Lord Paladin Dolloway unleashed massive tentacles of fire that slithered towards Mael, only to be stopped in the vicinity. From the floating blood sphere that Mael had around him, he sent out tendrils that went and intercepted Dolloway's fiery tentacles.
Having seemingly exhausted his floating orbs, the blood poured onto the ground, pooling at Mael's feet. But Mael, still in place, calmly summoned more blood orbs to replace the ones he had used up.
"What’s with you? Rooted in one place like a tree," the man frustratingly barked at Mael, as he had not yet moved forward, backward, or in any other direction, nor did he make a single offensive attempt against the man. All he did was stand there, using magic only to protect himself.
Mael remained silent in response to the man's words, steadily continuing with his task of summoning blood to intercept the attack that the man followed up his silence with.
"Humph, fine, don’t answer. But tell me what's in that bag; what’s so important in it for you to carry it around like this?"
"I could say the same for you with that sword you carry around? Not that I don’t see it ever reaching me," Mael announced, finally making a couple of steps forward.
"As for what I know, while nobility value hereditary aristocracy, you members of the church, especially you people of the Paladin Order, are held in high regard based on a meritocratic value, yet you... For someone supposed to protect the archbishop, you don’t look that impressive. Did you bribe your way to the top? As of now, the only thing you managed to get me impressed with is how you haven’t managed to get your master and yourself killed yet."
The man, relentless and seemingly confident in his mana pool, unleashed more of his attack at Mael, only to have his attempts meet with the same outcome as the previous ones.
"Trying to provoke me? I was not born yesterday to fall into your trap."
"I can see how smart you think you are. But I think you should've understood by now. Essentially, my blood magic is no different than water magic, with just a slight superiority over that peculiar element. Yet that slight superiority is something your fire cannot win over."
"Then I'll use lightning," the man yelled, unleashing on Mael a literal rain of lightning bolts.
Mael and everything in the vicinity were engulfed in the violence of the man's lightning. The ground shook as several unfortunate pillars that stood in the way collapsed, causing pieces of the ceiling to crackle and fall.
Not even a dozen breaths in, Mael calmly emerged from the smoke.
"It’s useless. I'll give you that your lightnings are powerful, but I've lived through and battled along much stronger ones. In other words, you cannot win against me," Mael announced, merely summoning yet another blood orb to replace the one he used.
"What are you trying to pull here? Are you attempting to win this battle through mana-attrition or something?" The man inquired, not bothering to conceal his growing dissatisfaction with the course of the battle.
"Why not? Are you afraid of running out of mana?
"Tsk, arrogant brat."
"It’s frustrating, isn’t it? I’m sure you stood here between me and whatever was ahead, expecting to fall not even a minute into the battle, yet here I am. How frustrating it must be... a Lord Paladin of the Church, unable to handle even a fight against a teenage boy with little to no real battle experience. But don’t worry, you’re doing a great job holding myself of—"
Dolloway unleashed his magic yet again at Mael, only to have him, once again, swiftly intercept them, but it soon became clear that those lightnings were merely an opening for him to close the distance, his sword finally drawn.
Mael remained calm in the face of the man lunging at him, theorizing, "since neither of my long-ranged magics works, close distance will surely overwhelm him," before concluding, "A rash yet very logical course of action, which makes it quite predictable."
"What the—?" The man exclaimed, following Mael's gaze downward to the ground.
Blood droplets floated upwards from beneath the debris of the ceiling, where they'd been pooling without the man particularly noticing.
At that very moment, the man understood why Mael was stubbornly not retaliating, nor even moving much, only to appear to focus on protecting himself, while in truth, all this time around, Mael was preparing the battlefield, setting up a trap for which he so easily fell.
"I was never a particularly athletic child, nor was I particularly adept at combining Aina and magic. So, in order to compensate for that potentially fatal disadvantage in close-range situations, I understood that I needed to find a way to make sure to obliterate anything that ever came too close to me."
