Becoming the King of Magic in my Brother's Novel-Chapter 114: Seizing Freedom

It took a moment for Alec to realize what he was looking at. But then the face of the young girl for sale overlapped with Red's, and he understood that Red had been smart and made life easier for him—herself as an orphan of the streets.

That did not change anything. He still had to get her out.

Alec's gaze swept across the crowd. Torching the place was one alternative, but it could lead to too many casualties.

Alec also wasn't sure if the bloodlust threatening to consume his mind was him or [Wrath]. If he gave in to his current impulse of slaughter and it turned out to be the product of [Wrath], he might not return from being a mass murderer.

Burning down a brothel with all of its wealthy clients would also garner a lot of attention. If Alec was ever discovered, he could forget about a peaceful life.

'It's not like I was expecting a peaceful life anyway.'

Alec was about to decide to wait and see when he noticed the 'merchandise' around some of the buyers in the crowd.

Waiting for Red to be bought and transported to another location would make saving her easier. But it would make saving the rest more difficult.

Alec ran through the spells he knew.

He could put all the victims under an Earth Dome and torch the rest. But it would be difficult to save the ones who had already been sold. He did not have the mana or mental capacity to give all of them their own small Domes. Simple Barriers wouldn't be enough, not when he could tell that multiple buyers had strong-looking guards.

There were probably a dozen or so superhumans scattered around the auction.

Putting up an Earth Dome would also make escape difficult.

Plan rejected.

'Maybe…'

Alec closed his eyes and focused.

Sleep was a spell that targeted a specific person's mind and turned it off. It was similar to hitting the powerswitch on a computer. It was just that the computer tried to keep itself active or turn itself back on.

The Persuasion spell he had used on Old George was similar, but different, since it kept the target semi-conscious and made them responsive to external stimuli.

Theoretically, if he could put everyone in the room in that state, he could grab everyone and walk them out.

The problem was how to do that. If he did it one at a time, they would notice sooner or later. He needed one spell to do it to all of them at once.

A multi-target spell.

He had started working on one for Taryeon during the field trip but gave up since he didn't have the know-how. But back then, he at least figured out that he was trying the wrong method.

He tried to use the same method as single-target spells. It was like adding another set of runes for each new target.

He could do it, in theory, since he could modify spell formations on the fly. But for a crowded room as the one before him, he would need a spell formation big enough to fill a room. Maybe bigger.

It would also take time to write.

Meaning, there was another way to draw multi-target spells.

Alec absentmindedly scratched his stump while thinking.

It had to be a way that didn't target individuals but by something that united all of them. Something that all of the targets shared. A common trait.

Something like that, Alec knew how to target.

He knew it back then as well. He just hadn't been smart enough to figure it out, but now he had two minds sharpened by the Poem.

He just needed to draw a spell formation that targeted life forms. With the Regulator part, he could set parameters that prevented the spell from targeting life forms like flies and rats, since that would drain his mana.

In the same vein, he could probably draft a spell that targeted Aether or mana, which would let him target only superhumans.

Alec could feel time slipping away by the beads of sweat running down his back like grains of sand in an hourglass.

Fortunately, he didn't have to be fast.

He stopped time and started drawing two spell formations. He took as much time as he could. He didn't have room for error since he wasn't in a place to test his spells.

They had to work the first time.

Alec could feel the pressure in his head start to build. He had to cut a few corners with the second spell, but it should be fine. It was only a precaution, after all. He was satisfied as long as it worked, even if it wasn't perfect.

Then, he resumed time and drew his mana from his magic circles. He guided it through and out of his body into the air in front of him, slowly drawing the runes of the spell formation that was a multi-target combination of Sleep and Persuasion.

It was a complex spell formation, probably unnecessarily so. If he had more time, he could refine and perfect it, making it easier to use and reducing the mana cost, but he was out of time.

So, he focused both parts of his mind on the task at hand. The first part drew the spell and the second double-checked it for errors and made real-time adjustments.

Finally, it completed. The spell formation faded away as the magic took effect and flooded into the room like a bouqet of invisble ghosts.

Some superhumans, probably mages, were sensitive enough to Aether to notice the disturbance, but not quickly enough to raise their defenses. The spell hit everyone like a wave and turned the lights off inside their heads. But it still left them standing.

Alec gulped.

The sight was a little creepy. The lively room suddenly turned deathly quiet in a blink, and everonye in it was standing lifelessly like an army of dolls.

Alec did his best to swallow his nervousness as he pushed open the door further and walked into the room. The first thing he did was grab Red and lead her to the door he entered through.

"I thought rats only silenced people with the plague."