I received the doctor's letter on Sunday afternoon. The doctor has locked the devil's whereabouts and decided to take action tonight. This time the devil did not go to the banquet. He hid in the "Royal Festival Concert Hall" in the east of the city under the identity of Victor Fanny.
The doctor's plan is simple and consists of three steps: sneak into the concert hall, find the demon, and defeat it.
There are other possibilities for a simple plan. The demon has already noticed that someone in the local area wants to hunt it. It doesn't know what the doctor is, but since he didn't flee the city overnight, there must be other tricks, so the doctor asked Shade to prepare for the battle, and he might encounter other situations tonight.
"The Royal Festival Hall?"
Hearing that Xia De was going to the concert hall to hunt demons tonight, the writer with a ruddy face and a pretty good spirit frowned slightly:
"Princess Resia and Margaret are also there for the concert tonight."
"Is it such a coincidence?"
This was somewhat beyond Xia De's expectations, but the two things should not be related. The devil hid in the concert hall because he was forced by the doctor. The princesses' appointment to go to the concert hall was also an itinerary decided yesterday.
Although doctors were the main force in hunting demons, Shade would not let down his guard. He prepared enough spellcasting materials for himself and brought all the relics that might be useful with him.
After doing all this, he left the cat and Dorothy at home after dinner and set out alone in a carriage with the night watchman. He found Dr. Schneider, who had arrived earlier, at the "Green Grass Tavern" east of Tobesk.
The "Grass Tavern" is a formal tavern located on Rodriguez Street, only 500 meters away from the Royal Festival Concert Hall. It is famous for its special grass-flavored beer. Of course, after Dr. Schneider ordered a glass, he thought the beer tasted quite strange and thought that the reputation of this place was exaggerated.
On winter nights, once night falls, the pub becomes crowded and no one notices Shad and the doctor sitting against the wall.
There were newspapers, notebooks, Rhodes cards and wine glasses on the table between the two of them, and a violin case containing the night watchman was placed on a chair nearby. Everything looked normal.
The violin case was also left by the previous detective, and Shade suspected that the other party did not buy the case just to hold the violin.
"I could feel that guy was inside the concert hall."
Dr. Schneider lowered his voice:
"I bought the architectural design of the concert hall from the black market. We will go in through the sewers later. Now is..."
"Seven o'clock, thirteen minutes and twenty-one seconds."
Xia De helped the doctor to adjust the time of his pocket watch.
"Yes, the next concert starts at eight o'clock. We will leave the pub at seven-thirty and sneak in when the tickets are checked. We will enter the concert hall from the sewer at eight o'clock. If the plan goes well, we will be out within an hour."
The doctor handed Shade a small cloth bag containing various spells. In addition to the basic silencing spell, there were also spells to assist in illusion, invisibility, eliminate odors, and suppress light.
The doctor, as a student of the School of Mechanical Engineering, was the best at alchemy among the five. In his opinion, the biggest problem tonight was not whether they could defeat the demon, but whether they could hide well and not be discovered.
"I made several backup plans."
The doctor showed Shade his notebook again:
"Even if the plan goes wrong, we have ways to remedy it."
Xia De nodded:
"If that's the case, I wonder if you have any plans for the current situation. Two high-level sorcerers are entering here now."
He looked at the doctor and shook the glass towards the door.
Dr. Schneider glanced at the door, then his face changed and he lowered his head to look at the newspaper on the table, as if he was interested in the obituary on the left side:
"It was strange that old Barkindo died, as he was clearly on the eve of leaving office."
The doctor said pretentiously, and after confirming that the two gentlemen in black coats who entered the door did not walk over here, he carefully told Xia De:
"I don't know the other one. The taller one is a professor at St. Byron's Mechanical College. I once took his elective course, 'Alchemy of Precious Metals.' But why did the college professor come to Tobesk? Was he also here for the Wise Pyroxene?"
This kind of encounter with the college professor in the tavern was also encountered by Shad in Coldwater Harbor. Then he broke into the Aurora Mansion and encountered Desire in the secret room behind the damp chapel.
"The professors don't come here just to have a drink, do they?"
Shade said, not looking at them like the doctor, the senses of a high-ring warlock were very sharp.
"It's hard to say, but it has nothing to do with us."
The doctor emphasized to Shade:
"Our only target tonight is that demon. Don't worry about anything else."
