The Tale of Hero Alice’s Social Death

Originally, Alice thought that after failing to find anything suspicious about Lilith, Collins, and Etoria, she could see something different in Arcana. However, the fact of the matter was that Arcana was only an ordinary child who was slightly superior to his peers. An example of his superiority would be that he was much better at handling magic than his classmates. Another example would be that he clearly knew how he should behave to win the hearts of his classmates.

Overall, if Arcana was put into a group of middle schoolers, he would indeed stand out among the group. However, that was about it.

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Arcana's performance did not exceed the realm of middle schoolers. At the very least, the way the boy socialized with his classmates looked considerably immature, in Alice's opinion. Even the two bodyguards standing in the corner of the classroom did not show any expressions in regard to Arcana's behavior.

Perhaps Arcana might grow more in another two years and reveal his full potential before entering high school. At that time, Arcana might be able to show enough worth to convince the two bodyguards that it wouldn't be a loss to follow him. However, at the present time, Arcana's performance definitely wasn't enough to convince people to work for him.

Of course, there was also the possibility that Arcana was only pretending to be only at the level of an ordinary middle school student. However, during her careful observation, Alice noticed that Arcana would sometimes make some low-level mistakes when conducting magic experiments. With Alice's current attainment in magic, she could spot these mistakes at a glance.

More importantly, after making these low-level mistakes, Arcana would carefully hide them. If Arcana possessed an extraordinary mind and was trying to create the image of an ordinary middle schooler for himself, he would have done the exact opposite instead in these situations. Rather than hide his mistakes, he should have revealed them to show that "he had yet to mature."

However, Arcana did not do so. He had chosen to hide these small mistakes. Aside from Alice, there shouldn't be anyone who could notice these mistakes. As for the two bodyguards, they stood facing Arcana's back, so they wouldn't have noticed Arcana's blunders.

Simply put, Arcana was only a child trying to create an image of excellence for himself. He didn't have any deeper thoughts. Alice would rather believe that Collins had hidden some sort of secret code in his hentai collection than believe Arcana had secretly developed his own forces and uncovered the demon spy hiding in the Royal Magic Tower.

After the class session ended, Alice left the classroom in disappointment.

But doesn't this mean nobody in the royal family is suspicious?

After returning home, Alice sat on her bed and fell into an awkward predicament. Despite all her efforts, none of her suspects turned out to be the mastermind.

Yet, it was a fact that the letters Mador received were serious. Not only did the sender request an alliance with the demons, but the other party had even marked a safe route that the demons could use to invade the human realm. Mador had also asked a few of her demon associates to verify the validity of this route and found that there were no ambushes prepared throughout the entire route.

If the sender of those letters was willing to tell the demons how they could secretly invade the Rhine Kingdom with their army, suffice to say that the other party was serious about allying with the demons.

In such a situation, Alice worried that should the demons keep refusing to give the other party a reply, the other party would grow impatient and do something irrational. Hence, Alice needed to uncover the other party as soon as possible.

However, now that all of her clues had led to dead ends, how should she go about finding new leads? All three of her suspects appeared very much innocent, so she couldn't possibly apprehend and interrogate them, right? How was she supposed to explain herself to King Haydn if she did that?

Of course, if she was absolutely desperate for clues, there was one that could more or less serve as a clue.

Demon King's Shadow… The book for it got stolen some time ago. Moreover, the period of theft is very close to when Mador received the first letter from "Etoria."

Alice thought back to the document she found on Collins's work computer. The document recorded the major events in the Rhine Kingdom in recent times, and the events were ordered by date. Meanwhile, the date the Demon King's Shadow book was stolen coincided with the time Mador received her first letter of alliance from "Etoria." This was too much of a coincidence, so Alice couldn't help but think that the book thief might be related to the mastermind.

However, this was only a conjecture. She still couldn't verify whether these two individuals were the same person simply based on time. But with no better leads to follow right now, Alice had no choice but to jump on it. If she could locate the thief who stole the Demon King's Shadow, she might be able to apprehend the mastermind trying to instigate a war between humans and demons… Even if she failed to capture the thief, she might stumble upon some new clues.

After deciding on this new line of action, Alice promptly gave Mador a call. Although Mador wasn't the Royal Magic Tower's "Magic Tower Know-It-All," her intelligence-gathering capabilities were in no way inferior to Magic Tower Know-It-All. She was superior even.

As for why Mador was superior, it was because she knew Magic Tower Know-It-All's real identity, yet Magic Tower Know-It-All did not know Mador's real identity. Otherwise, seeing as how Magic Tower Know-It-All had reported the Demon King's whereabouts to the Rhine Kingdom, the other party would have long since reported Mador to the kingdom if he knew Mador was a spy for the demons.

"Hello? Lord Demon King? Do you have business with me again today?" Mador's voice came from the phone. After learning from Frosette and the Four Heavenly Kings that Alice was the real Demon King, her behavior toward Alice improved significantly. However, because of her personality, she didn't behave fearfully around Alice. On the contrary, she even dared to joke around with Alice. "Weren't you going to find the shota today?"

"You should very well know what I went to see Arcana for," Alice said, feeling a little exasperated. She had asked Mador for a lot of information about Arcana this morning, so Mador had used this as an opportunity to tease her. "Anyway, Arcana is just an ordinary kid. He's not the guy who sent you those letters… So, I'm all out of leads now."

Mador grew a little helpless when she heard Alice's answer. "What should we do, then? That person seems determined to ally with us. He must have also learned about your appearance in the Rhine Kingdom as he sent me another letter recently asking if you are interested in the alliance."

"It seems this person is definitely related to the royal family in some capacity. The other party should be a heavyweight noble, at the very least. Otherwise, he wouldn't have learned about this matter."

News of the Demon King appearing in the Royal Magic Tower was only circulated among the Rhine Kingdom's royal family and a very small number of nobles. King Haydn's intention was to wait for some time before letting the news media report this matter.

Hence, anyone who could learn about this matter was definitely someone of great importance in the Rhine Kingdom's government.

Yet, Alice had already ruled out all of the royal family members as potential suspects. This left her in an awkward situation. It was fortunate that she had already found a new clue.

"I'm calling you to ask about an incident that could be related to that mastermind… The Royal Magic Tower's Demon King's Shadow went missing a few months ago. You should have gathered some information related to it, right?"

"Huh? You know about this matter as well, Lord Demon King?" Mador exclaimed. "The Royal Magic Tower has kept this matter tightly under wraps, and not many people know about it. You shouldn't have visited the Rhine Kingdom several months ago, right? How did you learn about this?"

Alice naturally couldn't tell Mador that she found this information from digging through Collins's hentai collection. So, after faking a cough, she said:

"You don't have to care about that. Anyway…tell me everything you know about this matter."