"That can’t b–"
"Guess what? I did learn. And as of now, you are close to me. Too close, in fact."
The man, understanding the highly dire situation he was in, immediately proceeded to an escape maneuver, but before he could even pull it up, a cage emerged from the blood-pooling ground, imprisoning him. A spike emerged from the same blood-pooling ground, impaling and straight up severing his arm.
"Son of bit***!" the man swore, summoning, despite his miserable state, magic. However, before he could cast any spell, he realized that the blow that severed him from his arms was only the beginning, as countless other spikes went to impale through various spots on the man's body, tearing his armor to pieces, peeling skin off his bones, and impaling him with discomforting ease.
No part of his body was spared, or so it appeared, when in fact all the spikes that impaled him were all impaled through and through in an almost surgically precise manner while also avoiding fatal spots such as the head and the heart. Other than those, nothing else of the man's body was spared other than those organs and limbs.
The man was left in a state of hanging-yet-alive butchered flesh.
Using one of his tendrils of blood, Mael lifted the man to a relatively safe distance and summoned a blood spear, seeming intent on finishing the job himself.
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The spear was just a step away from impaling the man's heart, but at that decisive moment, Mael hesitated before finally lowering his spear off the man's chest.
The man, who, despite his dire circumstances, was not only alive but also conscious.
"Doooo... iiiiiit," Mael understood from the macabre sound coming out of the man's mouth. "Don't you have the guts to do that?"
Despite his awareness of the risk, Mael approached the man, still wary of a possible suicide attack, which the man in his state, with literally nothing left to lose, was most likely to choose, yet Mael approached him, or at least what was left of him.
"Perhaps," Mael replied, drawing his spear and reaching for the man's chest, "but that would be because, as a healer, I live by certain principles that compel me to consider the boundless weight of life." Summoning a strange magic to his fingers, which he then infused into the man Mael pursued, he said, "Taking away your life alone isn’t worth throwing away my principles."
A few seconds passed, and nothing apparent happened.
"You thought I was going to heal you, didn’t you? Unfortunately, healing just anyone is not one of my principles; I am not a saint and certainly not an idiot."
Summoning off his tentacles, the man’s body fell heavily against the blood-pooly ground. Glancing at the door through which he entered the room, Mael wondered if his cousin was done with the fight he had chosen to take on before deciding to proceed further without him; not a single glance thrown at the man he walked past on the ground. Mael was forced to look back after hearing a bolt of lightning fling toward him from a few dozens of meters away.
Before the thing could even reach him, Mael's blood took over the task of protecting him, as he was not so much unprepared for an attack of that sort coming from his back, especially with that teleporting magic-wielding boy around. Mael recognized the threat he really needed to take care of as urgently as possible.
Turning to face his assailant, Mael saw two individuals, both miserably injured. One was his small stature, which Mael recognized as the teleporter boy despite his missing arm. The other person on the other side was the man he left Arte with.
The thought of something having happened to Arte crossed Mael’s mind, but the state the man was in and the presence of the teleporter boy reassured Mael that his cousin was most likely safe.
"Lord Dolloway!" the teleporter boy exclaimed, running to the Lord Paladin’s side.
"You’re not going to ask me what became of your cousin?" The formerly masked man asked, standing between Lord Dolloway and the teleporter boy as if to serve as a shield between them and Mael.
"I don’t think I need to ask about that. Those injuries speak for themselves."
"Humph. You sure do boldly trust him."
"Blindly trust him? No, that’s not that; it’s not trust. I just think I know what he should be capable of. I’ve never seen him fight anyone before, yet it is an undeniable truth that he became the favorite of one of the fourteen. I know that person, and I know that to be recognized by him, you have to be either recognized as having "a "big brain" or "a big muscle." As for what I’ve been given to witness about my cousin, I know for a fact that he does not belong to the first category. In other words, it was not trust; I was just certain he was stronger than you."
Mael calmly walked toward them, only to stop after a few steps.
