The Tale of Hero Alice's Social Death - Chapter 323

Chapter 323 – The Tale of The Nobility’s Social Death

…

TL Notes:

Changes made to Chapter 315 (15th-August-2022):

Original:

The Gryffin Kingdom’s Princess Alice was one of only two people who had a chance of inheriting the Gryffin Kingdom.

Changed to:

The Gryffin Kingdom’s Princess Alice was potentially the only successor to the Gryffin Kingdom.

…

Since the Icarus City Anime and Game Convention was the grandest anime convention held in the Rhine Kingdom, the event host naturally prepared a place for cosplayers to change clothes. Specifically, dressing rooms were prepared all over the outside of the Franken Convention Center. Meanwhile, as an evil abuser of authority, Lilith had naturally gotten her hands on an exclusive dressing room.

Currently, though, inside Lilith’s exclusive dressing room, Lilith, the room’s owner, was wearing a fawning smile as she looked at Alice.

“It was my bad, Alice. Don’t be mad…” Lilith pleaded awkwardly as she looked at Alice sitting on a chair sulking. “Every noble would more or less have some kind of strange fetish, so you don’t have to be embarrassed about having one. You might not know this, but my second elder brother also has a strange fetish…”

Although Alice had already responded very quickly just now, because Lilith was holding onto her at the time, the other party could grab her twintails simply by lifting her hands. So, even though Alice had reacted quickly, she was still a beat too late to stop Lilith’s actions.

By the time Alice caught Lilith’s hands, Lilith had already taken off one of the “hair ties” keeping her twintails in place. Although the “hair ties” she used looked no different from an ordinary hair tie when it was all bundled up around her hair, as soon as it was removed, any person with discerning eyes could instantly tell what these “hair ties” really were.

It was fortunate that not many pedestrians nearby were paying attention to Alice and Lilith at the time. After all, although they were beautiful girls, it would be incredibly rude to stare at two girls up close. As for pedestrians standing further away, even if they noticed Alice and Lilith messing around, they’d have difficulty discerning that the “hair tie” in Lilith’s hand was actually a pair of white panties.

Afterward, it went without saying that Alice quickly snatched her panties back as quickly as she could. Then, she picked up her hat that had fallen to the ground, put it on, and walked to the dressing room Lilith previously mentioned in a huff.

Of course, despite her current angry performance, Alice wasn’t actually angry. Instead, she only behaved angrily to hide her anxiety and divert Lilith’s attention. If she behaved angrily enough, Lilith might shift her concern away from the topic of “Alice’s hair ties are panties” to the topic of “Alice is angry.”

Sure enough, Alice’s idea worked. Lilith was more concerned about Alice being angry at her than Alice using panties as hair ties. It should be known that Alice was the Gryffin Kingdom’s princess, while she was the Rhine Kingdom’s princess. If she ended up angering Alice in the Rhine Kingdom, it might become a diplomatic incident.

Strictly speaking, Lilith felt that she was at fault in this situation. After all, she had rudely laid her hands on Alice’s twintails and exposed Alice’s fetish in public. Though, if Lilith were to be honest, while Alice’s fetish was quite strange, it wasn’t uncommon to see such strange fetishes among nobles. Compared to some fetishes Lilith had seen among the Rhine Kingdom’s nobility, Alice’s act of using panties as hair ties could even be considered tame. Alice’s fetish was so harmless that Lilith didn’t even think it was worth using it as blackmail material. After all, the only thing she could achieve by exposing this fetish to the public was to give Alice a social death.

So, after a brief moment of surprise, Lilith quickly followed Alice and begged for Alice’s forgiveness like a fawning lackey. One shouldn’t be fooled into thinking they were on equal footing simply because they were both princesses. In reality, there was a huge gap between the Gryffin Kingdom’s sole successor and the Rhine Kingdom’s abandoned princess.

Moreover, personally speaking, Lilith was quite fond of Alice, who looked similar to her and shared similar hobbies. If possible, she didn’t wish for Alice to hate her.

However, Lilith’s concerns were unnecessary. Alice wasn’t actually angry at Lilith, much, much less hated her. She was only trying to gauge Lilith’s reaction. If Lilith was someone who couldn’t keep a secret, Alice wouldn’t mind using Consciousness Transformation on Lilith.

Fortunately, Lilith seemed quite sincere in her apology, and it didn’t seem like she was the type of person who couldn’t keep a secret. For example, even though Lilith had hinted at Etoria having a strange fetish, she never actually revealed Etoria’s fetish. Of course, even without Lilith mentioning it, Alice already knew that Etoria had a lolicon fetish. She even knew that the prince was keeping a dwarven university student outside the palace.

“Fine. I’ll forgive you,” Alice said, sighing. She was never angry, to begin with. She was simply concerned that Lilith would expose this so-called fetish of hers. While she wasn’t concerned about facing social death as the Gryffin Kingdom’s princess, she absolutely couldn’t afford to do the same with her identity as the Hero and the Demon King since these identities concerned her future.

“Great. That’s a relief.”

Lilith sighed in relief when she saw that Alice seemingly wasn’t as angry as she had imagined. However, she also noticed that Alice appeared very concerned about her reputation, so she made a mental note to carry Alice’s secret to the grave.

Then, seemingly thinking of something, Lilith suddenly tapped her head and said to Alice:

“By the way, you’ve never met my eldest brother, right, Alice?”

Lilith’s eldest brother. In other words, the Rhine Kingdom’s eldest prince—Collins Doyle. Alice had searched his information on the internet yesterday and found quite a lot of information on him, though most of it was information on his childhood. When he was young, Collins Doyle was a cute little boy, but King Haydn suddenly stopped attaching importance to him as he grew older. Because of that, Collins’ presence on the internet gradually faded, and there was very little information on him after he grew up.

Nowadays, hardly anybody talked about Collins on the internet. There weren’t even photos of his current appearance, and the most recent image was one that was taken over a decade ago. Alice doubted that anybody would recognize Collins even if he were to appear in public right now.

“As an apology, I’ll take you to meet my eldest brother. He is also attending the convention this time,” Lilith said as she pulled Alice out of her chair. Then, she smiled and continued, “Actually, my eldest brother is a regular at this convention. But because he hasn’t shown himself to the public as the prince for a long time now, most of the people acquainted with him don’t actually know he is the Rhine Kingdom’s eldest prince.”

Collins, is it…

Although Alice was a little confused as to why Lilith was using “a meeting with Collins” as an apology, she naturally didn’t object to Lilith’s arrangement. She had just been agonizing over how she could get in touch with the Rhine Kingdom’s eldest prince, and here Lilith was offering her the solution. The best part was, all she needed to do was throw a small tantrum to receive this opportunity.

Of course, it still didn’t change the fact that Alice found Lilith’s way of apologizing confusing. If she didn’t happen to be investigating the Rhine Kingdom’s princes, who could possibly feel the sincerity in Lilith’s apology?

…

TL Notes:

[1]the Gryffin Kingdom’s sole successor: I’m not sure if the author forgot about Kristine/Kryst or if Lilith is assuming that Alice is the only one with succession rights since Alice and Kryst are both Hatter’s “illegitimate daughters” and it didn’t make sense to give both illegitimate children succession rights to the throne.