The Tale of Hero Alice’s Social Death - Chapter 309

Things turned out differently from what Alice imagined.

According to her plan, Magic Tower Know-It-All should have tried to contact her in a hurry after finishing his consulting work for the day and fearfully expressed his respect to the Demon King.

Such groveling behavior might sound exaggerated, but this was normal for the demons who worshiped strength above all else. In fact, even the demons’ Four Heavenly Kings would act like lackeys when dealing with the Demon King. After all, the Demon King was not only a symbol of strength but also the demons’ hope of conquering the human realm.

Regardless, it had already been five hours since Alice had initiated contact with Magic Tower Know-It-All. During this time, she had practically wandered around all 236 floors of the Royal Magic Tower. Although she didn’t enter every individual room, she had already familiarized herself with the tower’s general layout and memorized the locations of important places such as the library, gymnasium, and laboratories.

Magic Tower Know-It-All conducted his operations in the tower under the name of a social club. Hence, the Royal Magic Tower’s authorities did not prohibit Magic Tower Know-It-All’s activities. They only required him to keep his waiting line limited to the corridor outside his assigned club room. This was also why the neighboring corridors were sparsely populated.

According to the school rules Alice found while wandering around inside the Royal Magic Tower, social clubs were required to halt their activities by six in the evening regardless of when they started their activities.

Thinking of this, Alice took a seat in the library and pulled out her phone—7 PM.

One full hour had passed since clubs were required to stop their activities. Although she had received several calls and messages during this period, all of them were from her schoolmates in the March Academy. None of these people were the person she was waiting for.

Strange… Logically, club activities should have long ended already. Could the academy’s side have given him special privileges to operate beyond the time limit? Alice wondered. Though, she didn’t think that this was a likely scenario.

The Royal Magic Tower was under the Rhine Kingdom’s royal family’s control. The royal family had its own intelligence department, so there was no way it would rely on Magic Tower Know-It-All to acquire information. This meant it was highly unlikely for the royal family to grant special privileges to Magic Tower Know-It-All.

However, despite the unlikely possibility, Alice still decided to revisit Magic Tower Know-It-All’s club room and check whether he was done with his consultation activities. If Magic Tower Know-It-All refused to contact her even after his activities were done, something must have gone wrong.

The worst-case scenario would be that Magic Tower Know-It-All wasn’t a demon. Or, he could be a demon spy who had turned traitorous and taken refuge in the Rhine Kingdom. This was a big problem since Alice had contacted the demon spy as the Demon King.

I’ve been careless. I totally forgot about such a possibility.

In hindsight, Alice realized how reckless she had been. For example, to make it convenient for the other party to contact her, she even gave Magic Tower Know-It-All her contact number. Needless to say, this was an incredibly stupid move. After all, if the other party met up with her without her knowing that he had already become a turncoat, wouldn’t she be announcing that Alice the Gryffin Princess was the Demon King? Although Alice had realized this problem before it was too late, it still didn’t remove the possibility of the other party investigating her phone number and linking it back to her.

Unfortunately, there was no use crying over spilled milk. If there really was a problem with Magic Tower Know-It-All, the academy’s authorities should have started taking action to search the entire Royal Magic Tower for the Demon King’s tracks already.

—No, they have taken action already.

While wandering around inside the Royal Magic Tower previously, Alice had come across many corridors filled with residue mana of various attributes. She had also seen a few people probing around the tower’s rooms and corridors with their mana. She hadn’t put too much thought over these findings previously, but now that she thought about it, the mana residue must have been caused by those people, and those people must have been searching for traces of dark mana within the tower.

When Alice eventually arrived back outside Magic Tower Know-It-All’s room, her heart thumped. This was because the originally crowded corridor had become empty now. Evidently, Magic Tower Know-It-All had long since concluded his activities for the day.

Yet, Magic Tower Know-It-All did not contact her even after all this time. Combining this with the people probing around the tower, Alice quickly understood that the Royal Magic Tower’s authorities were already aware of her presence. Or, more specifically, they were already aware that the Demon King was loitering within the Royal Magic Tower.

As for why the tower’s authorities hadn’t tried to call her and pinpoint her location, she had no idea. If she were on the Royal Magic Tower’s side, the first idea she would have come up with to locate the Demon King would be to call the Demon King’s number and trace the flow of mana. By doing so, she could immediately pinpoint the Demon King’s location.

Although I don’t know why they haven’t tried to call me, they should have encountered a problem that prevents them from doing so.

The communication magic stone embedded in Alice’s phone was one she had bought from a random phone store after arriving in the Rhine Kingdom, and the magic stone functioned similarly to the SIM cards on Earth.

Alice currently owned three phone numbers, and she switched between them depending on the occasion:

For the demon realm;

For her use as the Gryffin Princess in the human realm;

For her use as the Demon King in the human realm.

The third number was the one she had bought after arriving in the Rhine Kingdom.

Although Alice had failed to consider the possibility that “Magic Tower Know-It-All” might not be on her side, it was fortunate that she didn’t worsen the situation by giving the wrong phone number to the other party. Otherwise, the Rhine Kingdom would probably quickly realize that the Demon King’s phone number coincided with the Gryffin Kingdom’s princess’s phone number.

Calm down. The Demon King’s presence in the tower should have gotten out already, so there’s no point debating that. If I were on the authorities’ side, how would I go about investigating this matter?

Alice returned to the library once again and closely observed the people around her. Most of the people in the library were apprentice magicians, and there were only two faculty members hastily walking around the library with documents in their hands.

By the looks of things, it didn’t seem like these people realized that the Demon King had infiltrated the Royal Magic Tower. It also didn’t seem like the tower’s authorities realized that she was the Demon King. Otherwise, there should have been many powerful magicians secretly observing her. Since there were none, she still had hopes of salvaging the situation. It was also crucial that she avoided exposing herself any more than she already had and tried to erase all traces of the “Demon King” in the tower.

After thinking it over, Alice felt that if the Rhine Kingdom were to really investigate the Demon King, aside from the phone number she had left with Magic Tower Know-It-All, the only other way the kingdom could achieve a breakthrough was through the girl who had acted as an intermediary between her and Magic Tower Know-It-All.

Alice truly didn’t think that her actions would bring such big trouble to the girl, and she couldn’t help but feel sorry for the other party. Fortunately, some of her psychic energy remained on the girl, so Alice could still track down the other party.

Thankfully, I brought one of the dogkins’ auxiliary totems with me.

Alice sighed in relief as she pulled out a small totem from her pouch. The totem had the carving of a dog’s head at the top, and it was an auxiliary totem belonging to the dogkins. Although this auxiliary totem’s search function wasn’t as powerful as the dogkins’ chief totem, it could still accomplish basic tracking with a very limited search radius.

However, this ability was more than enough for Alice’s use. She was currently inside the Royal Magic Tower, and the girl she was looking for was the only person carrying remnants of her psychic energy. Hence, as soon as Alice injected some of her psychic energy into the auxiliary totem, she promptly received a general direction from the totem.

Northeast… Upstairs, huh…

Alice lifted her head and looked in the direction where the totem pointed. The auxiliary totem couldn’t provide accurate coordinates like the chief totem, so Alice could only conduct her search following this vague direction.