The Divine Farmer Of Monster Meat

Chapter 3: First Harvest

The screeching was rhythmic, a guttural discordance that set Felipe’s teeth on edge. From the jagged shadows to the north, three hulking silhouettes emerged. They were quadrupedal, hunched and twitching, their hides patches of raw, weeping sores and hardened plates of bone.

"Stay low, Felipe," Mariana hissed, her voice barely audible over the wind. She adjusted her grip on the bone-spear, her knuckles white. "Don't move until I say so. When they commit to the charge, stay behind the rock and keep your head down."

"What are they?" Felipe whispered, his breath hitching in his chest. "Those aren't just rodents."

"Scav-stalkers. They’re fast, and they’re hungry," she replied, not taking her eyes off the approaching beasts. "They don’t hunt with sight. They hunt with vibration and scent. The moment you grew that fruit, you rang a dinner bell across the entire sector."

One of the creatures lunged, moving with a blurring, jerking motion that looked like a glitch in reality. Mariana didn't hesitate. She stepped out from behind the obsidian slab, her movement fluid and lethal. She thrust the spear upward, catching the lead beast mid-air. The sharpened pipe pierced its throat, pinning it to the ground with a wet, sickening thud.

"One down!" she shouted, spinning to meet the second. "Felipe, move to the east! Now!"

Felipe scrambled, his boots slipping on the loose scree. He felt a gust of foul-smelling wind as the second stalker vaulted over the very rock he had been cowering behind. He fell to his knees, his hands scrabbling for anything to hold onto.

"System!" he gasped, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Tell me you have a combat feature! A weapon? Anything?"

[System Note: Combat augmentation unavailable. Current status: Civilian. Suggestion: Utilize the environment.]

"Useless! You're absolutely useless!" Felipe ducked as a set of serrated claws raked the air where his head had been a second ago.

Mariana surged past him, her blade flashing as she severed the tendons of the second beast’s leg, bringing it crashing to the dirt. She kicked the creature square in the skull, finishing it with a ruthless efficiency that made Felipe’s stomach turn.

"The last one's flanking!" she barked. "Watch your left!"

Felipe turned, his eyes wide. The third monster was inches away, its jaw unhinging to reveal rows of needle-like fangs. He didn't think; he reacted. He reached down, grabbing a handful of the dirt near the now-withered sprout, and flung the grit directly into the creature’s glowing red eyes.

It shrieked, clawing at its face, its momentum faltering just enough for Mariana to drive her spear home.

The silence that followed was heavy and suffocating.

Felipe slumped against the obsidian, his lungs burning. "Is that... is that it? Are we done?"

Mariana stood over the carcass, breathing hard, her chest heaving. She wiped her spear on the creature’s hide. "For now. But if we don't clear these bodies, the smell will bring a pack of twenty next time."

Felipe looked at the carnage, then at his trembling hands. "What do we do with them? The system mentioned leather-vines. Can I use these?"

"You can use anything that holds a memory of life," Mariana said, her tone softening just a fraction as she walked over to him. "But you look like you’re about to pass out. You okay?"

Felipe wiped the sweat from his forehead, leaving a streak of grey dust. "I’m fine. Just… tired. Like, deep, bone-crushing tired."

"That’s the toll, kid," Mariana said, sheathing her knife. "You’re pulling energy from your own reserves to manifest these plants. You keep doing that without eating or resting, and you’ll burn out before you even get a harvest. Here."

She tossed him a piece of dried, salted meat from her pack. It was tough as leather, but to Felipe, it smelled like heaven.

"Eat. Then we process these hides. If you want to build a farm, you need a perimeter. Leather-vines are perfect for that."

Felipe chewed the ration, his eyes fixed on the monsters. "How do I do it? The vines?"

"Take the hides," she instructed, pointing to the carcasses. "Strip them while they’re still warm. The system will recognize the bio-signature if you feed the soil with the flesh, but the hides… they’re for the infrastructure. You weave them into the ground, and when you sprout the vines, they’ll fuse. It creates a fence that feeds on anything that tries to cut through it."

Felipe stood up, swaying slightly. "It sounds… violent."

"The wasteland is violent, Felipe," she said, watching him begin to work. "You’re not just gardening. You’re building a predator."

Felipe knelt by the first carcass. His hands felt sluggish, his movements heavy. As he began to work the blade, the system flared in his vision.

[Resource Detected: Stalker Hide.]

[Would you like to initiate Leather-Vine Cultivation?]

[Warning: High stamina cost detected. Proceed?]

"Yes," Felipe whispered. "I have to."

He pressed his palms into the cooling, coarse fur of the monster. He pushed the same hunger he had felt earlier not the hunger for food now, but the hunger for safety. He channeled every ounce of his remaining energy into the earth, feeling a cold, draining sensation leach from his fingers and flow into the soil.

His head spun. The horizon seemed to tilt, the bruised sky swirling into a vortex of grey and violet.

"Felipe!"

Mariana’s voice sounded miles away.

"Steady," she muttered, grabbing his shoulder to keep him upright. "Don't push it all at once. Just feed the soil, let it take what it needs."

Felipe grit his teeth, his vision flickering. He felt the life force or whatever the system called it being siphoned out of him. It was as if he were giving blood to the dirt.

"I... I can't..." he stammered.

"Yes, you can," Mariana urged, her voice firm. "Look at the ground."

Beneath his fingers, the soil began to shift. It wasn't the emerald green sprout from before; this was different. Thin, cord-like tendrils, dark as the obsidian rocks, began to snake out of the dirt. They weren't growing upward; they were weaving themselves into a tight, impenetrable lattice across the ground, interlacing with the leather strips he had laid down.

The vines pulsed with a faint, hypnotic blue light. They moved like restless snakes, searching, probing, locking onto the debris and the stones.

"See?" Mariana said, her eyes wide with a mix of surprise and grudging respect. "They’re building themselves into the terrain. They’ll be impossible to tear out without a chainsaw."

Felipe collapsed back onto the dust, his chest heaving. His body felt hollowed out, his muscles trembling uncontrollably.

"That… that cost me everything," he gasped, staring at the ceiling of the sky.

"You did good," Mariana said, her voice uncharacteristically gentle. She knelt beside him, looking at the glowing, pulsating vines that now formed a protective web around their position. "You didn't just grow a garden, Felipe. You grew a wall."

"It's blue," Felipe murmured, his eyelids heavy. "Why is it blue?"

Mariana leaned in, inspecting the bioluminescence. "Because you were scared. The system reflects your intent. You wanted safety, you wanted a barrier that would keep the dark out. It gave you exactly what you were feeling."

Felipe closed his eyes, the image of the blue vines burning into his retinas even in the dark. "Is it… is it going to eat me if I stay here?"

Mariana let out a short, sharp laugh. "Not as long as you’re the one holding the leash. Sleep, Felipe. I’ll keep watch. If anything else decides to test the perimeter, they’ll find out exactly what happens when they touch your garden."

Felipe didn't need to be told twice. As he drifted off, he could feel the faint, rhythmic pulse of the earth beneath his back, a slow, steady heartbeat that felt like his own.

"We’re going to be a problem for this place, aren't we?" he mumbled into the dirt.

Mariana leaned against the obsidian, her spear across her lap, her eyes scanning the wasteland. "No, Felipe. We’re going to be the only thing that survives it."

The blue light of the vines intensified, casting long, dancing shadows against the rocks, a silent, flickering warning to everything lurking in the grey, suffocating reach of the wastes. Felipe slept, and for the first time since he had arrived in this hell, he didn't dream of hunger. He dreamed of growth.