The Tale of Hero Alice’s Social Death

What Lilith and Sylvia would do afterward, Alice did not know. Perhaps they would investigate the shota magician's identity, or perhaps they would turn their spearhead toward the nobles who had sent bodyguards to protect Collins. However, regardless of what they chose, it was unlikely that they would trouble Alice.

Originally, the shota magician's main task was to blend into Collins's bodyguards and observe Collins. However, at this point, Alice was basically certain that Collins was cross-dressing otaku through and through and had no interest in becoming the Rhine Kingdom's next king.

There were rumors on the internet talking about how the matter of the Rhine Kingdom's eldest prince taking the initiative to hand over his succession rights to the second prince was merely a conspiracy theory and that, in reality, the second prince had forced the eldest prince to say so. However, after Alice investigated Collins herself, she felt that there was a high possibility that Collins might have actually taken the initiative to give up his succession rights to the second prince.

King Haydn had probably realized that Collins had zero interest in inheriting the throne. Coupled with the fact that Collins was addicted to animation culture and had only the most superficial understanding of state affairs, King Haydn must have decided to fulfill Collins's desire and make Etoria his heir instead.

However, this discovery put Alice in a bind. She realized that she was close to running out of suspects. Even until now, she still hadn't found a clue relating to the identity of the person impersonating Etoria and trying to collude with the demons.

Lilith definitely wasn't the culprit. Or rather, Lilith was also looking for the culprit trying to collude with the demons. Like Alice, Lilith was aware that should the demons intervene in the Rhine Kingdom's political struggles, the backlash of the demons' actions being discovered would be catastrophic. It would no longer be just a battle between the Hero and the Demon King at that time. Instead, all humans and demons would be dragged into a war fueled by hatred.

Collins also wasn't the culprit. The guy's head was filled with anime characters. Moreover, he had an incredibly strange fetish. Although he would occasionally pay attention to the big events happening in the Rhine Kingdom, he would only take memo of these events. Even then, the memo he took wasn't kept on his home computer but on his work computer instead. He clearly didn't take these big events seriously.

Etoria evidently couldn't be the culprit, either. Previously, Alice had already gotten Luna to inspect Collins's memories during the Conference of Kings. Aside from having a lolicon fetish, Etoria was an intelligent heir that wouldn't engage in superfluous matters.

Luna's spirit magic was also very trustworthy. After all, she was an individual with Demon King-level strength. The spirit magic she used at the time was even at the taboo-level. With Etoria's strength, there was no way he could resist Luna's spirit magic. Even if he had an item such as Sylvia's Ring of Divine Wisdom protecting him, Luna's magic could still tear through the item's defenses as if it didn't exist.

In other words, the only suspect left on Alice's list was the third prince, Arcana Doyle…a middle school student.

A first-year middle school student at that.

When Alice looked at the photo of Arcana in her hand, she simply couldn't convince herself that a young child like Arcana could pull off a stunt so big that it could potentially jeopardize the peace between humans and demons.

The photo was provided by Mador, who now wholeheartedly believed Alice to be the Demon King. As the demon spy working in the Royal Magic Tower, Mador could easily get her hands on the images and information of any individual in the Royal Magic Tower. Her information database was superior to even Magic Tower Know-It-All's.

Similar to the March Academy, the Royal Magic Tower also had a middle school department. Meanwhile, Third Prince Arcana was currently studying in the tower's middle school department. However, students of the middle school department could only enter the Royal Magic Tower after they were in their third year. First- and second-year students had to attend classes at a magic center located in the magic town.

Meanwhile, the picture in Alice's hand was a photo of Arcana studying in the magic center. The photo had practically captured Arcana's entire classroom, and Alice couldn't help but wonder how Mador had taken this photo without anyone noticing her, especially when the photo also showed two intimidating black-clad warriors standing at the corner of the classroom.

