{Heraldess VI : 97 Hp}

  “Again?” Throttle sighed, preparing another dagger and tossing it toward the Heraldess. There was a sound of clacking rocks, and the dagger exploded. “It could be worse.”

  “Not really,” I grumbled. “If we don’t figure this boss out soon, we’re dead meat.”

  Throttle shrugged. “We’re probably dead anyway.”

  The Heraldess stepped from the cloud, bobbing her head as she counted the stones in her hand. At the very top of her forehead, there was a tiny white mark, where Throttle’s dagger had hit her.

  “You’ve got good aim.” I said, with a whistle.

  Throttle huffed. “Not that it did any damage.”

  {Heraldess VI : 97 Hp}

  A hand knocked against the metal gate, followed by the adolescent squeal of a pubescent voice. “Grind? Throttle? What’s going on?”

  “WE’RE FINE!” Throttle shouted, then mumbled to me, “If we survive this, I’m not sharing any loot.” She flicked her gaze back to the approaching monster. “And I’m not sharing this fight either. It’s been far too long since I’ve almost died.”

  The Heraldess had reformed much of her tattered suit, shedding the torn cloth for new, magically summoned materials. “Do you think we’d be able to use her own stone against her?” I asked. We’d done something similar with the gargoyles, after all.

  Throttle bent down, plucking stones off the ground, until she found one with a crystal. “One way to find out.”

  She grinned, with a wide shining smile. “Perfect—”

  The stone shone back, then erupted in a burst of energy.

  Throttle jerked her hand back, but the damage was already done. Black vines crystalized over her skin, hissing on contact, inflicting toxins.

  {Throttle : (-20) 30 Hp}

  [Neurotoxin I applied]

  [Blood Rot III applied]

  I helped tear the growth off, revealing the spiderweb cracks of mottled skin underneath, blistering up. The arm itself hung useless by her side, twitching.

  “Throttle—” I warned.

  “I’m fine, dipwad,” Throttle hissed, through gritted teeth. “You’re coming up with a plan, aren’t you? Do something already!”

  Right. Plan. Plan. I’m good at making plans.

  I took a deep breath, thinking hard.

  “Yeah I got nothing,” I whimpered. “We need more information.”

  “Stupid tricks and strategies,” Throttle growled. “Why can’t the thing just die when you hit it?”

  The Heraldess had stopped walking forward, standing with hands behind her back waiting.

  {Throttle : (-5) 25 Hp}

  “That’s not good,” Throttle grimaced. “The poison’s taking my strength too.”

  {Throttle : 14 Str}

  “What’s the time limit?” I asked.

  There was a long moment of silence.

  “Throttle—?”

  “There isn’t one,” She hissed.

  I swallowed. “That’s not good.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  The Heraldess seemed to have grown bored, grabbing stones from the ground. She sorted the useless gray rocks from the ones with crystals, making a nice pile. Then she clawed at her face, plucking other useless stones, replacing them with the stronger crystal ones—

  “Grind?” Throttle asked, staring intently at the wide grin plaster across my face. “You feeling alright?”

  “I’ve figured it out.”

  “Well don’t just stand there!” Throttle hollered. “DO SOMETHING!”

  “RIGHT!” I jolted, snapping my shovel out from my inventory and ramming it into the ground below us. Not for the first time, I was surprised by just how versatile a quality shovel was in an actual combat scenario. With a twist, I gouged out a heap of useless rock and tossed it at the Heraldess.

  She braced herself, and the rocks hit her, sticking into her hide. There was an automatic crackle of energy, and the Heraldess shuddered, growing an inch or two taller.

  “Grind?” Throttle frowned. “Are you cracked in the head or something?”

  “Trust me on this one,” I whispered, taking another shovelful of gravel and belting it forward. A crystal or two exploded, which kept some of the stone from reaching her, but the ones that did stuck, like before. And then I dug out another shovelful after that, and another, until I’d bloated the Heraldess to easily twice her usual size. With the added stones, she had trouble locating a teleport, and, due to the increased size, also struggled with mobility, making each subsequent shovel load a little easier.

  {Throttle : (-5) 20 Hp}

  “GRIND!” Throttle snapped, smacking me on the head with her good arm. “You’re only making it stronger!”

  “Am I?” I asked, smirking.

  She glanced back, toward the monster.

  {Heraldess VI : 97 Hp}

  “Nothing’s changed,” Throttle muttered.

