Infinite Farmer-Chapter 142: Dirt Champion

Dirt Elites

Dirt Elites are each many times more powerful than more typical kinds of Dirt Warriors. They are faster, stronger, and can take more hits. Their baseline skill at handling weapons is much higher as well, rivaling all but the most powerful of human weapon-masters.

Unlike other Dirt Warriors, they come equipped with basic active-use combat skills, further amplifying their power.

Like other Dirt Warriors, they are not hampered by pain and do not fatigue.

It was not the Dirt Elites that had taken down Potter. Tulland had seen the arm that flashed out of the shed to kill his friend, and it had not belonged to the smallish, tough-as-nails looking squad of five soldiers who had come out first. The next notification revealed exactly what the huge, ebony-dark arm he had seen belonged to, and it didn’t sound like good news.

Dirt Champion

Huge and nearly undefeatable, the Dirt Champion is otherwise meant to function as a boss. It is balanced to reappear at the last level before the next safe zone as an individual threat for a group of several adventurers to take down as a group.

Though at that time the boss would be possible to defeat, it would still be difficult despite the greater individual strength of your allies and the lack of support the boss would be subject to. Here, in this place, it will attempt to guide you towards dangers meant to slow you and allow it to move in for the kill.

“There’s a bridge.” Licht turned quickly, backpedaling as he fired some huge, jagged bone out of his crossbow. “That bolt will hold them a few seconds, but we need to run down the path to the bridge. It’s our only chance to outdistance them.”

Nobody questioned his orders. Tulland and Necia ran in tandem, moving down the road without concern for any patrol groups that might find them. If they ran into one, it would all be over, but the risk of getting caught by the boss was so much greater they paid no attention to that fact.

“Don’t slow down once we cross. I don’t care if you have to run on the ropes. We can’t wait for any of you. We’ve already lost people to their arrows. They aren’t far behind.” Licht turned and fired several more times before catching back up in a couple bounds, betraying how easily he could have left the others behind as a distraction, and how much danger he was putting himself in by not doing that. “I’ll take care of the bridge once we cross.”

Tulland heard people falling behind them, victims of momentary hesitation when the enemies had appeared. Only Brist getting them moving had given him and Necia the lead they needed to stay safe long enough to make it to the cliffs above the high ravine Licht had pointed them to. There, swinging in a fragile way over the gulf, was the bridge. It was supported by thick ropes and solid-looking planks, but it might as well have been paper for all the security it made Tulland feel.

What do I do?

You listen to your betters and run for your life. You simply can’t defeat that monster as you are.

They made it to the bridge, finally, and began crossing. Tulland knew when the elites had set up shop on the cliffside by the barrage of arrows that began falling down all around them. Necia shifted her shield to her back and shoved Tulland in front of her, shielding his body with hers as they made their way across. The gulf was huge, much larger than anything Tulland believed could have occurred in a natural world.

Below it, as big as a sea, was water. If it was a river, it was the biggest one Tulland had ever seen. He guessed it was actually an arm of a bigger body of water, an ocean or a huge lake making an incursion into the land. From this height, he doubted it mattered. It would hit as hard as rock if he fell from here.

“No,” Licht said. “No. No! Run!”

There was no moving faster than they already were. Tulland watched as Licht finally, horribly decided to save himself, hitting the afterburners and outdistancing the group effortlessly. He covered the remaining quarter of the bridge in a few seconds, benefiting from the extra movement of some sort of escape skill to move at superhuman speeds even by class-holder standards.

Tulland didn’t blame him at all. Above them, hurtling through the air courtesy of a champion’s throw, was a boulder the size of a house. Around the time Licht got himself clear of the bridge, it hit. There were no ropes anywhere that could have held up to it. The boulder bisected the bridge without slowing down, whipping the entire structure so hard that Tulland’s hands did nothing to keep him attached to it.

Then he was falling. He fell for what felt like tens of seconds before the motion of the air finally stopped his spinning, pointing him feet-down as he cut through the air towards the water. Some impossible distance above him, he saw Necia climbing up the remains of the rope bridge like a ladder, for that moment safe. It was a small comfort to him, knowing she at least had a bit more time.

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Hit the water. Before you go in.

What? I’m dead, System.

It’s likely. I don’t care. Just listen to me. Hit the water with as many vines as you can just before impact. Every plant you have.

To… weaken the water?

To trim off speed. To cushion the impact. However you want to think about it. You are hardly human by your old standards, Tulland. It’s not likely, but you might survive this if you just think and try. Now pay attention. You have seconds left.

Tulland stopped arguing and got to work, sending every vine he had on his person down to his legs, wrapping them through each other and letting them hang down from his legs. The Chimera Sleeves were the best at it, inflating and closing around his feet and seeming to understand when he told them to be as springy as possible.

The moment this was done, he designated the water as a target to whatever vines could listen, enhanced them all with Primal Growth, and then touched down.

