New Gods of North America

After leaving the academy, Wayne went to a newspaper office and spent $20 on an advertisement.

In this era, communication was not yet developed, and many local newspapers had dedicated sections for publishing various "advertisements", "announcements", and "notices". These were mostly small, text-only boxes, charged by the word or size of the space.

The content varied widely, such as "a place is hiring", "a company has relocated", or "someone came to the area and is looking for relatives who have moved".

This section was relatively cheap, and Wayne bought a week's worth.

The content was: "Wayne National Detective Agency is temporarily understaffed due to personnel deployment and will suspend accepting all types of commissions for one week," followed by a daily countdown.

The majority of the remaining funds were used to buy space in other sections, and the newspaper republished some reports that praised the detective agency.

These were published daily with different content for four consecutive days.

Wayne wasn't exactly trying to advertise. He mainly felt that since Lina and the others had just left with valuable goods, and the matter was published in the newspaper, someone might be targeting the detective agency.

So, he simply made it widely known that the detective agency currently had few people, taking advantage of the church's current tacit approval of killing extraordinary criminals, to see if he could lure out the fish.

Wanted criminals who "come to the door" might be innocent, but those who "attack the door" are basically not.

Because Chef Parker was still in a "sleeping" state, dinner could only be casual.

The scale of slaughtering in this era couldn't support segmented products like "fried chicken nuggets", but it didn't stop Wayne from buying a few chickens, chopping them into large pieces, and frying them.

Although there wasn't professional equipment like a high-pressure fryer, it wasn't too difficult to soak them in brine, then coat them in wet flour followed by dry flour. It also wasn't too hard to fry them at a low temperature until cooked, then at a high temperature until crispy.

Therefore, even though Wayne himself felt it was lacking, everyone very diplomatically said it was delicious.

Well, in this era, most people were already quite satisfied as long as they could eat relatively normal meat every now and then.

Only a few partners in the detective agency knew that Parker was a "puppet", so new employees like Conner still had unrealistic expectations for the chef's sudden "awakening", always thinking it was a side effect of some special extraordinary ability that Lina needed to suppress.

After all, with a little loli like Emma who occasionally took off her own head, the agents had a very strong acceptance of the strangeness of the extraordinary world.

After finishing dinner and throwing all the math homework to the little loli and Seth, who came to improve the food, Wayne watched Doug train his birds in the detective agency's small courtyard.

When buying ingredients today, he happened to see someone selling peregrine falcon chicks. The chicks had almost lost all their down and could start flight training, so Doug was wearing a leather glove and practicing there.

In the upper class of Windsor Kingdom and the southern United States, hunting was still a regular activity that could show status and position. As one of the popular hunting birds, peregrine falcons were quite expensive.

Fortunately, according to the concepts of this era, newly hatched chicks and well-trained adult birds were more popular. The price of older birds that had not been trained was relatively cheaper.

So, Wayne got a bargain and felt quite happy.

Since his explosion ability was upgraded, Wayne had always had the idea of letting Doug's birds carry bombs for "reconnaissance and strike integration".

Unfortunately, pigeons had poor carrying capacity, parrots were too conspicuous, and owls were professionally suitable, but only for night flight.

The peregrine falcon, with its top-notch flying speed, filled this gap quite well. It flew fast and had a decent carrying capacity. If it could be coordinated, it could be used as a short-range rocket launcher.

It's just that this guy is still a bit clumsy. Owls can now land directly on the hands of acquaintances, but peregrine falcons still need to wear thick leather gloves.

Wayne, with Doug's help, tried to let the peregrine falcon land on his bare hand, and its claws directly pierced a hole in Wayne's palm.

Wayne was still trying not to openly show his self-healing ability, so he wrapped his right hand in a bandage before secretly healing himself.

Doug's extraordinary ability is "bird affinity" rather than "bird control", so he still needs to train the peregrine falcon for a while.

But Wayne felt that this guy was more pleasing to the eye than that silly owl, so he felt it was okay.

Conner's "daily practice" was more hardcore.

At this time, he was holding a small and lengthened fuse of high explosives, lighting it, and playing catch with Cowardly Peter.

Cowardly Peter was not as brave as Conner, wishing he could wear "armor" throughout the whole process—if he couldn't beat Conner, Cowardly Peter's principle was not to play—Conner would consciously observe the burning of the fuse, trying to grab the explosive tube at the moment of detonation, and then use his extraordinary ability to defend and release the force in time.

Wayne didn't avoid them too much, taking the opportunity to let Doug's birds get used to the sound of explosions, so as not to drop the chain during the air drop.

After a rare period of leisure, Wayne went back to his room to take a hot bath.

He also stuck a piece of paper written in simplified Chinese next to the mirror, and then observed whether there were any abnormalities on his body.

According to the Hunter Association's theory, Wayne has now absorbed extraordinary materials covering five of the eight fields, basically counting as a "madman" or "mutation" reserve.

Although Wayne's spiritual intuition still felt good about himself, he couldn't rule out that this was a case of himself being "naturally crazy".

So, it was temporarily inconvenient to talk about absorbing extraordinary materials from the "holy" field. Wayne first self-tested, waiting for the time when he couldn't understand the sentence written in simplified Chinese, "You're here too?", or found that tentacles were growing somewhere on his body, then he quickly sought help.

But the current situation was okay.

Except for a slight feeling of "indigestion" after absorbing the extraordinary material extracted from Roy Strampler, no other adverse reactions had occurred.

Wayne was already a little familiar with dealing with this situation. He first drank half a bottle of holy water, and then went to the cellar to touch the stone slab fragment.

Then, as before, the feeling of indigestion quickly subsided, and a part of the spiritual power nourished the "blue bar" in Wayne's body, which rose quite a bit.

After basically preparing to go fishing, Wayne began to routinely maintain his revolver and the newly acquired bolt-action rifle, waiting to see if there was an opportunity to "wait for the rabbit".

Anyway, the homework had been brought back, and the other students in the dormitory had not recovered, so Wayne was happy to continue "recuperating", planning to skip class for a few more days.