The silence in the room became absolute, heavy enough to suffocate.
Gil stared at the flat, empty fabric where his left arm should have been.
No.
"Huh?"
No.
"Why is my sleeve empty?"
No.
"It's there that my arm should be, no?"
Nooooooo!
"Then where is it?!"
After his roar, a long, heavy silence fell over the room as he tried to comprehend what his eyes were showing him.
No matter how much he blinked, shook his head, or reached over with his right hand to touch the phantom air, his left hand didn't come back.
He had to face the brutal, cold facts: it was gone.
"What... what happened?" he muttered, his voice trembling violently.
He frantically searched his memories, desperate for anything that could explain the horror he was looking at.
Towards the end, it's true I couldn't really feel my arm anymore, but I couldn't feel much of anything back then.
So I thought it was normal... But my... my arm...
Even without looking up, he could feel everything around him losing its color.
The sterile white walls, the harsh fluorescent lights flickering overhead, the frigid air itself—everything turned gray, draining into a bleak, monochrome blur.
The world felt stripped of warmth, leaving only a cold, hollow vacuum in his chest.
My arm. I lost my arm.
As he struggled to accept his new, broken reality, a deep voice casually cut through the suffocating gloom.
"Well, given the situation, I'd say you got off pretty easy."
Gil, plunged into deep despair, whipped his head around toward the source of the sound.
In his panic, he had almost forgotten Hector was even in the room.
The man sat there, leaning back against a metal chair, completely unfazed by Gil's murderous, bloodshot glare.
"Oh, don't look at me like that. Did you really think you could get off scot-free? You managed to survive and even kill one of those things. It's an achievement, sure, but losing just an arm for what you pulled off? I'd say that's a remarkably small price to pay."
After a brief, heavy pause, Hector added in a much more somber tone: "Believe me, some would trade much more to survive..."
At those words, Gil saw red.
Him.
Hector.
It was all because of him.
He could almost hear a dark, sinister voice whispering directly into his ears, fanning the flames of his hatred.
It was because of this man that his already rough, but normal, peaceful life had gone completely off the rails.
It was because of him he ended up dragged into this living hell and thrown into that dark, blood-filled arena.
It was because of him he had to face those nightmare creatures, and it was entirely because of him that he was now sitting here, mutilated and strapped down like a rabid animal.
"Hector!" he roared, the sound tearing violently from the very back of his throat.
He tried to push himself up, but the thick leather bonds tying his remaining limbs to the medical bed dug deep into his raw skin.
Still, the physical pain was nothing compared to the agony in his chest.
Driven far past the brink of sanity by sheer rage, he reached inward, forcing his still feeble, orb to respond.
The miniature sphere burst into existence. in the center of the room—not as its usual golden sanctuary, but with the addition of a violent, blood-red epicenter.
Jagged, translucent spikes of crimson energy condensed out of thin air, pointing their razor-sharp tips directly at Hector's chest, humming with lethal intent.
As if sensing the sudden spike in lethality, Hector tilted his head slightly, his expression shifting from amusement to mild annoyance.
"Careful now. Don't forget I'm not the only one in this room."
Gil froze mid-command.
Sure enough, the giant was standing right beside Greg's bed, precisely where Greg and the tomboy were resting—unconscious and utterly defenseless.
If he unleashed this storm of blood-red shards now, the collateral damage was guaranteed to impale them too.
You coward, Gil thought bitterly, his teeth grinding together so hard they threatened to shatter.
As if reading his thoughts, Hector flashed him a disdainful, mocking smile.
Then, surprisingly, he took three deliberate steps away from the two unconscious youths, stepping directly into the open center of the medical bay.
"Then again," Hector said, rolling his broad shoulders in a slow warm-up, "I suppose you need to blow off a little steam. Good timing... me too."
He stood right in the line of fire, completely exposed. Even if he couldn't visually see the strange, floating spikes of raw intention, his battle-hardened instincts felt the sheer, focused violence directed at his head.
