"Creeak..."
The wooden door opening immediately drew the attention of the church knight outside. His icy gaze snapped toward it, his steel armor rang out sharply, and the greatsword in his hand was already raised.
Norton's scalp prickled. He hurriedly shut the door, leaving only a narrow gap, and whispered to the church knight outside, "Don't! I just wanted to ask why there aren't any books about the Ascension Ritual! These two books only explain its origins. They don't say anything about the rules!"
"You don't need to know so much!" A cold, raspy voice rang out from inside the steel armor, as cold as the metal itself and full of ruthless violence.
Norton reluctantly closed the door again.
What was that supposed to mean? He was going to take part in the Ascension Ritual! Why wouldn't they even let him see the rules and procedures?
Could it be that they would simply gather together and recite the Bible?
Or perhaps it was some small-scale ceremony where they reenacted the story of the Ascension?
Surely they weren't going to hang him up and send him to ascend, were they?
No, no, that was impossible. He had only just been promoted to missionary and become an official church worker. How could they send him straight to ascend?
He figured the most likely possibility was that a small group of missionaries would gather around a bonfire representing the Ascension and recite the Bible.
The more Norton thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed. They would probably either gather to recite the Bible, or he would stand in a corner as an inconsequential hanger-on and watch the whole Ascension Ritual.
After all, he had only just become a missionary. Naturally, he couldn't be given any important tasks.
Besides, he had never even heard of the Ascension Ritual before. That showed it must be a small-group ceremony conducted in silence from beginning to end. In any case, they definitely wouldn't use him as a sacrifice! He had only just become a missionary, after all.
Besides, if they wanted to kill him, they could just do it. There was no need to go to the trouble of holding a ritual first.
Norton comforted himself with these thoughts, finding them perfectly reasonable.
Only then did he relax a little and sit back down on the bed.
A day and a half of confinement was no problem for him. After all, he had been confined for more than twenty years. What he did best was lie or sit around and let his mind wander.
Apart from getting a little hungry without food, there were no other problems.
While Norton lay on his bed and messed around, the church had already begun busily preparing for the Ascension Ritual two days later.
Several thousand church members lived in Holy Lord Cathedral, which occupied an absurdly large area. The largest part was the cemetery behind the church.
Every priest and bishop of Holy Lord Cathedral from the past several hundred years was buried here, members of a class that didn't count as mere tools. When Norton was still a cleric, he had to come here to clean every month.
He felt that the church paid particular attention to honoring the dead. Whenever he and the other lowly clerics came to clean each month, they would see piles of burning coals.
Little Norton didn't know that the black ashes left by those fires weren't offerings for the dead, but the remains of firewood burned during the Ascension Ritual.
And he was the next person to be burned.
Ascension meant ascending after death, which was why the Ascension Ritual was held in the cemetery. It also used the purest faith and sacrifice to cleanse the cemetery of filth, preventing unclean things such as vampires from being born.
That was why preparations of all kinds had already begun here two days ago.
A wooden cross had been planted in the clearing at the very center of the cemetery. The soil beneath the clearing still contained black ash that could never be completely removed. It had all been produced by the burning firewood, and even the soil had been scorched black.
The cross's upright beam was long and sturdy, and firewood had already been stacked in layers into a high pile at its base.
A barrel of mixed oils stood beside the firewood. It was used to feed the flames during the Ascension Ritual and could also be considered a sacred object.
In fact, oil hadn't been used in past Ascension Rituals. Although firewood couldn't burn a person to ashes, it could still burn them to death, and the ascension could be completed.
But Norton's soul was unclean, unlike those of past sacrifices for the Ascension Ritual. If he wasn't burned thoroughly, he might turn into a vampire. Of course, that was all an excuse. The real reason was that Father Mia didn't want to see Norton's intact corpse, because he would feel heartbroken and regretful.
After all, it would be such a pity for a child that handsome to be burned into a pitch-black, human-shaped lump of charcoal.
The ashes left after burning were a natural fertilizer that could effectively increase soil fertility, so green grass and trees covered the cemetery, making it look like a carefully tended botanical garden.
This showed that the Ascension Ritual did have its benefits. As the saying went, fallen blossoms were not heartless; they became spring soil to nourish the flowers. Little Norton could still fertilize the land after being burned.
Missionaries came and went, carrying flowers to decorate the surroundings. Using flowers to highlight holiness was the church's most common and effective method, and they could cover up the feces on the ground and the stench that filled the air.
Father Mia stood in a small pavilion in the cemetery, watching the missionaries prepare the ritual site not far away.
Beside him was the familiar Bishop Rosen, sipping the red wine in his glass.
On the stone table in front of him lay a book Norton had never seen before.
"Vampires"
The Holy Lord Church had existed for thousands of years, but the Papal State had been founded only a little over three hundred years ago. Research into vampires had begun when the Holy Lord Church was founded, and members of successive generations had written about them for nearly a thousand years. Its various lines of research could be said to be quite extensive.
Even so, they had only probed beneath the surface.
Perhaps because vampires and God were at odds, the church had encountered considerable obstacles in its research into them.
First and foremost, the church was unable to create vampires itself for observation and experimentation.
But a thousand years of research had led the church to believe it had more or less identified the factors required for a vampire to come into being. (This is only what the church believes, not an established fact of the story.)
1. Having no faith, not believing in God, and harboring extremely unclean thoughts.
2. Dying in an extreme manner.
3. Harboring immense resentment.
According to the church's research records, the birth of a vampire generally involved all three conditions above. Yet the church's own experiments in creating vampires had never succeeded. It seemed that their souls had already converted to God and could no longer be tainted by impurity. Or perhaps they carried God's holiness within them, preventing their corpses from becoming unclean upon execution.
That sounded like a powerful passive ability, but to the important figures in the church's upper ranks, it was a great disappointment. After all, vampires could live forever. Even if they were hideous and drank blood, they were still an immortal species, favored above all others by the powerful.
Quite a few bishops had tried to turn themselves into vampires on the verge of death to gain eternal life, but none had ever succeeded. Only lowly commoners whose faith was impure and who were full of resentment as they were tortured to death had a chance of becoming vampires. (Only a chance; the odds were still low.)
It seemed that becoming a vampire required resentment purer than faith in God?
Although Norton's faith was impure, he had thoughts of his own, and the torment of execution by fire in the Ascension Ritual could also stir resentment in his heart, his status as a church member still made it impossible for him to become a vampire.
But who could guarantee that the research recorded in the book was right?
It would be better to burn Norton thoroughly and make absolutely sure he couldn't become a vampire.