Through the help of big wads of cash, Alice successfully rented an apartment near the magic town. She had rented the place for several months. Although she doubted she would stay in the Rhine Kingdom for more than a month, the apartment owner required renters to rent for a minimum of three months.

The reason Alice had chosen this apartment was that it was not only close to the magic town, but it was also located in an area with a low density of surveillance cameras. While this might sound like the apartment was situated in an unsafe district, it was exactly what Alice wanted for her accommodation. That way, she could reduce the risks of getting caught when she was up to no good.

Hence, although Alice found it a little wasteful, she still chose to rent this apartment unit. Meanwhile, only after verifying that there were no hidden cameras in the apartment did she dare to inspect the spy camera’s footage using her newly bought computer.

“Kurse… Information on this guy is quite easy to find.”

According to the camera footage, aside from a bunch of individuals who were clearly otakus, the only other person Lilith had interacted with was this middle-aged man named Kurse. After Lilith had wandered the convention for around two hours, Kurse suddenly appeared next to Lilith and said something to her.

Because the loli Dark Guard stood quite some distance from Lilith, the spy camera failed to capture what Kurse had said to Lilith. Even so, Alice still managed to find information on Kurse after conducting an image search on the internet.

The information Alice found on the human realm’s internet was quite ordinary. It generally spoke about Kurse’s position and achievements in the Rhine Kingdom. There wasn’t even any mention of him working as Lilith’s guard.

In contrast, the demon realm’s internet contained detailed information on Kurse. Not only did this information mention Kurse working as Lilith’s guard, but it even talked about his fighting style and some of the moves he often used. Moreover, after watching the latter half of the spy footage, Alice found that most of the information shared on the demon realm’s internet was accurate.

I guess the ones who understand you the most are usually your enemies. Or maybe it’s because the demon realm wouldn’t deliberately censor information on humans, Alice thought. However, Alice didn’t put too much attention on Kurse.

Kurse might be on Lilith’s side, but it was obvious that he was only responsible for ensuring Lilith’s safety. It was unlikely he would meddle in information collection. Hence, there was no point in conducting further investigations into Kurse. While Alice wasn’t trying to belittle Kurse, when it came to combat power, ten Kurses tied together wouldn’t be enough to survive even one of her panties.

The latter half of the spy footage showed the fight between Kurse and the Dark Guard. At this point, Alice could more or less guess what Kurse had previously said to Lilith. He had probably informed Lilith about a loli stalking her for more than two hours. Although the Dark Guard looked harmless on the surface, Kurse, as Lilith’s guard, should have noticed the loli’s suspicious behavior.

Meanwhile, after briefly trying to initiate contact with the Dark Guard and realizing there were no possibilities of communication, Kurse had promptly taken action to apprehend the Dark Guard for interrogation. However, the Dark Guard’s strength had exceeded Kurse’s expectations, and the two had fought for over ten minutes before an outcome was decided.

Although the fight ended in Kurse’s victory, Alice could tell that Kurse didn’t win because he possessed superior strength. Instead, it was because the Dark Guard was conflicted over whether she should fight or escape. During the fight’s climax, the Dark Guard even retracted her partially executed attack, which resulted in her suffering a fatal blow that nearly cut her body into two halves.

From the spy camera’s first person’s perspective, Kurse looked considerably stunned by the fight’s outcome. He looked greatly confused as to why the Dark Guard would suddenly cancel her attack. After all, because of this unexpected development, he had failed to control his strength properly and killed the Dark Guard with his attack, ruining his plan to capture the Dark Guard for interrogation.

Fortunately, the instant the Dark Guard got cut, she had used the opportunity where the mana of Kurse’s sword was glowing brightly to dig out the spy camera in her left eye socket and toss it under a car. This drastically reduced the possibility of Lilith and Kurser noticing the camera after the Dark Guard’s death. It was also fortunate that Lilith and Kurse did not inspect the Dark Guard’s eyes. Had they lifted the Dark Guard’s left eyelid, they would realize that her left eye socket was hollow.

.

Originally, Alice thought that this would be where the footage ended. However, be it intentionally or unintentionally, the lens of the spy camera the Dark Guard tossed just happened to be aimed in Lilith and Kurse’s direction after coming to a halt under the car. So, the camera captured some of Lilith’s and Kurse’s subsequent actions.

Firstly, after Kurse verified the Dark Guard’s death, Lilith approached the Dark Guard and took a few pictures of the Dark Guard’s face with her phone. Subsequently, Lilith and Kurse were greatly shocked when the Dark Guard’s corpse suddenly disintegrated into mana and vanished from an area. Finally…a new figure appeared by Lilith’s side.

The new arrival was a woman. Although the camera only captured the woman’s profile, Alice could still tell that the woman had a bold presence. The woman looked to be in her early twenties, roughly the same age as Catherine. She was dressed in a short-sleeved top and a pair of hot pants. She looked like a gyaru at first glance, and she didn’t look like someone who should be messed with.

However, through the footage, Alice saw Lilith showing the pictures she took to the gyaru before fiddling with her phone for a moment, looking like she was sending those pictures to the gyaru. So, Alice could quickly tell that this gyaru should be one of Lilith’s intelligence sources.

Her gyaru get-up… No matter how I look at it, she doesn’t look like someone involved with the government.

It was highly unlikely that the gyaru was a government official like Kurse. At the very least, she shouldn’t be a government official on the surface. So, Alice didn’t have high hopes that an image search of the gyaru would yield any useful information. However, surprisingly, her image search didn’t come up completely empty.

The Hot Girls on Icarus’s Night Market Street

Evidently, the image search didn’t yield any information directly related to the gyaru. Instead, Alice found several posts mentioning the hot girls frequently appearing in Icarus City’s Night Market Street. Moreover, because of the gyaru’s considerably outstanding appearance, many of her photos were shared on the internet.

At this point, Alice could already tell the gyaru’s real identity. Seeing as this gyaru was operating under a completely different identity on the surface, there was a 90% chance that she was a thief working under Lilith. This gyaru might even be responsible for making Alice’s fake student ID.

In other words, if Lilith had any malicious ideas she wished to carry out, she would definitely make use of these thieves first. So, Alice’s next course of action would be to investigate the gyaru and the gang of thieves behind her to see if Lilith had any abnormal behaviors recently.

If Alice could verify that these thieves were not plotting anything against the Rhine Kingdom’s succession rights, Lilith could be ruled out of her list of suspects.

“But it’s not going to be easy to get into the thieving industry.” After pondering for a moment, Alice nodded and said, “It seems I’m going to have to trouble an old friend.”