Infinite Farmer-Chapter 122: Leader

“Why are you late?” Necia grabbed Tulland’s arm and dragged him along with her before he could fully orient with where he was. “How can you be late to a teleport?”

“I had a meeting. It’s a long story.” Tulland started running, trusting Necia wasn’t leading him towards a cliff or anything similarly disastrous. “Where are we going?”

“To the battle. Read your summary and try to keep up.”

Terrain Race!

The battle to come takes place at a designated point, with both advantageous and disadvantageous terrain positions from which to fight. Your enemies are already in route to their positions, hoping to seize the high ground, get the upper hand, and slaughter you.

Don’t let that happen. Locate the correct destination and travel there before your enemies can make the trip.

“We know we are going in the right direction?” Tulland asked.

“No!” Necia yelled over the sound of a few dozen warriors galloping across the turf. “Not for sure, anyway. The scout and forester types had a general idea of the direction, and White got us all moving. We’ve been running for minutes now.”

“Any idea of how long we’ll have to keep going?”

“Me? No. I’m just following the leaders. I’m not sure if they know or not. It doesn’t really matter, if you think about it. We can only stop when we get there.”

“What if we just didn’t go? Waited until they had to abandon the high ground and come to us?”

“Someone asked the same question. Potter and White convinced everyone it wasn’t a good idea to piss off The Infinite if we could help it. Worst-case scenarios included wiping us all out for not meeting mission minimums or teleporting us to the location in a bad condition.”

“Ah.”

“And don’t think we aren’t going to talk about how you managed to be late to a compulsory event. We are going to talk about it. But for now, just run.”

There wasn’t much to the run besides simply trying to keep everyone together, something Potter and White handled by acting as bookends on the entire group. White led the group by in the front pushing the pace and Potter stayed in the back making sure there wasn’t anyone slow enough to get lost. The terrain wasn’t very difficult, and the group made what Tulland thought was an excellent pace.

“It’s here!” one of the scouts yelled. “Just ahead. Outside of the trees.”

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Ten seconds later, the group broke the treeline and sharply veered to the left, where a small rise in the terrain leveled out to a small platform of sorts. The group broke over the rise and stopped flat on the level piece of ground.

“Is this it?” Tulland looked around. “I expected a fortress or something.”

“This is more than you think!” White yelled. “For an individual fighting an individual, this rise doesn’t matter. For a group fighting a group, it’s a large advantage they’ll have no easy way to nullify.”

“He’s right! Now catch your breath. They won’t be far behind us. And we can’t be sure The Infinite won’t have other surprises. Keep your eyes peeled.”

“So what happened, then?” Necia whispered to Tulland. “Give me the short story.”

“I’d like to. But it’s not entirely finalized yet. Can I give you the full version after we are out of here?”

“Don’t think I’ll forget. I’m a princess, you know. We get status reports. We expect them. Her majesty will be quite peeved if she doesn’t get hers soon.” Necia tried her best to straighten up to a regal stature, then laughed. “I’ve really lost my touch at that. Go ahead. Talk to your little friend.”

I hope you were telling the truth back there. I’d hate to die over you lying. Again.

This will be small comfort, but you might die over this even though I was telling the truth. You’ve rolled the dice. The result will be the result of a gamble you’ve made with the odds against you.

But it was true? There’s a chance to get out of here?

Tulland Lowstreet, in my word as a System, there is always a chance. I know more than you could possibly imagine about your world, and more than you will ever learn about this one. But there are things I don’t know. Secrets which only The Infinite knows, and secrets even it hasn’t guessed at.

Which is a fancy way of saying there might not be any chance at all.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

That’s true of everything. The best building can be toppled by a sufficiently strong storm, one that nobody predicted. All you can do is build as strong a foundation as the land allows, and hope the weather goes your way.

You are getting more poetic in your old age.

I’m young as Systems go. But, yes. My time away from the terrors of the parts of your world I frequent has lightened my mood somewhat, lately.

“Okay. Back.” Tulland was as confident as he could be that the System was at least telling some kind of partial truth. In the end, it didn’t have much to gain by lying in this situation. At the very least, it could have lied to him every time the Infinite had ever talked to him. The fact that it had only chosen to do so now meant it expected something important to come of it, one way or another. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem, but I’m glad you are done. Look over there.”

In the distance, the dirt men from the previous level had started to gather. Where before they had been almost uniform, this was much more clearly a mixed unit of troops, moving in a much more organized way. It didn’t take a genius to know they were an upgrade from what they had faced before, which was expected. The unexpected was announced a moment later.

