As for the various versions of "The Lovers of the Clock Tower", Shade had learned a lot from Dorothy and Resia during the study every Saturday. The piece performed by the "Golden Dawn Opera Company" this time was closer to the original version of this fairy tale recorded in the ancient documents unearthed in the Fifth Age.
Most of the earliest versions of fairy tales have nothing to do with descriptions such as "innocent and kind". On the contrary, they are extremely realistic and even have some horror elements. Perhaps the young witches in the Fifth Age were believed to need to be exposed to such stories from an early age.
Although this kind of story is not suitable for children in the current Sixth Age, it is indeed very suitable for adults.
In the darkened box, while Shad and the blonde princess were being affectionate, the grand performance downstairs had already attracted waves of applause. The reputation of the "Golden Dawn Opera Company" was not only supported by Miss Benanis, who had not been on stage for many years. When Shad hugged Margaret and thought about this ancient fairy tale, he really felt that every witch, in addition to her own power, must have other extraordinary qualities.
"Hold the snow on the top of the mountain and watch the sun in the depths of the desert."
"If you could meet us, dear girl~~"
“Please call our names softly and ask any questions you have.”
"Where the lilies are in bloom, or, westward where the sunflowers are."
Margaret didn't care about the performance downstairs, but hugged Shade's neck and hummed the witches' ballad softly. Seeing Shade looking at her, she smiled and said to him:
"It's a great day like this. Why don't you open a detective agency in Willendal?"
"From my experience, wherever I go, something bad will happen. The people of Willendel will not welcome me."
Xia De said this very carefully, then lowered his head and gave the squinting princess another kiss, and the latter became even happier:
"My decision was right. Becoming a witch apprentice is what I want. I can get..."
Her white teeth bit her lower lip, and her eyes were about level with Shad's nose, so she had to speak from a bottom-up perspective:
"Everything. Shade, come to Willendel City as soon as possible. I promised you that as long as you see me in Willendel, I will definitely give you a gift."
As he said this, he put his arm around Xia De's neck and tried to change his sitting position, but suddenly he saw Xia De turning his head to look outside the door:
"Footsteps... a lot of heartbeats, a lot of people are coming, the heartbeats are very fast."
Sure enough, a few seconds later, there was a knock on the door from outside, and the knock was quite urgent:
"Your Highness! Your Highness!"
"What's going on?"
Margaret stood up, smoothed the wrinkles on her skirt, and made sure that her upper body was dressed properly. Finally, she threw her long hair behind her shoulders. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, let the blush on her face fade, used magic to calm her mind, and then opened the door.
In addition to her maids, there were also several royal attendants who were originally at the stairs. In addition to the people who were already here, among the strangers, Margaret recognized the chief of the Blast Furnace City Police Department, Michaela, whom she had only met twice, and the gray-gloved agents who were secretly protecting her. Margaret looked directly at the tall and thin man among them. The latter had an ordinary appearance, but he was the leader of this special operations team:
"Your Highness, there was a shooting in the alley on the north side of the opera house. It was fired with a silencer at least twenty minutes ago. The victims were cleaners at the theater. Their clothes were stolen. We suspect... at least three gunmen entered here."
Margaret's face darkened, and she only opened the door of the box a crack to ensure that people outside the door could not see the sofa because of the angle. She looked back at this moment, but did not see Shade, only a silver cat standing on the back of the sofa, looking at her with its silver eyes piercing.
Although she had not seen Shad's Transfiguration with her own eyes, she had heard about it from Miss Sylvia, who had heard about it from Audrey Edwards. Therefore, she immediately understood what Shad meant and said to the nervous people outside the door:
"No need to panic. I need to leave now, right?"
"Yes, Your Highness. I am sorry to disturb your interest, but according to our security regulations, you'd better leave now. Your Highness, the carriage is ready, and the streets are quiet now."
The tall and thin man said, Margaret sighed, but still said helplessly:
"Okay, I won't make it difficult for you. But wait a moment, I need to pack my things."
"Okay, Your Highness. For safety reasons, please hurry."
No one asked Margaret what she was going to pack in the opera box. The princess called her two personal maids in and asked them to clean up the marks on the sofa. She put away Shade's belongings and picked up the silver cat and put it on her shoulder. Shade released an illusion and hid himself. The spellcasting ability of the cat form was greatly weakened, but fortunately the cat was smaller, so it was still easy to hide from others.
