"If I had to guess, there's a town that way," Necia said.
"We both know you wouldn't be guessing, so why not just tell how you know?
Necia was laying back in a wood chair so durable that Tulland suspected it could hold up a house, blocking the sun from her eyes with her hand.
"I will if you finish cooking that stuff already. What are you making, anyway?"
"It's a fish. I'm going to put it over rice and squeeze so fruit on it."
"Wait, fruit? No fruit."
"Shush, you." Tulland flipped the fish on the big, flat piece of dark wood he was cooking it on. Sohow, and he didn't care enough to figure out how, the Dark Cedar didn't burn. It made for good pans that he could carve with a camp knife, courtesy of his weird farming skills forcing the plants he owned to cooperate with whatever he was trying to do. "You ate almost that entire deer yesterday and barely put salt on it. You can try sothing new."
"That wasn't a deer," Necia claid.
"I thought we agreed we'd call them the closest familiar animal."
"Yes, but I had deer on my world, and that wasn't a deer. It was more like… I don't know. A bear with horns."
"A bear?"
"It's like a tiger mixed with a pig but furry and with huge claws." Necia waved her hands vaguely to indicate the danger of the sharper parts of bear paws. "They don't taste great."
It had been almost two weeks since The Infinite had unceremoniously dumped them on the surface of the planet with almost no equipnt to speak of, no entertainnt, and no other guidance besides a vague indication that it was now their job to save an entire world. After a brief period of helpless near-nakedness, Tulland got down to the only thing he could do well. Farming.
After a few hours, he managed to get them sothing like rudintary clothing before turning to his well-developed farr's instinct to see what kinds of things could be turned into better cloth and coming up empty. He wasn't, he found, a tailor. Luckily, the fur his Wolfwood trees grew was fairly easy to lash into a durable-enough leather clothing that wasn't uncomfortable so long as the fur was turned inward.
Once that was done, they already had food, grown in the sa batch of crops as produced the materials for their clothes. It had been the better part of the day before Necia threw down her bowl of grain, raised her hands, and scread.
"What?" Tulland had asked, alard beyond words at the sudden reaction. "What's going on?"
"at, Tulland." Necia turned and gripped his arms with an almost insane level of fervor. "We aren't in the dungeon anymore. The animals out here are just normal animals. And do you know what normal animals are made out of?"
"at." Tulland's mouth began watering as the implications of it hit him. "Actual at."
It took them a while to learn how to catch anything. The trick, it turned out, was to have plants that looked like delicious food, but that were secretly waiting to enact "hold really still, and then attack anything non-human that gets close" orders. Within hours, they had all manner of quadrupedal war casualties. Tulland had been reluctant to actually reduce them down to cookable chunks, but Necia ca through for both of them, remorselessly taking their protein supply from zero to hill-of-at in no ti flat.
It was about a day before they stopped eating any ti they weren't completely full, during which Tulland felt he had gained another tenth of his body weight in outside at. After that, their plans to move on as quickly as possible had evaporated in favor of establishing the best, most powerful farm Tulland could manage, sothing he could draw off in case any unexpected dangers found them.
Tulland had spent his ti experinting with the various materials on the farm. In no ti, they had chairs and a small table, neither of which were very good but did exist. Necia had spent her ti forming his spare vines and mud into a roof of sorts, supported by branches that would have been strong enough to serve as a giant's spear.
"I will admit, grudgingly, that the fish slls good. Even if it's not quite at," Necia said.
"What are you talking about? It's fish at."
"Yes, but fish at is fish, not at."
"If you say so." Tulland flipped the fish one more ti, spritzed it with citrus one more ti, and put it on a hard wood plate before taking it to Necia. "Try this. My uncle used to make sothing like this for my birthday. I'm sure I didn't get it right, but it's probably edible."
Necia sniffed the fish suspiciously.
An untrusting thing, that one. Tell her I said to stop being a child.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
"System says you should just eat it."
"And what would it know? It doesn't even eat!" Necia picked off a piece of the food with her fork and, after another suspicious sniff in its general direction, finally put a piece in her mouth.
"Oh." Her expression changed almost imdiately, and she took a much bigger bite, chewed it, then dug in with enthusiasm. "This is really good, Tulland. How did you get this again? I didn't even know you could fish."
"My uncle was a fisherman!"
"Fine. I didn't know you had fishing gear."
"I have the vines." Tulland had one of the vines on the ground stand up and wiggle for visibility. "They are pretty good at it, it turns out. I watched them for a while. They just open up until sothing swims through, and them thwomp."
"Thwomp is not a word."
"Just eat your fish."
