The Tale of Hero Alice’s Social Death

Chapter 248: The Fish That Got Away

Knocking everyone in the hall unconscious turned out to be a more troublesome task than Alice had initially anticipated. This was because she needed to verify whether these people were actually unconscious or not. Then, she would need to ensure that whoever remained conscious became unconscious.

However, this was too tedious of a task, and someone could potentially fool her with their acting. So, Alice took a different approach to this problem, casting Waterball on everyone in the hall to wake them up before knocking them unconscious with a hit to the head. She would only consider a person truly unconscious after she had sent them off to slumberland with her fist. Everyone else was playing dead in her eyes.

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When the conscious people in the hall saw Alice's "cruel" methods, they quickly abandoned their resistance. Originally, some of these people had thought of fooling Alice by pretending to be unconscious. Then, they would see what the cloaked midget was up to.

However, when they saw Alice nearly breaking the foot of a person, who continued pretending to be conscious after being soaked by Alice's Waterball, the others in the hall dared not continue acting. From how they looked at it, Alice was willing to do anything to wake a person. Had the unlucky fellow, who had tried to continue playing dead, not cried out in pain, Alice might have broken his foot for real.

Thanks to everyone's cooperativeness, Alice got to offer her slumber package to everyone in the hall much sooner than expected. Although she had to employ some physical persuasion with a few customers, it was a sacrifice she was willing to make to ensure her customers received her services without any delays.

"That takes care of everyone here," Alice said as she scanned the main hall. As for the people outside the castle and on the castle's second and third floors, she didn't bother to extend her services to them. Even if some of those people remained awake, they couldn't see what was happening in the main hall.

Of course, Alice had completely forgotten that she could have simply used her right hand to verify whether a person was truly unconscious or just pretending to be unconscious. After all, unless a person had a specific type of fetish, their body would subconsciously resist her right hand's ability so long as they were awake.

Ignorant of the blunder she had just made, Alice walked to the short pedestal that used to hold the Radioactive Soul Stone and analyzed its internal structure using Psychokinesis Transcendence. Then, she found that the pedestal was indeed not an ordinary object. Specifically, it had anti-inspection magic cast on it to prevent others from analyzing it.

However, Psychokinesis Transcendence was no ordinary magic, so Alice easily bypassed the pedestal's anti-inspection magic.

But is it really beneath this thing?

Through Psychokinesis Transcendence's analysis and exploration, Alice quickly found a narrow passage under the pedestal. Then, following this passage, she found that it was connected to a huge underground space.

Evidently, this underground space was a secret room in Demon King Castle. Meanwhile, this secret room belonged to either Grant or the Demon King preceding Grant. Whichever the case it was, it was still worth the effort to check it out.

This spell that isolates mana is quite interesting. But it doesn't seem capable of blocking taboo-level spells.

Alice walked up to the pedestal and crouched down before it. Afterward, she extended a hand to the pedestal and felt around for a moment, quickly finding a hidden mechanism. With a single click, she caused a cover of some sort on top of the pedestal to loosen. Then, she removed this cover to reveal a small magic array.

Unfortunately, while Alice managed to locate the hidden mechanisms in the pedestal using Psychokinesis Transcendence, her mastery over the taboo wasn't high enough that she could analyze anything and everything. Specifically, analyzing physical objects was easy, but analyzing spells was difficult, and analyzing magic arrays was even more difficult.

However, Alice couldn't be bothered to waste too much time on this small magic array. Instead, she opted to impart the "Fireball Magic Array" concept onto this magic array using Aspect Separation. Then, she effortlessly unraveled this magic array.

Once Alice unraveled the magic array, she could feel the whole pedestal coming loose. So, she stood up and kicked the pedestal.

Sure enough, the pedestal smoothly moved aside as if it had wheels attached to it, revealing a staircase underneath it.

"Got it."

Alice chuckled softly. Then, she stepped onto the staircase and returned the pedestal to its original position on her way in. Even if someone woke up afterward, they wouldn't know that there was a secret entrance here.

However, after Alice entered the secret passage, a figure suddenly started moving in the hall. Evidently, Alice did not have the chance to catch this scene.

"Ouch, it hurts Who is that person? How did a little guy like that drain everyone's mana in an instant?"

Surprisingly, the person who moved was the pink-haired female streamer Alice had encountered outside the castle's entrance. After sitting up, the girl massaged the back of her neck, which was also the spot Alice had struck just now. While the other demons had fallen unconscious after getting struck once by Alice, this pink-haired girl was an exception.

Of course, that wasn't to say that the pink-haired girl possessed great strength that allowed her to resist Andusia's magic and Alice's physical abuse. In fact, she was part of the group that fell unconscious as soon as Andusia's spell took effect. Only, due to the self-defense tool she carried around because of her special identity, she managed to regain consciousness much sooner than everyone else. Although her self-defense tool had lost most of its functionality after its mana was drained by Andusia, the little defensive capabilities it retained allowed her to avoid staying unconscious for too long.

Meanwhile, when the pink-haired girl regained consciousness, it just so happened that she saw Alice opening and walking into the secret passage.

"My phone"

Due to her self-defense tool, the pink-haired girl retained a bare minimum of mana in her body. So, she still managed to get herself to stand up from the ground. Then, after standing up, she pulled her phone out of her pocket, the phone's screen lighting up when she pushed the power button.

The girl's phone was different from the average person's phone in that it was a military-grade phone. Aside from mana, her phone also operated on other sources of energy. So, once her phone lost access to mana, it automatically began running on its backup batteries.

Unfortunately, even though the girl's phone could continue operating normally, it couldn't connect to the internet since all of the mana in the area was gone. So, when she checked her streaming application, the message "No connection to the internet. Live broadcast has been disconnected."

"Dammit. Who is that bastard"

The pink-haired girl gnashed her teeth as she uttered a complaint. Then, she looked toward the pedestal that had returned to its original position and stumbled her way to it. Unfortunately, the pedestal refused to budge when she tried pushing it.

"I remember that person touching this place"

The girl frowned and mimicked Alice's actions and groped around the pedestal. She quickly found a small indent and exerted some force on it, causing a metal cover on top of the pedestal to come loose. Then, she removed the metal cover to reveal a magic array.

Originally, the girl thought that this magic array would be the biggest hurdle preventing her from opening the secret passage. However, after she inspected this magic array for a moment, her expression turned a little strange.

The magic array having a complicated appearance was something she could understand. After all, beneath the pedestal might be where the rumored Demon King's treasure was hidden. It was only natural for the magic array meant to keep this treasure locked away to be complicated.

However, the conclusion she got from researching this magic array wasstrange, to say the least. Despite the complexity of its design, the magic array's ultimate purpose was actuallyto create a fireball?

When the girl tried to unravel this magic array like she would unravel a Fireball Magic Array, the result she got rendered her utterly speechless. It turned out that this complicated magic array really was just a glorified Fireball Magic Array. It wasn't even made to be more difficult to unravel than your average Fireball Magic Array

"What the hell Is this even the way to the Demon King's secret room? Why is it locked behind a Fireball Magic Array?"

The pink-haired girl couldn't help herself from uttering a complaint as she pushed the pedestal away. Then, when she looked at the staircase leading underground, she hesitated for a moment before going inside.