After getting ready, Margaret left the box and, under the nervous escort of a group of people, came to the side door of the opera house from the hidden staircase on the side. The guards who had already gone downstairs in advance escorted two carriages to the alley outside the side door.
Surrounded by a crowd of people, Margaret and her two maids boarded the first carriage, and two of the remaining maids boarded the last carriage. The two carriages drove out of the alley one after another, but drove in different directions.
Among them, the carriage carrying Margaret drove eastward along Glass Bottle Avenue in front of the Glass Bottle Opera House in the silent night. But in just five or six minutes, it suddenly drove into an alley on the side.
The alley was specially widened to facilitate the passage of the water truck of the City Hall Fire Department, and it was not narrow at all for a carriage to pass through.
The streets and alleys were indeed very quiet. There was a gas street lamp every few hundred meters in the alley. But before the people in the carriage could react, the driver suddenly jumped off the carriage in the dark area between two lamps.
He rolled on the ground swiftly and picked up the pistol he had put in a nearby trash can. The horses were still moving forward, and in front of the alley, dozens of people emerged from the roofs, behind the garbage dumps, and even from the sewers. Under the cover of the night, they pulled the trigger at the carriage that was still rushing forward due to inertia.
Because each gun was equipped with a silencer, and they were specially selected pistols with low kinetic energy, the continuous gunfire did not disturb the quiet night. The flames lit up one by one and then disappeared, and the muffled sound made everyone watching this scene feel more depressed.
Originally, the royal family members should have ridden in a fully metal carriage, and the carriage should also be made of metal, but this time the carriage was made of wood. Holes were punched into the wooden walls, and after the first round of shooting, the alley was filled with the smell of gunpowder. The assassins skillfully changed the magazines and prepared for the second round of attack, but at this moment, a sharp creaking sound was heard in the silent alley, and everyone saw the carriage door being pushed open. A man actually walked out of the carriage that was supposed to be only the princess and two maids:
"Where did you find this broken carriage? The metal shaft of the door can be used as a tetanus infection weapon."
Xia De frowned and jumped off the carriage. He opened his clenched right hand and let the metal bullets fall to the ground with a clatter. The speed of the bullets that passed through the wooden boards of the carriage was really slow.
Looking around, even though there was no light, his eyes could still clearly see the positions of all the gunmen and confirmed that everyone present was an ordinary person.
The gunmen said nothing. Suddenly, the driver next to the trash can aimed at his head and pulled the trigger. Xia De didn't even turn his head. He quickly raised his right hand and clenched it in front of his shoulder.
He maintained this posture, then turned around and looked at the driver who couldn't believe what he saw, and then spread out his palms.
Although there was no light in this specially chosen alley, the gunmen were still able to see a bullet-shaped object lying in the palm of the young man. As the palm tilted, the object fell to the ground and collided with the bullets, making a clinking sound.
This was the first time that Xia De caught a bullet with his hands. As an outsider, he thought it was a difficult task, but he found it very simple when he actually did it. With his current physical fitness, he could see the flight trajectory of this small-caliber pistol bullet very clearly. It was much easier to catch a bullet that could not turn than to catch Mia who was jumping around.
"That's why I say that only low-level sorcerers are afraid of weapons in the hands of ordinary people."
He thought to himself, and the black chain in his sleeve fell to the ground—
stop!
After he raised his hand the next time, the sound of chains breaking through the air suddenly exploded in the alley. But the chains were quickly taken back by Shade. He turned around and spoke to Margaret in the car. Behind him, the trash can, the upright metal pipes, and the cabinets thrown on the roadside were neatly split in two, and the bodies of the twelve living people hidden in various corners of the alley were quickly wrapped in pink crystals. After their bodies turned into pink crystal clusters, they exploded into crystal fragments one by one. And the crystal fragments quickly disappeared silently on the ground.
"It's solved, but how do you explain this? Does the church know that you are a student of the Sukses Higher Medical School? You should have this tacit understanding."
Shad asked Margaret in the carriage, while the two maids beside her had fallen asleep.
"Don't worry about that. You deal with the body, and how I explain it is my own business."
Her Royal Highness the Princess said, and then they all heard a slight explosion behind them. Turning around, they saw a spinning black and gold vortex appear out of thin air in the alley, and Miss Sylvia, Miss Benanis, and Megan, three witches wearing high heels, walked out together.