Gil didn't hesitate for a single microsecond.
He unleashed everything without restraint—the raw, unrefined force he had unlocked while battling the lingering shadows in his mindscape. Spikes, razor-thin shards, condensed waves of crimson force; he hurled every scrap of energy he could conjure straight at the man's face.
He used every drop of power he possessed, desperate to dull the blinding, tearing pain that threatened to consume his soul from within.
Yet Hector moved as if he weren't under attack at all. He didn't even bother to raise his guard.
"Alright, kid," Hector's deep voice echoed clearly through the chaotic barrage. "Time you learned your place."
An explosion of terrifying, dark blue energy erupted from Hector's body, shattering the crimson spikes into harmless sparks before they could even graze his skin.
The atmospheric pressure in the room skyrocketed instantly, heavy enough to crush the air straight out of Gil's lungs.
Before Gil's mind could even register what was happening, a massive hand shot through the energy storm like an iron vise and slammed Gil violently back against the mattress.
BOOM!
The reinforced metal frame groaned under the sudden, brutal impact before shattering completely, bringing the bound and newly injured Gil crashing down to the concrete floor amidst the debris.
Coughing up a mouthful of copper-tasting blood, Gil lay among the ruins of the bed, his mind reeling in dizzying shock.
But... how?!
Gil thought, absolute panic seizing his chest as he stared up through blurred vision at the man holding him down with a single hand.
I thought the Shadow said he was on the physical path! What the hell is this dark blue aura?! Are you telling me that's raw physical strength?!
Despite the overwhelming display of power he had just fallen victim to, he had no intention of giving up so easily.
It was just too unfair.
He hadn't asked for any of this.
He had just wanted to finish his work, go home, and live his life—and now he was trapped in this nightmare, half-dead and broken.
He thrashed, squirmed, and even tried to bite the older man's wrist, but nothing worked.
Hector's grip was like an anvil anchored to the earth.
Beside him on the floor, the sphere he had manifested began to pulse once more.
It hovered near the ceiling, though it didn't attack right away—perhaps too feeble from the backlash, or waiting for a direct mental command that its master was too frantic to give.
Gil hadn't even noticed the change in the orb yet, so completely consumed was he with physically lashing out at his captor.
After all, he had only discovered these abilities a short while ago; when backed into a corner, his core instinct was still to rely on raw, human struggle.
After trying to punch, kick, and bite to no avail—and being painfully, brutally reminded in the process that his left arm was missing as his shoulder throbbed with agony—he finally ceased struggling.
His muscles trembled with utter exhaustion, but his anger did not fade. It merely condensed into a dark, volatile core as he glared up at Hector with a gaze dripping with pure, unadulterated hatred.
No. I don't care how long it takes... I'll make them pay. Every single one of them.
It was as if he were making a solemn, binding vow to his own soul.
Responding to his internal fury, the golden sphere—previously tainted with blood-red—began to mutate rapidly.
The deep red darkened at an accelerated rate, suffocating the golden light until it turned pitch black.
Soon, an abyssal darkness began to swallow the entire sphere, radiating an ominous, unstable pulse that made the air in the medical bay vibrate with static tension.
Just before the light was completely swallowed up, Hector moved.
Whether he felt the dangerous shift in the room's ambient energy, decided he had pushed the poor kid's fragile nerves far enough, or perhaps felt a rare, fleeting moment of pity for the amputated youth in such a brutal fashion, it was impossible to tell from his hardened face.
He stood up, releasing his heavy grip on the young man, and stepped back slightly.
"Now that you're a bit calmer," Hector said, his tone dropping into a firm, undeniable command that left no room for defiance, "you're going to listen to me."
He leaned in slightly, his looming posture casting a long shadow over Gil, but his aura retreated just enough to let the choking youth draw a ragged breath.
"...Besides," Hector added quietly, looking down at the empty sleeve, "it's not like you can't get your arm back."