Jelo staggered back, clutching his side, pain flaring with every breath. Each inhale felt like shards of glass grinding against his ribs.

His vision wavered at the edges, threatening to collapse into darkness, but he forced himself to stay present. Stay focused. Stay alive.

He disengaged fully, giving himself a moment to rethink his approach. The Dabba prowled forward slowly, its massive form casting a long shadow across the cracked earth.

His eyes tracked the creature's movements with renewed intensity, scanning its patterns despite the fog of pain clouding his thoughts. The way its weight shifted before it lunged. The slight dip of its shoulder that telegraphed which claw would strike first.

The brief moment of imbalance after it committed to a heavy attack. He'd been reacting before, fighting purely on instinct and desperation. But now, injured and running out of options, Jelo forced himself to think strategically.

A new strategy formed in his mind, rough, improvised, born of necessity rather than planning. He couldn't match the Dabba's brute force. That much was painfully, brutally clear. His body simply wasn't strong enough, his abilities not powerful enough to overpower the creature in a direct confrontation where strength met strength.

But he could manipulate distance, timing, and momentum to create openings. He could be smarter, more precise. He could turn the Dabba's overwhelming aggression into a weakness, use its size and power against it.

Jelo took a shaky breath, tasting copper in his mouth, and moved back in.

The fight resumed immediately, violent and chaotic from the very first exchange. The Dabba struck relentlessly, its claws tearing through the air with murderous intent, each swipe capable of ending Jelo's life if it connected solidly.

And more often than not, Jelo barely avoided the attacks or took glancing damage when he couldn't evade completely. His body was slower now, weakened by blood loss and the accumulation of injuries, and the creature exploited every vulnerability it found.

He was losing six out of ten exchanges, taking hits that drove him backward, that opened new wounds or tore at existing ones. A claw raked across his shoulder, shredding fabric and flesh alike. Another strike caught his thigh, the impact nearly buckling his leg beneath him.

The Dabba's massive tail whipped around like a battering ram and slammed into his side, forcing what little air remained in his lungs out in a painful, gasping wheeze.

Yet in four out of ten moments, his strikes landed clean.

Dragon Claw slashed through openings when the Dabba overextended, the claw-shaped projections extending from Jelo's hands to strike at ranges the creature couldn't immediately counter.

He exploited the brief windows of vulnerability that appeared when the Dabba committed too hard to an attack, when its weight was forward and it couldn't pull back fast enough to defend. The projected claws tore into mutated flesh, carving deep furrows and adding to the steadily accumulating damage covering the creature's body.

Wing Burst allowed sudden repositioning when Jelo needed to escape a killing blow or create an unexpected angle of attack.

Each activation was taxing on his already strained body, the physical effort required to move at such velocity taking its toll, but it kept him alive. It kept him in the fight when by all rights he should have been dead already.

Scaled Guard absorbed heavy blows when Jelo mistimed a dodge or found himself cornered with nowhere to retreat. His skin would harden like dragon scales just before impact, the defensive transformation spreading across his body to reduce or nullify the damage.

His movements became more labored with each passing exchange, his body screaming at him to stop, to give up, to let unconsciousness take him. But he refused. He kept moving, kept fighting, kept searching for that one critical opening he desperately needed.

Gradually, through pain and desperation and sheer stubborn refusal to die here in this forgotten wasteland, Jelo's patience and timing began to pay off. He started reading the Dabba's attack patterns more clearly, predicting its movements a fraction of a second before they happened.

He baited attacks deliberately, positioning himself just close enough to seem vulnerable but maintaining enough distance to evade when the creature took the bait and committed.

He forced the Dabba into overcommitments, making it lunge too far, strike too hard, leave itself exposed for just a heartbeat longer than it should have.

And then, finally, the creature made a critical misstep.

The Dabba lunged forward with both massive claws extended, aiming to catch Jelo in a crushing pincer attack. It was a move Jelo had seen before, one the creature had used successfully earlier when his reactions were slower. But this time, Jelo was ready.

He activated Wing Burst at the last possible instant, the ability launching him not backward but sharply to the side, his body blurring through space just past the Dabba's reach. The creature's claws closed on empty air, its enormous mass carried forward by the momentum of the attack, unable to stop or redirect.

Jelo didn't hesitate for even a moment. He spun mid-movement, his hands already positioned for Dragon Claw, and unleashed a concentrated barrage of claw projections directly into the Dabba's exposed flank.

The attacks hammered into the creature one after another in rapid succession, each one targeting the same vulnerable point, a section of flesh that had been torn and damaged by previous strikes, where the mutated hide was thinnest and least protected.

The Dabba roared in pain and fury, the sound reverberating across the desolate landscape. It tried desperately to twist around to defend itself, to bring its claws back into position, but Jelo pressed his advantage mercilessly.

He closed the distance, gathering all his remaining strength, and drove his fist, extended with Dragon Claw's projection, directly into the creature's side with everything he had left.

The impact resonated through the air like a crack of thunder. The claw projection punched deep into the Dabba's body, tearing through muscle and organ, devastating its internal structure.

A final, precise combination of energy strikes and raw physical strength landed perfectly, delivered with desperate precision by someone who had absolutely nothing left to give after this moment.

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