The Tale of Hero Alice’s Social Death

Alice could feel that someone was watching her today. Her high Spirit stat allowed her to clearly sense the types of gazes directed toward her. Meanwhile, she noticed that many of the gazes she was receiving recently were observing her with deliberate intent.

If Alice's guess was correct, these gazes should be coming from King Haydn's subordinates. After all, Alice was the Hero. Now that Haydn had learned that the Hero was still in his country, his guilty conscience naturally wouldn't let him ignore the Hero's presence and let the Hero roam freely outside his knowledge. It was especially so now that Gunst had gone missing. At this point, Haydn was most likely still suspicious of Alice's involvement in Gunst's disappearance.

In the case of the average human, 99% of them would trust anything and everything the Hero said. This was because Heroes were saviors chosen by God. They were warriors with pure souls and the willingness to sacrifice their blood, tears, and sweat for the sake of humanity. A good example would be Aird, the true Hero who was still working undercover in the demon realm.

However, Haydn was different. He wasn't your average civilian. He was someone seeking to acquire a Demon King's strength. It also went without saying that his goal in seeking this strength wasn't to fight for humanity's freedom. On the contrary, his actions put him directly against humanity. Hence, he wouldn't place absolute faith in the Hero's words as most humans would.

Not to mention, while the Hero might not lie to ordinary people under normal circumstances, it was a different story when the Hero was dealing with her enemy. What if Alice had already discovered his actions and lied to him after taking care of Gunst?

In the eyes of a liar, everyone around him would naturally be a liar as well. Hence, it was understandable that Haydn would send people to keep track of Alice's movements and see if he could find any clues that might reveal her to be the person who had defeated Gunst.

However, the most Haydn could do now was monitor Alice's daily activities and her rented apartment from a distance. He still didn't dare to have his subordinates sneak into Alice's house. After all, he wasn't 100% certain that Alice had already caught onto his plans. If he had his subordinates sneak into Alice's house and learned that everything was only a misunderstanding, he'd have needlessly provoked the Hero. Worse yet, he might even expose his plans to the Hero.

While it was still bad to have people monitor Alice's activities, there was still room for excuses and recovery, right?

"Alice, should I eliminate those people for you?" Luna asked.

Luna might not be as strong as a complete Demon King, but she was still stronger than the demons' Four Heavenly Kings by a large margin. She was basically on the same level as Alice right now in terms of strength. She was even superior to Alice when it came to magical studies. So, while Luna might not be as strong in combat as Alice when the latter was fighting with panties, she could still sense whatever Alice could.

Originally, Alice had planned to bring Luna to inspect the location where she fought Gunst two days ago. However, as soon as they left the house, they were immediately subjected to numerous gazes, and this displeased Luna. After all, this was one of the rare occassions where Alice took the initiative to seek her help. This made her feel needed by the Hero. Yet, now, their outing was put under threat by all these unpleasant stalkers.

Luna was so upset by this situation that even her expression had darkened significantly, and her voice had grown somber as she said:

"I can ensure they die of natural causes. Nobody will notice that they've been attacked."

Luna was a spirit magician. With the strength of a pseudo-Demon King, it'd be a piece of cake for her to mess around with the spirits of these stalkers without anyone being the wiser. Even if she outright killed them, those who inspected the corpses would only find that these people had died of natural causes. They wouldn't find evidence that these people had been killed by spirit magic. Unless, of course, Haydn asked for help from the human realm's only spirit magician capable of using spirit taboos.

However, it didn't really matter whether Haydn could find anything on his subordinates' corpses. If all of the subordinates he sent to monitor Alice suddenly croaked, even if it was from natural causes, he'd have to be an utter fool to believe that these people had truly died from natural causes. So, Alice shook her head and said:

"Ignore them. They're only following Haydn's orders. We only need to take care of Haydn. There's no need to trouble these people."

The people monitoring her were, simply put, innocent wage earners. If Haydn didn't even dare to share his plans with Gunst, someone staunchly loyal to the royal family, there was no way he'd share his plans with other people. So, it was unlikely that any of these observers were truly aware of Haydn's plans.

Soon, Alice and Luna arrived at the scene where Alice fought Gunst the day before yesterday. The Rhine Kingdom's military had already locked down the area and erected tall rock walls using magic around it. Unless one flew in the air, it'd be impossible to see what was going on inside the cordoned area from the outside.

However, every kingdom in the human realm had very strict restrictions on flying in cities. From what Alice heard, it was because flying accidents would often occur when flying in densely populated cities wasn't properly regulated. Moreover, these accidents would usually lead to serious injuries and deaths.

As one of the most important cities in the Rhine Kingdom, it went without saying that Icarus City would have a strict air ban. So, even though many people had gathered outside the rock enclosure, nobody dared to openly violate the air ban in front of the military.

When Alice and Luna initially arrived at the scene, a soldier in light armor had intended to have them leave the area. However, when Alice lifted her hat and revealed her face, the soldier was briefly stunned before letting Alice and Luna enter the cordoned area.

Before coming here, Alice had naturally contacted Haydn through her phone and told him that he would be visiting the scene of the battle that took place two days ago. As for the excuse Alice gave Haydn, it was something along the lines of: "I feel that there is something strange with the mana used in that battle. It feels like taboos were used, so I'm thinking of investigating the situation."

It was a reasonable excuse, so Haydn had no way of refusing Alice's request. It would also seem that Haydn had informed the soldiers here about her visit. Although these soldiers didn't know about Alice's identity as the Hero and were confused as to why the king would let the princess of a neighboring kingdom into the cordoned area, since Gunst, their direct superior, had gone missing, they had no choice but to listen to King Haydn's commands.

After walking through a door in the wall, Alice saw that the battlefield looked the same as when she had left it. Haydn did not have people repair the damaged streets and buildings immediately. Instead, he chose to search for clues and find out the identity of the person who fought Gunst as well as...

Searching for an incredibly important item from the battlefield.