After seeing the bloody red color and the single black line inside the crystal, doubt ceased and certainty took its place. A criminal who has committed countless crimes of all kinds.

Everyone watched in silence, who might want to defend such a heinous criminal.

'Since everyone is convinced of it, we'll start with the punishment.'

Maximus casted a mental stability spell on Hayden or Triton; it did not truly matter, as they are both the same person.

'Don't be scared, you won't at least die of pain. You will live every moment vividly.'

Maximus had knowledge of most of the world's sciences, even the missing ones, including the methods of curses.

Maximus began to draw a circle similar to magical circles in front of him in the air. Curses differ from magic spells in style. Spells are formed by drawing them in the mind, so you do not need to do the process on the ground, while the curses are drawn manually and follow specific steps; otherwise, they get out of control, harming everyone around them.

He drew a violet ring with an ominous mana, added several overlapping circles and drew a specific pattern, the patterns varied between letters and runic words, in addition to geometric shapes and sometimes symbols of the constellations, especially the constellations Capricorn and Cancer.

A minute has passed since the operation began and it ended a while ago. Once the circle was completed, a terrible halo of death was unleashed, similar to that of a death knight at the very least.

'What is it? What is this ominous circle?'

The audience raised their guard, just a magic circle able to release a measure of energy close to a death knight must be extremely dangerous.

The curse, which was two meters in diameter, shrank for a few centimeters and was positioned in the hands of Maximus.

'You'll regret all your actions over the next week. You will neither die nor live. You will stay suspended between the two.'

Maximus set the target of the curse and the curse turned directly towards him and entered his body. A few moments until he screamed in pain like crazy, his voice was so loud that everyone in the entire auction building could hear.

'Shut up.'

Maximus casted a spell of silence on him and freed him from the chains that bound him; he fell to the ground just like a deflated balloon. His body no longer had bones, which made him like a sack of live meat, nothing more, nothing less.

'What – what did you do to him? And what is that ominous circle?'

'Oh, that.'

Maximus rubbed his head and answered with a terrible smile.

'It is just a composite curse of the eighth rank, which has several properties: corrosion, regeneration, mental stability, acceleration of thinking and finally immortality. I set it to last a week.'

"It's a monster."

"This is not Maximus who came with us in the morning."

Even his comrades denounced his actions that went too far beyond the line, but who would be able to confront him while one of the ten strongest knights was nothing more than an insect in his eyes.

'That's the least he deserves for what he did. He only blames himself for what happened to him as a result of his decisions and actions.'

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He snapped his fingers and Duke Hayden disappeared, literally a sack of decaying tissue. Maximus put him in a separate dimension to begin the topic he wanted to talk about before the accident.

He sat above the desk in the middle of the meeting room, sighed once and then breathed deeply to relax his temper.

'Now that I have eliminated all the bugs, can we start talking about our topic?'

Maximus spoke as if nothing had just happened. This was surprising on one hand and shocking on the other. Maximus did not appear to be touched by a single inch, as if he had killed insects in the true sense of the word.

'Are you shocked by what happened? That is normal, to eradicate pests.'

One of the attendees asked the heavenly magician to remove the doubt that had accumulated in his heart.

'Are you good or evil? Your actions so far do not suggest that you are good at all.'

Maximus laughed so hard that his eyes teared, wiped the tear with his fingertip and then pointed to everyone.

'I'm not evil, I'm a hero but my style is pretty different from the usual heroes. I am merciless to my enemies.'

His eyes turned red and blinked brightly with the last sentence. He formed a fireball of mana in his hand and then pressed it and scattered it.

'I don't like arrogant and hypocrites, I like to crush them whenever I see them. Sometimes I restrain myself but doesn't mean I will always succeed in doing it.'

Albus, who has been silent since the beginning until this moment, participated in the dialogue for the first time.

'Calm down everyone. Let's get back to our main topic without further delay.'

Albus clapped and spread his mana in the room to enhance the sound, which drew everyone's attention to him and redirected it towards Maximus.

He thanked his friend for the small help and proceeded to explain the basic elements of his plan.

'The topic I wanted to talk about is divided into two parts: the first is to raise the current power ceiling to a higher level, and the second is to improve the current average strength of fighters by at least one rank.'

He formed a magic circle, injected it with mana, and connected it to his mind, adding a second circle to the first to display his ideas on the wall to facilitate explanation.

His application of the idea wowed the sorcerers who were present and gave them some inspiration to learn more and seek new horizons of magic.

'Raising the power bar is a process that concerns only the elite in general and those present here in particular. There are two ways, one easy and risk-free and one difficult and dangerous.'

'Can't we learn only easy and risk-free?'

'That's the problem. Yes, you can, but it is not enough to raise the power bar for what I aspire to. I will continue to explain.'

His presentation of his ideas directly facilitated the explanation and the communication of ideas to the attendees.

'The easy way is a bit strange, it's in plain sight, but no one has thought about it before. You know this; it's the crystal of achievements.'

The attendees nodded their heads with Maximus' words as if they were students in a classroom.

'A magical device that displays a person's achievements, whether good or evil. Its only use is to compare people's achievements and claim entitlement to positions and ranks. The easy way is to swallow this crystal without breaking it, once swallowed whole, it fuses into your mana storage center, increasing your abilities according to how much you achieve.'

The audience rose up between an exclamatory and a skeptic of the method. The decisive solution is experiment but Maximus stopped them.

'Here's the problem, it's a free increase but it increases your abilities by twenty percent from its current level without increasing your growth speed afterwards.'

'Since this is a problem, the solution must be in the difficult and dangerous way.'

Albus, who realized what the difficult and dangerous method was, Maximus told him about it, as did the handbook explaining how to implement it.

'You hit the core, Director; the answer is in the second way. The second method is a mana training technique, which has the ability to increase the magical and physical abilities of its learner and the capacity of the mana or aura by several times higher than its current level.'

The audience listened carefully, waiting for either an answer to their questions or an opportunity to ask them as soon as Maximus stopped. Someone was curious about the technique and asked a question wanting to know at least its name.

'It's called the multi-storage technique of mana, as its name suggests, it allows possessing multiple storage centers in the body of the learner.'

The technique was indeed a surprise of high caliber for everyone, a way to push your current boundaries once you learn it...