Arte summoned earth spikes, which, along with a combination of wind magic, he hurled at the man.

Just as the spikes were about to reach their target, the masked individual conjured lightning that seemed to implode from within him. This not only reduced Arte's spears to smithereens but also sent zapping tendrils of lightning that came ominously slithering like thousands of snakes toward Arte.

"Take this!"

Without turning his back to his opponent, Arte jolted backward, evading the rain of lightning coming toward him. Swinging his spear upward, Arte erected a massive rock wall from the ground, against which the lightning crashed loudly and violently.

.

For a brief moment, Arte thought that his wall had withstood the man's lightning, but before he could breathe a sigh of relief, the wall collapsed under the impact of the black-masked man's attack. The man had managed to penetrate the wall with his battle cudgel, for which he had conjured lightning heads that transformed his golden cudgel into a two-headed spear.

Summoning a rock shield, Arte blocked the man's thrust, but the man was vicious and separated his cudgel into two lightning-headed spears and used the other half to spear the other half toward Arte.

Reacting just in time before being gutted by the man, Arte, using wind magic, propelled himself backward. Though slightly dazed by the desperate maneuver, Arte quickly gathered himself and charged, using wind magic to push him forward and sending a spearing barrage at the man.

Arte tried to strike the man with his spear, using the reach of the weapon to his advantage. However, the man was able to evade each attack with ease, showing proficiency in both long- and short-range combat. Arte remained cautious, aware that the man, crafty and ruthless as he was, could launch an attack at any moment.

Feeling that the man was about to pull yet another of his tricks, Arte sent, amidst his many thrusts, one that made it through—one that the man clearly didn't expect and one that Arte certainly didn't plan on sending.

In the heat of the fight, Arte aimed for the man's face.

The man made it out alive; as Arte's trust didn’t exactly land on his face, but rather on his mask, shattering it to pieces and revealing beneath it a face, or rather, something that remained of a face that had once been voraciously eaten by flames.

Distracted by his earlier, uncontrolled attack and the sight before him, Arte was left unfocused for a moment. This moment was not missed by the unmasked man, who immediately used light magic to unveil a blinding light similar to the one he used the previous day to blind Arte.

"Damn! Not again!"

Jumping backward, Arte thought he'd made the fatal mistake of failing the same trick twice, only to realize, with relief, that he was wrong because nothing followed the blinding light that he was certain would be followed by one of the man's vicious combinations.

As his eyes gradually recovered from the blinding shock, Arte was surprised to see the man take the initiative as he had: he stepped back.

Arte initially assumed that the man's hand on his face was an attempt to hide his face, but as the man's face began to bleed profusely, Arte realized that it couldn't be just that.

"Shit…. Aaaaargh!" The man screeched in some sort of agonizing pain.

"What’s going on?" Arte wondered, confused as ever.

Falling to his knees, the man kept screeching, clearly in pain, even letting go of his weapon to desperately reach for something on his back, which turned out to be a second mask, a spare one.

Only after the man put it on did he finally calm down, and the blood stopped pouring out of his face.

Reaching for his battlecudgel, the man stood up, looked in Arte’s direction, and said, "Allowing me time to recover, what are you, an idiot?"

Uninterested by the man's insulting words, Arte asked, "What's wrong with your face?"

To Arte’s question, the man didn't answer.

"Those weren't ordinary scars, were they?"

"Indeed, they aren’t," the man announced, reaching for his golden cudgel.

"Where did you get these?"

"You and Mael Edouard saw them, didn’t you, inside the rooms, the corpses... If you've seen them, you should be able to guess where my face has been burned like this."

"... the calamities."

"During the light calamities, I was a mere paladin, with no great aspiration nor grandiose ambition whatsoever, just a mere paladin like one that could be seen anywhere. When that damn creature breached, I happened to be off duty and out of the northeast fortress, the only place in the north spared by the beast consuming light, thanks to the Holy Paladin who stood guard to protect it.

"Master…"

"I was there to witness, and I dare say I was the only one to ever witness the creature so close by and survive. Survive at a cost—the one to live with burnt, cooked bacon skin and insufferable pain whenever magic, light, and lightning—the magic I used to survive—leave me in a state no better than the corpses you've seen," he pursued, reaching for his mask. All thanks to his grace, Archbishop Whiteley, and his invention."

Remembering Mael’s words and being already very familiar with the name, "So he was truly the one behind all of this... I’ve seen these corpses. What are you doing with them? Why are you doing this to them?" Arte inquired, still indignant at that sight.

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"I take it you're one of those who believe corpses should be treated with respect... especially in these states, what a farce."

"A farce?"

"You felt indignant to see them in that state, right? Why? Because nobles' remnants are to be held in respect somewhere in their respective familial sanctuaries?" As though facing a ridiculous situation, the man heartily laughed.

"What’s so funny?"

"You’ve seen what they looked like, right? The state they were in? Nobody wants or even has a need for such butchered meat. Alive nobles have uses; dead nobles have uses as well, but in that state they are of no use to anyone... except the Archbishop and his experiments."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing but that here, under His Grace's care, they can finally contribute to humanity's greater good, as they ought to be. While you were up there, playing white knight for those harlots, we were making great things down here, Arte."

"Them… You… What have you done to them, you people?"

"Hahaha,... you're curious? Are you sure you want to know? Hahaha, to be honest, I'm not sure what happened; I only know how they lasted and what became of their---" Arte, fuming with unprecedented anger, swung his spear at the man, but the masked man was able to quickly combine his cudgel back into one and block the blow, swinging down at his face.

