The Tale of Hero Alice’s Social Death

Although the tree branch was connected to the tree using some special method, the connection wasn't reinforced in any way. The only protective countermeasure put in place also only came in the form of a small zap of electricity, and such a small amount of electricity wasn't even enough to make Alice flinch. So, Alice managed to break off the branch easily.

The person who had put the tree branch here was probably aware that humans normally wouldn't intrude on the treants' territory unless they had a good reason. So, that person didn't bother putting any powerful protective measures in place, choosing to only add a simple measure to keep birds from taking the tree branch away.

"It doesn't look like anything special. It feels no different than a normal tree branch even when I swing it."

When Alice swung the tree branch with her left hand, she felt like a little girl playing with tree branches in the countryside. If it wasn't because she could feel the obvious contaminants from the tree branch, she would have most likely suspected that she had found the wrong target.

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It should be known that Alice's current physique was by no means weak. While she might not have the essence of the Hero, a.k.a. the Hero's Power, she had the talent of a Hero. So, the development of her magic and physique was on par with Heroes. Her body might look like a child's, but her body's toughness was most likely on par with human powerhouses like Catherine already.

Yet, even then, Alice still felt an obvious discomfort from her left hand. She even had difficulty moving the mana in her left hand. This showed just how powerful the tree branch's ability to pollute its surroundings was.

After experimenting with the tree branch's ability with her left hand, Alice switched to holding it in her right hand.

…

[Weapon: Fragmented Demon King's Power - Pollution Roulette]

[Quality: Law]

[Effect: Strength +5000, Constitution +7000, Speed +5000, Mind +7000, Control +5000, Mana +7000]

[Additional Effect:

Forbidden Pollution (Passive Skill. You will not be affected by any spiritual attacks and curses. Curses that lower your spiritual power will be reflected to the caster);

Indestructible Blood (Passive Skill. Gain a Demon King's aura through the infection of a Demon King's blood);

Disguiser (Active Skill. Devour an object. The user or the weapon can be transformed into the devoured object's size and appearance);

Law Breaker - Mana (Passive Skill. Continuously release pollutants that will destroy the law concerning mana.)]

…

Although Alice had long since expected the pollution source to be an extraordinary item, never did she think it would be a Law-grade weapon. Moreover, going by its name, it was an item created using the Demon King's Power's essence. It was an existence similar to "This Is Wrong" and "It's So Short."

But obviously, the Demon King who created this Pollution Roulette was much more reliable than Andusia and Miriya Hampar. At the very least, this Demon King had given their weapon a normal-sounding name, so normal that Alice couldn't help but doubt whether the weapon's original owner was a Demon King.

At the same time, Alice couldn't help but look forward to showing this weapon to Andusia. Andusia would probably die from embarrassment after seeing it. After all, even though she and this unknown Demon King had the same material to work with, the weapons they ended up creating were starkly different.

Besides that, Alice now knew why this weapon would look like a tree branch. Out of the skills attached, there was a skill called "Disguiser," which could be used to disguise the user or the weapon itself at will. The only precondition was that the weapon would have to devour an object first, and the appearance of the disguise was limited to the devoured object.

The person who had hidden the Pollution Roulette on top of this towering tree had most likely let the weapon devour one of the tree's branches. Hence, the Pollution Roulette could hide so seamlessly among the other tree branches.

After learning about the Pollution Roulette's Disguiser skill, Alice couldn't help but wonder if she should feed her power armor to it. That way, she could use Disguiser to disguise herself into a muscular man with a beautiful face without having to physically put on the power armor in the future, giving her a great deal of convenience.

However, Alice didn't plan to put this idea into practice immediately. The Pollution Roulette's "Law Breaker - Mana" skill was clearly the cause behind the Kalu Forest's central region's pollution. Meanwhile, this skill wasn't an active skill but a passive skill that would continuously take effect instead. If she couldn't get rid of this skill, she wouldn't be able to carry the Pollution Roulette out in the open.

But this really is unexpected. To think that the essence of this 'pollution' isn't just simple environmental pollution, but destruction targeted toward the law concerning mana... This property is quite in line with the Demon King's Power's characteristics.

Originally, Alice was under the assumption that this pollution was related to toxic gasses, in essence, and it would only cause damage to the mana it came into contact with. She also assumed that this pollution was so difficult to eliminate because the pollutants would embed themselves deeply into the mana particles they contaminate. However...what she didn't expect was for this pollution to be destroying the law concerning mana and for the contamination of mana to be nothing more than a trivial side effect.

It was no wonder she felt so greatly discomforted when she held the tree branch in her left hand previously. She also understood why she couldn't manipulate the mana in her left hand. It was because the Pollution Roulette was interfering with the law concerning mana.

As for the demonic organs the demons had evolved to have, they were most likely used to process the incomplete mana to make them usable again. If the human realm's mana was equated to normal files that could be read directly, the demon realm's mana would be akin to fragmented files that needed additional processing, such as piecing them together, to read normally. Meanwhile, the demons' unique organs were a type of file processor that could organize these fragmented files into readable files.

But now that Alice had come to realize the nature of this pollution, she also understood that if she couldn't eliminate the demon realm's "pollution" problem, there would come a day when mana would be destroyed completely. At that time, the demon realm would lose all access to the concept of mana, and that would no longer be a situation that could be handled just by growing some new organs.

At least now I know what the nature of this pollution is. This also means that there should be something similar to this Pollution Roulette hidden somewhere in the demon realm by some person over ten thousand years ago, and that item is directly responsible for causing the demon realm to end up in its current state.

Alice frowned when she reached this conclusion.

Could this person be...the First Demon King?

The more Alice thought about this possibility, the more plausible she found it. Like all other Demon Kings, the First Demon King was chosen by the Demon King's Power because of his hatred toward humanity. In other words, the First Demon King was a person intending to destroy the world. But obviously, there was no conflict between the human and demon realms at the time. Apart from living in different areas, the two races were almost indistinguishable from one another.

In fact, the two realms' inhabitants couldn't even be considered two separate races. Instead, they were all humans.

Hence, the target of the First Demon King's hatred at the time was unlikely to be limited to just the human realm's humans. Instead, his hatred also extended to the demon realm's "demons." Meanwhile, because of this hatred, he had created a weapon that could pollute half the globe. Specifically, the demon realm.

From that point onward, due to the deteriorating environment, the demon realm's desire to invade and conquer the human realm grew. Meanwhile, the First Demon King took advantage of this situation to lead the demon realm's humans to attack the human realm's humans, sparking a war that involved the entire world.

After that, the First Demon King was sealed by the First Hero, and the demon realm's humans had no choice but to accept the fact of their defeat and continue living in the demon realm. Then, they gradually started to evolve organs that the human realm's humans did not possess. Afterward, following the First Demon King's title, the demon realm's inhabitants named their home the "demon realm" and referred to themselves as "demons," thereby splitting the largest sentient race into two different races, each occupying half of the world.

Of course, these were all conjectures on Alice's part. Most records relating to the First Demon King and First Hero had already been lost to time, so she couldn't determine whether her conjectures were on the mark or not. Even so, she had indeed seen a record mentioning that "there was no distinction between humans and demons in the distant past," so there was a possibility that her conjectures might be true.

Anyway, let's see what this Pollution Roulette actually looks like.

After sighing, Alice returned her attention to the tree branch in her hand. She currently had absolute authority over the Pollution Roulette, so not only was she immune to the "Law Breaker - Mana" skill's pollution effects, but she could also cancel the "Disguiser" skill's active effect.