At first glance, Alice estimated that these two warriors should be close to Kurse's level. It was also obvious that these two warriors were bodyguards sent by King Haydn to keep Arcana safe until he graduated middle school.

As for whether these two guards would become Arcana's subordinates after he graduated, that would depend on Arcana's actions. According to Mador, Lilith was in a similar situation as Arcana in middle school, and Kurse was tasked to protect her at the time. Meanwhile, when she graduated, she managed to convince Kurse to become her subordinate.

Based on this development, it would seem that Lilith was quite a charismatic leader. Unfortunately, King Haydn had chosen to neglect her because she was born female. Alice honestly felt quite sympathetic to Lilith for having such an old-fashioned father.

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But the fact that he still hasn't graduated from middle school should mean that he would have great difficulty developing his own forces, Alice thought and sighed. According to Mador, Arcana did not have any opportunities to develop his own forces. Even his bodyguards were sent by King Haydn. So, the boy shouldn't have any opportunities to create trouble.

Moreover, Arcana couldn't even enter the Royal Magic Tower as a first-year middle schooler, let alone send invitation letters to Mador. Unless, of course, Arcana could evade the surveillance of his two bodyguards, secretly develop his own forces, and sneak into the Royal Magic Tower to send letters to Mador…

However, could a 13-year-old child really accomplish all these things?

Although Alice felt that it was highly unlikely for Arcana to be the culprit, for precaution's sake, she still decided to pay the young third prince a personal visit and observe his behavior in secret. After all, now that Lilith, Collins, and Etoria were ruled out from Alice's list of suspects, Arcana was the only one left.

Icarus City's Royal Magic Center opens from 7:00 to 24:00. It offers various services such as magic research and magic studies… Alice scrutinized the information Mador provided on the magic center. The magic center has a total of 10 floors. Floors 1 to 6 are for customers, while floors 7 to 10 are reserved for the Royal Magic Tower's middle school department's first- and second-year students.

Alice had trouble understanding why first- and second-year middle school students had to study separately in a magic center instead of inside the Royal Magic Tower. However, after reading more of Mador's report, she could more or less understand such an arrangement.

There were mana control devices set up in every room in the magic center. While these devices wouldn't affect someone with large amounts of mana, they could prevent middle schoolers, who only had small amounts of mana and were inexperienced at using it, from losing control over their mana and ensuring their safety.

By the time these middle schoolers underwent two years of studies in the Royal Magic Tower's middle school department, they should be adequately familiar with using their mana. At that time, it would be safe for them to study in the Royal Magic Tower, which didn't have any mana control devices in place.

Those devices won't work against people with sufficiently large mana pools?

Alice nodded. When she first read about the mana control devices, she had been worried about whether they would work on her. However, after reading the device's description in Mador's report, she realized that these devices were merely a safety precaution to help children with poor control over their mana. So, they would not affect her.

After making sure that her magic wouldn't be restricted inside the magic center, Alice got ready to observe Arcana. Her plan was to sneak into Arcana's classroom and observe his behavior in class. However, before that, she would need to figure out a way to prevent herself from getting detected.

Her current magic robe definitely couldn't work in this situation. Its short duration of three minutes wasn't even enough to last her through one class session. Preparing several magic robes wasn't an option, either. Based on her past experiments, the cooldown of similar skills was shared. The cooldown wouldn't disappear simply because she had switched to another magic robe.

It seems I'll have to buy a better robe.

Alice had previously considered getting a magic robe of better quality to see whether the Mana Concealment skill's duration would increase along with the robe's quality. However, it would now seem that she had to put this plan on her agenda.

Alice was a relatively action-oriented person. Since she had decided to get a better robe, she did not hesitate a moment longer. Immediately, she stood up and got ready to leave her house and search for a shop that sold magic robes. In her opinion, the sooner she took care of this matter, the better.

The longer she dragged out this situation, the more impatient the mastermind would become. Once the mastermind ran out of patience, nobody could say what the other party would do.