Chapter 168

PHA – Chapter 168 – Please Welcome the Next Victim

After returning to Hall City, Alice returned to her quiet routine.

Although Lalu expressed her confusion toward Alice’s decision to read taboos with no practical value, Alice said that it was her hobby of reading about the principles of taboos. Thus, Lalu didn’t say anything about the matter.

At this point, Alice had already gained the reputation of a genius magician in the March Royal School of Magic. Even the students of other classes have heard about her reputation. So, Lalu simply assumed that Alice’s behavior was one of the eccentricities of geniuses. After all, even some of the students from Class Group B had started initiating conversations with Alice, and it seemed that they were getting along very well.

Class Group C’s students were mostly balanced magical talents, while Class Group B’s students were focused on research or those with special talents. Compared to Class Group C’s students, Class Group B’s students studied the principles of taboos much more thoroughly. Hence, when these students heard that the princess was also interested in taboo research, they quickly got acquainted with Alice.

Meanwhile, Alice’s unorthodox behavior created an awkward situation for the nobles of Class Group A. Ever since the princess entered the March Academy, the nobles had brushed up on their manners and political knowledge in preparation to mingle with her.

However, since Alice entered the March Academy until now, the students of Class Group A hadn’t exchanged more than three sentences with Alice. In contrast, the students of Class Groups B and C had grown very familiar with Alice. Whenever Alice met the students of Class Groups B and C on campus, she would even greet them with a smile. Yet, the students of Class Group A could only receive the princess’s cold gaze and her maid’s brutal fists.

Of course, some nobles had also tried less than scrupulous methods to approach Alice. These nobles were people who their respective families had already abandoned. Unless they could prove their worth to their respective families, they would be cast out of their families with nothing to their name once they graduated from the March Academy. Hence, these nobles had thought of using violence to coerce Alice into submission.

However, the consequences of their actions were…best left unmentioned. Those students would most likely be spending the rest of their lives in the mental hospital.

In any case, Alice’s academy life remained mostly uneventful. With the opportunity to interact with the research students of Class Group B, Alice managed to accelerate her taboo learning progress slightly. A month after returning to the March Academy, Alice had not only improved her mastery over the elves’ eleven taboos, but she had also managed to learn five new taboos. Overall, it was a rather pleasant result.

Alice had also made good progress on her research of Psychokinesis Transcendence. Thanks to the knowledge she learned from Psychokinesis Transcendence, she also had a much easier time understanding other taboos. Should her proficiency in Psychokinesis Transcendence improve in the future, her ability to learn other taboos should also improve.

However, Alice’s time in the March Academy wasn’t completely devoid of problems. There was one thing that distressed her a little: the lack of variety in the March Academy’s taboo collection. While the March Academy’s library housed many taboos, most of them were offensive spells, few were defensive spells, and even fewer were sealing spells. As for the other spell categories, there were no taboos for them whatsoever.

The problem with this lack of variety also existed among the taboos Alice learned from the elves. Of the elves’ eleven taboos, seven were offensive spells, three were defensive spells, and only one was a sealing spell. Similar to the March Academy’s taboos, the elves’ taboos were only limited to these three spell categories.

While the lack of defensive and sealing taboos was a problem, the complete absence of taboos for the other spell categories was an even bigger problem. According to Alice’s knowledge, the “Dragon’s Shadow” Luna used didn’t belong to any of the three aforementioned categories. Dragon’s Shadow was a special taboo capable of fooling the world and stealing the strength of a race. Unfortunately, the March Academy’s library did not possess any information on Dragon’s Shadow.

Other than Dragon’s Shadow, many other types of taboo also existed in this world, such as gravity- and soul-related taboos. However, Alice did not find any of these taboos in the library. This situation put Alice in a bind.

The reason Alice was frantically learning taboos was so that she would have more options when fighting the Demon King’s Power. If her opponent used a fire-type taboo, she would counter with a water-type taboo. If her opponent tried to run away, she would use a gravity-type taboo to control the other party. If her opponent tried to use an attack that couldn’t be countered, she would use a sealing taboo to interrupt the other party’s spellcasting.