  “Exactly,” I said, with a grin. “Her health has no correlation to her size. She could use all the pebbles she wanted, and it wouldn’t hurt her in the slightest. However, the more normal pebbles she has, the harder it is for her to attack.”

  The Heraldess was giving me an odd look, especially odd for a monster without eyes, eyebrows, or a face. She shuffled, backward, quickly plucking normal stones from her hide and dropping them onto the ground.

  “She can’t see,” I stated. “She has to feel it. Maybe the crystals weigh more than normal stones, or maybe it's just magic. Either way, the process takes time, and I can clog her armor much faster than she can cleanse it. It’s basic dilution.”

  Throttle grinned, following along in her head. “I’m surprised an idiot like you figured this out.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” I muttered. “And anyway, that’s only one problem solved. It’s harder for her to attack, but she’ll still outlast us, even like this. We’ve stopped her attacks. Now we bring her health down.”

  The Heraldess ignored us, picking up the pace of her sorting, now almost frantic. She started to get frustrated, making clicking noises and knocking more stones out of her hand, before realizing that the entire handful was useless rock, and she threw it on the ground.

  As she threw said handful onto the ground, she wasn’t paying attention to the legendary shovel rammed into her face.

  Rocks exploded off in a cloud of dust.

  {Heraldess VI : (-17) 80 Hp}

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The Heraldess chittered, clutching her face in disbelief and shock. It gave me more than enough time to get additional hits in, at her arm and side.

  {Heraldess VI : (-5) 75 Hp}

  {Heraldess VI : (-2) 73 Hp}

  Throttle choked. “How’d you do that?!”

  “I don’t know!” I shouted, jumping backward, before something in my streak of good luck went horribly wrong. “I shouldn't be doing nearly this much damage!”

  The Heraldess groped at the hole in her side, chittering. She didn’t feel pain, did she?

  I winced.

  “That must not feel good,” I muttered.

  “Forget that!” Throttle hissed, with another violent shudder.

  {Throttle : (-5) 15 Hp}

  “Kill it! Kill it now!”

  “GOT IT!” I shouted back, charging forward, shovel raised.

  {Heraldess VI : (-2) 71 Hp}

  {Heraldess VI : (-2) 69 Hp}

  {Heraldess VI : (-1) 68 Hp}

  {Heraldess VI : 68 Hp}

  Each subsequent hit did less and less damage, until my attacks couldn’t do any damage at all.

  What was going on?

  The Heraldess finally seemed to get herself back under control, jumping out of reach, crystal stones at the ready.

  C’mon Grind, think. Why would the Heraldess be taking more damage?

  No.

  Start from the beginning. How does the herald take damage? At all?

  I watched her, plucking stones from her hand and sorting them out.

  Health points are relatively simple. It’s how many times you can get hit before you break. The Heraldess found her crystals almost immediately. My attacks had knocked most of the useless stone off, leaving behind the ones marked in crystal. But why—

  That’s it, isn’t it?

  I grabbed another shovelful of rock, and chucked it, catching the monster in the face.

  She staggered back, dropping her crystal rocks onto the ground, where they ignited.

  I’d been approaching this fight from the wrong angle.

  The “Heraldess” is not the rocks, but something that binds the rocks together. In other words, the more rocks she has to control, the stretched out and the weaker her control is. And if that’s the case, attacking her while she’s weakened would do a lot more damage than a normal attack. But it goes beyond that. Magical rocks are probably easier to manipulate. Non magic rocks would not only stretch her out, but they’d be easier to knock out.

  Throttled winced, grabbing her chest.

  {Throttle : (-5) 10 Hp}

  I was an idiot. The Heraldess had compressed herself at the start of the fight. The compressed stone shell is much stronger than loose stones, which get stuck to her.

  The Heraldess slumped over.

  She knew that I knew how to beat, so there wasn’t much of a point to be playing slow and defensively anymore.

  She charged.

  I dug my heels into the rock and swung, shooting up a wave of stones. They instantly bonded to her body, and she fell facefirst into the ground. In blind fury, she grabbed the floor and strained, ripping her head for the mound of rocks, which she’d inadvertently latched onto.

  {Heraldess VI : (-50) 18 Hp}

  “Yeesh.” I winced. It wasn’t just that she struggled to control what rocks she bound to, it was that she had little to no control over it. If one touched, it was bonded.

