After their silent exchange, neither Gil nor the healer uttered a word.
Judging that he had made his point, the healer took a step forward and refocused his attention on Greg and Kuro, who were lying unconscious and battered on the ground.
As much as Gil hated to stand by, he knew that only the man who had inflicted those wounds possessed the ability to heal them right now.
Talk about a sick sense of irony, Gil thought bitterly.
Kneeling beside them, the familiar warm, gentle light enveloped the healer's hands. As before, the bruising, cuts, and severe trauma covering Kuro and Greg began to mend rapidly right before Gil's eyes.
Despite the hostility of their situation, Gil couldn't help but feel a lingering sense of awe at the absolute wonder of the display.
Once he was certain the two were completely out of danger, the healer left the unconscious pair resting on the stone floor.
He gave Gil a subtle nod, confirming they would recover, before turning away to resume his duties with the rest of the captives.
Gil stayed close to Greg and Kuro, keeping a watchful eye over them while only half-paying attention to the remainder of the day's training session.
His mind was elsewhere, plagued by a thumping headache from the successive backlashes of using his sight. As if the physical strain weren't enough, the healer's parting words kept echoing endlessly in his mind, refusing to let him rest.
Gil squeezed his remaining hand into a tight fist. As much as he hated to admit it, the healer was completely right.
Whether it was back during his desperate fight against Hector, in the blood-soaked arena against those beasts, or today while trying to guide his friends: tracking the opponent's movements was never the real root of his problem.
Sure, it was a factor, but the core issue was far more frustrating. His body simply couldn't keep up. His mind could perceive the threat and chart a reaction, but his physical frame lagged dangerously behind.
Letting out a heavy sigh, he kept watching the remainder of the session, unable to help wincing every time another captive went down.
The cold truth was that most of these people were far from seasoned fighters.
They were resilient and didn't shy away from pain, but it was painfully obvious they lacked proper combat training. For many of them, yesterday had been their very first real fight—if that chaos could even be called a fight.
Realizing that sending her sub-group in one by one was utterly useless, Helena had stepped up to organize her followers into a coordinated tactic, attempting a human wave assault to overwhelm the healer.
It was utterly ineffective.
After humoring them for a brief moment—seemingly assessing the flaws in their coordination—the healer began to methodically dismantle them. He punished every single opening and every drop of their guard like a ruthless drill master. The gentleness and pity he had shown the day before had vanished entirely, replaced by absolute, unforgiving rigor.
And as for Helena... who managed to hold her ground a little better, she repeatedly tried to rally her companions during the assault, only to be struck down with equal—if not greater—severity.
While it wasn't particularly gentlemanly of him, Gil couldn't deny feeling a quiet sense of satisfaction watching that scheming girl—whom he neither liked nor trusted—get thoroughly humbled.
Even better was Mao's turn.
Realizing early on that the odds were stacked against them, the scholar chose to send his allies to the front lines first, staying back to analyze the healer's movements and search for a flaw he could exploit to turn the tide. But if Gil hadn't succeeded even with all his perceptual advantages, it was obvious Mao stood no chance either.
When his turn came, he received a beatdown far harsher and more painful than anyone else's.
Apparently, the healer took a strong disliking to how Mao used his companions as meat shields while refusing to commit to the front line himself.
Where Helena had at least fought shoulder-to-shoulder with her group, Mao obstinately hovered in the rear, trying to dissect the combat like he was the only one capable of tactical thought. Judging by the pathetic state Mao was left in after the exercise, the healer had made his displeasure crystal clear.
After what felt like an eternity, only two people remained standing in any condition to fight. Even though the healer patched everyone up after each bout, the vast majority of the captives were knocked out cold on the floor, either completely unconscious or too drained to twitch a single muscle.
Gil, who had technically participated in one of the matches without taking a physical beating like the others, and Orphée, who stood off to the side, seemingly completely ignored by the healer from start to finish.
Gil glanced over at his ally, who simply offered a light, unbothered smile in response, quietly humming a tune just as he had been doing since the very beginning of the session.
Eventually, the healer walked over to Gil, inspecting him from head to toe with a visible trace of hesitation. One didn't need to be an empath to understand why he paused. Gil's current condition was complicated to handle. On one hand, he was uninjured from today's fight, but he was down an arm.
On the other, the recent loss of that limb rendered standard sparring almost pointlessly counterproductive—he needed to adapt to his altered balance and body mechanics before anything else.
Reaching that exact conclusion, the healer gave a single, understanding nod.
"Mmh. Come with me," he said.
Leaving the unconscious captives under Orphée's passive watch, Gil followed the healer a short distance away across the arena floor until they stood face-to-face once more.
"I'll be blunt," the healer began, his tone serious. "Your situation is... unique. Normally, someone with an injury like yours would have already been written off—either executed on the spot or left to rot and fend for themselves. And most of the time, it doesn't end well for people in your position. So you should consider yourself lucky to have caught Sir Hector's eye."
Despite himself, Gil couldn't suppress a bitter, derisive snort.
The healer let out a heavy sigh and shook his head, looking down at him with a flash of genuine pity.
Hating every second of that look, Gil knit his brows tight, his glare darkening with rising anger by the second.
Recognizing that raw words alone would be hard for the boy to digest, the healer checked his patience and spoke with unvarnished honesty.
"Listen to me carefully," he said flatly. "Set aside how unfair this all is, the fact that you never asked to be dragged here, and whatever else is racing through your head right now. You're not the first. I stood right where you are now, and countless others before me did too. But unlike them, you have the rare luck of possessing something that caught Sir Hector's interest."
He paused, letting his gaze settle heavily on Gil.
"Don't go thinking they aren't trying to use you. They absolutely are. But the mere fact that they find you useful gives you value in their eyes. And what do you think happens to those who have no value around here?"
The cold weight of those words hung in the air. Gil fell completely silent, his jaw clenched tight. He didn't need a picture painted for him; he knew the man was telling the absolute truth.
As repulsive and bitter as it sounded, that was the brutal reality of their existence here.
Seeing that the boy hadn't lost his temper or exploded, the healer offered a brief, approving nod.
At least he's not beyond reason, he thought.
"Second of all," the healer continued, "I don't know if you fully realize this, but if Hector hadn't intervened in the arena that day, you would already be dead."
Gil snapped his gaze up, his eyebrows raising in sharp surprise.
"What? Did you honestly think that after losing all that blood in the arena, you would have survived without emergency intervention?"
Gil paused. He had to admit he hadn't given it much thought at the time—he had been too focused on surviving—but he had bled heavily that day.
Still, looking down at the empty sleeve on his left side, a surge of pure bitterness welled up inside him.
"So what?" Gil spat, his voice tight and trembling with suppressed rage. "I'm supposed to thank Hector? I'm supposed to walk up to him and say, 'Oh, thank you so much! Thank you for dragging me here, butchering me, and leaving me like this!' Is that what you want me to say?"
The healer stood quietly, letting Gil vent every drop of his anger without interrupting. Once the boy finally ran out of breath, he looked at him calmly.
"Finished?"
He sighed, his tone dropping an octave.
"Let me tell you something. You didn't lose that arm because Sir Hector felt like cutting it off for fun. And if you're looking for someone to blame for that empty sleeve, there are two people responsible. But the main one..."
The healer raised his hand and pointed a single, unwavering finger directly at Gil's chest.
"...is you."