New Gods of North America

There is a saying that goes like this -

When you find one cockroach in your house, there may be thousands of them lurking in dark places where you haven’t noticed them.

Although this statement may be a bit exaggerated,

But after using the "pesticide" called "purification ritual", the number of murderers has increased.

Then things are obviously more troublesome than imagined.

Wayne and David Mills reported the situation to Pastor Bazzini who was in charge of handling the incident.

Although Pastor Bazini still appeared calm on the surface, he immediately gathered everyone together to discuss countermeasures.

Even Inissa, who had been excluded from the discussion by Pastor Bazini intentionally or unintentionally, was called into the meeting room.

By the way, Lina was also brought along - Pastor Bazzini's original words to Wayne were, "Call all the experienced professionals in your detective agency as well."

After everyone is gathered,

Tom Hagen, who held a high position but did not have on-site command authority, became a kind of conference host.

So he started by throwing out some ideas:

"From the perspective of handling emergencies, I brought more than 20 well-trained exorcists this time. Pastor Bazzini has also mobilized a similar number of mobile personnel. There are also more than 10 bounty hunters or 'agents' from Wayne's detective agency. If they are used for direct confrontation, then the combat effectiveness should be more than enough.

"But the problem now is that we may still be going around in circles in the fog set up by the event planner. If we speculate based on the previous patterns, the other party's plan may be completely completed within two days. The most important thing now is to buy time."

Then Tom Hagen called the names of the students one by one according to their seats and asked everyone to express their opinions.

A local exorcist in Georgeberg suggested continuing to increase the level of the purification ritual until the extraordinary influence exerted on the two suspects was completely eliminated, and then sorting out the clues to find the murderer.

David Mills still believes that this treatment is too harsh:

"If the planner of the incident focused on 'hiding himself', then I think even if we did that, the possibility of obtaining effective clues would still be small. Moreover, some abilities have heavy 'backlash', and the impact may be forcibly purified in the end, but the person is also crazy.

"And the problem now is that two local church staff have been found to be affected. If there are more, don't we have to continue to 'purify' them one by one? If this continues, I don't think we will have to deal with all the local clergy ourselves, even without the other party continuing to take action.

"I think we should put aside the distractions for now. Assuming the murderer is planning a ritual, we should seize the time today to prepare defenses at the next location and directly cut off the other party's ritual process. This way, even if we can't catch the murderer for the time being, we can prevent the situation from getting worse."

Hunters like Inissa seem to prefer to think about how to capture prey:

"I also think that 'interrupting the ritual' is a feasible and effective method. However, from the perspective of 'ending the incident', since the murderer behind the scenes is hiding so deeply, if he is let go this time, he may commit crimes again in the future, and it may be more difficult to arrest him.

"From previous situations, it seems that the criminal suspect named Roy Stampler used a strong control ability when committing crimes, and he could even control others to commit suicide. And now we have found the same ability in two different people.

"So I suspect that the extraordinary ability of the murderer behind the scenes may have the attribute of 'granting' or 'borrowing'. For such abilities to spread, they usually need to meet specific conditions, and the loss of spiritual power will not be very low. Therefore, as long as the murderer behind the scenes is still a 'human', he cannot create 'accomplices' or 'scapegoats' indefinitely. He must also have some direct or indirect connection with the two people who have been discovered.

"If we hurry up and investigate before the ritual is completed or fails, we should have a chance to find the real culprit behind it."

Lina thinks everything is fine, and even a little bit sinister:

"If the murderer can even copy memories multiple times, then the so-called "sins" that can be seen on others and the arrangements at the crime scene may all be traps deliberately set by the murderer to lure investigators to waste time. In this case, I think the ritual that both suspects have said they were unaware of should be the key point.

"So now that we know the 'target' of the murderer behind the scenes, you might consider placing the 'target' where they should be, and then lure the murderer to continue committing crimes..."

Wayne glanced at Pastor Bazzini at this time.

As the theoretical "ultimate target" of this series of cases, Pastor Bazzini's expression did not change after hearing this proposal. He just nodded to indicate that he was listening.

Then it was Wayne's turn.

Wayne didn't really have anything to say at this time, but since it was his turn, he could only say something:

"I think what everyone said makes sense...it just depends on what Pastor Bazzini decides."

In fact, according to Wayne's own idea,

The biggest question at the moment is whether the person behind the scenes wants to "complete the ceremony" or wants to "embarrass the church."

If it is the former, then whether it is "interrupting the ritual" or "pretending to fish", the murderer should react, either running away quickly or gritting his teeth and taking a gamble.

If it was the latter, then the ceremony might be completely fake. Just as Inissa said, it might be an illusion created by some special extraordinary ability, the purpose of which was to attract the attention of the local church and then take the opportunity to do something strange.

But the situation was already chaotic enough, and the solutions were roughly the same, so Wayne did not jump out to make the problem more difficult.

No more special suggestions.

The meeting soon came to the point where Pastor Bazini had to make a decision.

Anyway, this is the number of people that have been assembled so far.

If it was a clear target, such as attacking a police station or rushing into a city office to kidnap the mayor, it might not be too difficult.

But if they were to spread out completely within the area of ​​George Berg, this small number of people might not be able to check out half of the city within two days.

It would be feasible to focus only on investigating people related to the church, but then we wouldn't be able to take care of other things.

In the end, Pastor Bazini chose the "fishing" plan:

“Let’s escort Mr. Schultz back to the manor first, and then gather some people to strengthen his protection.

"If something happens to him, I will stay in the church from tonight to the end of tomorrow to see what the murderer behind the scenes wants to do."