Chapter 374: 375

How Alice was supposed to investigate King Haydn was a problem. According to Alice’s understanding, King Haydn had delegated a significant portion of his authority to other people so that they could help him with his work. He was a completely different ruler compared to Hatter, who’d spend most of his time cooped up in the palace working.

After sneaking into the Rhine Kingdom’s palace multiple times across several days, Alice concluded that King Haydn would only spend five hours working in the palace each day. His work hours were also random. Overall, he looked like he had a much easier time being king than Hatter.

Of course, King Haydn’s actions also came with risks. The more people King Haydn delegated power to, the more likely it was for him to breed corruption in his government. After all, not everyone could behave selflessly when granted great power. This was why Hatter had chosen to directly involve himself in most, if not all, important governmental affairs. Though, in exchange for a corruption-free government, Hatter had to work himself to the bone.

Fortunately, King Haydn wasn’t a fool. It would seem that he was aware that his action of delegating power to others would lead to the potential breeding of corruption, as he had made significant investments in strengthening his kingdom’s police force and intelligence department. Therefore, most officials who had gone corrupt would be quickly identified and arrested. The arrest of these officials would even be announced through news channels to assure the Rhine Kingdom’s citizens that their government was actively combating corruption.

Despite how much of a slacker he is, it seems he is still a relatively good king. He doesn’t touch upon his personal affairs when he is working.

After investigating King Haydn for some time, Alice found that the other party would never talk about private matters when he was at work. While this was a praiseworthy work ethic for a king, his behavior made it highly unlikely for him to slip up and reveal any clues during work.

Moreover, contrary to Alice’s initial assumption, Gunst had never shown up in King Haydn’s office during these past few days. This was incredibly strange, no matter how she looked at it. After all, the captain of the kingdom’s royal guards wielded great authority and responsibility. Logically, Gunst should have come to report to King Haydn at least once every one or two days. Yet, Gunst did not do so, which was a stark contrast to Catherine, who would visit Hatter’s office at least several times a day.

After thinking about it, Alice felt that Gunst was most likely meeting King Haydn in private and outside the palace. Hence, he did not have to go through the trouble of visiting King Haydn in the palace.

Hence, Alice eventually decided she would shift the focus of her investigation to King Haydn’s private life.

…

I should have changed the meeting time…

Alice sighed in frustration as she looked at the box in her hands. Originally, after she was done observing King Haydn this morning, she had planned to follow his car and see where he would go after work. However, it just so happened that she had agreed to meet with KG Company’s representative today.

KG Company had completed the figurine Alice commissioned yesterday and asked her when she would like it delivered to her. Alice didn’t think much about it at the time and simply said they should complete the handover at noon the next day. What Alice didn’t expect was for King Haydn to start work in the morning the next day and finish his work by noon.

Hence, although Alice wished to continue her investigation on King Haydn, she had no choice but to dismiss this thought.

However, Alice wasn’t worried King Haydn would do anything major when she wasn’t observing him. As the “Demon King,” she had the final say in whether the demons would invade the human realm or not. So long as she kept her mouth shut, Mador, the demon spy operating in the Royal Magic Tower, wouldn’t agree to King Haydn’s alliance, and the demon army wouldn’t enter the human realm.

Alice had originally been worried that the person trying to ally with the demons would take action against the throne ahead of time after failing to get a reply from the demons. However, she no longer had to be concerned about that problem anymore since she was all but certain that King Haydn was the mastermind, and his goal wasn’t actually the throne but the demons instead.

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Hence, even if Alice dragged things out a little bit, there was no risk in King Haydn carrying out his plan in advance. After all, if there weren’t enough demons in the Rhine Kingdom, he’d have no way to collect the demon mana he needed to convert the Demon King’s Shadow taboo.

Moreover, the sooner Alice recovered Andusia, the sooner she could obtain Andusia’s suggestions on some of the matters troubling her. Although Andusia was unreliable at times, her experience as a Demon King was the real deal. Andusia knew a lot more about magic than Alice did. Hence, in Alice’s mind, collecting the figurine from KG Company was equally as important as investigating King Haydn.

Anyway, after meeting with KG Company’s representative in a toy store in Icarus City, Alice collected the figurine she commissioned and unboxed it immediately. Fortunately, KG Company kept to their promise and perfectly carved the block of Living Wood into a miniaturized version of Magical Girl Hikari. The figurine even came in the same pose as the pose Andusia maintained in front of Lilith.

Now, all Alice had to do was insert a remnant human soul into the figurine, and it would gain the external characteristics of a human. Then, she could swap Andusia with this figurine without Lilith ever noticing that her precious figurine had gone missing.

After returning the figurine to its box, Alice left the toy store and returned to her rented apartment. Her plan was to put this figurine at home before heading to the Royal Magic Tower’s library to read about remnant souls.

Although soul magic was considerably niche in this world, there were still some books on soul magic in the Royal Magic Tower. With Alice’s current talent for magic, she shouldn’t have any problems learning a spell that would allow her to extract a small portion of her soul.

However, after walking for roughly ten minutes while immersed in her thoughts, Alice suddenly stopped walking. Before she realized it, the pedestrians around her had disappeared. The shops nearby were also closed and vacant. This was strange no matter how she looked at it. After all, it was currently noon, and her current location wasn’t a deserted area. It was also very close to the magic town. Logically, this place should be bustling with people.

It didn’t take Alice more than a moment to realize that someone had deliberately cleared this area. Moreover, whoever had done so was influential enough to force the owners of the nearby shops to stop doing business for the day and disperse the pedestrians in the area. Yet, whoever had cleared out, this area did not chase her away. It was as if they had cleared out this area for her specifically.

Narrowing her eyes, Alice scrutinized her surroundings. She could roughly guess why someone had gone through the trouble of clearing this area. Although she had long since known that someone would come looking for her because of that, she didn’t think the other party would appear so soon.

Immediately, with her left hand holding onto the figurine box, Alice inserted her right hand into the pouch tied to her waist and pulled out a small black collar. The collar was none other than the Pollution Roulette she had retrieved from the treants’ territory some time ago. At this point, Alice was certain that there was some kind of tracking magic placed on the Pollution Roulette, and this tracking magic had allowed the culprit behind the treant settlement’s pollution to find her.

Moreover, it would seem that the culprit behind the action still wasn’t aware of her identity. Otherwise, there was no way they’d attack her without trying to negotiate beforehand.

However, it wasn’t surprising that the other party didn’t know Alice’s identity. Alice normally wore a large sun hat to hide her face and golden hair when going outside, so she only looked like an ordinary girl with short stature in the eyes of others. Very few people would look at her and think of Alice the Gryffin Princess, and even fewer would link her to Alice the Hero.

As they say, haste makes waste.

Seeing as the other party didn’t even bother to identify her before taking action, Alice could tell that the other party was in quite a hurry to retrieve the Pollution Roulette. Unfortunately, this urgency would also be their undoing.

After tossing the Pollution Roulette into the air and catching it, Alice looked at the entrance of an alley to her right and said:

“That person hiding over there. If you’re aiming for this Pollution Roulette, you can come out now.”

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