  Actually—

  I swung down, cutting through a pair of black shoes, before jumping a good distance back, as crystals started activating.

  {Heraldess VI : (-5) 13 Hp}

  The Heraldess ignored her injuries, stumbling over her broken shoes, forcing one step after another. Elements erupted from her feet, sprouting up around her in a vortex of energy.

  But it was already over.

  {Heraldess VI : (-2) 11 Hp}

  {Heraldess VI : (-2) 9 Hp}

  {Heraldess VI : (-2) 7 Hp}

  {Heraldess VI : (-2) 5 Hp}

  She started slowing, each foot tethered to the ground, pulling up mounds of loose rock.

  {Heraldess VI : (-1) 4 Hp}

  {Heraldess VI : (-1) 3 Hp}

  I smirked, leveling my shovel toward her head. “Give up.”

  If she heard me, she didn’t show it.

  {Heraldess VI : (-1) 2 Hp}

  “Hey,” I snapped, pushing her back. “You lose, okay? Stop moving or you’ll get yourself killed.”

  “What are—” Throttle grimace, dull blood dribbling from the side of her mouth. “Grind. What are you doing?”

  I knew very little about Blood Rot, but the time between each spasm of damage had been growing longer. If the Blood Rot was finally fading, Throttle should survive.

  Which meant my current priority was the Heraldess.

  {Heraldess VI : (-1) 1 Hp}

  With a final shudder, the Heraldess collapsed onto the stone. Arms, legs, head and side all bound into the rock beneath her.

  I took a deep breath, then out. “We have no intention of killing you.”

  Throttle spat. “Sure we do.”

  “Well I don’t,” I muttered, before continuing. “If you can talk, then you’ve got to be at least a little human.”

  Throttle bit her lip. “Talk?”

  “Didn’t you see—” I cut off. “There was a notification box with words. She’s clearly a lot more human than what we’ve been fighting, and frankly, I've got a lot of questions.”

  [Questions?]

  I jolted, snatching the gray notification out of the air.

  “What are you holding?” Throttle asked, hobbling over.

  I waved it around. “See?”

  “No.”

  Seriously?

  I frowned, checking over the plane again. This wasn’t the first time I’d been able to see something nobody else could. My real stats are hidden from anyone besides myself.

  Was this some sort of ability—

  Throttle coughed, spitting blood.

  {Throttle : (-5) 5 Hp}

  Blood Rot was slowing down, but it hadn’t stopped.

  She opened her stats, before bursting out in laughter. “Grind, look at this.”

  {Throttle : -15 Str}

  “I didn’t even know that was possible,” she chuckled. “Sure feels awful.”

  “Todays a day for learning,” I said, with a smile. “Monster. Talk to me. How do I stop her poison?”

  The Heraldess tilted her head.

  [Kill me]

  “Sorry but that’s not an option.” I said, with a shiver.

  [someone has to die]

  That was how this game worked. You found a thing. You killed the thing. You got stronger, so you could kill more things.

  But there was one idea I hadn’t tried in a long while. Glitches.

  I said, tapping throttle on the shoulder, before whipping up my own stats. I could more or less substitute one game object for another by moving their stat screen, so if I found a way to edit Throttle’s stats—without turning her into a mound of sparkling glitchy energy—

  Throttle glanced at the screen floating over her head. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why do you look so nervous?”

  “No reason.” I said, pulling one stone off the ground. Stones were durable, right? “Just never tried this before. Well I actually did try this one time…uh…” I sensed crapshoover in my inventory, sputtering and crackling with likely radioactive light. “Just hold really still.”

  A gray notification bonked me on the head.

  [You don’t want me dead?]

  The Heraldess rustled.

  [I have good stats]

  What kind of stats would a boss consider good?

  I had to think for a moment. There was a simpler option here. And what I was doing could be more dangerous.

  I sighed. “You seem human. I don’t kill humans.”

  The Heraldess grabbed her arm and, with a sickening crack, ripped herself from the ground, collapsing into a heap of loose stone.

  {Heraldess VI : (-10) -9 Hp}

  She died almost instantly.

  Throttle gasped, skin filling back to their healthy color. She took a couple deep breaths, before collapsing onto the ground. “Grind…cutting it a little close, are we?”

  I wasn’t listening.

  All my attention remained focused on the pile of gravel sitting before me, and on the notification hovering beside it, patiently waiting to be acknowledged.

  [{Grind}, you already have]