Infinite Farmer

Whatever overpowered strike the chimera had used to disable Necia last time turned out to have a cooldown of at least a minute, and they spent that entire time whittling away at the monster's health. Necia was in charge of blocking the chimera's attempts to attack and left Tulland plenty of openings to push through with his pitchfork, poking it again and again and building up damage. The chimera barely cared about each individual hit. None of them were as deep as that first big strike, but they were adding up. The chimera was getting slower and slower.

"It's going to attack again soon. The big one." Necia puffed. "I can block it."

Tulland swallowed down any thought of telling her to avoid the attack. For all that he cared about her, he also knew that he needed time. As much of it as he could get.

"Do it," Tulland said. "I'll end things after this one. I promise."

Necia nodded, then turned back to the chimera just as it began to prepare its next huge shot. In the meantime, Tulland hit it the few final times he could sneak in, then ducked behind Necia as she took the hit, barely getting out of the way as she was thrown away from the point of impact. She hadn't taken the hit perfectly, and wasn't fully recovered from the last hit, either. The chimera had learned just enough about her shield block talent to force the point of impact off center, which generated a sick breaking-and-tearing sound in Necia that only truly ended as she hit the ground, as down for the count as he had ever seen her.

The chimera got less of the recoil this time than it had last time too. Tulland wasted no time as he launched forward onto the back of the chimera, gripping one of its wings as he reached for the Clubber Vine in the back of the chimera, the one he had left there. As expected, the vine itself hadn't done as much damage as he might have hoped, even though it was well-anchored and had a straight shot to the back of the beast's head and neck.

Tulland didn't care. The point of anchoring the Clubber Vine was never the vine itself. It was the anchor. The silver stars weren't the best weapons in the world, and he had no special skills for getting them into his enemies again and again like he did for his pitchfork or his automatically attacking plants. The counterbalance for that was that the little spiky metal seeds were as sharp as anything he had ever encountered. They'd dig through flesh like a knife through butter, so long as they were pushed.

And there's nothing better to push it than a Clubber Vine swinging on the other end. Let's see how big of a hole they both dug together.

Tulland yanked out the seed to see it had done more than he had expected. There was a cavity in the big animal's back about the size of three of Tulland's fists, ragged and bleeding from minutes of being torn apart by jagged metal. It was deep, not enough to kill the monster or even seriously hamper it, but enough. He hoped, anyway.

Reaching into his dimensional storage, he brought out the fourth plant he had packed for the fight. Originally, he and Necia had planned on using them as distractions, hoping a face full of acid would have more effect on the chimera than a lungful of weak Acheflower toxins. Now he had a different idea for where to put the acid.

He pulled out all of the new bulbs he could fit in his hand and shoved them into the hole, then brought out more. The chimera stirred, trying to stop whatever the peskier of the two humans was doing behind his back. It just didn't have the coordination to make it happen just yet, considering the aftereffects of Necia's counter. Tulland had all the time he needed to empty out his dimensional storage of the ten or so little bulbs it would let him carry.