Battle format: Kill the Leader

The troops arrayed before you are not elites. They are, however, well-trained regulars. Each of them still only possesses a generic, skill-less set of talents that leave the classes that make up your troops at a distinct advantage. That does not mean they are powerless. Far from it.

In this battle, victory comes in two forms. The first is basic survival. Upon the complete destruction of enemy troops, each survivor on your side will be teleported back to the safe zone, rewards in hand. The prizes will be meager, but coupled with the chance to keep living, they will be far from nothing.

The larger victory comes from the satisfaction of the parameters of the scenario. As the battle commences, you will notice that the enemy troops are preferentially targeting the leader of your team. If they manage to kill the leader, the second victory will be theirs, and your rewards will be limited even if everyone else survives. On the other side of the same coin, you will find that killing the enemy leader will net you a huge advantage against the remaining troops. Killing the enemy leader quickly will grant you even higher rewards, evenly distributed among your team.

At an even split in voting, the reward preference for this round of combat has defaulted to an even, party-centric orientation. A greater total prize pot is in play.

“Leader?” Necia smiled. “That’s White. He’s tough. Lots of armor. Can’t say I’m disappointed.”

“Maybe.” Tulland frowned. “White is our commander. He calls the orders. But what if it’s Potter?”

The color drained from Necia’s face as she looked over at the unarmored, robed scholar milling around the rear of their formation.

“Right. I’m on it. I won’t be in formation though if I protect him,” Necia said.

“I’ll tell White. He’ll make the adjustment.”

Tulland elbowed through the troops towards the front of the line where he was supposed to be anyway, catching up to white a moment later. The enemies had already begun to charge, but the space between them in the field was sufficient that there were a handful of seconds left.

“Necia’s in the back.” Tulland shouted. “Guarding Potter. In case, he’s our leader.”

White gave a momentary look of surprise, then nodded. He barked a few quick orders, closing the gap where Necia would have stood. Then the enemies were upon them.

The last time they had fought with a group, it had rushed against their wall mindlessly. This group was smarter. With the difference in terrain in play, they stood back long enough for their archers to set and start firing arrows. Tulland ducked back behind the armored warrior to his rear as the projectiles fell down on them, looking sharp despite also seemingly being made of nothing but raw earth.

Licht and the other archers returned fire, giving much better than they had gotten in the exchange. At that moment, the dirt warriors up front used the moment of distraction to begin attacking from below. That exchange went in favor of the humans as well. Tulland could hear Brist laughing like a madman as the tell-tale sound of his fists sinking into target after target rang in his ears, calling up past traumas of his own training unbidden. He bit back a shudder as he called out the Chimera Sleeves, set them free to hunt as they pleased in the enemy ranks, and then brought his new pitchfork into play.

The weapon was better than he could have dreamed. The first strike sunk all the way through an Earth Warrior’s head, almost toppling Tulland over as his whole body leaned with the weapon in one smooth, powerful strike that extended much further than he was used to. He pulled it back, then stabbed it out two more times, killing the dirt warrior who stepped forward to take its fallen brother’s place in line. The pitchfork seemed to love hitting things. Tulland could feel that desire to stab seeping in through his palms as he struck out again and again, for once outpacing the slower, less damage-dealing warriors on the line. Out in the fray, he could feel the feedback of growth his vines were getting as they took down unsuspecting targets. Things were going well.

“No!” White bellowed. “To the right! Mage!”

Tulland turned to see a mockery of Potter built out of loam standing far away from the troops, just now emerging from hiding in tall grass and raising a glowing hand at their lines. White chucked some sort of javelin at it, one that Tulland had never seen him throw before. It fell short. Licht got a bolt into it, taking a good chunk out of its side but leaving it standing. If both of these guys considered the mage to be a problem, Tulland knew it had to be stopped. At the moment, he had just one ranged weapon worth putting into play.

Pulling out an Acheflower and charging it with every single bit of power he could, he chucked it overhand at the mage. It was a good throw. The Acheflower sailed through the air on a perfect course for the mage’s face, impacting hard and disbursing its powder all over the monster as it exploded with a soft pop. All that happened just a moment too late, though.

As the flower was making its way to the mage, Tulland watched as the light in its hand blurred forward, passing through their lines without doing any apparent damage to the warriors it brushed past. In the back, a frustrated female cry he recognized all too well rang out, followed by a sound like wooshing wind as the light rebounded like a hit ball, over their lines and back in front of the mage.

As the now-disoriented mage stumbled away, the light resolved into a tall, fabric-clad man. Potter looked around as the entire enemy army turned their heads towards him as one. And Tulland watched as the leader of the human army realize he was behind enemy lines, unarmored, and about to be cut down.