Chapter 399

Without the Mana Concealment skill, Alice felt that she would have long since been discovered. After all, the fact that Haydn dared to carry out his plan in his house must mean that he had implemented various measures to prevent others from spying or trespassing on his house.

Unfortunately for Haydn, Mana Concealment’s ability wasn’t limited to turning Alice invisible. It also hid her presence. In other words, so long as Alice didn’t use any magic or separate her mana from her body, the presence of the mana in her body would remain hidden as well. In that case, no matter what surveillance measures Haydn had implemented, he would be incapable of detecting Alice’s existence.

Honestly, after having used Mana Concealment so frequently recently, Alice had come to realize just how useful her right hand’s ability could be. Before this, she mostly treated her right hand as a convenient means to gain an instant power boost via panties and inspect unknown items. Although she had been aware that her right hand could also grant items abilities that they normally shouldn’t have, she never really capitalized on this part of her right hand’s abilities.

However, after seeing how useful Mana Concealment could be, Alice realized how much she was potentially missing out on. She felt that she should be touching more items with her right hand. Who knows? Maybe she could find another skill that was as useful as Mana Concealment.

Anyway, Alice quickly located the source of the mana fluctuations. However, after arriving at the scene, the corners of her mouth twitched a little when she saw the sight before her.

Firstly, she was right to assume that Haydn had indeed used the help of other magicians to activate his taboo.

Secondly, different from her assumptions, Haydn didn’t bother to hide these magicians in a hidden room. Instead, the hundred or so magicians were gathered in the living room.

It would seem that Haydn had realized the futility of hiding these magicians. After all, if someone managed to sneak into his house, the mana fluctuations that filled the building were enough to let even the average civilian know something was wrong. So, rather than waste time and energy constructing a secret room to hide all these magicians, he might as well put them in his living room.

Alice carefully observed the magicians as she stood by the living room’s entrance. All of these magicians were seated on the floor with their eyes closed while the mana in their bodies was flowing in varying patterns. From what Alice could tell, each magician’s mana flow pattern was flawed in some way. When these flow patterns were adopted individually, they would achieve nothing.

However, when the varying mana flow patterns of these 100-plus magicians were combined, they would form a complete mana flow pattern that would result in the activation of a spell.

From a programmer’s perspective, it was as if these magicians were separately inputting different lines of code for a complete program. By itself, each line of code could accomplish nothing. However, when combined, they would form a complete and functioning program.

But these magicians…feel strange…

Alice frowned. When she first saw these magicians sitting neatly on the living room floor, she thought these magicians were helping Haydn voluntarily. However, upon closer inspection, she noticed that although these magicians had their eyes closed, their expressions looked calm and sluggish, as if they were asleep. If it wasn’t because she could sense these magicians actively controlling their mana to flow in a set pattern, she would have believed they had fallen asleep.

Hypnosis?

This word flashed in Alice’s mind.

The spirit magic category could be subdivided into multiple subcategories, and hypnosis was one of these subcategories. Alice’s usage of Consciousness Transformation to bluntly plant commands into her target’s memories could be considered a form of hypnosis, but it was a crude way of hypnotizing people.

Real hypnosis magic was much more effective at manipulating a person’s thoughts and actions. A taboo-level hypnosis spell could even directly modify the characteristics of a person’s soul, and the modification would be much more ingrained than the changes made using Consciousness Transformation.

Luna had previously mentioned hypnosis magic to Alice, so when Alice saw the dazed expression on these magicians, she knew Haydn, or more specifically, the Demon King behind him, had most likely used a hypnosis taboo to get these magicians to cooperate with him.

In addition, Alice noted these magicians were considerably powerful based on the mana fluctuations radiating off their bodies. They should be at the level of professors employed by famous universities. Meanwhile, the fact that Haydn had managed to abduct so many powerful magicians without causing a commotion on the internet must mean that he was also controlling the circulation of information on the internet.

In any case, this situation simplified matters for Alice. Since Haydn had hypnotized these magicians to help him, Alice only needed to release one or two from their hypnotic state to break the taboo they were operating. With how complicated of a taboo they were operating, any inconsistencies should be more than enough to turn the taboo into an inoperable mess.

If Haydn truly was backed by a Demon King, this Demon King should be responsible for hypnotizing all these magicians. If that were the case, it should be impossible for the average person to break the hypnosis on these magicians. Fortunately, Alice knew how to use Consciousness Transformation, which was also a spirit taboo. Although she didn’t dare say that she could completely suppress the Demon King’s hypnosis magic, if she only needed to liberate one person from their hypnotic state, it shouldn’t be all that difficult for her to accomplish.

The problem was that Alice would need to separate some of her mana from her body to activate Consciousness Transformation on a target. Meanwhile, mana that had separated from her body would no longer be counted as part of her presence, which meant Mana Concealment would no longer shield it. So long as Haydn or the Demon King backing him were paying attention, they would immediately notice this mana and realize that an intruder was in the mansion.

However, Alice couldn’t afford to hesitate. Even now, Luna was still having her mana drained by Haydn’s taboo. If Alice didn’t do something about this taboo, Luna would eventually die from having her life force depleted. So, without hesitation, Alice used Consciousness Transformation on the old man sitting closest to her.

Immediately, the elderly magician’s memories appeared in Alice’s perception. Similar to past instances, Alice could not understand any of the garbled characters that had appeared in her mind. However, that did not matter since all Alice needed to do was insert a “wake up” command at the end of the memory code.

Spirit-type magic feared interference the most. Although a simple “wake up” command wouldn’t be enough to break the hypnosis taboo right off the bat, it would create ripples that would rapidly spread and affect the taboo’s stability.

It was similar to how a calm lake would react when a pebble was thrown into it. The pebble might not create a huge impact when it first fell into the lake, but it would create ripples that would gradually spread and cover a large portion of the lake’s surface.

Meanwhile, once these “ripples” covered a sufficiently large area, the hypnosis taboo would crumble apart.

Sure enough, shortly after Alice planted her command into the old magician’s memories, the magician gradually opened his eyes as if he had just woken up from a dream. Though judging by the look of confusion on the old man’s face, it was evident he didn’t realize what was happening here.

However, Alice couldn’t be bothered to care about the old magician’s thoughts right now. This was because as soon as the old magician woke up, she could sense the mana flow of the other magicians in the living room growing chaotic.

Removing the old magician from the taboo’s activation was akin to putting a hole into a beaver dam. As soon as this hole appeared, water began pouring out of it. Moreover, this hole grew bigger and bigger as water continued pouring out of it. At this rate, it wouldn’t take more than half a minute before the “dam” collapsed completely.

With the situation as it was right now, Haydn and the Demon King backing him should have already realized that someone had snuck into the mansion and sabotaged their plan.