Infinite Farmer-Chapter 117 - 113: Farming Science

"I don’t understand," Tulland admitted. Somehow, Potter who was mostly a fighter knew more about farming than him, a farmer.

"Well, imagine iron. It’s mined as an ore. The iron has to be melted out of that ore. Just that one part. That’s the useful bit." Potter pulled out his dagger and tapped the blade, as if to illustrate the point. "When you give something like ground up bone to your plants in the soil, they are only taking what they want from it. Phosphorus and calcium, I think. Two chemicals. On my world, some of the better farmer-related classes had figured out how to separate out just those parts. It made it cheaper to ship to where it was needed."

That was interesting enough, Tulland supposed. It wasn’t exactly useful to him, since his farmer’s intuition told him about how much of each thing to mix with his soil and kept him from the worst overshoots. He nodded, appreciating knowing a bit more about what was happening there but not caring that much about details that wouldn’t be that useful to him.

Skill Level Up!

"One second." Tulland held up his hand to stop Potter, who was still droning on about plants. "Let me check something."

Tulland Lowstreet

Class: Chaos Farmer LV. 70

Strength: 60 (+5)

Agility: 60 (+5)

Vitality: 60 (+10)

Spirit: 105 (+5)

Mind: 60 (+10)

Force: 150

Skills: Primal Growth LV. 20, Produce Armament LV. 20, Market Wagon LV. 15

Passives: Broadcast LV. 15, Botanical Engineer LV. 16, Strong Back LV. 15, Fruits of the Field LV. 15, Farmer’s Intuition LV. 16

Farmer’s Intuition leveled. Why?

Likely the same reason your plants level when you give them fertilizer. Potter is giving you the component knowledge the skill runs on. The Infinite is rewarding the study. Interesting, really. If I were you…

Say no more. Tulland dismissed the System for the moment. "Potter, would you say you know a lot about plants?"

"A lot? I don’t know that I’d put it that way. I’ve read a few books on plants, a few on agriculture…"

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"What constitutes a few?" Necia asked. "You are a scholar class, right?"

"Well, yes. I’d say I haven’t read more than fifty or sixty books on the general subject of botany, if pressed."

Tulland was holding on to Potter’s robes now, a look of desperation in his eye.

"Potter, you are going to come to my house. I’m going to feed you."

"Yes?" Potter looked confused. "And?"

"And you are going to tell me everything you know about plants. Every. Single. Thing."

"Oh, just that? Of course." Potter beamed. Tulland knew that look. His tutor used to have it every time a student showed actual, genuine interest in a lesson. "Lead the way."

—

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Tulland had worried that the scholar might realize the value of what he was doing and demand a price he couldn’t pay. He was half right. The older man almost instantly aware of the implication of what was happening, but was more than happy to do what he could to help for free.

"And so while we humans tend to think of the purpose of a plant as producing wood or fruit, or for use as ornaments, or for shade, the plants have a very different idea of what they are for. Can you guess what it is?"

"To survive?"

"Close." Potter scooped up some more grain mush. He had been packing it away for hours, taking short breaks to digest them so that he could push more calories into his already packed system. "This really is better with salt. And you cook it well, I must say."

"I’ve been cooking it for months. It’s the only thing I can make." Tulland tapped on the table, deep in thought. "So if not survival, and not producing things we need, then what?"

"Something close. Figure it out yourself if you can. I suspect it’s worth more that way."

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Tulland tried. It had been hours of talking, and the levels had been slowing down as the scholar started repeating himself or moving away from agriculture into more esoteric understandings of plants. Still, Tulland had gained two more levels to his Farmer’s Intuition, and was eager to get his third. He thought. It was a minute or so of watching Potter hork down bites of food before he got it.

"Seeds?" Tulland was uncertain. "They live to produce seeds. More of themselves."

"That’s right. In the real world, a plant doesn’t care if it’s exceptionally lethal, just if it’s lethal enough to survive long enough to disperse its seeds. The same goes for whether or not a fruit is delicious, or whether or not a tree is sturdy. They are just as sturdy as they need to be to survive."

On the ground between them, Potter used his toe to sketch out two circles with his toe, one big and one much smaller.

"Human involvement changes that. On my world, we had a fruit. An orange sweet kind of thing. We kept good records of the fruits when they were first intentionally grown, all the way to the present day. They started out as smaller, harder things, like this." He pointed to the smaller circle. "And that was enough for them to survive in the wild. Birds and rodents would eat the fruits, scatter the seeds, and they’d grow."

"And the bigger circle?"

"Something that would have never occurred without human involvement. The fruits didn’t need to be bigger and sweeter for the plants to survive in the wild, but we wanted them to be. We selectively bred the trees until we improved the fruit."

