Grim Darkness? Imma Farm, Okay? 2 (Patreon)

A week after I’d found myself in this weird tunnel system, and things were progressing… I wouldn’t say well, but they were certainly going better than I had been afraid of. I wasn't able to start buying up Light Augments willy nilly, since I didn't have much of the “currency” that was used.

Said currency, labeled GH, was displayed on the same screen as everything else, on a bar along the top that I’d missed when I was first looking at the screen. When I’d first noticed it, the value I had was zero, but some small glowing mushrooms were free so I’d immediately grabbed them and set them up over my makeshift grow bed.

Once I had some seeds planted, the number started ticking up. Poking around for a bit eventually revealed that GH was for Grow Hours. If I was right, then I’d gain a single point for every hour something I’d planted was growing. Which, if it worked the way I hoped, meant that the more stuff I had growing, the faster it would go up, and the better stuff I could get from the ‘In-App Store’ or whatever the hell it was.

Speaking of, the amount of crap you could get in there was… insane. Not only could you get things like lights and warmth, you could get food and water Augments, as well as defensive tools...sort of. They were seeds that from the description would double as biological weapons. As in weapons that were living things, not weapons that targeted biological systems.

I sighed, leaning back and putting a hand over my eyes. I'd been going over all this in my head for days now, ever since I'd planted the first crop. From what I could tell so far, the plants were growing nicely, which was a good sign.

I was worried though. I didn't know what else was down here, or if this was some abandoned world that hadn't had living people on it for a century, or really anything else. All I had was my little grow box, some canned food, a shovel, and a lot of questions.

I sat up and stretched, yawning. It had been a long day of planting, and I was tired. I lay down on the cot, pulling the blanket over me. Tomorrow, I would go out and take a look around again. Maybe there was a way out of here, or at least a map.

I rolled over and closed my eyes, willing myself to sleep. It took a while, but eventually I drifted off, the sound of the vent fan humming softly.

[hr][/hr]

At the end of my exploration the following day I had good news and bad news. The good news: I most definitely was not the only person in this place. The bad news: I'd discovered that fact because a pipe releasing a sludge-waterfall also spat out a body. A body full of bullet holes and with a gash across their neck that looked like someone had gone at it with a chainsaw.

My scream echoed through the halls, but no one came running. No one was around to come and investigate.

It was a gruesome scene, but I'd spent my share of time reading murder mysteries and thrillers, and there was the nagging thought that I could learn more about whatever Matrix knockoff world I'd found myself in. After taking a few moments to get my nerves under control, I approached the body.

It was a man, wearing a raggedy, tattered and bloody jumpsuit. His eyes were open, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. Well, eye. The other was covered by a metal plate with a dull red piece of what looked like glass instead. More than that, despite the fact that he had what was clearly an electronic doohickey in place of an eye, what little of his body wasn't mangled to high heaven looked extremely malnourished.

I took a closer look at the jumpsuit, noting a large patch over the chest. On the patch was a stylized eagle, if the eagle were like the skinned cows and the bear on that one flag from the Fallout games. Either way, the presence of a two headed eagle patch told me diddly squat.

With a sigh, I picked up the shovel, trying to figure out what I was going to do with the body that had been dumped at my feet, literally. I stood there for a moment, staring at the body, trying to figure out what to do. I couldn't bury him, every single surface I'd found except for the sludge was metal.

In the end, the best I could do was to drag him into one of the storage rooms and shut the door.

I sighed, and started dragging the body towards the closest door. The hallway was silent except for the sounds of my boots squeaking against the metal and the dead man's limbs scraping along the floor. The body was heavier than it looked, and it took all of my strength to get him into the room and close the door behind him.

I stood there for a moment, leaning against the closed door panting and sweaty. What had this man done to deserve this fate? Who had killed him, and why? I had no idea, but I knew one thing: I didn't want to meet them. I also knew that as soon as I had enough Grow Hours saved up, I was buying some seeds that would grow into weapon plants.

The body showed that I wasn’t alone, and that the other inhabitants weren’t dancing around in a circle singing kumbaya. Thus, I was going to make damn sure that when they inevitably came calling, if they proved to be hostile to me I wasn't defenseless.

Upon getting back to my ‘base’, I opened up the screen and took another look at the possible defensive plants. The cheapest one looked like a pokemon and was labeled ‘Peashooter’. Unfortunately, it cost over ten thousand Grow Hours to buy a seed pack of them. I also didn't know if spending the Grow Hours would affect the plants I had already planted.

I frowned and sat down. How many Grow Hours did I have anyway? I had planted a total of six seed packs, each of which had at least a dozen seeds in them, and it had been a week. If all of them counted towards my total, then surely I'd have enough, right? Checking my current Grow Hours, I frowned in confusion at seeing barely a thousand.

“What the hell?” I muttered. Why did I have so little? It couldn’t be limited to each seed pack, it was too high for that.

A glance at my grow bed had the screen reappear.

