Untapped ~ Chapter Twenty-Four!

“Please, take a seat.” The Duelist had a smug smile on his face as he waved at a couch with plush, golden, overstuffed cushions. “Most comfortable place on the frontier, guaranteed.” 

Joe stared at the couch, taking a long, deep breath as he shook his head. “You think I don't know why you want me to sit here? I can't believe you managed to steal these from the temple in the first place, let alone hold on to them this long.”

“And keep them in pristine condition,” Poppy primly finished for Joe. “So… not that I'm trying to hide, but how did you find me?”

Coughing into his fist to buy himself a moment, Joe felt his ears heating up as his face flushed. “Uh… yeah, about that. I was taking a group of trainee Ritualists on a very enthusiastic walk. We weren't expecting to find anyone this far out.”

“Hmm. Still not paying attention to current events, I see.” Poppy’s words didn't have any heat in them, but Joe still tensed up. “The sheer population density has made it nearly impossible to go too far without finding people. Even all the way out here, I think there's a proper Town only a mile east? Their population was closing in on fifty thousand, last time I swung by. Not many people managed to get strong enough to survive the bifrost yet, and if they weren't here before it opened… I'd say it got at least five times harder to meet the requirements.”

“I suppose that makes sense, what with everyone fighting for the same resources, training, and whatnot,” Joe agreed with his old friend, lapsing into silence as he stroked his chin. 

“Please stop touching me.” Poppy slapped Joe’s hand away. “I'm not a dog. If you want to pet an animal, you're going to have to go out there and meet Kenny. I'll warn you right now, though; doesn't matter what creature you want to see, you're going to end up playing with a goat.”

“Why would I ever want to do that?” Joe blinked at his friend uncomprehendingly. “Farm life has really gotten to you, hasn't it?”

“You don't know the half of it.” The Duelist's rigid posture failed him at that moment, and he slumped back into the couch. Waving down at his clothes, which were perfectly clean, not a speck of grime on the well-fitted vest and shirt combo, he lamented, “Just look at me! I'm basically wearing whatever I can find laying around these days. Don't get me wrong, I chose this life, but… it's been harder than it was supposed to be.”

“I'd tell you what I've been up to, but I'm sick of going over it,” Joe spoke into the lingering silence as Poppy's eyes went distant. “Farm life is what you chose? I was pretty sure you didn't come with me because you were planning on laying down roots, making sure you had a house for your daughter to land in when she was admitted to Midgard.”

That perked the fighter up some, and he straightened out and nodded firmly, “Absolutely. That's why I'm here. I started out, wait, let me back up. I did a year with the Royal Guard, more as a gift from the queen than anything that I was really after. Got some great training, made good coin, but I'm meant more for one-on-one combat than large-scale group tactics. They got a bit feisty with me after I kept breaking their training scenarios.”

“Took down all the threats by yourself?” Joe hazarded a guess, getting a proud smile from the other man that all but confirmed it for him. “Took the money, decided to strike out on your own?”

“Not right away.” Poppy's hand drifted to the hilt of his rapier, though he didn’t seem to realize it. “Instead, I moved into the arena scene for a while, doubled my money, tripled it even, just by betting on myself. After I got past all the individual fights, the same thing happened. People wanted to team up, and I got grumpy when they didn’t pull their weight.”

“After that, I decided to go back to my old job, which is… I suppose non-disclosure agreements from all the way back then don't matter so much anymore. I don't owe them any loyalty.” Poppy’s hard tone put a small frown on Joe’s lips, but he waited patiently instead of interrupting. “Anyway, I may have fibbed a little bit when I was telling you what I used to do a long time ago. Truth is, I worked as private security for the super wealthy and barely managed to get into Eternium before the monsters out there overran the private island we were on.”

“Abyss, dude.” Joe leaned back as he looked at Poppy in a new light. “Are you being serious right now?” 

“Yep. Anyway, I made a name for myself in the arena and spread around that I was looking for work.” Poppy waved around the large tent they were in. “That's how I ended up here. Technically, I'm the security consultant for the entire guild, but that just breaks down to fighting the monsters that are too strong for them to handle on their own and giving the members some regular training.”

“But… farming? On the frontier?” Joe winced dramatically, a hand on his heart. “I'm just not seeing how this is getting you what you want.”

“Need to build a home, Joe. Nothing available in the city, or not worth having, and I wouldn't want to raise her there, anyway," Poppy explained bluntly. “Money wasn't doing me much good, not with the price of everything going so far up. I like the freedom we have out here, and we have a bit of breathing room. Now…”

Joe stepped in to fill the silence left behind by Poppy's hesitation. “Now you just need to figure out how to build a house without those Wretches ripping it apart, yeah? What's up with all that, anyway?” 

