Chapter 256 256: variant dabbas
The moment they moved—the Dabas moved too.
That was the first sign this wouldn't go smoothly.
Most Dabas reacted with a delay—a beat of confusion before instinct kicked in. These two had no such delay. The moment Jelo and the others crossed into their awareness, both creatures locked on with the kind of focused aggression that came from something stronger, something older.
Jelo activated his Assess skill immediately.
The reading came back fast.
Enhanced variant. Both. Above standard threshold.
He pushed the result aside. It didn't change what needed to happen—only how careful they had to be getting there.
"Splitting now," he said.
No further instruction needed. Atlas and Ken angled right toward the larger of the two—a broad-framed creature with thicker plating along its shoulders, its movements carrying deliberate, ground-shaking weight. Jelo and Mira broke left toward the second—leaner, faster in its initial steps, its eyes tracking them with sharp unblinking focus.
The distance closed fast.
Mira struck first.
She drew two blades in a single motion—both already on her, pulled from their sheaths without breaking stride. She came in with a sweeping lateral arc aimed at the Daba's forearm, testing its guard before committing deeper. Simultaneously, she split—both clones peeling off at opposing angles, each one a perfect mirror of her movement, blades already drawn and raised.
Three Miras. Three blades. Three angles.
The Daba hesitated for exactly one second.
Mira drove through that second. The real her came in low while both clones pressured the flanks. Her blade connected—a clean cut across the creature's lower forearm that drew a hiss from it and forced a stumbling step back.
Good start.
Jelo moved parallel, trying to establish a second angle on the Daba's exposed side. He activated his enhanced vision—the world sharpening, the creature's movement patterns becoming readable a fraction of a second ahead of when they occurred. He could see the tension in its legs before it shifted weight. Could track where the strike was coming from before the arm even moved.
The Daba adjusted faster than expected.
It pivoted away from Mira and directly toward Jelo—ignoring the clones entirely, having identified the real threat faster than most creatures at this level should have. Jelo read the charge, planted his feet, and activated Skilled Guard across both forearms just as the creature's shoulder drove into him.
The hardened skin absorbed the brunt.
He still moved back three steps from the raw weight of it.
His guard held but the impact was significant—more force than a standard variant could produce. He reset his footing and sent Dragon Claw forward immediately, the claw-shaped energy projection launching from his right hand at close range. It caught the Daba across the chest—a sharp tearing impact that drove it back and drew another hiss.
On the other side of the ground he heard Atlas.
A deep crack—stone rising fast.
He couldn't look. His own situation demanded full attention.
Mira's clones were pressing the Daba from both sides, blades working at different heights and angles, but the creature had started learning to read them—not perfectly, but enough. It began tracking the slight inconsistency in clone movement, the tells that separated projection from original, and started directing its strikes toward the real Mira with improving accuracy.
She saw it.
Jelo could tell she saw it because her pattern shifted—she pulled the clones tighter, overlapping their paths with hers to make the tracking harder, blades weaving between the three of them in a pattern designed to obscure which hand was real. But the hesitation Tongen had identified was still there. She had openings. She saw them. She paused at the threshold of each one instead of driving through.
The Daba exploited the third pause.
It drove through Mira's guard with a shoulder charge that bypassed the clones entirely and connected with her center mass. She hit the ground hard. One clone dispersed on impact. The other held its position for a moment before fading. Both blades stayed in her hands—she'd kept her grip through the fall—but the landing had stripped her momentum entirely.
She got up.
Slower than before.
Jelo stepped between them—Dragon Claw active in his right hand, Skilled Guard raised on his left forearm—and intercepted the Daba's follow-up. The claw connected clean. The guard held the counter. But he felt the ESS moving underneath him, the depletion making every expenditure cost slightly more than it should.
[Energy Reserve: 100 / 1000 ESS]
Not much left. Make it count.
The Daba pressed harder.
Jelo traded two more exchanges—each one grinding—and found his footing eroding. His reaction window was narrowing. The enhanced vision was showing him the strikes before they arrived but his body was responding a fraction slower than the reads warranted. Depletion wasn't just fatigue. It was lag between intention and execution.
The Daba grabbed his forearm.
Stone-weight grip. Unyielding.
It wrenched—
Jelo went airborne, hit the ground shoulder-first, rolled, came up on one knee. His vision swam. The depletion pressing in from all directions.
He looked up.
The Daba was coming.
Mira stepped in front of it.
Both blades up, both remaining clones flanking with blades of their own—she drove a full combination into the creature's face and chest, the most committed sequence she'd thrown all fight. Blades crossing, clones pressing simultaneously from both sides, the three-angle pressure overwhelming the Daba's ability to track all of it at once.
For a moment it worked.
The Daba staggered, took three hits in rapid succession, guard overwhelmed.
Then it found her.
One strike. Clean. Through the clone on her left side, around the blade in her right hand, and directly into her ribs.
The sound was bad.
Mira hit the ground. Both clones dissolved. Her blades stayed in her hands but her arms dropped—the grip loose now, strength gone from the impact.
She didn't get up immediately.
Jelo pushed himself upright—
The Daba turned back to him.
Things were now getting more and more heated they had expected things to be a bit tough but this is way worse.