Time passed slowly, and in the blink of an eye, two months had flown by.
From a human perspective, that span was not long, but it was still a distant stretch of time. For Norton, who had already reached the end of eternal life, however, those two months were basically no different from his life before.
No, there were a few differences.
A month ago, the new pontiff of the Papal State had been formally confirmed, with the honorific title His Holiness Adam.
It was said that the cities His Holiness Adam had once overseen included the Holy Lord City region, and that he had come from the Church of Holy Lord City itself, having overseen it as a low-ranking bishop. In that respect, he and Norton were from the same hometown.
He was cruel and tyrannical, cold-blooded and bloodthirsty! As soon as he took the throne, he burned the old pope's former attendants and servants to death in the name of the ascension ritual. They included, but were not limited to, carefully selected big-breasted nuns, gentle, warm-bedded aunties, and a group of young clerics personally trained by the old pope...
There was nothing wrong with that. Just as a new game development team would always make a point of killing off the protagonist created by the previous team, it was only human nature. He had only killed a bunch of sex slaves, which did little harm to the Papal State as a whole.
When the old pope had taken the papal throne, for example, he had launched a frenzied series of campaigns against neighboring countries to expand his territory and make a great holy name for himself.
That was a decision that stirred up turmoil in the world.
Compared with the old pope, however, the new pope, His Holiness Adam, was a little too strange.
Over the past month or so, aside from burning the old pope's sex slaves to death through the ascension ritual, His Holiness Adam had made only one minor move.
He had established a new hierarchy of positions within the Papal State's Church system called the Eye of Holiness.
The specific function of the Eye of Holiness was to scour the world for all kinds of monsters and Vampires, capture them, and conduct in-depth research on them.
The people of Lino City were all saying that His Holiness Adam wanted to obtain eternal life, and that was why he had established the Eye of Holiness within the Church.
Within the Church, this was a reform of moderate significance. To the people of the Papal State, it was an optional institution that made little difference, except that there were a few more people they had to show respect to.
For Norton, however, this was not very good news.
He was a Vampire himself, and one being tracked by Werewolves at that.
The presence of the Werewolves had already made it hard for him to stay outside the city. He had never expected the day would come when it would be hard to stay inside the city too.
Recently, he had noticed that every night, squads of knights wearing armor he had never seen before would leave the Church and pass through the streets on their way out of the city. Perhaps they were Church members of the newly established Eye of Judgment department.
Their presence had undoubtedly affected Norton's outings to some extent.
Still, the effect was not too great. After all, Norton could hide high in the bell tower and use its vantage point to determine when and in which direction the squads went out. He only had to avoid them.
But it was also while looking out from the bell tower that Norton discovered there was another somewhat mysterious force in the city.
Spies the Boya Empire had planted in the Papal State...
Interesting. This world did not seem to be as unchanging as he had imagined. Or rather, it was the first time he had sensed how unpredictable this world was.
Of course, apart from that, Norton had made one other discovery that hardly counted as a gain.
A boy in fairly luxurious clothing clutched his bulging clothes and carefully squeezed out from behind a wall with a hole broken in it.
He glanced warily at the figures passing along the street, then approached the inconspicuous beggar on the street corner with a somewhat furtive air.
"Here you go, Mr. Beggar." The boy took the pastries hidden in his arms and held them out in both hands before Norton, paying no mind to the smell coming from his filthy, tattered clothes.
The childish voice was filled with innocent goodwill, but it made Norton's scalp prickle.
Here he fucking comes again!
What the hell is wrong with you? Why do you keep picking this one beggar to feed every day?!
To watch the Church, Norton would always disguise himself as a beggar and squat on the street corner with the best view, using it to observe the Church.
Norton believed that proper surveillance did not mean sneaking a look for a while and then moving somewhere else. In fact, watching for a while and changing locations was extremely likely to attract attention.
After all, what normal person would wander around the same area for no reason?
Norton believed that the surveillance method that would truly keep him hidden was to squat in one place without fail. He might attract attention on the first day and earn a glance on the second, but on the third, fourth, fifth day, or even a month later, squatting there would no longer draw any attention. In fact, if he did not squat there, the people who had long since grown used to his presence would wonder whether something had happened to him.
That was the best way to conduct covert surveillance.
Sure enough, on the first day Norton squatted in that corner, people who suddenly noticed him would still make a few sympathetic remarks, and missionaries would even drive him away. But now nobody looked in his direction at all. Everyone even knew there was a beggar there, and the missionaries and Church knights passing by had grown accustomed to him.
Norton felt he was simply a genius.
But it was precisely because he had been there so long that he attracted the attention of some people who should never have noticed him.
For example, this little boy, the priest's favorite.
Perhaps his family was too powerful and everyone around him too kind, leaving the child with no outlet for the goodwill in his heart.
So he poured it all out on Norton, who was squatting in the corner and posing as a beggar.
His big, innocent eyes were full of goodwill toward Norton, and the pastries cradled in his two fair, tender little hands were so exquisite that an ordinary well-off family could not afford them. That also made it understandable why a child so innocent could still exist in this day and age: his family gave him the means to remain innocent.
With those two round, darting eyes fixed on him, Norton could only steel himself and remain silent. Even though this behavior did not fit his identity as a beggar, he still did not want to reach out and take the pastries from the boy.
He knew this kind of troublesome child all too well. If he did not accept the pastries now, the boy would feel snubbed, and perhaps after his enthusiasm lasted a little longer, he would gradually stop coming.
But as soon as he accepted the pastries or gave the boy any response, the boy would immediately become overjoyed. He would come back next time and might even drag his little friends along with him.
So Norton ignored him completely.