The beast now slowly circled him as it considered him more deeply than before.
"That cut must've made it wary." Clancy thought as he assessed the damage done to him.
The cut to his chest was the most pressing issue as he still was trying to catch his breath properly. However, the cut on his shoulder was just a small flesh wound that only made it hurt to move his arm. In this life or death situation, he considered a small pain to be unimportant, though he didn't want to worsen the damage done to him so he had to take a more defensive stance, or what he thought was defensive.
Shifting onto his front foot to keep the damaged shoulder as far from the beast as he could, he reconsidered the monster. All in all, the main issue was its speed, which wasn't to say it wasn't physically powerful; just that it was so fast he could barely keep up with it even with his focus skill active. This problem wasn't easily overcome as how could he hope to slow it down.
A sudden realization hit him, why not just attack its leg to slow it down? In hindsight this should have been really obvious, but his frantic thoughts weren't exactly producing productive ideas. He tried again to conjure anything of earth to try and slow the monster down, still wary of the last time he tried anything which had almost exploded his brain.
"Just keep it simple, maybe I can just trap one of its feet and damage a leg." He thought, hoping the beast would keep circling him just a bit longer so he could catch his breath. An outline of a plan was slowly forming in his mind as he tried to remember all he could about fighting back on earth.
He had never been good at fighting enough to actually help him in a situation like this, but he liked to pretend he at least had a semblance of control here. A sudden, crazy plan had finally formed, luckily just in time as it appeared the monster was ready to pounce.
The 4-legged monster appeared to shift its weight onto its back foot, which was exactly what Clancy was hoping for. Using every bit of mental focus he could muster, he attempted to make the ground surrounding the dogs paw-like feet sink in and surround it, hoping to trap it for even an extra second to throw it off guard. He felt a strong resistance from the ground beneath him, but he pulled even harder and finally he felt a shift, the ground beneath its back left foot had sunk by about 10 centimeters and had filled itself back in with its foot still buried.
The Beast clearly had not expected this as it started to lunge, finding itself partially stuck because of Clancy's spell. This was all the time he needed to rush forward and deliver what he hoped to be an important strike; the beast had stopped paying Clancy attention as it tried to figure out what had stopped it. That was a mistake. Launching forward Clancy made his way to the side of the beast as he swung for the thigh of one of its back legs, Clancy didn't know much about this beast's anatomy, but he hoped that it was at least somewhat similar to dogs back on earth.
His hopes had clearly paid off. Swinging his blade, he felt the fur give as the blade plunged into the muscle of the beast's thigh. This had shocked the beast back into the fight, suddenly remembering where it was the beast let out a howling wail as it ripped its foot from the ground in a burst of rage. Its eyes glowing an even darker shade of red, it tried to lunge at Clancy, luckily for him the knife had clearly hit an important part of the dog's thigh as its speed was greatly reduced. Unfortunately for Clancy however, the dog still had incredibly sharp fangs. Covered in a thick drool the dog shot its fangs towards Clancy's head in a frantic swipe. Clancy had been prepared for this as he was already trying to make distance from the beast as he finished his attack.
Swiftly pulling his blade back into a hopefully useful position, he readied himself for the mass coming his way. As the dog struck, he tried to block the attack with the flat of his blade and was met with a force far greater than his arms could handle as they were shot back, reverberating from the strike.
"Oh fuck, this is going to hurt" before he could even finish his thought a force far too great for his chest to handle struck him, he was suddenly thankful he tried to deflect the strike as if he took this head on, literally, he would have died. That thought alone sent an even greater chill down his spine than the attack he just received, as he was flung back rolling on the dirt the realization that he could actually die here haunted him. He had somewhat been having fun during this fight, but that was over, if he didn't take this as seriously as he could he would die.
A look of determination crossed his face as he prepared himself for the following attack. A deep, primal hunger surging through his body. He needed to consider every part of his skills to find a way to win, the damage dealt to the dog's leg gave him enough time to figure out what he should do. His gravity manipulation needed to be used, he was sure of it. He just didn't know how, His focus skill had been running from the start to help him try and keep up with the beast, his whispers of earth spell had somehow conjured him this trusty dagger and had helped in stunning the beast long enough to actually get a meaningful hit off. Now he needed his Child of gravity attribute to kick in.
Taking a moment to breathe he tried to remember the description of his Child of gravity attribute, it said something about his mana being replaced with gravity magic. This clearly had an effect on his whispers of earth spell, because he believed without it, he wouldn't have been able to hold the dog down for as long as he did, but how would he bring it into his combat. He instinctively knew he couldn't use it without touching what he wanted to affect, meaning he would have to touch the beast to be able to affect it, but that seemed like a death wish.
He was trying to conjure up an idea when something mentally clicked, a smirk crept onto his face as he lowered himself again, ready.
The dog had spent this time trying to recover what it could from its injured leg, this clearly had done something for it as it was bleeding a lot less. The wound would still hinder it but Clancy felt that it wouldn't be as bad now.
The beast prepared itself as again it pushed its weight onto its back foot, although this time it seemed to put more weight onto its leg that wasn't injured.
Clancy pushed his focus skill as hard as he could before he felt his eyes were about to pop out of his skull, breathing slowly he tried to ready himself for the battle to come.
Both the beast and Clancy locked eyes as they rushed forward.
Clancy lifted his dagger in the best imitation of a proper strike as he could as his plan was coming into action. Predictably the dog had lunged for his head again, he had figured it would as it wanted to end the fight as swiftly as possible; Clancy however prepared for just that idea.
He rolled his shoulder down as the dog lunged at him, dodging the first claw that struck for where his head had been. Narrowly avoiding the razor sharp edge, he brought down his dagger, focused on pushing as much gravity mana as he could into his dagger. His idea was to make the weapon as heavy as he could manage while striking, hoping to bypass the beasts natural defense.
This plan had worked, a slight purple gleam appeared on the edge of his blade as he felt its weight increase by roughly fifteen percent, this didn't sound like much but for a weapon that relied on its swift strikes suddenly increasing its mass as it was being swung down gave a major boost to its cutting ability.
Clancy had been right, bringing down the dagger he found the beasts front shoulder and struck true. Immediately met with the beast's thick fur and muscles he pushed both physically and magically, the weapon sunk deep into the beast's shoulder as it let out a piercing shriek.
The weapon had sunk almost all the way into the shoulder clearly cutting vital muscles and blood vessels, Clancy had a look of Pride as he felt his plan working. A wicked smile stretched across his face as he looked hungrily at the beast.
He would win, He knew it.