The Tale of Hero Alice’s Social Death

The magic robe's presence concealment is great, but the duration leaves much to be desired. I should probably find a higher quality one and see if the duration will increase.

The magic robe's Mana Concealment skill allowed Alice to hide her and the shota Dark Guard's presence completely. So, they were able to enter Collins's office without any hindrances. Alice had also made sure to destroy all surveillance cameras that were in operation.

The game development company had the Rhine Kingdom's eldest prince backing it, so it was unlikely to be troubled by such a loss. According to Alice's investigations, although Collins had hidden his identity as royalty from his colleagues, he had used his identity to help the game company on many occasions. So, it wouldn't be wrong to say that this company was backed by the eldest prince.

After ensuring that she had destroyed all surveillance cameras that could potentially capture her appearance, Alice removed the robe covering her and the shota Dark Guard. It was fortunate that both of them had small bodies, so the robe could cover both of them without a problem. Though, if a third person was added to the mix, the robe would have trouble fitting all of them.

The company Collins worked for was called "Wiggle Wiggle Entertainment," a strange name for a company. The company's office was located on the 25th floor of a tall office building in Icarus City. It was a relatively mediocre company in Icarus City, a city with a fairly developed culture.

Collins worked as only an ordinary employee in this company. Alice found a seating chart displayed on the wall in the lobby and quickly located Collins's seat and computer. Then, without hesitation, she took a seat and turned on Collins's computer.

As for the shota Dark Guard, Alice had put him on guard duty at the office's entrance. If anyone were to enter the office at this time, the shota Dark Guard would immediately knock them out with spirit magic.

The shota Dark Guard was a considerably all-rounded magician. He was knowledgeable in even rare magic types such as spirit, gravity, and soul magic. It was for this reason that Miriya, the Eighth Demon King, had chosen to keep him as one of her Dark Guards. After all, not only was the shota magician a powerful magician, but he could also be put to use on many occasions.

Collins's computer was locked with a password, which came as no surprise to Alice. On the contrary, she grew even more interested to find out what was in Collins's computer that the cross-dressing prince deemed necessary to put a password on it.

It should be known that this was a company computer. Normally, it should be more than enough to put a password on crucial files. Yet, Collins had even set a login password. This must mean that the computer held things that Collins didn't wish for others to see.

Although Alice wasn't skilled in the ways of a computer hacker, she had a reliable brute force method to bypass the computer's security measure—Aspect Separation. The advantage of Aspect Separation was that it targeted "concepts," not physical objects. In other words, she could set even target a virtual item's concept with the taboo. The only downside was that it would cost more mana.

After casting Aspect Separation, Alice changed the concept of "Collins's computer's passwords" to "123456," a simple six-digit password that gave her easy access to Collins's computer.

Alice had to admit that Aspect Separation was incredibly useful for "cracking" locks. It didn't matter whether the lock in question was a magic lock, a normal lock, or a password. With the help of Aspect Separation, she could immediately reduce even the toughest lock into one that even a child could open. In Alice's hands, Aspect Separation had essentially become a universal key.

Let's see what unspeakable things you are hiding.

After logging into Collins's computer, Alice began searching through Collins's folders one after another. She made sure to dive deep into every folder until she reached a dead end. After all, it was normal for items of great importance to be stored in the deepest parts of the computer. Collins spent a large part of his time on his company computer every day, so he must have left some crucial information on it. Meanwhile, Alice's job was to find this information.

Originally, Alice had prepared herself for a long fight. She had even bought an energy drink from a vending machine outside.

However, things developed far more smoothly than Alice expected. Although Collins had indeed hidden the supposed "crucial information" in a deep location, Alice managed to find it in only a matter of seconds. The reason for this was simple—under the "Recently Visited" section was a folder named "Secret." There was even a password on the folder.

Despite knowing to hide his secret files under layers of folders, Collins had completely forgotten about the "Recently Visited" section. This situation left Alice at a loss for words.

Regardless, because Alice had changed the concept of "Collins's computer's passwords" to "123456," the "Secret" folder's password was also changed without exception. So, Alice got into the folder easily and immediately had her attention attracted to one particular file.

Although there were many items in this "Secret" folder, only one file was placed at the bottom-right corner. This situation piqued Alice's curiosity, so she clicked on the file to open it. Immediately afterward, a dense wall of texts appeared on the screen. However, with just a glance, Alice instantly found the key point of this document.

Demon King's Shadow

Demon King's Shadow? If I remember correctly, isn't this one of the taboos kept in the Royal Magic Tower's library?

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Alice frowned. She had a faint impression of this taboo because she had seen it in the Royal Magic Tower's taboo catalog that she had previously obtained from Frosette "Academy Know-It-All" Shax.

From the name, it was obvious that this spell was in a similar category as Dragon's Shadow, a spell used to trick the laws of this world to grant the user the power of a dragon. In that case, Demon King's Shadow should be a spell used to grant the user the power of a Demon King.

As for which Demon King this spell was designed to mimic, it was Fugalo Ford, the Tenth Demon King. The creator of Demon King's Shadow had used a trace of Fugalo Ford's mana as the basis of development for the taboo. Hence, the only Demon King the taboo could summon was the Tenth Demon King.

The document Alice opened was a record on strange events that had taken place in the Rhine Kingdom recently. At the end of the document, Alice even saw a paragraph of text that was clearly added only a few days ago—"The Demon King appeared in the Royal Magic Tower. Her purpose remains unclear, but she is suspected of trying to recruit Magic Tower Know-It-All."

However, out of the many events mentioned, only one paragraph was highlighted in red and bolded. This showed that Collins placed significant importance on this particular event.

The Royal Magic Tower's Demon King's Shadow taboo book went missing. Alice narrowed her eyes. Tsk. This doesn't seem like a minor problem.

If the taboo book for Demon King's Shadow remained in the library, there wouldn't be any problems. After all, on the one hand, everyone knew that Demon Kings weren't nice people, so they wouldn't casually summon a Demon King. On the other hand, practically nobody studying in the Royal Magic Tower had the ability to learn and use this taboo.

However, the taboo book had gone missing. This represented an entirely different problem. Regardless of whether the thief could activate this taboo, the fact that the taboo book got stolen showed that someone was interested in this taboo.

It naturally wasn't good news that someone was interested in summoning a Demon King. To make matters worse, this particular person had even stolen the taboo book of Demon King's Shadow. This most likely meant that the thief might have already made the necessary preparations to cast the taboo and possessed the ability to actually cast it.

Although this incident might seem unrelated to the person impersonating Etoria, if I think about it carefully, this thief and the Etoria impersonator share the common trait of having an interest in the demons and the Demon King. Alice scratched her hair at this thought. She felt as if she had caught onto an important clue, yet she still felt that she was missing something important. Could they be the same person…?

Alice dared not come to any conclusions without any further information. So, she closed the document and focused her attention on the other items in the "Secret" folder.

Meanwhile, after looking at the other files, Alice quickly understood why Collins had put a password on this folder. This was because 99.99% of this folder was made up of images and videos expressing the vigor of youth.