[quote][center]Metal Grow Box (Junk Quality):

[list]Carrots (Scarlet Nantes): 2 plants - 1404 Hours to Harvest, 156 Hours Grown

Tomatoes (Azoychka): 1644 Hours to Harvest, 156 Hours Grown

Spinach (Emperor): 2 plants - 468 Hours to Harvest, 156 Hours Grown[/list][/center][/quote]

Doing some mental math showed me that a hundred fifty six multiplied by seven resulted in my current Grow Hours.

“So I gain Grow Hours for each plant that takes rather than the seeds,” I muttered. Well that was a major pain in the ass. So much for getting an easy to grow defensive plant.

On the one hand, I could wait for my seven plants to provide me enough Grow Hours to buy a Peashooter. On the other hand, I could make select purchases to improve the number of plants I had growing at a given time.

Pulling open the store again, I pursed my lips as I flipped through the various tools and the like to improve the odds of the seeds I planted taking root. There were a myriad of options that I could afford on the cheap, but the ones that wouldn’t seriously eat into my Grow Hours were all labeled as Junk Quality.

“What Qualities are there?” I wondered out loud. The screen shifted, making me yelp in surprise, before taking in the text it now showed.

[quote][center]Quality Grades:

[list]Junk: The lowest quality item. While Junk items can still be useful, they are far inferior in quality and effectiveness to other grades.

Common: Common items are low quality items, but they will perform their function well enough.

Uncommon: Uncommon items are better than Common items, the pinnacle of what can be achieved with mundane building materials.

Rare: Rare items are just inching into quality beyond what a mundane crafter can achieve with raw skill and base materials. Some quirky side effects with use are to be expected.

Legendary: Legendary items are high-quality items, and will perform their function exceptionally well. They rarely have the quirks found in Rare items, and any such quirks they do have are practically guaranteed to be beneficial to the user.

Epic: Epic or higher level objects cannot exist without being created using extremely rare resources, expect to only find them in the most advanced locations or securely protected vaults across worlds.
Imperial: Imperial Quality objects are the apex of mortal achievement, requiring access to godly resources to create, even then being made by the hands of men is an act of defiance against the gods of the Immaterium themselves.[/list][/center][/quote]

I stared at the screen in front of me, parsing what it was saying. There were seven different grades for things, starting with Junk, which seemed self explanatory, and ending with Imperial, which required access to godly materials, and were crafted by mortals, who were defying the gods of the Immaterium, whatever that was.

And that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was the line about Epic and higher objects not existing without being created with extremely rare resources. What was the point of having a system like this if there were no epic or legendary items?!

On top of that, it wasn't like I'd seen any indication of personal weapons or armor, everything in the store was focused on gardening. Pushing my frustration aside, I returned to looking through the store for something that would help me in the short term.

After an hour and a half of searching, I came across something that caught my eye. ‘Necrivore Fertilizer’ came in multiple grades, the lowest of which was Uncommon. Reading through the description, my mind went back to the body that had freaked me out earlier.

Necrivore Fertilizer, when placed over a body before it was buried, would supposedly double the growth rate of any seeds planted in the dirt above it. I had no idea if said doubling would also double the rate I’d get Grow Hours from it, or if it would be less effective because I’d only get half the total hours of the plants growing from it.

The Uncommon Quality was just within my budget, as it cost 1,100GH, and my time searching had pushed me to 1,106GH. I would have to cobble together another crappy grow box, but even ignoring the potential gains of doubled growth rates for my plants, it would cut down the time needed for me to have actual fresh produce.

It was a gamble, and not one that would necessarily pay off, but the potential rewards far outweighed the costs involved. So with a sigh, I purchased the fertilizer, and got to work making another grow box, one long enough for the body that I’d have to retrieve and bring back. Not something I was looking forward to, but needs must and all that.

It took another two full days for me to kitbash a trio of the metal crates into a long enough box that I felt comfortable retrieving the body I'd stashed. Which fortunately hadn't been taken, unfortunately it was starting to stink.

I dragged the body back to my 'base', specifically to the grow box and set it up. It was a grisly task, and not one I wanted to repeat. Once the fertilizer was spread and the interior of the grow box was filled with the sludge that was serving as my dirt, I opened up some more seed packs and started planting.

I made sure to plant different seeds than I had in the other grow box, specifically some varieties of cucumbers, peppers, and zucchini. I wasn’t particularly fond of zucchini, but I do remember that it supposedly was really easy to grow and could produce really large produce. Hopefully it would live up to its reputation, because if it did I could possibly use it to barter with if I had some company that wouldn’t shoot first.

Speaking of, I still had no idea who was living here, or what kind of life they were living. They were definitely killing each other, if the body that was currently fertilizing my crops was any indication, and I had no way of knowing if they were just a gang, or if it was a larger scale conflict.

If it was just a gang, then negotiating with them would be relatively simple. If it was a larger scale conflict, who was it with? I just didn't have enough information to work with. It was like trying to figure out what the picture of a puzzle was when I only had a single piece to work with.

That was going to be a problem, and one that I would have to deal with eventually. For the moment, I just needed to lay low and keep growing shit.