Wary of what Mael was planning on pulling off, the man summoned his magic out, ready to fight to protect his friend despite his already sorry state.
"We, nobles, spent our lives trying to test the limits of our magic, which tends to lead us to certain amoral lengths. I know that; I’ve got there. And it was there that I learned to do this." To these words, Mael extended his right hand, palm open, pointing not at the man standing between him and Dolloway, but at the already severely injured Dolloway, who strangely began to cough, each more violent than the last.
"What?!"
As the man's cough persisted, a projection of a beating heart slowly took shape above Mael’s held out palm.
"What have you done to him?" The teleporter boy barked, understanding that it was something Mael's doing.
But Mael ignored his words and proceeded, saying, "Lord Dolloway, you were right; my morals, my "lack of guts," got in the way, because, as I had earlier said, alone you weren’t worth killing. But now, you are no longer alone; the tides have, as they say, changed."
Somehow understanding what Mael was up to before anyone else, the man standing between Mael and Dolloway lunged, screaming at the confused teleporter boy, "Aiden, get away from Dollow. Run!"
Mael simply waited for the man to reach a relatively close distance to the teleporter boy before crushing the projected heart with his hand in a ruthless motion. He murmured to the wind, "Farewell, Lord Dolloway, may the sleep be long for you."
In response to these words and actions, Dolloway's body grimly inflated, then imploded into a massive gory mist of blood that engulfed the duo standing beside him. Smithereens, entrails, bits of organs, and shattered bones flew in every direction of the room.
A little while after, as the little gory aftermath settled down, Mael was greeted with an unexpected sight: both the boy and the man, whom he thought would be caught for sure, survived. The teleporter boy, who was shaken but unarmed. The man also survived, though he was now in a pitiful state, with bones protruding from two of his arms and blood pouring everywhere.
"You survived, you even saved your friend, talk about great reflexes, or was I simply too careless?" Mael muttered, calmly striding toward the duo, but before even taking a couple of steps in their direction, the teleporter boy gathered himself up, and crawled his way back to his friend, before teleporting themselves away.
"Tsk,"
Given how swift and fast the teleporter boy was, this method, as gruesome as it was, was Mael's only idea for dealing with him. However, this unique opportunity was wasted.
Mael wasn’t given much time to care about their escape when the sound of running footsteps came in his direction from where he had come from. It was Arte.
"The man I fought, he got away! with the teleporting boy." He urgently warned.
"I saw that, but I doubt he'll be any trouble from now on," Mael assured.
Arte finally calmed down after hearing his cousin's words and realized what his feet were dripping in the middle of.
"Mael, what happened here?"
Looking at his feet, he saw them being drowned in a pool of blood, within which he saw something floating, which immediately made him avert his gaze.
"Look at me. Don’t look down anywhere else, you’re going to regret it," Mael warned.
Having heard the warning, Arte complied, feeling that, as Mael said, he would regret disobeying. He strode across the room to Mael, not looking down or anywhere else but ahead.
Seeing how his cousin, Arte, finally listened to his words for once, Mael smiled as he turned around and walked in the direction of the corridor ahead.
Arte followed quietly; it was only later, while inside the corridor, that he inquired. "Say, Mael."
"Hum?"
"On my way to this place, I found rooms similar to the one where we found these corpses on fire, and that fire doesn't seem to be fire from a battle, but rather seems to be voluntary, was it yo—"
His question was still being asked when he caught a glimpse of an answer in Mael's gaze.
"It was already that way, when I passed." Arte blatantly lied.
A lie that Arte, with a simple nod, accepted as truth.
"Let's get moving; I haven’t found the girls yet. Only for them, we might be able to arrive on time, but there is no time left for us to l—"
"What happened, Mael?"
"Say, Arte. When the teleporter boy appeared to me, along with the masked man, he was injured. Was it you?"
"You mean, it wasn’t you?"
Mael shook his head.
"It wasn’t me. It wasn’t you... then who?"