New Gods of North America

Regardless of the specific outcome, at least tonight's wave of enemies was eliminated.

The battle itself didn't last particularly long,

but cleaning up the battlefield took quite a bit of effort.

The guy who was shot dead was relatively easy to deal with; the extraordinary material was a small, heavy metal trinket.

Its overall condition was still intact, and it was quickly dragged onto the carriage.

Once back at the detective agency, we'll confirm whether to send it in for a reward or report it to the authorities.

The guy who could turn into black mist was a bit more troublesome. The extraordinary material was somewhat like black 'mercury,' scattered all over the area, not soaking into the soil but instead forming small 'droplets.'

These small 'droplets' did fuse together. Wayne, using his minimalist vision, spent half the day picking them up in the grass, finally collecting a small bottle.

There was also a portion of extraordinary material that felt like bone marrow or brain matter, a grayish, mushy, jelly-like substance that was also a bit sticky.

These two guys were already scattered all over the place, and the agents couldn't tell who was who, so they could only roughly sort them out.

For example, if a piece of meat was cleanly 'separated from the bone,' they blindly guessed it came from the 'skeleton,' otherwise it probably belonged to the 'black mist.'

As for the indistinguishable parts, they were put in a separate sack.

These three sacks probably won't have a chance to be exchanged for a bounty,

but according to Wayne's blind guess, and his stereotype of the 'darkness' and 'death' domains, he felt that these two guys might be 'not completely dead,'

so it's best to be careful and take them back to see if they need to be rendered harmless again.

To avoid something like 'Gray Wolf' Freddie, who might come back to haunt us.

By the time they were ready to return to the detective agency, dawn was breaking.

Fortunately, the lottery sales had temporarily come to an end, otherwise they would have had to drop off their belongings and rush back to Richmond,

thankfully avoiding the tragedy of working for the state's public welfare fund without even getting any sleep.

According to the prior announcement, the first batch of lottery tickets would only be sold until the night of the challenge countdown,

but the first batch of prize claims would have to wait at least half a month.

This is mainly because news doesn't spread as quickly in this era, so the other party is given an extra day after the deadline to respond in the newspaper, and if they respond by mail, the postmark time will prevail.

Currently, several fixed winning numbers correspond to whether Malcolm Baker 'will accept the challenge,' 'who will win or lose or draw,' and a special one, 'how many matches will Wayne win'—the winning numbers are from 'zero' to 'eight' with a letter prefix, with seven matches or more being the top prize, considered the same prize.

Anyway, at most only 70% of the total sales will be allocated as 'prize money,' and the winners of the same prize in each batch will divide the prize money equally according to a certain sales ratio, and the remaining prize money will roll over into the 'special prize pool' for the next batch, and whatever is left will go to the state.

The state government won't lose money no matter what, and it doesn't matter if all lottery buyers buy the same situation.

The detective agency contributes manpower and resources, mainly to have more opportunities to directly communicate with some citizens, increase their sense of participation and enthusiasm, and save on advertising costs for 'promotion' and 'whitewashing.'

Therefore, the detective agency's work in the next few days will be to compile the total sales of this batch, publish an announcement in the newspaper, and then wait for the follow-up,

and also continue to find ways to provoke the other party to see how many more extraordinary materials they can send.

In fact, there's not even much need to bother with calculating the total sales; there are staff members supervising every day, and the sales for the day are certain, just add them up.

As soon as they arrived outside the detective agency's courtyard, everyone noticed something was wrong.

In the small woods next to it, a large area of trees had been knocked down, almost forcibly carving out a 'basketball court.'

On the fallen or not-yet-fallen trees, you could still vaguely see sparse 'ketchup,' 'tofu brain,' and 'small meat cubes'...

Holy crap?!

Did the other side arrange a sneak attack last night?!

The carriages tacitly sped up, and Doug quickly asked Sanders in the driver's seat to release the parrot to fly in and confirm the situation first.