“Mind if I join you?” Teddy's voice was barely muffled by the fluttering tent flap, which she shoved out of the way as she stepped into the small space. “I'd invite you over to the main guild tent now that everything is taken care of, but…”

“-My couches are more comfortable.” Poppy finished for her, earning himself an eye roll as Teddy pulled back her hood and flopped onto the cushions. “Not a problem; this is a conversation that should be more private, anyway.”

“Straight up, what happened is we made a mistake.” Teddy launched into her explanation with a long sigh. “We were turning a good profit and decided to expand the size of our guild. Joe, we are great farmers. Frankly, the amount of produce we're, um, producing, is absolutely ridiculous. Even so, every scrap of it is bought up at a premium before we can get all the way to market. So we decided to increase the size of our fields. Basically, just doubled the amount of land we were using.”

Clenching a fist, she glanced out the ground and spat through clenched teeth. “We thought we were prepared for more Tillbane, but we assumed it would only be double the number of them. That makes sense, right? Double the land, double the monsters? I’m not crazy here?”

Already shaking his head as he opened his mouth to reply, Joe leaned heavily on his Calculus and Number Theory Lore to explain, “No, that doesn't sound right at all… Don't look at me like that. Did you add a second field the same size as the first? Or did you just push the boundaries of them back? Looks like you are cultivating all the land around you in a big circle with yourself at the center.” 

Vaguely motioning with his hands, the Ritualist did his best to ignore her stricken expression. “If you had, let's say, a hundred yards of farmland and doubled it to two hundred yards, you're going from thirty-one thousand, four hundred sixteen square yards to one hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred sixty-four square yards of farmland. By doubling the amount of space you were using, you should have planned for a quadrupling of the monsters.”

“Basically put a giant sign up that says ‘come murder us’ to the Tillbanes.” Poppy grunted as he crossed his arms in annoyance. 

“First, I hate the fact that you were able to do that math in your head.” Teddy shook her fist at him, though it wasn't anger in her eyes, but despair. “Second… yeah, that tracks with what actually happened. I'm just not sure what to do. We abandoned the expansion, but they're still coming. I'm glad we kept this to just us because… I'd hate to have to admit publicly that, before you arrived, we were right on the verge of running.”

The three of them sat in silence for a few moments, until Joe raised an eyebrow. “Now that you know this, what are you going to do? Is there anything that can be done to slow the monsters or make it so they stop coming at you? At least as much?”

“Not a clue.” Teddy shrugged helplessly. “They show up anywhere wild land is converted, whether that's into towns, fields, whatever. At this point, we might have to get mobile again. If we scrimp a little bit, we should be able to set up a smaller farmstead a few miles-”

“Wild land, you say?” Joe's mind was churning along furiously. “Because we're on the frontier. This is starting to make sense, because I've messed with a whole lot of land in the past without ever once seeing one of these Tillbanes. What if I said we could help each other?”

“I don't have anything to pay you with, Joe, and I'm not sure what exactly you're offering in the first place,” Teddy cautiously replied, obviously trying not to get her hopes up. “We've been stuck in survival mode for weeks, and even the food we need for ourselves is almost gone. Money? Forget about it. Even if we got the land up and running today, it's going to be another month before we are able to get out of famine mode.” 

“I can help with both of those. Probably.” Joe waved a hand back and forth to show that the odds might be a bit more iffy than he was letting on. “Here's the thing, I have a land claim token-”

“Look, even if things are bleak right now, I have no interest in the Golden Greens becoming a subordinate of the Wanderer’s Guild.” Teddy’s words came out sharply, but she bit her tongue as Poppy reached over and put a hand on her shoulder. Joe's eyebrows shot up at the interaction, and he began to think that maybe there might be a second reason Poppy had stuck around in this seemingly hopeless situation. “I just can't do that to my people.”

“Good, because I wouldn't ask you to!” Joe cheerfully replied as he settled back in the plush cushion. “See, I don't need money, but I do need to use this land claim token. It's going to grab a pretty big chunk of real estate, since it's, um, a duchy-sized claim token.”

“Feces on a stick, Joe, what did you do?” Poppy groaned on his friends behalf, but the Ritualist merely waved him off.

“I'm not planning to stay on this world, at least not for any real length of time,” Joe informed him with pure conviction. “But I'd love to have someone I trust taking care of the area while I'm gone. Building it up, making farms happen, things like that. Maybe a nice house or two?”

This was directed at Poppy, who said nothing, but tilted his head forward slightly to acknowledge the point. For her part, Teddy seemed less defensive and more contemplative. “Sounds good, Joe. Too good. What's the catch?”

“I need cheese.”