Chapter 112: Cost Of Healing

Lucius watched on as the healers did their best to take care of the injured Keith. And it was obvious that whatever they were doing was helping the man. Lucius could see that color had returned to the man's face and his lips had also become much redder than before.

'Seems like the blood replenishment really does work… if it was some incompatible blood type or just some random fluid, the man should have died already.' Lucius thought to himself.

Ten more minutes passed after the blood replenishment process was complete. Even if the second healer was done, the first one was still continuing to use his gift on Keith. Lucius could now confirm that it was his gift that was the key to the blood replenishment.

One would think that Lucius would regret that Keith was surviving this as he was the son of his foe. But it was not so. Lucius originally did not even intend for him to get injured. He had only used Enrage to see him fight a bit more and cause conflict.

Lucius had seen who Bethany had reacted when the maid had rejected Keith's advances and knew that even if she had sent the maid way, she did not like Keith. She was likely to only be tolerating him because of their relationship with the viscount Drew.

Lucius just wanted to strain their relationship with them and make it harder for them to cooperate… Or at least reluctant. Even if something like that was not going to happen in reality and Baron Harrels would stay loyal to the Count, Lucius didn't think it was a waste being extra sure.

As for the maids and servants that would suffer under Keith's hand or the entire Harrels family itself? He didn't care. 

'At least him getting injured is letting me learn about the healing arts of this world. While they don't have modern things like blood transfusion and IV fluid nutrition, they did manage to make their equivalents.

Though I can't really tell if this is only exclusive to this hospital or if there are others who can do the same. The senior healers' gifts are key to this and both of them would be needed to accomplish this.' Lucius thought to himself.

Lucius even wanted to use nexus on them and see their gifts but held back. He still had plenty of time to choose his target for nexus and did not want to use up the Aether right now. Plus there was still Keith whose exact gift he did not know.

Since Hell Aether had some effect on Lucius' own gift, he had a hypothesis that it would affect others too. In his own case, Lucius could enter his soul space and see the imprint of Nexus itself along with the hell imprint.

But he would not be able to do this for others of course… in most conditions. Thus his only insight into their gifts would be Nexus. Lucius had also inquired about the kind of gift that Keith had and got the answer that it was a gift that increased his kicking power.

This was a rather vague description and he did not think, it would be enough. There were many gifts that could be described similarly and really did have similar effects but they would be different gifts.

Lucius did not want to be careless and miss out on the kind of gift that he truly had. Because if he did and the Hell energy had some effect on it, he would need to know the original to know the difference.

In research without a standard, comparing a sample would often be useless. How would one tell it's different if they did not know what is supposed to be different?

~phew~

"I'm done, head healer Berk." The senior healer spoke.

Head Healer Berk did not speak directly but instead checked the body of Keith. First was the physical checks like pulse, breathing, and temperature before he used his gift to do a different kind of test.

Head Healer held Keith's head in his right hand and closed his eyes. Lucius could see that Keith's eyes were glowing behind his eyelids and even his mount seemed to be glowing as could be seen from the rays coming from between his teeth.

It looked like someone had put a light bulb inside Keith's skull and it was illuminating.

"Hmm… good work. His body should recover after a month or so. Though he will need to rest for longer, our gifts can only do so much." Head Healer Berk spoke before turning to the junior healers and nurses.

"Always remember that gifts can only take one so far. They can save someone from the brink of death, even restore them to the peak but… there is always a cost. And this cost is not just on the healer in the form of Aether but also the person being healed." Berk enlightened.

The Junior healers and nurses almost had stars in their eyes upon hearing his words. To them, it was top notch wisdom that they would rarely get to hear, while to Lucius this was an important hint.

'Huh, so the healing gifts have additional costs than just Aether.' Lucius noted.

There were many healing spells in Lucius' past life and he had seen quite a lot of them. He knew how they worked and what they needed to work. Most of them would work on mana, but some also worked on life force.

Such spells were forbidden in most nations and rarely would they be used. One such famous spell was simply called as vitality split. It was a dark magic that could allow the caster to split their life force with another person. 

Depending on the state of the injured person, it could be extremely damaging to the caster. In some cases, the caster would even die instantly upon using a spell like this. But there were other spells that could forcefully drain someone's life force while transferring it to a third party.

"Hmm… now a gift like that would be worth investing in," Lucius muttered.