Tulland was almost past his capacity to learn that day. It had been hours of plant-talk, and even with his newfound, class-inspired interest in plants, he was not and had never been much of a student. With Potter visibly stuffed full of food at last, he was looking for an escape. It was only politeness that kept him on track for the end of this one last lesson.

"You might think this was wrong to do to the plant, in some respects," Potter said. "We were forcing it to waste energy on a fruit that was in no way better at spreading its seeds. But what do you think happened then?"

"No idea," Tulland answered. "Sorry. I really can’t guess."

"We started to grow orchards full of the damn things. All over. The fruit was better, which motivated our farmers to invest in keeping the trees in better health and increasing their numbers. That’s the last thing I think you have to remember, Tulland. The seeds are the point, and a plant will do what it needs to in order to survive all the influences of its environment. But we, Tulland, are also an influence. Especially humans like you."

Skill Level Up!

"That’s another one." Tulland smiled at the scholar. "Thank you so much. It’s probably the last one for the day, though. I don’t have much of a constitution for learning, I think."

"Oh, I’m just about out of relevant things anyway. Did that pail of yours ever refill, by the way?"

"Actually, I think so." Tulland checked inside his storage. "Yes. I’d better go take care of that now."

"Can I watch?" Potter looked towards the obscured portions of Tulland’s property. "I’ve never seen the farm proper. I’d be interested to."

Tulland shook his head, actually sad that he couldn’t let the man. He’d be taking a loss by not getting all the information he could out of the man, and seeing the farm would almost certainly jog some ideas loose in the man’s brain.

"I can’t. I’m sorry." Tulland winced as the disappointment showed in the scholar’s face. "I really am. It’s just that we allowed access to a trusted friend on the last set of floors, and…"

"Say no more." Potter waved his hand. "I heard a little bit about that from White. He wouldn’t give me the details, but I think I might understand a bit of how destroying a farmer’s farm would hurt him. You are all recovered now, I trust?"

"Pretty well." Tulland held back the details of how his class worked, glad that Potter wasn’t pushing for them. "And it’s getting better the more of this soil I’m able to pour in. I just wish I didn’t have to disturb the plants to do it. The stuff I dug up yesterday is just barely reaching the point it was before I dug it up. The rest of it is probably going to take the same kind of dive."

"You’re digging them up?" Potter grimaced. "Is that really necessary?"

"I mean, I have to get the soil to them somehow."

"Just hoe where you can to mix it in, and douse the rest with water. The nutrients should leach downwards by themselves. Especially over time."

"Will that work?" Tulland’s Farmer’s Intuition took the information and ran with it, verifying that it very probably would. "Dammit. Yes, it should. Why didn’t I think of that?"

"I wouldn’t blame you. You never had any training. But if the plants near the plot you dug up yesterday are doing better than expected, I’d think that would be your confirmation."

—

Tulland spent the rest of the day stirring up the soil of his farm as much as he could, carefully hoeing every inch of soil around every plant that didn’t seem like it would deal harm to the roots of the plants themselves. Occasionally, one would get hurt, but the damage overall was minimal.

This time, he went much heavier on the pail soil and much lighter on the dirt from the monsters. If he wasn’t filling out the entire dug-out cavity with a complete replacement of soil like he had the day before, it seemed like the best policy was to dust the entire plot as evenly as he could. After mixing the soil, he took handfuls of the dirt and dusted it over the entire farm, creating a hair-thin layer of nutrients that he immediately wetted into the soil once the job was done.

His Farmer’s Intuition was closing the gap on level twenty, which Tulland was looking forward to. He didn’t exactly expect that every change in a skill would come from a round-numbered level, but it would represent a milestone in any case. If it gave him some new facet of power to develop, it would be all that much better.

"All done?" Necia came in and sat down near the plot as she watched her filthy, muddy friend finish his work. "Do you think it’s working?"

"It should." Tulland looked out over the farm and sighed. "There’s no way to know for sure until it grows, but if Potter and I are right, it should show in the score tomorrow, even if I can’t feel it in the individual plants so well right now."

"Here’s hoping. In the meantime, I need you to go take a bath and then go to bed. I want you up bright and early tomorrow," Necia said.

"Oh? What’s going on? Another formation practice with Potter and White?"

"Nothing like that. It’s just that we haven’t really been anywhere together since we got here. We were too busy. Which was fine, but…"

"But I’ve been ignoring you."

"Not just me. This place. We didn’t find much to use out in the wild of the last safe zone, but this safe zone is a different place. It’s better. I wondered if it might be worth checking things out."

"Good plan." Tulland dusted off his hands and stowed his farmer’s tool. "You are going to bed now?"

"Yeah. It doesn’t look like it, but moving around in all that armor for those formations really takes it out of me. I want to give dinner and my regeneration a chance to work before tomorrow."

"I’ll try not to wake you when I come back."

"Do that. And Tulland? Smile. It’s gonna be a fun date."