The Tale of Hero Alice’s Social Death

As promised, Frosette handed the Royal Magic Tower's taboo catalog to Alice the next night.
The catalog also came with some additional information on the Royal Magic Tower.

After reading through the taboo catalog, Alice found that the Royal Magic Tower was indeed different from the typical magic academy.
Unlike the March Royal School of Magic, the Royal Magic Tower's focus wasn't on research.
The selection of taboos it collected was also strange and varied.

There was even a rather…unique taboo named “Pleasure Amplification.” The taboo's effects were exactly as its name suggested.
When cast, the taboo would use mana to stimulate certain parts of the target's body, heightening the target's sensitivity in those areas.
Aside from physical stimulation, the taboo would also provide emotional stimulation in a specific area.

In other words, this taboo was essentially a replacement of products that induced physical pleasure and X-pills.
While this taboo's effects seemed rather useless, the complexity of the taboo's mana operations and requirement for precision control was so far beyond the standard spell that it got put into the category of taboo.

After reading the taboo's description, Alice couldn't help but wonder if the inventor of this taboo had misinterpreted the meaning of “taboo” when he developed this taboo…

At the same time, though, the presence of such a cultured taboo also proved that the Rhine Kingdom's Royal Magic Tower was indeed different from the other magic academies.
Alice couldn't help but acknowledge that the Royal Magic Tower was truly daring to put such a taboo in its library.
Was it not afraid of misleading its students?

However, aside from such excessively offbeat taboos, Alice had also found a few taboos that interested her in the catalog.

For example, the “Dragon's Shadow” taboo Luna had used previously was also present within the Royal Magic Tower's collection.
Alice had even found a taboo named “Demon King's Shadow,” which was developed based on Dragon's Shadow.

Every taboo listed in the catalog came with a summarized description of its effects, and the Demon King's Shadow taboo was no exception.
Similar to Dragon's Shadow, Demon King's Shadow allowed the user to mimic the Tenth Demon King Fogallo Fold's shadow.
In turn, the user would gain a large amount of dark mana.

Of course, the developer of this taboo had never managed to activate it successfully.
In reality, most inventors of taboos lacked the ability to use the taboos they developed.
They had only verified the feasibility of their taboos through strict calculations and formulaic simulations.
It was similar to how the people of Earth had verified the existence of objects several light-years away even without seeing these objects in person.

Of course, gifted people capable of casting the taboos would also appear in this world from time to time.

“Demon King's Shadow… If it's developed based on the principles of Dragon's Shadow, does this mean that this taboo can create a replica of a Demon King that is capable of fooling the world?”

Alice was a little flabbergasted when she saw this taboo.
She couldn't help but be in awe of the bravery and lunacy of the researchers who developed this taboo.
Any normal person would never be able to come up with the idea of creating a “Demon King” to trick the world.

Moreover, even more astonishing was that this spell had been registered as a taboo.
In other words, many other scholars had researched this taboo and verified that it really was capable of accomplishing the desired effects.

Meanwhile, seeing as the Demon King this taboo replicated was the Tenth Demon King, the person who developed this taboo must've seen the Tenth Demon King in person before.

“Damn, I'm getting a little interested.”

Although Alice knew that replicating a Demon King capable of deceiving the world wasn't necessarily a good thing, she couldn't restrain her curiosity.
Even if she wasn't going to use it, she still wanted to read about the principles of this taboo.

Initially, part of the reason Alice had worked hard in learning taboos was that magic was new to her, while another part of the reason was that she liked the satisfying feeling she got from studying as a genius.
Thanks to her improved talent, she could quickly understand the knowledge she studied and put it to use.

However, Alice also developed a deep interest in taboos themselves as time passed.
At this point, even Lalu would frequently joke about her drive to study and say that she behaved more like the nerds in Class Group B than an all-rounder in Class Group C.

Aside from these interesting taboos, Alice had also found quite a few taboos that didn't belong to the general categories of offensive, defensive, and sealing taboos.
For example, there was this taboo called “Gravity Restitution.” According to the introduction, this was a taboo capable of rewriting the gravity values in the targeted area, and it was somewhat similar to the spells Grant had used previously.

The more time Alice spent reading the Royal Magic Tower's taboo catalog, the stronger her interest grew.
She was resolved to ask the Rhine King to let her learn these taboos when she met the other party next week.

However, sometime later, Alice noticed that the booklet Frosette handed to her didn't just include the Royal Magic Tower's taboo catalog.
There was also plenty of other information recorded at the back.

That's right… Today was supposed to be the day that the spy in the Royal Magic Tower exchanged information with Frosette.
The addition of the taboo catalog was only incidental.
Everything else here should be the information Frosette required.

Alice quickly came to a realization.
Although it was unfriendly for the humans and demons to spy on each other, Alice did not try to stop their actions.
After all, so long as the Hero and the Demon King did not initiate a fight, the chances of the human and demon realms going to war were zero.

Hence, the humans and demons could spy on each other as much as they wanted.
Everything was fine so long as they didn't discover the true identity of the Hero and the Demon King.

Although Alice wasn't particularly interested in learning the information the demons had collected on the humans, she still took a quick look.
However, when she reached a certain part of the weekly report, she saw something that made her frown.
Specifically, the demon spy working inside the Royal Magic Tower had written the following sentence in his report:

Prince Etoria has brought up that suggestion again.
Should we report this to the Four Heavenly Kings and Lord Demon King?

“Prince Etoria?”

Alice pondered for a moment and realized that she didn't seem to recognize this person.
Hence, she opened up her computer and typed in the words “Prince Etoria” into her search engine.

Immediately, several search results appeared on the webpage, and the topmost result linked to Prince Etoria's Magipedia page.
After clicking into the page, Alice was immediately attracted to one particular section:

“Etoria, the Rhine Kingdom's second prince.
The prince with the highest potential to inherit the throne…” Alice narrowed her eyes at these words.
“What suggestion did he make to the demons?”