Odis was unaware of the conspiracy at the Duke's mansion, and he traveled by carriage to the Backlund Mechanical Research Society.
Although the arrival of the evil god is now a reality, the meeting between Darnesie and Corraymond cannot be ignored. It would be best to go and discuss it with Max.
The carriage sped forward, and Odis, lost in thought, was suddenly struck by a spiritual awakening and looked out the window.
He saw three homeless men on the street, arm in arm, dancing joyfully while singing: "...Ah, this beautiful world! Ah, this helpless world!"
"Friends, dance and sing! I have heard the secrets of the stars, I have heard the essence of the universe."
"I heard the teachings of the gods, and they echoed in my ears..."
Odis frowned: What is this song about?
As the carriage passed the three vagrants, Odis observed them carefully. The vagrants had genuine smiles on their faces, but their eyes seemed to lack spirit and even looked somewhat cloudy.
Although Odis's spiritual senses detected something amiss, he did not stop the carriage. Instead, he planned to report the matter to the "Mechanical Heart" and have them investigate.
Shortly after passing the three homeless men, Odis suddenly heard a startled cry from behind.
He quickly stuck his head out of the window and saw the three homeless men lying neatly on the ground, spitting blood from their mouths.
Their eyes bulged out, their faces turned purple, and they quickly stopped breathing.
Their faces still bore cheerful smiles, but the smiles looked extremely eerie against the backdrop of blood.
Just as Odis was about to tell the driver to stop, his intuition sent a warning of danger: "Quick! Let's go!"
As he spoke, he sprinkled a handful of transparent powder, and two invisible giant hands appeared behind the carriage, pushing the carriage to accelerate.
The carriage hadn't gone far when the three vagrant corpses suddenly sat up, opened their mouths, and uttered a few strange, drawn-out syllables.
These syllables traveled far, and Odis heard them faintly. They sounded like the fax machine sending a fax that he had heard before he traveled through time. Although they were not very sharp, they were very jarring.
Only after the spiritual omen of danger disappeared did Odis peek out again.
The three pedestrians closest to the homeless man linked arms and danced joyfully, singing, "Ah, this beautiful world..."
However, they looked quite astonished, as if they didn't understand why they were jumping up and singing.
Odis hesitated for a moment before saying, "Stop the car!"
He speculated that this was likely the result of the strange power emanating from the ongoing ritual of the "Morse Ascetic Order".
The three homeless men were clearly the initial source of contamination, and after they died, they contaminated the three people closest to them.
Meanwhile, there were quite a few people around checking on the three homeless men. At this rate of pollution, by the time they returned from the Mechanical Research Society, dozens of people would probably be dead.
So he opened his notebook, wrote two sentences, tore off the page, handed it to the driver, paid him double the fare, and told him to hurry up and deliver the note to the Mechanical Research Society.
Odis then quickly returned: "Scatter! They have a strange contagious disease!"
Upon hearing that it was an infectious disease, everyone immediately scurried away, and many even screamed and ran away.
Odis looked at the three people dancing and singing. Like the three vagrants from before, they were like wind-up music box dolls, with simple movements and a limited range of activity.
After thinking about it for a moment, Odis came up with a solution.
He first sprinkled out white powder, which, upon contact with the air, emitted a pure white light, and thick fog rolled around the light.
The thick fog spread rapidly in all directions, and after the pure white light disappeared, half the street was shrouded in fog.
For a moment, the onlookers were somewhat surprised and retreated to a distance again. Although the white light that had just appeared was a bit strange, they didn't take the fog in front of them too seriously because thick fog often appeared in Backlund.
Since the "strange illness" of singing and dancing could no longer be seen, most of the onlookers left.
Odis and the people who were dancing and singing, who were also affected by the contamination, were all in the thick fog. Because of the fear of unknown contamination, Odis dared not open her spiritual vision and could only sense the location of the others through her spiritual senses.
Fortunately, they stayed in place and didn't run around.
Then Odis took out the spiritual materials he carried with him and began to draw a magic circle on the ground.
After being reminded by Bernadette, Odis brought more spiritual materials today, so there were enough materials to complete this complex magic circle.
At this moment, the thick fog on the street gradually thinned, and the three people who were still singing and dancing could be seen.
The surprise on their faces had vanished, replaced by joyful smiles, seemingly genuine smiles.
Odis put away the pen and the remaining glass bottle, and infused one of the extraordinary symbols with spirituality.
Unlike ordinary magic arrays, this one resembled a vortex, instantly sucking away nearly half of his spiritual energy.
This is one of the powerful magic arrays he was researching, but because it required too much spiritual energy, he hadn't used it before Sequence 7.
This spiritual energy immediately caused the magic circle to emit a golden light. At that moment, the sun in the sky suddenly pierced through the thick fog and shone on the three people who were dancing, as well as on the three dead homeless men.
Immediately afterwards, a beam of golden light shone down, causing the three dancers and the three corpses to burst into flames.
They were like charcoal, seemingly flammable materials; the three singers even spewed flames when they opened their mouths.
But they were still singing and dancing: "...I heard the teachings of the gods, and they echoed in my ears..."
Their voices gradually became hoarse and disappeared; their necks were burned off, and their heads fell to the ground.
The intense flames continued to burn until they were reduced to ashes, leaving not even a bone behind.
In the ashes, there seemed to be a sound like a fax machine, but under the intense sunlight, the sound quickly became intermittent and eventually disappeared without a trace.
Then, the sun disappeared behind the thick fog again, becoming faint, like a gas lamp about to burn out.
As the thick fog dissipated, Odis checked his "success" and found it to be quite effective.