After saying this, he stood up:
"But to be on the safe side, let's go outside now. It's not safe here anymore."
Although it was not a good idea to walk on the street on a winter night, the doctor was obviously afraid that staying in the pub would cause other trouble.
In short, the doctor took Shade to avoid the professors of the college and walked around the streets in winter for twenty minutes, which was considered as a way to familiarize himself with the terrain.
Seeing that the time was almost up, he took Shade to the alley outside the Green Grass Tavern on Rodriguez Street, and found an iron door in the middle of the alley that was almost integrated with the ground. The door was pressed under a pile of abandoned steam pipes. The doctor used his mind to move the pipes to the right, and Shade saw that the door was close to the wall. Judging from the degree of rust, no one had opened it for at least three years.
"It's the entrance for sewer maintenance, but because of the city's underground pipeline renovation, in order to prevent direct contact between biogas and gas pipelines, this section of the sewer has been abandoned."
As the doctor explained, he squatted down, took out a small copper key and inserted it into the keyhole on the side of the door. He twisted it hard and the key broke directly in the keyhole.
"It's okay, it's expected."
The doctor laughed dryly, looked around at both ends of the dark alley, whispered a spell, and then slammed his right hand on the ground. With a dull bang, the rusty iron door on the ground was directly opened, revealing the dark passage below.
The doctor climbed down the ladder first, followed by Shad, who did not forget to close the iron door that had popped open.
Compared to the cold ground, the disgusting sewer seemed damp and warm. Although the smell was bearable, Shade was still glad that he didn't eat much tonight.
"This way!"
Dr. Schneider, who reached the bottom of the ladder first, took out two candle ends from his pocket, lit them, and let them float beside him.
He checked his current location and checked if there were any other "visitors" in the sewer. After confirming that there was no problem, he waved to Xia De, and the two walked towards the depths of darkness together:
"Doctor, you should have prepared a way to deodorize it, right?"
Xia De did not forget to ask, with the smell the two of them were now carrying, if they appeared in the concert hall, people might be able to smell them across two corridors.
The dim light of the candle illuminated the way ahead, and rats and cockroaches moved forward with them in the dirty and narrow sewer. Although they often encountered accidents when traveling with the doctor, those "accidents" probably hated the smell of the sewer, so they quickly arrived under the concert hall.
This abandoned sewer was originally connected to the concert hall's warehouse, but the exit was blocked many years ago. After checking the architectural map of the concert hall, the doctor found another way, which was to dig a hole directly upwards from the position closest to the ground:
“It’s right here.”
The candle flew upwards, indicating the location confirmed by the doctor. And there was no need for Shade to do anything next. As a sixth-ring warlock, Dr. Schneider still had the ability to melt the stone wall.
He stretched out his hand, and then a ball of hot fire like magma appeared in his hand. The fireball continued to rise, like a burning knife cutting through the snow, quickly melting the rock wall above his head. Shade recognized that this was the flame of the Balrog. After the doctor devoured the demon, he could gain the power of the demon in this way.
The hole was soon opened, and above the head was the backstage spare parts warehouse on the first floor of the concert hall. This place would not be opened during the performance, so there was no light in the room.
So the two of them entered the concert hall smoothly. The doctor gave Xia De a brown leaf. After wiping the leaf on his clothes twice, the stench that had just been stained disappeared completely.
"It's not an alchemical item, it's the leaves of a special plant."
As if he had guessed what Shade was thinking, the doctor explained, and then gave Shade a white mask that only revealed the eyes and mouth:
"This is the alchemy tool."
He put an identical mask on his face, and as the mask "melted", the doctor's appearance changed into another person. Shade did the same, and after the mask melted on his face, he felt as if a layer of water film was wrapped around his face.
"Even a demon can't easily see through this disguise, which is very expensive, so we must make good use of this opportunity. Follow the plan and follow me."
After getting ready, the doctor leaned over the door to make sure that no one was in the corridor, and then opened the door a crack. When the middle-aged psychiatrist with blue eyes walked from the darkness to the light, the wriggling black mucus wrapped around his shirt, giving him a new piece of clothing.
Xia De followed in his newly changed clothes, stepped on the red carpet, and looked at the empty corridor that was brightly lit by gas lamps.
This meant that the two of them had officially entered the concert hall, and it also meant that Shad had once again followed Dr. Schneider and broken into someone else's house without permission.