Several agents didn't wait for the courtyard gate to open and directly climbed over the wall into the courtyard,

and when Wayne's head popped over the wall, he saw Damon McReady standing in the courtyard, playing 'lift-up' with Emma with 'one hand.'

Uh...

Although it's good that everything is okay, aren't you guys a little too relaxed?

Damon McReady even greeted Wayne, "'Boss,' you're back? There are two more prisoners in the cellar. Liam is interrogating Peter, the one with two legs."

Wayne's ability to accept things was already very strong at this point.

He climbed over the wall into the courtyard, chose to put aside unimportant details, and first asked about the general situation, "Was the detective agency attacked again last night? Was there any damage?"

"There shouldn't be too much damage... but Miss Inisa said she needs to rest for the time being and has already returned to her room, so I stayed here to guard."

"What happened?" Wayne asked.

Inisa is the type who wouldn't say a word even if she was injured. For her to proactively say she needs to 'rest' already felt wrong.

Damon McReady scratched his hair with his still-normal hand:

"Last night, there was a group of attackers who seemed to be from the School of Life. They also seemed to be worried that there were traps in the detective agency and retreated quickly. One of them could create mimetic 'puppets' and imitated Emma in the chaos.

"After dealing with the entanglers, Miss Inisa and I split up to pursue them, and then she seemed to have encountered an ambush in the other party's counterattack."

And you're still in the mood to play 'lift-up' here?!

"Inisa is injured?"

"I'm not really sure... Miss Inisa's condition doesn't look too good, but she only told me not to let anyone disturb her for the time being."

Damon McReady pointed in the direction of the 'crime scene' outside the courtyard, seeming to still have some lingering fear, "When I got there, there were no living enemies left... Although some may have escaped successfully, I don't think the other party will return to attack again in the short term."

Wayne thought about it for a moment,

and then patted Damon McReady on the shoulder, "Okay, I think I know what's going on."

Some people may seem easy to bully, but you can't really bully them...

If those 'ketchup' things outside had the chance, I feel like they would have a lot in common with that Wendigo in Black Stone Town right now.

Wayne thought that those fresh extraordinary materials from last night might be useful, so he took them over and gently knocked on the door of Inisa's small wooden house,

"Inisa, are you okay?"

Good heavens,

his spiritual intuition instantly 'thumped' for a moment before subsiding.

Inisa's soft voice came from the small wooden house:

"I'm fine, but I need to rest for a while."

"I remember that extraordinary materials from the 'death' domain seem to help with the Exorcist Association's restraints. Do you need them now?"

The faint sound of water was heard, and then you could feel Inisa's footsteps approaching.

This really isn't a good sign—powerful hunters always control their footsteps.

The door was opened. Inisa, although wearing her usual dress, even had her hair dripping wet, as if she had just crawled out of the bathtub,

and judging from the color of the water droplets, she wasn't soaking in ordinary water.

Her lips were pale, and her eyes had turned scarlet red, giving people a sense of pressure like facing a beast.

Wayne showed the extraordinary materials.

Inisa looked down, her gaze lingering on the gray, mushy 'jelly,' "I might need this one."

Wayne handed it over,

and as Inisa reached out, Wayne noticed the 'patterns' on her thin arm had almost 'embedded' themselves into her arm, like a brand burned and discolored, tightly箍住(gū zhù - encircled/hooped) on it with high temperature,

and the areas not covered by the 'patterns' were all bruised or purplish-red, and the blood vessels on the back of her hand and fingers were all knotted up.

"Are you really okay?" Wayne asked again.

"My extraordinary ability has side effects. It absorbs spiritual power from enemies when inflicting damage."

Inisa managed a smile as she slowly closed the door, "Although one of the enemies wasn't too strong, the original source of their extraordinary power was of a high level, so the church's restraints were completely activated."

"Can you recover?"

"I'll try... I should be able to temporarily restore it to its previous state, at least try to alleviate it slightly."