This powerful magic circle was his strategic "weapon." Before this, Odis had only drawn a few similar magic circles, none of which had been put to use.
The attack from this magic circle is more like an extraordinary attack than a support or sealing attack.
However, these magic arrays can only draw power from nature, and they possess abilities such as creating lightning and summoning scorching sunlight.
However, some strange abilities cannot be cast using the corresponding magic array.
For example, the "Master of Puppets" has the ability to turn others into puppets, and the "Hermit" has the ability to enter the shadows, etc.
The principle behind these magic arrays is to rapidly mobilize and concentrate the surrounding natural energy.
This is why Odis wanted to study the "Record Officer" and "Record" abilities. If there were a breakthrough in this research, then these powerful magic arrays could truly create attacks that were comparable to extraordinary abilities.
After all, extraordinary power is one of the forces of nature, and theoretically it can be borrowed temporarily using spiritual materials.
For example, if his research makes a breakthrough, a huge pure white beam of light could have descended just now, purifying them and burning them to ashes within 2 seconds.
Currently, there has been no breakthrough in research on "recording," and it can only be done as it is today, where the irradiation and combustion take about 5 seconds to complete.
If the person inside the magic circle were a normal extraordinary individual, they would have run away long ago.
Odis did have a strategy to deal with the extraordinary ones: simply add a "tracking array" to the array and select a target to "track".
As Odis wiped away the magic circle, he built a "spiritual wall" to prevent the ashes from being blown everywhere by the winter breeze.
Not a single mistake, not a single poem, not a single post, not a single piece of content, not a single look!
This is also a simple way to seal them in, to prevent any further contamination.
About twenty minutes later, a carriage bearing the "Mechanical Holy Symbol" sped over. Max jumped down and glanced at the ashes on the ground: "Is it over?"
"It's resolved," Odis explained. "They were all contaminated. Although three pedestrians were still singing and dancing, there was no way to save them. To avoid contaminating more people, we had to burn them to ashes."
Max nodded in understanding.
He had two team members clean up the ashes, then said to Odis, "Come with me to Backlund University. There's a tough problem there, and we'll see if we can help."
This time, Odis did not refuse: "Okay."
Once aboard the carriage, Max said, "Before we received your intelligence, we received news from headquarters that someone was conducting an evil ritual in Backlund."
McStand said, "Including the case you just reported, 'Machine Heart' has received three extraordinary cases related to that descent ritual today."
"Some of the church's mobile forces have been deployed to Backlund, but so far, they have not found the other side's altar."
Odis breathed a slight sigh of relief: "As long as the official extraordinary individuals take it seriously enough, they should be able to catch those bastards soon."
Max gave a faint "hmm".
Before coming here to provide support, Max's mission was to escort a group of important church scholars, scientists, and family members of "Mechanical Heart" members out of Backlund.
But of course, this couldn't be told to Odis.
The carriage sped along and soon arrived at Backlund University.
One of the school buildings has been sealed off by the "Mechanical Hearts" and the police. Captain Ikonser is on the second floor with two "Mechanical Hearts" captains, trying to resolve the issue.
Three more members of "Mechanical Heart" are waiting outside.
Max and Odis alighted from the carriage, and Max immediately asked the waiting members of "Mechanical Heart," "What's going on?"
"According to the students' descriptions, while the Stanford professor was lecturing today, several students closest to him suddenly stood up and began mimicking his speech," one member described.
"The Stanford professor thought it was a student prank, so he flew into a rage. Then several other students stood up, started mimicking him, and flew into a rage just like him."
"In the next minute, the professor first questioned his students, and then told them to stop playing pranks."
"When half the students in the classroom were mimicking his speech and movements in unison, the professor realized something was wrong. He quickly asked the remaining students to leave and told them to call the police."
The first two police officers to arrive, the one who entered the classroom first, said the same things to the professor and made the same expression, just like the students.
"When we arrived, we first sealed off the school building, and then Captain Ikonser used a sealing artifact to put everyone in the classroom to sleep."
"And began to use the sealed artifacts to investigate the environment of that classroom, as well as to examine the spirits and mental bodies of the teachers and students."
Odis thought to himself, "The 'Mechanical Heart' is really using sealed artifacts to solve cases!"
However, this seems to be a characteristic of this approach.
A few minutes later, a captain of the "Mechanical Heart" team returned from the second floor and said to the senior superintendent outside: "This classroom has been contaminated and must be purified immediately. Moreover, the people inside are beyond saving."
The senior superintendent in charge of the investigation was pale-faced: "My God, a professor, more than twenty students, and a police officer!"
In this era, every college student is either rich or powerful, especially at top universities like Backlund University, where students are either millionaires or children of high-ranking officials.
The captain of "Mechanical Heart" said, "Even if we release them, it will only lead to more contamination."
The senior superintendent sighed, "Fine, alright."
The captain wasn't there to consult the senior superintendent; he was merely informing him before going to the carriage to retrieve the purified weapon.
Max caught up with them, helping them while asking, "Are there no hopes that those students will wake up?"
"This is a 'thought storm'..." the captain explained. "This is a name that Captain Ikonser just came up with. The Stanford professor's thoughts and memories have covered the students' thoughts and memories and established certain connections."
"That's why there are situations where students tend to repeat whatever Stanford professors say."
"It can be seen as... as those students having lost their own thoughts..."
Odis, who was listening to all this, couldn't help but frown: His thoughts and memories had been overwritten! What a bizarre ability...
Thinking of this, he suddenly glanced at the teaching building: This sounds like an enhanced version of the "smart helmet"!
Even before this technology was put into use, Odis saw the consequences of "technology getting out of control."