The Tale of Hero Alice’s Social Death

"Alice! I just received news from Sylvia!"

After Alice idled around in her home for three days, Lilith called her and brought her a surprising piece of news.

"She found a thief whose mana matches perfectly with the mana in that crystal of yours. Moreover, that thief had indeed visited Icarus City several months ago."

This situation surprised Alice. Originally, Alice thought the first party to bring her good news would be KG Company and that Sylvia would only be done with her investigation sometime later. She didn't think that Sylvia would produce results in only four days.

Of course, this wasn't exactly an impossible situation, either. Unlike manufacturing a figurine, Sylvia's investigation was partly reliant on luck. If she was really lucky, the first person she investigated might even be the thief they were looking for. So, it wasn't out of the question for Sylvia to find their target using only four days.

It was also unlikely that Sylvia had found the wrong person. Identification based on mana fluctuations in this world worked roughly the same as identification via fingerprints back on Earth. Like fingerprints, it was highly unlikely for people to have similar mana fluctuations. So, the person Sylvia found was most likely the thief who stole the book Demon King's Shadow. Not to mention, the other party had visited Icarus City around the time the book was stolen.

After ending her call with Lilith, Alice received a documented report from Lilith via LINK. The report was the information Sylvia had gathered after finding the target. However, the report didn't only contain the target's cover identity in the Thieves Guild. Sylvia had also dug out the target's real identity.

Although thieves typically kept their personal information well hidden, Lilith had many thieves working under her. So, uncovering the identity of a thief was a relatively easy task for her. It was especially so when the thief in question had a loose lip. According to the report, the thief had the disposition to become talkative once he had a little alcohol.

"Canlat, a 32-year-old male, is your average programmer, and behaves humbly at work. The only bad habit he has is his fondness for alcohol. Moreover, he doesn't hold his alcohol very well..."

Alice looked at the photo displayed on her computer. The photo was of a neatly-shaven middle-aged man in a suit. This should be a photo taken for certification purposes. No matter how Alice looked at the photo, the other party was just your average middle-aged working class. He did not look like someone who'd be working in the shadows as a thief.

However, the report also showed plenty of evidence of his activities as a thief. Among them included some overlaps between his normal business trips and thief activities. His bank account would also see unidentified funds appearing in it frequently. All of these pointed to Canlat being a very active thief.

Most importantly, Sylvia found that several months ago, several large sums of money had entered Canlat's bank account. Yet, when she tried to trace the origins of these funds, she was immediately met with a dead end. She couldn't even see the exact amounts of the transfers themselves. She could only determine the total amount by subtracting the amount of money Canlat had in his account before and after the transfers.

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It was evident that whoever hired Canlat to steal the Demon King's Shadow had made use of their influence to erase all records of their fund transfers to prevent others from tracking them down. Moreover, this person should possess a great deal of influence in the Rhine Kingdom. After all, Sylvia had Lilith backing her. Yet, she still failed to find any clues about Canlat's employer.

Because of these untraceable funds, Canlet's suspicion of being the thief responsible for stealing the book Demon King's Shadow was infinitely increased. At this point, Sylvia was almost certain he was the thief they were looking for. Only, going by his actions, it didn't seem like he had the book on him. Instead, he had probably already handed the book over to whoever had employed him to steal it.

"We currently suspect this might be related to some of the kingdom's nobles. If these nobles are looking to overthrow my father and take the throne for themselves, it makes sense they would do all these things."

The first few people to come under Lilith's suspicion were the Rhine Kingdom's nobles. No matter the world, human ambition would never stop. Meanwhile, if some of the Rhine Kingdom's nobles were trying to overthrow the king, it'd make sense they would try to collude with the demons and steal a powerful taboo to strengthen their combat power.

When Alice heard Lilith's conjecture, her first thought was to wonder if some nobles had truly banded together to take over the Rhine Kingdom. However, upon closer thought, she felt that something was amiss with this situation.

The attempt to collude with the demons, the theft of the book Demon King's Shadow, and the placement of the Pollution Roulette. When Alice linked all three of these matters together, she couldn't help but get the feeling that if the mastermind behind these events were the same person, rather than say that the other party's goal was a coup, it felt more like the other party was aiming for…the demons?

The other party had tried to lure the demons into the human realm, stole a taboo book that could create a Demon King, and set up a device capable of creating a polluted environment similar to that of the demon realm. No matter how Alice looked at it, most of these behaviors did not seem like something a person would do if they were only looking to overthrow the king. Instead, these behaviors had more to do with the demons and Demon Kings.

It'd be great if Andusia were here. I could have asked for her opinion on this matter, Alice thought, scratching her head in frustration. As luck would have it, the next two days would be the weekend, so Lilith didn't need to attend classes. With Lilith's otaku personality, she would likely spend most of her weekend cooped up at home. So, Alice couldn't sneak into Lilith's house to talk to Andusia, either.

Anyway, since Lilith suspected that it might be the nobles' doing, Alice decided not to say anything about it. After all, Alice didn't really have a good reason to refute Lilith's conjecture. Not to mention, Lilith would be the one doing all of the investigating since this matter concerned the Rhine Kingdom's nobles.

"Can you apprehend that thief? I want to ask him a few questions in person," Alice asked. Since she had to wait a few more days before she could talk to Andusia about her suspicions, she decided to look for more clues for the time being.

"You want to ask him questions? I'm afraid you're not going to get a lot of useful information. Thieves mainly do business through the Thieves Guild, and rarely would they meet their employers face to face. They also won't ask any questions that aren't directly related to their commissions," Lilith said. "Moreover, there is a chance that he might reveal false information to fool us. So, asking him questions might end up negatively affecting our investigation."

"You don't have to worry about this. I have a way to make him speak the truth," Alice said, chuckling. She might not be able to read or accurately modify memories, but she could plant instructions such as "do not lie for the next several minutes" into Canlat's memories.

The human mind was like a program, while memories were encoded codes. Although Alice couldn't understand any of these encoded codes, she could stuff unencoded codes directly into a person's memory code, and the person's mind would process these codes nonetheless.

So, even if Alice didn't know how to read memory codes or encode the codes she wrote, she could still rely on unencoded codes to achieve simple controls.