She was the Saintess of the Humble Family, whose name was synonymous with intelligence.
Compared with the corruption tactics of long ago,
the Demon Race had evolved long ago, thanks to Lance.
Put simply, gambling, sex, and the addictions caused by Herbs were fundamentally the same.
They relied on coercion and psychological attacks.
Though terrifying, they ensnared 99 percent of people who tried them.
But once you understood them—once you grasped their essence—
you could understand one thing:
this wasn't mind control.
It was control of the body.
The sensations produced by the body were fed back to the soul.
If chemistry had existed back then, there would have been a word for it:
mental control carried out through hormones.
The clever trick Lance had devised back then was to separate body and soul.
It was like saying, "You made my body feel good, but that doesn't mean my soul has surrendered."
Once I separated myself from my five senses, you had nowhere left to invade, and my mind cleared in an instant.
In the past, people had cared too much about morality. So when they crossed a line, they'd despair, question themselves, and then give up on themselves.
That was the essence of it.
Then, after being controlled time and again, those corrupted people came to believe they could never turn back, and became slaves of the Demon Race.
But Lance had truly solved the problem once and for all.
He developed a complete treatment: remove them from the environment, treat their bodies, and restore them to their former condition.
Once their bodies had recovered, they wouldn't suffer such intense bouts of addiction.
It was like getting rid of the drug's effects.
Without the environmental influence, they wouldn't be subjected to brainwashing either.
It was like how casinos had