"I, Rosen, a low-ranking bishop, welcome the Holy Judgment Order!"
Bishop Rosen, dressed in black episcopal robes, bowed respectfully as he spoke.
The order held a position much like that of the armed guards attending an emperor. A mere low-ranking bishop like Rosen did not dare show it the slightest disrespect.
Bishop Rosen's words drew no reaction from the Holy Judgment Order. Its members remained standing motionless where they were. After a short while, a hoarse voice that sounded as though it had not spoken in years came from within the lead Holy Knight's armor.
"By... His Holiness's... command... purge... all... that is unclean..."
Bishop Rosen wiped the sweat from his forehead and asked cautiously, "Then, do you need me to..."
"As of today... Holy Judgment... takes over... all affairs... of the church in Holy Lord City!"
"Yes!" Bishop Rosen wiped the sweat from his forehead.
He then looked at the church knights and missionaries behind him and announced in a loud voice, "As of today, the Holy Judgment Order will take over all affairs in Holy Lord City. Holy Lord Cathedral is closed effective immediately, and no missionaries or church knights are permitted to leave."
The appearance of the Holy Judgment Order meant bloodshed.
Its judgments were directed not only at vampires like Norton, but also at all manner of things deemed "unclean."
A bloody purge began in Holy Lord City.
Cannibals, the defiled, and those whose faith was insufficiently devout would all be sentenced to death by the Holy Judgment Order in the name of punishing insults to the faith!
If the church before had treated human lives like grass, then the Holy Judgment Order showed utter disregard for all life and rules.
After the Holy Judgment Order entered the city, devout prayer became the focus of life in Holy Lord City, and God became the only thing that mattered there.
But the Holy Judgment Order itself was not the one that unleashed the real bloodshed.
Unlike the cold, ruthless church knights and missionaries, who did not even speak to the poor, the Holy Judgment Order was willing to listen.
Whether you were poor or rich, ugly or beautiful, all you had to say was, "I've found a heretic!"
Then the knights of the Holy Judgment Order would set out without hesitation.
No one knew who first set the bad example.
When the poor of Holy Lord City first saw the Holy Judgment Order slaughter the entire family of a wealthy man whose thoughts were not devout, and then entered his home and stole his belongings, the feast of human nature truly began.
The Holy Judgment Order, meant to capture vampires and purge the unclean, had become a tool for the release of human desire.
A bloody massacre began in Holy Lord City, and it was the greed of the city's own people that opened the gates of this hell.
"Slaughter... the unclean!"
Accompanied by hoarse voices and the clatter of armor, a bloody massacre played out in Holy Lord City.
Holy Lord Cathedral shut its doors completely, leaving everything in Holy Lord City to the Holy Judgment Order.
Countless poor people, driven by their desires, invented nonexistent instances of uncleanness and falsely accused the city's rich of harboring unclean thoughts. This prompted the knights of the Holy Judgment Order to slaughter them, whereupon everyone swarmed in and looted the money and valuables from their homes, even seizing their houses and land to make a new start in life.
To protect themselves, the rich likewise had no choice but to use the Holy Judgment Order to punish the poor. They falsely accused the poor of making deals with devils, leading the Holy Knights to massacre groups of impoverished people.
Some rich people also seized the opportunity, scheming just as the poor did. They falsely accused other rich people of being heretics and led the Holy Knights to slaughter them, so they could take their wealth.
Besides, the poor were not united among themselves. Those who had seized less envied those who had seized more, and the discontented used the Holy Judgment Order to redistribute wealth.
Those who had seized more feared those who had seized less and used the Holy Judgment Order to protect their wealth.
One year after the Holy Judgment Order entered the city, less than one in ten of Holy Lord City's people remained.
Corpses littered the streets of Holy Lord City, the stench of decay mingling with the stench of sin. Blackened bloodstains and rotting flesh that had congealed together had even dried and hardened onto the ground.
Bodies lay everywhere. Some were fresh, while others were badly decomposed. Some had partially air-dried flesh stuck to the road, while others had been completely devoured by rats and wild dogs, their bones gnawed to fragments.
The stench of decay filled Holy Lord City, making it hard to breathe. Red-eyed rats, some as large as half a meter, ran, fed, and mated at will in packs on the deserted streets, in plain sight. From eating so much human flesh, their bodies had become ugly and patchily bald.
The few people who remained alive huddled in their homes, listless but plump and glossy from all they had eaten.
The sharp drop in population greatly reduced the conflicts within Holy Lord City. Only when wealth lay exposed in the city with no one left to pick it up did this riot of human nature finally come to an end.
Holy Lord City, however, had suffered somewhat greater losses.
Less than one in ten of Holy Lord City's people remained, and the dense stench of decay rising from the mountains of corpses could be smelled even by Norton, who lived far away on the mountaintop.
It was a man-made disaster tantamount to extermination. There had been no war in the Papal State for many years, and casualties on this scale had not been seen for a long time.
The investigation into Norton the vampire, the reason the Holy Judgment Order had been deployed, had yet to turn up the slightest clue, while Holy Lord City was already on the brink of collapse.
Even if those who remained had survived this carnival of human nature, they would have a hard time surviving the great plague that would follow.
By September, the weather was growing ever hotter.
The stench of decay in Holy Lord City grew so thick that no one could bear to stay there for another second.
With no other choice, Holy Lord Cathedral, which had long kept its doors shut, reopened them and assigned missionaries and church knights to supervise the remaining population of Holy Lord City as they cleared away the corpses.
After this ordeal, Holy Lord City would need at least five generations, over a hundred years, to recover some of its former vitality.
But that had little to do with the church.
To the pope, no matter how many people died, all that mattered was that he could find the secret to immortality.
To Bishop Rosen and Bishop Adam, no matter how many people died, all that mattered was that the pope could not find Norton.
As for the people who had died?
In this age, they were merely renewable expendables.
As long as they were not wiped out entirely, they could always reproduce on their own.