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Or plot armour! I hate those moments though...

You can always make a thread asking for other authors thoughts on how to untangle it.

I have some ideas.
1. Have them get beat to shit so you can have them survive due to a deus ex machina and take a few chapters to have a training arc.
2. Have them lose and change the POV to a different character to make them the MC. (This could open up the idea of a deformed evil MC coming back to fight the new MC in a plot twist.)

3. Have them lose. let the villain win but then slowly fall into a depressed self-hate cycle as the villain realizes that it was all pointless, screaming and begging for mercy at the MCs grave.
4. MC seduces the threat and they join the MCs team.

5. Go back to an earlier chapter and add a vague clause about some hidden power set to release on the verge of death. Gaslight all your readers into believing that it was always there and let the MC survive in a broken physical state.

I vote for 4

Do you know what an Deus ex machina is? It will absolutely solve your problem.

You don't want to overuse them. At the very least, a deus ex machina should have some kind of drawback so that the reader doesn't feel cheated.

I have reflected on the topic, and have decided to call in side character support.

Context: this was meant to be the beginning of a training arc, but I threw my MC into a illegal fighting tournament to try to make allies. In the process, I realized that my not trained, thin build MC would be demolished by the competitors after so many rounds so… they got demolished.

Solution: I realized I had randomly introduced a side character with ties to the government a while back, so voila! I can have the government agent shut down the fighting ring temporarily to save my MC from dying.

many thanks to @Paul_Tromba !!

Oh and the drawback: MC is going to end up in a coma temporarily, our companion is going to get thrown in jail, and now the gov agent is suspicious of them… so plenty of issues for our cast! Mwahahaha!

So it's the deus ex machina but are good one.