The Tale of Hero Alice’s Social Death

Gunst was a person with a stubborn mind, an upright personality, and great flexibility in battle.

A stubborn mind. This part of Gunst was mainly reflected in his perception of the world. He was an orphan taken in by the Rhine Kingdom's royal family, so he was nurtured as a warrior for the Rhine Kingdom since he was a child, and he was staunchly loyal to the royal family. His loyalty did not change even after he had acquired a significant portion of the Rhine Kingdom's military power.

An upright personality. This part of Gunst was more easily seen. Although Gunst wasn't a talkative person, he would often help people from poor families. He also spent money to build many orphanages and welfare homes around the country.

However, one would be mistaken if one assumed Gunst was soft-hearted simply because of his philanthropic behavior. When dealing with people who violated the law, he would never go easy on them. He treated all criminals equally, regardless of whether they came from poor or wealthy backgrounds. For these reasons, Gunst had an excellent reputation among the people. It was also why Lilith had admired him greatly in the past.

Great flexibility in battle. Alice had personally experienced this part of Gunst previously. Although Gunst had a stubborn perspective of the world and an upright personality, none of those were reflected in his actions when he fought for real. When fighting against a confirmed enemy, he would use any means available to achieve victory, even if it meant resorting to unscrupulous tactics such as sneak attacks and attacking the lower half of his opponent's body. According to Luna's findings, Gunst had even used a spiritual magic scroll when he fought against Alice.

Unfortunately, Alice's spirit was overly strong. Moreover, as luck would have it, Gunst had used the spiritual magic scroll in conjunction with his final "Rainbow."

At the time, Alice was already holding a pair of white panties in her right hand. Meanwhile, the white panty just so happened to have a passive skill called Spiritual Abnormality, and the skill's effect protected her from all spirit magic. Hence, the spirit spell launched by the magic scroll was utterly useless against Alice.

When Alice listened to Luna retelling the battle, a somewhat awkward expression appeared on her face. She couldn't help but think that Gunst was an incredibly unlucky fellow. Under normal circumstances, the combination of Rainbow, a physical-type offensive taboo, and a spiritual magic scroll should have been an ultimate combination that would allow Gunst to win against most opponents on his level. Yet, both of these attacks were perfectly countered by the white panty's two passive skills(Spiritual Abnormality and Absolute Defense).

If Luna hadn't read Gunst's memories, Alice wouldn't have even known that Gunst had attacked her with a spirit spell. After all, Spiritual Abnormality's effects were incredibly powerful. Unless a spirit taboo struck her, she wouldn't feel anything.

"However, doesn't this also mean that Gunst's loyalty doesn't lie solely with Haydn but with the royal family instead?"

Setting Gunst's terrible luck aside, Alice noted that based on Luna's explanation, while Gunst might be stupidly loyal, his loyalties didn't lie with King Haydn specifically. Instead, he was loyal to the royal family. Only, since King Haydn currently wielded the greatest authority in the royal family, Gunst chose to obey King Haydn's orders almost unconditionally.

But that was about it. According to Luna, Gunst was indeed responsible for planting the Pollution Roulette in the treants' territory, and he had done so because it was an order from King Haydn. However, Gunst didn't actually know the purpose and nature of the Pollution Roulette. He also didn't know why King Haydn would give him such a command.

Basically, Gunst had merely been carrying out the commands he received like a perfect tool.

"It seems that Haydn is also aware that Gunst's blind loyalty isn't targeted at him specifically but the entire royal family," Andusia said, ridiculing King Haydn's cowardice. "But this also means that even if we eliminate Haydn afterward, so long as another member of the royal family inherits the throne, Gunst will be willing to assist the new ruler."

"Based on Gunst's memories, that is indeed the most likely scenario," Luna said, nodding when she saw Alice and Andusia turning to her. "He will only obey the orders of the royal family. So long as the kingdom's ruler has the royal family's blood coursing through their veins, he doesn't care who ends up sitting on the throne."

"In that case, we won't have to worry about Gunst anymore," Alice said, sighing in relief. "Thinking about it now, Haydn must have promoted Gunst to the position of royal guard captain because he is worried his children might give Gunst an order that would be outside his control. But now that Gunst wields such great authority in the kingdom, I won't have to worry so much about eliminating Haydn."

…

"Is Gunst still nowhere to be found?"

While Alice and the others were discussing King Haydn, King Haydn anxiously searched for Gunst's whereabouts. At this point, he received at least five updates from the intelligence department daily. However, every update only gave him a disappointing answer. It was as if Gunst had suddenly ceased to exist, vanishing completely.

Even the tracking crystal that Gunst had left in his place had lost its functionality. This tracking crystal could normally track Gunst's location based on his mana, but when he tried to use the crystal now, it remained unresponsive, refusing to give him any information.

What Haydn didn't know was that Alice had sealed Gunst's mana. At this point, Haydn was even wondering if Gunst had died already and his mana had completely dissipated. If that were the case, it would explain why the tracking crystal couldn't locate Gunst.

Honestly, Haydn hoped that Gunst was dead. That way, Gunst wouldn't be able to reveal any of his secrets. Even if someone extracted Gunst's remnant soul, a remnant soul that didn't have a consciousness wouldn't be able to provide much useful information.

Meanwhile, the worst-case scenario would be that Gunst was still alive, and someone had imprisoned him in a place where mana could not reach. In that case, if someone were to interrogate Gunst using spirit magic or a special form of torture and learn about the commands Haydn had given to Gunst, Haydn would be in big trouble.

"Lord Fogallo, you've really put me in a bind this time..." Haydn uttered a complaint as he looked at the small mirror in his hand. Meanwhile, the name he mentioned belonged to none other than the Tenth Demon King, Fogallo Fold. Fogallo Fold was also the Demon King whose phantom would be summoned by the taboo Demon King's Shadow.

If Haydn wanted to acquire Fogallo Fold's strength instead of summoning a puppet incapable of thought, he would need to gather a sufficiently large amount of demon mana. However, it was an incredible challenge to accomplish such a feat. After all, how would he find so many demons in the human realm?

Although Haydn could get a bunch of demons as long as he went to the demon realm, he needed to set up complex devices to harvest the demons' mana. Haydn had secretly had people construct these devices, but they were incredibly large and cumbersome, so transporting them would be very problematic. Moreover, if he brought these devices to the demon realm, the demons would definitely discover them. At that time, he would most likely get attacked by many powerful demons.

Hence, Haydn needed a way to attract a large number of demons into the Rhine Kingdom. Either that or he needed to create an environment resembling that would allow him to produce demon mana. But now, both of these paths had been closed off from him.

"I'll need at least a hundred demons to meet my needs..." Haydn fell into thought as he looked at the mirror in his hand. The mirror that originally reflected his gloomy face was now displaying a progress bar that kept track of the current amount of demon mana detected in the Rhine Kingdom. "But the demons have yet to respond to my request for an alliance even until now, and the number of demons in the kingdom isn't even enough to meet one-tenth of my—huh?"