. "You know how some people's dads are rich and important?"

"Yeah?"

"And some people's aren't?"

"Sure. So you wanted to keep up with the rich kids?" Tulland asked.

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"No. I was the rich kid. I could have done anything. Had anything. Gone anywhere."

"You make it sound so terrible, Necia."

"I'm serious. I wasn't going to do a single thing there worth doing. I would have had a very good life and it wouldn't have meant anything. This one time, I went on a trip to help some people in a disaster. Just to, you know, work. And the amount my father-the-king spent…"

"Your father-the-king?"

"Shh. Not important. The amount he spent on bodyguards to watch me from the shadows would have fed thousands of those people who just experienced the worst. There was no good I was ever going to do that would be real."

"I don't follow."

"That's because your weird world didn't send people here. Having a willing adventurer go to The Infinite lifts everyone up, even if they don't do much. And as powerful as my father was, there was nothing he could do to keep me from dedicating myself to this. I moved to a warrior monastery. I trained for years."

"And he couldn't reach you there."

Necia sighed, then reached to the side of her armor and loosened a clasp. "Gods, I can't even shrink to my normal size. I'll explode. And no, he could still reach me there. I didn't even realize it until I got there. Every single trainer I had at that monastery told me I was a genius. That I was doing very well. And then I got here, and almost got killed by the motes. They bit me all over."

"Ah." Tulland decided to keep his own experience with the motes to himself, for a lot of reasons. "You think he messed with your training?"

"He probably just told them to take care of me. To make sure I stayed safe. He couldn't bribe everyone, but he could bribe a few people to make sure I didn't get hurt in training, or that I wasn't sad because I wasn't doing as well as I could. And when the chance came to go through the arch, I thought I was ready. I wasn't."

Tulland finally managed a decent burp. Somehow, it wasn't embarrassing. They had just eaten thousands of calories together, which made him feel they were sort of past belch-embarrassment. It made him feel much better.

"You seem ready to me. Strong," Tulland said.

"Yeah, it's the class. I'm big. I have muscles. Armor. But I haven't been circling through these levels, picking up every piece of experience I can get because I'm talented. I've seen a dozen people pass me, and every single one of them was better. After that, I realized I'll never make it past the fifth. I can't."

"That's stupid," Tulland said. "You're stupid."

"Oh? Look at the little awkward farmer boy who could hardly look at me before. All brave now," Necia said with no malice in her words.

"Well, you can't move. And you can't get me otherwise because, as I have said, you are being dumb."

"Alright, then, George. Enlighten me as to why I'm so stupid."

"George?"

"It means farmer. Stop stalling."

Tulland rolled over with great difficulty, once again bemoaning his lack of self-control once it turned out that conventional food took him almost no time at all to grow. "Of course, people passed you while you were in here. You didn't have real training. And before you didn't have real training, you were a princess or something."

"Queen-in-Waiting, she of the Scepter of Stars."

"Whatever, dummy. The point is that this is your training. You didn't start out perfect. You're still practicing. And here, stupid, is the best place to practice for the rest of The Infinite. You'll be fine. You were just always going to get a slow start."

Necia huffed and went quiet. Tulland, glad for the break, focused on trying to will a pound of rice to break down in his stomach. He had learned, today, that nothing quite evened things out socially as much as being literally level on the ground.

"Fine. You win." Necia rolled over. "Did you notice this is a cooperative level, by the way?"

"I did."

"And did I tell you I'm not capped out on giants yet?"

"You did not," Tulland said. "But I don't believe you. You have to be mostly capped by now."

"About halfway. But I'm not that far from the next level. I was going to have to grind the third floor monsters some more before that jerk ran me out."

"Ah. You seem to be leading up to something here."

"I am." Necia took a deep breath. "I would like to ask you on a date. And you can't say no."

"I can't?"

"No. It's my first time asking anyone out because I'm a princess. It would be cruel."

"Not that I'm saying no, but what would we even do on the date?"

"Well, I have a little more than a week before I have to face the fifth floor. So I was thinking that we could kill giants and eat rice for a full week. I could help you dig weird gardens. That sort of thing."

Tulland thought about it.

"You can't think about it like that," Necia said. "It's making me all self-conscious, and I can't turn back to a normal girl size right now."

"It's not that. I was just thinking that it's a little non-standard. And that if anyone I know saw you asking me, they'd think you were tricking me," Tulland said.

"Why?"

"Because you are way out of my league."

Necia laughed.

"Of course I am. Hardly matters here though, does it?"