Becoming the King of Magic in my Brother's Novel-Chapter 101: Humble

Dario and Millie didn't take long to fully understand the situation after Alec's comparison. It was a testament to both side's intelligence.

"But why haven't you figured out how to prevent it?" Millie asked, her question hitting Alec like an arrow, and his already slumped shoulders slouched even further.

"How am I supposed to stop Aether from reacting with living beings? I don't know how it reacts to begin with! I just know it does!" Alec whined. He had struggled with that questions more times than he could count without making any progress.

It was the greatest question, so he understood why Millie asked it, but that only meant the answer was just as great, which, in this situation, meant it was difficult to get.

"I see. It's just…It would have been nice if there was a way to stop others from ending up like Milo and—Who is this, by the way? Is she your…?" Millie asked, pointing at Rita.

"When she was alive, her name was Rita Moser. She was the betrothed of the old man who held me and Milo captive."

"The old man was a fucker and a pervert, then?"

"I mean, you're not wrong. But he probably wasn't as bad back then. This woman is a lot older than she looks. She most likely doesn't age the same as humans due to her monster nature."

"Hey, you were not that polite when I asked!" Dario exclaimed.

Alec and Millie looked at him once before sharing a glance and rolling their eyes.

"Argh, whatever. But how come all these monsters are so calm?" Dario asked with a frown.

The woman he could understand. She was trapped in a glass box and had probably been put to sleep by the old fucker that kidnapped a bunch of people to experiment on. She might even be dead!

The unarmed monster was special since it was a human monster, according to Alec. But the cat and the dog-sized lizard?

"That's…It's an ongoing experiment." Alec glanced at Millie.

"I didn't want to say anything since it might give you false hope, but you remember how I said that Aether fries the brain when fusing with it?"

"Yeah?" Dario nodded.

"I might have a way to undo that."

Dario and Millie both showed indecipherable expressions as they looked at Alec with stares powerful enough to drill holes through paper. They were silently telling him to explain. In detail. What he meant by that.

"The monsterification basically reduces the careful, precise, and delicate architecture of the brain to rubble. It should all still be there. It's just unusable.

"My method is to slowly rebuild everything by expanding and reinforcing the pathways I mentioned earlier."

"How?" Millie asked intensely.

"It's a thing called the Poem of Neverlasting Wisdom."

"What's that?"

"It's a piece of text created by the ancient civilization, Bjerion. Originally, it was written on the wall of one of their ruins and is impossible to recreate, re-read, copy, or experience again. Once you've seen it, you will never be able to see it as anything but meaningless scribbles."

"Originally?"

"Yeah. I didn't exist before, after all."

"You're saying you can do what no one else can?"

"That I'm standing before you is proof that I can do what no one else can. Twice over. I can eat monsters. I've figured out monsterification. And I can remember what others can't."

"Humble much?" Dario raised his eyebrow and scoffed.

"I have no reason to be humble. Faux humility is as much of a sin as pride since I am condemning others instead of raising myself."

"That's good for you, Alec. But are you saying that you're making these poor monsters read?" Millie asked worriedly. There was no way they could read, after all. Two of them were animals. One was in a death-like coma, and the last was an orphan.

"Of course not. I am reading the Poem to them."

"Right now?"

"Right now, I'm talking to you."

"Then, if there's even a slight chance that it might bring Milo back, don't stop on our accounts!" Millie said hurriedly, urging him to read it, read it, and read it again.

"Unfortunately, that doesn't work. Or, it doesn't work for me, even if it might for them.

"I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I think there are growing pains when you use it more than once a day. If I rush it, I end up with a splitting headache that makes bricks seem like a good idea."

"Oh…" Millie hung her head in disappointment.

"Don't worry. I won't stop trying. Sooner or later, it will have an effect. Rome wasn't built in a day, after all."

"Rome?" Dario and Millie looked at him in confusion. What did a construction project they didn't know about have anything to do with possibly undoing Milo's transformation?

'Whoops.'

"It's a…big city far, far away that took more than a day to build, obviously, since it was so grand. It's just a way to say that greatness doesn't happen overnight and not to rush."

"Overnight? But you just said in a day?" Dario asked.

Alec and Millie looked at him. Alec turned to Millie. Millie shook her head.

"Anyway. Once a day. And there's still a few hours left."

"..."

"..."

Millie looked at the armless monster. Dario looked at Millie, occasionally glancing at Rita.

Alec looked at the two animal monsters. The fact that they had calmed down, except when eating, was proof that it was working.

However, what he said earlier had made him think.

Monsterification was almost no different from brain death.

Humans could lose memories or worse when their brains were deprived of oxygen for too long. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Oxygen deprivation was more a cause of brain death than brain death, so Alec couldn't quite compare the two, but oxygen deprivation that had led to brain death wasn't something a person could recover from.

Some might even say that brain death was the death of a person while its body clung to life, while it usually is the other way around, with the body giving up first, removing a person's anchor to life.

Looking at it that way, Milo was already dead.

Was Alec bringing him back or was he making an anchor for something else?