She’d be putting the cart before the horse by simply increasing the size of her taboo repertoire without increasing its variation. So what if she learned a hundred fire-type offensive taboos? They would be rendered useless so long as her opponent possessed one water-type taboo.

I’ll have to find a way to scourge the rest of the world.

Alice was feeling a little torn. She was aware that the March Academy wasn’t hiding any taboos from her and that the taboos in the library were everything the academy had collected over the years. Hence, she couldn’t help but shift her attention to other places.

After all was said and done, the March Royal School of Magic was a place of education. Hence, the taboos the academy collected prioritized practicality above all else. Take the “Burning Star” taboo, for example. While the taboo had great offensive capabilities when cast as is, the main reason it was included in the March Academy’s library was because its principles were proven useful to society through the invention of the magic stove.

On the other hand, Dragon’s Shadow was a taboo that functioned to trick the world and grant the user the strength of the dragon race. Even if one learned Dragon’s Shadow’s underlying principles, it was unlikely that one could put these principles to use in civilian or military technology. One would only be able to maximize the taboo’s effects by casting it as is.

The various countries’ intelligence departments, military academy, and the inventory of other races…

Alice sat before her desk inside her dormitory as she wondered which location she should infiltrate next. Firstly, she could exclude the human realm’s other magic academies from her list. There was a high chance that these academies would be similar to the March Academy in that they collected only a small variety of taboos. Thus, there’d be no real value in visiting them.

On the other hand, the various kingdoms’ intelligence departments would be one of her priority targets. If Luna could learn a taboo like “Dragon’s Shadow” from the Gryffin Kingdom’s intelligence department, it meant that the various kingdoms’ intelligence departments should have more of such special taboos in their collection. For the time being, Alice shouldn’t have any trouble gaining access to the taboo archives of the Gryffin Kingdom’s intelligence department with her identity as the princess and Luna’s past affiliation with the department.

In the case of military academies, Alice shouldn’t have any problems gaining access to the Gryffin Kingdom’s military academy, either. After all, Catherine, the captain of the Gryffin Kingdom’s Royal Guards, had previously invited her to the military academy. Moreover, Catherine was aware of Alice’s identity as the Hero.

Meanwhile, as an academy focused on combat, the military academy might not have as big of a taboo collection as the March Academy, but most of the taboos it possessed should be useful in actual combat. However, whether the military academy possessed taboos outside of the offensive, defensive, and sealing categories or not was still unknown.

Aside from the various human kingdoms’ intelligence departments and military academies, Alice also had the option of learning the taboos of other races. Aside from humans, demons, and elves, there existed many other races in this world, such as beastkins and dwarves. Moreover, unlike the elves, these races often conducted cultural exchanges with other races, so the development of their taboos should be slightly superior to the elves. They also had much bigger populations than the elves.

Other than these places, there was still one more special location Alice felt that she needed to visit.

The Rhine Kingdom’s Royal Magic Tower…

Alice frowned when she looked at the information displayed on her computer. The Rhine Kingdom’s Royal Magic Tower was similarly regarded as a magic academy. However, it was different from the other magic academies found in the human realm.

The Rhine Kingdom’s royal family had constructed the Royal Magic Tower, and it was considered the most unique existence out of all the magic academies that existed in the various human kingdoms. The royal family had done an excellent job keeping the tower’s information confidential, and even in the current day of information technology, very little information could be found on the Royal Magic Tower on the internet. Even Alice had only learned of the Royal Magic Tower’s uniqueness by asking Frosette, the March Academy’s “Academy Know-It-All.”

Frosette had previously mentioned that the demons had planted spies in the five human kingdoms’ best magic academies. In other words, the demons should have a spy in the Royal Magic Tower. This led Alice to wonder if she should rely on the demons to infiltrate the Rhine Kingdom’s Royal Magic Tower.

While Alice was considering how she should expand the comprehensiveness of her taboo repertoire, her phone suddenly rang and interrupted her thoughts.

After looking at the caller ID, Alice was momentarily stunned to learn that it was Hatter calling her.

…

TL Notes:

(21st-March-2022)

I’ve changed the “Langir Kingdom” in Chapter 59 to “Rhine Kingdom.”