Some people's deaths were lighter than a feather; others took a single punch, and it was heavier than Mount Tai.
Norton's death caused no ripples in the church. He was just an ordinary tool churned out by the church's production line. A batch of people like him died every day; none of them were special.
But Father Mia had been punched, and that was a major incident.
First, the training system had developed a glaring flaw.
A tool produced on an assembly line had actually developed a rebellious streak? That proved beyond doubt that something was wrong with the current training methods. They had to oppress those damned missionaries even more harshly, squeezing every last thought out of their heads to ensure there would never be another Norton.
Second, Father Mia's beating had dealt a tremendous blow to the church's dignity and was the greatest possible insult to God's holiness!
In a church that worshipped God, one of God's underlings had been beaten. Wasn't that openly saying God did nothing?
It was a naked insult. Norton's crime was unforgivable!
"Crackle..."
Behind the graveyard, the sound of burning wood rose alongside thick black smoke.
The corpse bound to the solid-wood cross had burned almost to charcoal, and the aroma of roasting meat had turned into the smoke of charred remains.
A crowd of missionaries stood around the burning cross, their heads bowed as they recited the Bible. Their buzzing voices droned on like flies.
Father Mia, one eye blackened, stood nearby with a grim expression, watching the roaring flames. Beside him, Bishop Rosen looked somewhat pleased at his misfortune.
But this was far from over. The consequences of Norton's rebellion did not concern him alone. The missionaries and clergy trained in the same batch as him, as well as the six church knights involved in the incident, all needed to be thoroughly purged to stamp out any chance of another rebellion.
A spirit of rebellion was a frightening thing. Killing the rebel did not simply put an end to the matter. Once that spirit appeared, it could make certain people realize that, besides running away, they could also fight back.
Norton had set an extremely bad precedent, a scathing mockery of the church's various methods of oppression and suppression of desire over the past twenty years.
Once it happened, it could happen again. The first Norton had stood up, and another would follow. If not for the fear that killing every missionary here would leave the cathedral unable to function, with even more serious consequences, the cardinal archbishop above Bishop Rosen would have ordered everyone in the Holy Lord Cathedral slaughtered.
A burning corpse did not smoke at first. Only after the flesh cooked and charred would it begin to burn and give off black smoke.
As the thick black smoke began to billow, Norton's barbecue stall finally finished cooking.
Thanks to the woefully backward technology of the age, even the accelerant refined from animal fat could not burn a human body completely to ashes, so Norton's corpse remained intact.
"Splash!"
Five church knights brought buckets of water and thoroughly extinguished the remaining embers. Then they stepped forward together and took down the cross, now burned to charcoal, along with Norton, who was black as a piece of char.
Norton's corpse had been cooked all the way through by the fire, his entire body reduced to dry charcoal. When the church knights dropped him onto the ground, he actually landed with a crisp snap.
A charred black arm broke off with a crisp crack.
Father Mia felt a slight twinge of regret. But burned to this state, there was no need to dismember him further. Scorching him this badly had completely eliminated any possibility of his turning into a vampire.
To be honest, it worked even better than dismemberment.
Still, they had to drive a stake into him. They had to observe the formalities, after all.
"There's no need to put him in a coffin. Norton's soul has been defiled by the devil. He doesn't deserve God's forgiveness, nor does he deserve honorable treatment!
"Of course, he must still be dismembered. Don't give a demon any opportunity to take advantage!"
Father Mia spoke with a grim expression, then strode away from the site of the ascension ceremony.
He had been punched around the eye, and it hurt terribly now. He needed a little boy's comfort.
Bishop Rosen swept a sinister gaze over the church knights around him, then said, "After you've chopped him up, throw him outside the city. Once that's done, the six church knights from earlier are to come see me."
The church knights had no idea what awaited them and continued to carry out the task assigned by the church to the best of their ability.
A wooden stake was driven into the chest of Norton's charred corpse.
There was already a gash in his chest where a greatsword had pierced him. The heat of the flames had shrunk the flesh and widened the wound, leaving the organs inside completely charred.
That also made the stake particularly easy to drive in.
If a corpse this crispy could still turn into a vampire, then the church's years of research might as well be thrown down the latrine.
A small handcart was pulled over, and two church knights reached for Norton's shoulders and legs, intending to lift him onto it.
But with the slightest pull, Norton's charred right foot came off.
"..." The church knight in charge of dismembering the corpse felt he wouldn't need to trouble himself again.
The church knight grabbed Norton's thigh instead. There was enough meat on it that it hadn't been cooked quite so thoroughly. He lifted Norton's crumbling corpse onto the cart.
"Creak... creak..."
The cart's wooden wheels creaked as they turned. Here in the Papal State of central Europe, Norton finally had his second chance to go out.
Last time, however, he had walked out. This time, he was being pushed.
The Papal State had held power for several hundred years. Exactly how many, even the pope himself couldn't say.
The Papal State's territory was vast. Just how vast, even the pope himself didn't know.
After the Holy Lord Church was founded several thousand years ago, it had swiftly occupied the entire land. The existence of vampires made it especially easy for the church to attract believers.
As the church's influence grew by the day, its standing rose steadily as well. By a thousand years ago, it had reached the point where kings ruled by divine right. The kings of every country had to receive the pope's blessing before they could become truly legitimate rulers.
As time passed, successive popes grew increasingly bold. Beginning with the training of church knights, they developed the church step by step into a kingdom. Even today, although the Papal State had not expanded to become the sole power on the Western Continent, the other countries were already full of believers and churches. Some kings were even among the church's most devout followers.
The boundaries of the Papal State's rule were therefore somewhat unclear, but there was no doubt that it was already the most powerful nation on the Western Continent. It was also the greatest height the Holy Lord Church had reached in all its centuries.
But the Holy Lord Church's prosperity did not mean the country prospered. On the contrary, the church's various bizarre practices had left people across the Western Continent struggling to survive, and the population dwindling.
The city where Norton lived was a typical example.