About half the Clubber Vines managed to slap the water as he hit the surface. He couldn’t tell if that really helped, but each and every one of them then disappeared from his farmer’s sense as the impact reduced them to mush. The two Chimera Sleeves on his feet did a little better, compressing and compressing as he hit to trim off as much impact as possible. They survived, although just barely so.

On his first day in The Infinite, Tulland had suspended himself from a cloud of thorns after being ravaged by monsters. Since then, he had been stabbed, shot by arrows, hit by clubs, and damaged in a dozen other ways he had thought were painful. When he hit the water, he found out what pain was. Between the ice-cold of the water itself and a whole-body lightning strike of agony, he was happy when unconsciousness took him away. A moment later, the pain brought him back. Every one of his limbs was useless to help him as he sank deeper and deeper into the water, writhing against the sharp, fire-hot pain.

Finally, without much of a struggle and no further ado, Tulland gave up. If death wanted him, it was free to take him now.

—

Idiot. She’ll die without you.

That was all the System said, but it was the right thing. Tulland’s eyes leapt open as he searched his mind for options to get him out of the damn lake. He couldn’t move himself through the water. That much was sure from the moment he hit. But he still had a few more or less functional Chimera Sleeves on him, and he commanded those to wrap around his shoulders and stretch out until they were long, flat, and slightly cupped.

The vines got it. By some miracle, they were smart enough to understand what he was asking when he told them to swim for him. He pointed them towards land, hoping they could take enough orders to actually find him a place he could breathe before he asphyxiated. After that, no amount of willpower could have kept him awake. The pain and the lack of oxygen put out his lights for good, unless the chimera sleeves had something to say about it.

When he finally woke up, he had no idea how long he was out, or where he was. Most of the bones in his body were still shattered, and his thinking was fuzzy enough that he could interpret that he was somewhere wet, dark, and entirely silent outside of the slapping of water on stones. He drifted in and out of consciousness for what felt like hours before he finally figured it out.

A cave. Some sort of underwater cave. How did they find this?

Sheer accident. They weren’t strong enough to lift you up the cliff face, and managed to find this. Some accident of erosion, I believe. Besides the pocket of air and the platform you are laying on, there’s no value to this place.

That’s still a lot of value.

For now. If you liked, you could probably lay here until the level was over. It does have a time limit, after all.

Not a chance. How long until I’m healed?

Completely? I have no way of guessing. I don’t think you know just how much damage you took here. It’s a miracle you are alive. Even what the vines did had little effect. I think that armor is much better than you believe it to be, but you were still almost turned to jelly inside of it.

Just give me a guess anyway.

No. Now lie still.

Tulland did as he was told. Somewhere down the line, he had gained an affinity for quiet, safe spaces. Despite burning with the need to get out of there and help Necia, boredom itself wasn’t much of a factor to him as his regeneration slowly pulled his body back together.

How can it be this slow?

No regeneration skill was ever supposed to heal this much damage. I believe something odd is happening with your farm, wherever it is. Something that gave you an extra few inches of survivability that now has to be paid back in time.

It has to catch up to what regeneration skills are supposed to be able to heal?

Something like that.

It took about a day before Tulland was healed enough for his regeneration skill to get down to serious work on him. A full day of wondering where Necia was passed before he started to hear the little, agonizing clicks of his bones pulling back into position and feeling the slow return of his ability to move and fight.

It seems like The Infinite finally decided to cheat.

To cheat? How?

The change in difficulty here. I’m so close to figuring out the sleeves. I can tell I am. And now there’s a champion who can throw mountains at us.

I understand what you mean. I do. But I am frustrated with you. It still isn’t like that.

How can you know?

The language it used in the level description. Having something like a roving threat moving here and there, something to avoid, isn’t that unusual. It’s certainly not common, but I’ve had administration of dungeons that worked that way, once upon a time. The language it used about them wandering around, and how they could be anywhere at any time isn’t something that was written just for this floor. It has a meaning. If it was trying to hunt you specifically, it wouldn’t have phrased things that way. It would be binding himself to a set of rules that it intended on breaking, for no gain.

How, then? How do people as strong as this crumble this fast?

Attrition, partially. There’s less of you than ever, something that was easy enough to ignore while you were still winning. Luck, to run into the threat, and to have it destroy someone you relied on so heavily for leadership. I suspect Potter would not have led you over that bridge.

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You think that was a bad idea?

Only in hindsight. Or I would have said something.

So what do I do now?

Tulland pulled himself to his feet, feeling his healing wounds re-tear as he did. It took another five or ten minutes before he felt right. It was funny in a grim way how much stronger he felt now, with another day of farm growth going on without him somewhere. He was almost up to the last floor’s standards now.

You could stay here. But we know you won’t.

Right.

Do what you have to do. Just promise me you will stay off the roads.