"You want to know what became of these girls that have been abducted right under your nose? What had been done to them? You want to know? even though I doubt you'll like it. Look at you; you look like you already know the answer and hate it," the man maniacally laughed.

Arte understood that the man was luring him to anger, but his anger was past the point of even caring, especially after the next words the man uttered.

"They’ve been, like what you’ve seen stored within these rooms, dis—"

Guessing the man's next words, Arte, fueled by anger and disgust, readjusted his spear and thrust it forward with a fire-magic-infused attack, determined to gut the man in front of him. However, the man, once again displaying his adept evasion skills, hopped back to a safe distance from Arte, narrowly avoiding the attack.

"Oi, oi, oi… Didn't that blow come with the intent to kill me? That’s not good, Arte; if you kill me, you’ll be no bett–"

"Don’t you bastards have the slightest bit of sympathy for your fellow human beings?!"

"Hum? What are you talking about, all of a sudden?"

"These flowers, these girls, had lives, fears, and dreams. They might have taken the worst of paths, yet they proudly, each in their own way, faced their struggles."

"Well, well, well." What are you pulling off of me right now? A moral lecture? If that’s so, don’t waste your saliva. I don’t care what righteous stances you believe yourself holding; I did what needed to be done, so I’m contemptuous of that."

"None; I believe just that we could, so we did." Is it so complicated? I could also say it is for the greater good, or something along those lines; I don’t know; I’m just a soldier, a Paladin of some sort. Just like how I don’t know exactly what this mask concealing my pain is made of, I know it is here that it has been made, and that here, despite the atrocities made here, I'm sure a greater good is to be born eventually out of this faculty. So for that to eventually happen, my job is to simply follow the order I receive and protect this place from people like you, that girl, and your cousin. In other words, Arte, I’m going to kill you." With these words, the man once again, turned his cudgel into two twin lightning-headed spears.

"You are free to try."

Like that, the fight between Arte and the masked-man resumed and went on for a couple of minutes.

Despite having earlier managed to land a blow on the man, Arte was deprived, by allowing him to recover, of any other opportunity to once again pull out that prowess, as the man was now more wary than ever of Arte’s spear.

Arte continued to thrust his spear repeatedly, using wind magic to enhance his attacks, as he faced the masked man. The man was skilled at deflecting each of Arte's thrusts with his multi-functional cudgel, causing Arte to become resigned to the fact that his spear attacks would not be successful. However, Arte did not let this discourage him and instead focused on overwhelming the man with brute force and endurance.

Keeping up with that strategy, Arte patiently waited for an opportunity, but it didn’t display a single sign of showing its tail, until it eventually did.

Foreseeing the man withdrawing at a distance to unleash his magic, Arte took advantage of that window, using wind magic, to lunge himself forward and thrust his spear viciously forward.

It wasn't until Arte was in the middle of the action that he realized what he had predicted and what had become reality were nothing more than a trap, which he had fallen for.

The man discarded half of his twin spear, grabbing Arte's spear with one hand and thrusting with the other for Arte's guts.

Had it not been for Arte's swift reflex to summon earth magic on his arm and, like the mask man, get a hold of the man's lightning-condensed short spear, his viscera would've been all over the floor.

"Wha—"

Having learned of his past mistake, Arte did not allow the man time to recover from his surprise.

Using both his spear, which the man was holding onto, and the man’s battle cudgel, which he was himself firmly grappling onto, Arte firmly lifted the man off the ground and sent him flying over his head to roll into the distance.

That, of course, was not enough to stop the man, as he immediately recovered from his roll. Arte had anticipated this outcome, which is why, when he hurled the man away, he immediately followed him in order to take full advantage of this rare opportunity.

With the man momentarily caught off guard and his battle cudgel taken from him, Arte took the opportunity to thrust his spear and successfully impale the man in the shoulder.

Still not satisfied, Arte drew the man up close with his spear and delivered an aina-enhanced front kick onto his guts, unimpaling the man and sending him rolling into the distance. Knowing that wouldn't be enough to stop the man, Arte closed, once again, the gap between them and impaled him again, this time on his other, uninjured shoulder.

Arte planned to deliver three or four more stabs with his spear in order to disable the man's limbs, but the man, despite his injuries, managed to interrupt the attack by releasing a burst of magic that forced Arte to retreat.

"Going for the four of my limbs... Getting ruthless, aren’t we?" The man taunted amidst his grunts.

"What if I am? I am just repaying the favor for your murder attempt on me."

"Murder attempt, huh? You know what? Forget about what I just sai—"

The man stopped mid-sentence as the boy wielding teleportation magic suddenly appeared beside him.

"Aiden, what happened to you?" The masked man asked as he saw the miserable state the boy was in. Not only did the boy appear distraught, he was also panting and out of breath, but most importantly, he was missing an entire arm.

Though Arte was wondering what exactly the boy stumbled on to be left in that state, remembering how he earlier teleported Mael and himself, Arte understood the potential trouble the boy, despite the state he was in, could be for him and Mael.

Clenching firmly on his spear, Arte lunged toward the duo.

As the masked man realized what Arte was planning, he urgently warned the boy, "Aiden! Now!" This proved to be a wise decision, as his words prompted the boy to quickly teleport the two of them away, leaving Arte to halt his charge at an empty location.

"Tsk!" escaped Arte in his frustration. "That teleportation magic is getting annoying."

Just as he thought about how annoying that boy was with his magic, Arte's thoughts drifted back to the injuries the boy had already sustained at his arrival; surely the person that attacked him was, as he did with the masked man, trying to get the boy and his problematic magic out of the equation.

"It had to have been him, Mael..."

Realizing that he had already wasted too much time, Arte proceeded forward into the labyrinth to join Mael.