Norton stepped over rotting leaves and petals as he made his way into Holy Lord City.
With no fresh petals spread over it, the filth and decay beneath them lay fully exposed on the streets of Holy Lord City.
With every step Norton took, a putrid breeze produced by colonies of microorganisms puffed up from the rotting leaves and petals stuck together on the ground, swirling toward his nostrils.
Anyone who breathed it in, never mind how disgusting it was, would at the very least fall seriously ill.
Weeds had overgrown the makeshift shacks erected outside Holy Lord City. The dark brown bloodstains on their walls had yet to fade completely, and long abandonment had left even the shacks looking dilapidated. The one saving grace was that there were no old bones scattered across the ground.
He looked around, barely able to believe this was the bustling Holy Lord City he had seen two years ago.
The sight of desolation everywhere was enough to set it utterly apart from what it had once been.
Norton made his way through Holy Lord City, breathing its putrid air and listening to its cries of despair.
He carefully avoided the murals around him, leaping from rooftop to rooftop as he gradually made his way toward the center. Only as he drew closer to Holy Lord Cathedral did he find signs of living people.
The closer he got to Holy Lord Cathedral, the more living people he found. Large houses farther away stood empty, but here near the cathedral, seven or eight emaciated survivors lay beneath a half-collapsed board.
The survivors seemed to gather around the cathedral instinctively, hoping in vain to find some small sense of security there.
The scent of Werewolves in the air was growing faintly discernible. Norton looked at the increasingly crowded, foul-smelling slum and the wretched paupers huddled in little corners, and sighed inwardly.
It was hard to imagine that Norton, who in the past had been pained by the sight of a starving mother and child at Mass, was now going to lure Werewolves here to slaughter at will in exchange for his own chance of survival.
"I, Norton, really am a scumbag!"
The farther Norton went, the heavier his heart grew. With every step, he felt more keenly the weight of the grave sins he had begun to bear, and he felt worse and worse. He even felt a faint urge to turn back and face the pack of wolves, offering his own flesh and blood in exchange for a chance for these people to survive.
But as the stench of the Werewolves blew on the cold wind into his nostrils, his heavy steps grew light again out of fear.
The shame and oppression in his heart did not ease. If anything, the sight of the wretched, gaunt paupers around him filled him with ever deeper pity.
Yet the more he felt that way, the less his feet seemed to obey him. The fear and tension in his heart drove him to flee through the slums ever more frantically and quickly.
Like a drifting leaf, Norton floated out of Holy Lord City again.
This hypocritical scumbag!
Time slowly passed. The night receded, and the crescent moon had grown so faint it was barely visible.
Dozens, even hundreds, of figures sped through the forest on all fours, racing toward Holy Lord City. After warily observing the surroundings, they charged resolutely into the city.
"Aaaah!!!"
Piercing screams rang out across Holy Lord City.
The warm summer breeze carried the stench of decay, joined now by a trace of fresh blood.
Time slowly passed, and in the blink of an eye, autumn had arrived.
As the saying went, only when a fish entered the deep sea did it learn how vast the world was. Only after leaving the Holy Lord City region did Norton discover that the world was not as hopeless as he had imagined.
Though the Papal State had been founded on religion, not everyone in it was incompetent, nor was every place filled with the Church's fanatical ideas.
In fact, the opposite could be said: of all the Church's cities, only Holy Lord City and Holy City, the Papal State's capital, had religious beliefs and rules so contrary to human nature.
This was easy enough to understand. Holy Lord City was where God had created the human race, and if it had not also been the place where God had perished, it would have had the strongest claim to be the Papal State's capital.
That was why religion held such a powerful presence in Holy Lord City, to the point of being almost perverse.
Only Holy Lord City was qualified to bear the word "holy" in its name, just like Holy City.
By comparison, the other cities were much more normal.
Lino City.
"Black bread! Freshly baked black bread!"
"Dock labor! Who wants to work on the docks?"
A bustling, classic central European city presented itself before Norton's eyes. Though the mud was as bad as ever and the mingled stench of excrement and other foul odors still hung in the air, the city was at least full of fresh vitality, far more alive than the deathly still Holy Lord City.
A battered carriage loaded with goods stood by the roadside. The owner of a newly opened shop was all smiles as he directed the workers on the carriage to unload the tables and chairs his shop needed.
"Pfft!" The horse's tail flicked slightly, and a wet fart burst from its anus.
With no sewers, the city had serious problems with standing water. Busy places were muddy everywhere, while less frequented areas even had pools of long-stagnant water.
A laborer in coarse hemp clothes stood in a corner, urinating into the water below without any regard for the people passing along the street.
Two Church knights in steel armor stood dutifully guarding the city gates, while laborers worked on repairs beside the walls, which stood over ten meters high.
"Whoa, what made these claw marks?"
Several conspicuous gouges scored the city wall, cutting deep into the stone. Judging by their shape, the laborers could even fit their palms against them.
The gouges also looked very fresh, as though they had been made only recently.
The laborers responsible for repairing the wall were somewhat astonished and alarmed.
This was a stone city wall; even swords and blades would struggle to leave any noticeable nicks in it.
What terrifying creature could have left such frightening claw marks on a stone wall?
And the claw marks continued all the way up. Clearly, the terrifying creature had already crossed the wall and entered the city!
There was a slight commotion at the city wall.
Inside the city, the bustle continued.
A beggar wrapped from head to toe in rags squatted on a street covered in watery mud, head bowed. The beggar neither begged for food nor prayed, and looked almost dead, with not even the slightest rise and fall of the body.
Such attire was very common in this age and attracted no attention.
The women of this age always wrapped cloth around their heads, looking almost exactly like this beggar.
None of the people passing by paid the roadside beggar any mind. Generally, at night, Church knights would come out and drag away any beggars still lying by the roadside and dispose of them.
As a result, rotting corpses were rarely seen in the streets.
Rags wrapped Norton's shriveled skin, completely concealing him from head to toe.
Through the old, filthy cloth, Norton's scarlet eyes watched the central European street and the bleakness within this city under the Church's control.
In this less-than-normal world, the less-than-normal Norton settled down for the first time.
He made his home inside a clock tower in Lino City.
The clock tower was also Church property. It stood over twenty meters tall, with a clock made of gold set into its exterior. Its internal mechanism was actually a pendulum system, suggesting that mechanical civilization had seemingly begun to emerge in the Papal State.
Every day, a white-robed Church missionary came beneath the clock to correct the time. Norton lived at the top of the tower, and all remained peaceful.
Time slowly passed. Every day, Norton found places to sit around the streets, gradually gaining some understanding of Lino City and the Church itself.