New Gods of North America

Doug's owl arrived around 2 AM. Wayne took the note Doug had written from the small tube attached to the owl's leg, put his own note in, and only after the owl flew away did he realize that Doug was actually waiting on the roadside not far from the dormitory.

It was estimated that the investigation teams had just finished a preliminary screening of the personnel within the academy. Doug, having finished his work, took the opportunity to pass by and deliver the message, and also happened to see the small flower pot placed on the windowsill.

After a night of investigation, quite a few problematic people were found in the academy.

Aside from those "fallen" individuals already registered in the academy's church, nearly twenty people were initially suspected to be related to the "lucky coin."

Students were considered a "minority" among them, with various "staff members" making up the majority.

Among them, six people directly possessed the contaminant—the problematic five-cent coin—while the rest, according to the church's definition, were victims who had been "contaminated" by them again.

Separate treatments and inquiries were still underway for these individuals. The academy also helped to find excuses to minimize the impact of the matter. It was said that some students were secretly called out from their dormitories after the crowds had dispersed.

Wayne asked Doug to find a chance to dig up the small backpack as soon as possible, take it back to the detective agency and hide it, and then divide each type of potion in half and send it to the cathedral overnight, asking Tom Hagen to arrange for someone to identify them.

David Mills was already busy enough, and since he had sent the potions that needed to be identified to the cathedral last time anyway, it would be better to skip the middleman.

The next afternoon, Wayne left early and went to the academy church to attend a meeting held by the local exorcism department.

The course he skipped was a theological philosophy class. The professor seemed to be quite familiar with David Mills, who poked his head out from the back door of the classroom, pointed at Wayne, and gestured discreetly.

After seeing this, the professor nodded slightly while continuing to speak, without interrupting his lecture, and then turned a blind eye to Wayne, who was quietly packing up his things and sneaking away.

The exorcist priest responsible for reporting the situation at the meeting was someone Wayne knew. When the exorcism department came to the detective agency for exchanges before, he wasn't even a "lower horse" to balance the average combat power of each team, but was assigned to the "cheerleading squad."

However, everyone has their specialty. This person's extraordinary ability was more inclined towards dealing with evil spirits. He could strengthen the effects of various so-called sacred objects through the "resonance" of sound.

He was probably the classic exorcist image from horror movies, holding a holy symbol or something and loudly reciting the "Holy Book" to the victims possessed by evil spirits.

The basic conclusion at the moment was that the source of contamination, called "lucky coin," could be preliminarily determined to be deliberately spread by "someone."

After having more samples, the possibility of special evil spirits or extraordinary items was basically ruled out through statistics and analysis of the patterns of the objects' appearance.

The holders of the coins might show a reaction of "avoiding talking about" or "not remembering" questions related to the source of the coins, but as long as there were enough questions and they were clever enough, some small details could still be slowly dug out.

For example, special evil spirits or extraordinary items were unlikely to run around the academy. They would have to specifically obtain the same coins and complete "communication" with so many people in a short period of time—evil spirits usually wouldn't be too picky, they would "contaminate" whatever they could.

Even if such a thing really existed, analyzing its activity patterns alone would suggest that it was a rather dangerous and active high-level evil spirit or sealing item, which could not have existed within the academy's scope before, and was more likely to have been suddenly "dropped" in.

So no matter how you guess, there must be "someone" involved behind this incident,

and it could basically be determined that they were not good people.

"The motive of the perpetrators is still unclear. From the characteristics of the extraordinary ability, these 'contaminations' have very obvious 'parasitic' characteristics. The holders of the contaminants can initially use the characteristics of the contamination by continuing to spread the contamination, but they themselves will be more severely contaminated."

"Currently, we can determine that the extraordinary power comes from the 'knowledge' or 'wisdom' domain, and the ability is inclined towards mental control and is contagious."

"Judging from the characteristics of the ability and the estimated strength, it is unlikely that such a fallen person would be unknown if they had a criminal record. We are investigating the criminal fallen people who have been reported within the church to see if we can find more clues, or try to find a way to arrest the perpetrators through existing similar successful cases."

After listening to the meeting,

Pastor Pasiel seemed to be quite relaxed at the moment, and even had the mood to take everyone to visit the interior of the academy church.

Wayne could understand him quite well. Regardless of whether the perpetrators could be caught, at least it had now been ruled out that the perpetrators "existed within the academy's scope before," which would not be the church's dereliction of duty or oversight.

It was a situation where "merit" was achieved if a role was played, and "no fault" if there were no major problems.

Wayne, like someone who had entered the interior of the academy church for the first time, followed the team and looked around, feeling that everything was quite new.

In fact, Wayne was indeed the first time he had "seen" the specific situation inside the academy church with his own eyes, rather than minimalist lines or something.

Compared to last night, the atmosphere inside the academy church seemed to be a little different at this time.

The "burning" feeling was slightly more, but the "suffocating feeling" like a lack of oxygen seemed to have disappeared.

Huh?

Was it because they knew that a bunch of people would come to the meeting today, so they rarely ventilated and changed the air in advance?

Pastor Pasiel seemed to occasionally look at Wayne intentionally or unintentionally. Wayne was relatively open and tried to appear normal, trying not to let him pay attention to himself all the time.

Then Pastor Pasiel specially led everyone past the door of his office.

Good heavens,

his office was a mess at this time. The position of the secret door had been completely destroyed, and it was wide open,

The safe inside had been opened and become somewhat empty, leaving only some messy documents and papers inside.

The medicine cabinet next to it was even more spectacular. The glass or crystal on the surface of the cabinet had been smashed, and inside were glass shards left after various medicine bottles were broken, as well as a hodgepodge of medicines flowing and mixing together on each layer and at the bottom.

Two clergymen from the academy church next to him were tidying up and cleaning the office.

Hiss…

It wasn't like this when I left last night.

I even helped you move the chair used to prop the door back to its original place.

David Mills was also a little surprised when he saw this scene, "Pastor Pasiel, what happened here?"

Pastor Pasiel turned his head, looking old and frail, seemingly not intending to let everyone see this scene:

"I suspect that the perpetrators' target was actually the academy's church. While we were conducting the investigation last night, someone took the opportunity to sneak into my office, then opened the secret door and carried out the destruction."

"We are tidying up to see if the other party has stolen anything from me, or secretly put anything in."

Wayne also looked at the scene and commented in the crowd, "That's really hateful."