After finishing off his half of the al, Tulland went back to work on Necia's armor. He was almost done, really. There were just so straps left to fit and a bit of fitting left to do once she told him where it wasn't quite comfortable. The shield already had her preliminary approval, having been much easier to craft besides getting the angles of the front just how she liked them, and making sure the handle fit her hand well.
"You are sure you want a mace?" Tulland held up a chunk of roughly-ford wood he planned on whittling down to a bludgeon for her. "I could probably get a sword sharp enough with this stuff. I'd rub it on a rock or sothing."
"I'm sure." Necia swung her arm back and forth a few tis, as if she was clubbing so unfortunate to death. "Swords were getting less useful for pure damage for anyway. I'd rather throw soone off balance than try to skewer them."
"Except with your spear."
"Yes. Please still make a little spear so I'm covered one way or another. Sotis I will still want to poke at things."
Tulland respected her wishes and went to work with his knife. A few hours of banter and several minutes of last-second alterations later, it was all done.
"Good." Necia moved around in the armor a bit, swinging her mace and pivoting her shield into different positions. "Pretty dang good, actually. Did you see the system description for this?"
"No? I didn't get one."
"Well, I'm reading it to you. It's embarrassing. I won't tolerate being the only one who can see it."
Necia turned her face away and recited the description of the armor. Tulland could almost see it.
Armor of Love
You have a paramour, an object of your passion in human form. He or she also cares for you, having made armor for you in line with the most ancient traditions of love shared between warriors. These traditions are honored throughout the universe, known world to world by different nas but always carrying the sa feelings and results with them.
This particular armor is crafted from large chunks of the Dark Steel Cedar, a magically constructed plant of unusual hardness and toughness. As an armor set, it heals itself of all but the most destructive of damage, and will regenerate lost chunks just as it repairs cuts and dents it incurs as a cost of battle. While not as durable as the finest of tals, this wood is a more than adequate substitute for many more mundane and less rare materials.
As a natural, living armor, the Armor of Love will absorb magical attacks with a greater efficiency than an armor made primarily of tal would. Where fire should burn or ice should freeze, the armor will do away with much of the ill effects, dissipating them before they ever damage your health.
These effects pale in comparison to the deeper aning of the armor. As a symbol of love, it burns ever brighter than re status enhancents could. It is a powerful, perfect reminder of what you feel, and as ti goes on an undying link to what you once felt.
As an amateur-made piece of equipnt, this armor will benefit from any modifications it receives from a proper smith, and will continue to do so as you encounter smiths of greater skill who make practical improvents to the design.
When you stand within ten yards of the object of your love, the effectiveness of this armor becos slightly stronger, so long as your love remains with the artisan themselves.
"No. I refuse to accept it." Tulland could feel his face burning. "There's no way it says that."
"It does, lover." Necia was in the odd position of having to make fun of Tulland without actually looking him in the eye. "Paramour."
"Stop it. Or I'll order the armor to break."
"Can you do that?"
"No idea. I could try."
"Don't. I love it." Necia hugged her arms around herself. "It's good armor, Tulland. Especially for soone who isn't a crafter. When we get this worked on, it's going to be a big deal. That and the Mace of Embrace."
"Not real."
"I'm afraid it is. The Spear of the Dear too."
"Bullshit."
"The last one I just made up. It's the Lance of the Burning Heart. Which isn't better. But they all work a little better when you are nearby, so…" Necia stood up and hugged him. "Stay close."
"I'll try."
After a few monts of enjoying the embrace, Tulland shook loose.
"You promised sothing. I forgot. How do you know there's a town nearby? And don't tell you are guessing."
"Oh, that. Yes." Necia pointed downriver. "See there? Where the two big hills are?"
Tulland did see. They were oddly large things. He nodded, trying to connect what was going on for himself.
"People like rivers, but they also like being sheltered from storms, and farmland is richer at the bottom of hills for reasons I don't rember. So I figure if there's a town anywhere near here, it will be there. I can't imagine The Infinite set us down so very far from civilization, since he wants us to save the world. I figure it's just about ti for us to move on, anyway. Heroes don't get vacations."
"They don't?"
"Well, that's what they say. I think they should, but I guess there's always soone who needs saving."
Tulland spent the rest of the night working on his plants. For all the soil had seed good here when he started farming, it tapped out unusually quicker. It wasn't quite as bad as so of the worst dungeon soil he had seen, but his conventional food plants did poorly in it. Even mixing in the magic soil from his bucket had only done so much, and it had taken him the better part of the week to get everything to a point he was comfortable leaving and expecting to grow by itself.
At the end, he harvested everything he could from his main farm and the secondary smaller farm he used to grow his weaponry, loading up his seed bag with future potential weapons and tucking away every armant he could manage in his dinsional storage. It was exciting to be leaving, but no part of him suspected it would be easy.
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