Norton

Biodata

Power Progression

Background / History

Church Confinement

Norton is a transmigrator who remembers a modern life, parents, and an education. He spends his first twenty years in the new world confined within the Church, unable even to reach its gates. Having witnessed at least ten fellow clerics being beheaded for breaking rules, he conceals his disgust behind outward obedience and waits for promotion to missionary—the position that should permit him to leave 1 5 6.

Books supplied on Father Mia’s orders introduce him to the Mass procession and the Holy Covenant. Although familiar with fictional vampires from his previous life, Norton takes the Church’s accounts seriously because he knows too little about the outside world to dismiss them 2.

His first excursion brings disillusionment rather than freedom. During Mass, he distributes crumbs to starving paupers and briefly fantasizes about overthrowing the Papal State. When a woman begs for food after his basket is empty, he keeps walking under the procession’s rules; a church knight kills both her and her child 5 6.

Sacrifice and Revival

After Norton vomits following a compulsory meal, Bishop Rosen and Father Mia regard his behavior as evidence of impure thinking. Rosen selects him for the Ascension Ritual. Norton is confined and forbidden to eat, but does not initially understand that the ceremony requires his death 8.

On the way to the cemetery, Father Mia reveals that Norton will be burned alive. Norton punches him in the eye, only for a knight to drive a greatsword through his heart. Mia orders his corpse burned to ashes. The Church also orders a purge of the clergy trained alongside Norton and the six knights involved, treating his resistance as a dangerous precedent 11 12 13.

In the mass grave, a knight’s blood seeps into Norton’s charred body and restores it. He expels the stake lodged in his chest, drinks more blood, tears the knight’s head from its body, and rises as a vampire 15.

Wilderness Hiding and Forced Transformation

After watching church knights kill a werewolf, Norton abandons any assumption that becoming a vampire has made him safe. He steals a pot of blood from a farmhouse, then establishes a cave refuge with an underwater escape passage 17 18 19 20.

Norton spends weeks testing his body, mapping the surroundings, and furnishing the cave. Dangerous forest creatures repeatedly drive him into hiding. A vampire bat eventually approaches him and offers blood; he allows it to remain as a companion 21 22.

Two Holy Knights locate his refuge and attack him underwater, where their heavy armor and poor mobility give him an advantage. After their deaths, Norton drinks their blood. What he believes to be an anti-vampire poison causes unbearable pain, yet also accelerates his transformation into a stronger, withered vampire. Fearing further pursuit, he abandons the cave with his coffin and bat 25 27 28.

Cliffside Shelter and Werewolf Pursuit

During a year in the wilderness, Norton alternates heavy feeding with prolonged fasting to investigate his growth. Ordinary blood fails to produce the dramatic improvement caused by the Holy Knights’ blood, while abstinence leaves his body increasingly shrunken 31 32.

Predators gathering around Holy Lord City’s mass grave make his old cave unsuitable. Norton instead builds a fortified cliffside cabin. Over the following year, werewolves emerge as the dominant creatures around the grave and eventually attack his home 38 39.

Norton severs the wolf king’s right arm but is overwhelmed by the pack. He breaks his own arm to strike an attacker behind him, escapes their grip, and leaps from the cliff. Continued pursuit forces him toward Holy Lord City, where he hopes to use the Church’s defenses against the werewolves 40 41.

Life in Lino City

Norton subsequently settles in a Lino City bell tower. Archbishop Duoxia’s relatively permissive administration allows him to move among the population in concealing clothes, listen for news, and observe the Church while seeking books about vampires 44 45.

While posing as a beggar, he attracts Karl, a wealthy boy who repeatedly brings pastries and confides in him. Norton eventually becomes his informal mentor and deliberately guides him to collect information from his family. Over two years, familiar streets and acquaintances give Norton a sense of belonging he never developed in Holy Lord City 46 47 48.

Increasing Boya Empire espionage, papal political activity, and an uncanny sense of approaching disaster prompt Norton to consider acting rather than hiding indefinitely. When Lino City faces the werewolf threat, he refuses Karl’s offer of shelter and initially plans to leave. Nevertheless, believing he may have drawn the werewolves there, he watches the city’s suffering and hunts werewolves at night to ease his guilt 49 50.

Appearance

• Human appearance: Handsome, with a delicate face that attracts Father Mia’s attention 1 11.
• Newborn vampire: Deathly pale skin and nearly colorless eyes 21.
• Second-stage appearance: Scarlet eyes, sharp teeth, protruding nails, and a gaunt body covered in dry, wrinkled skin. His skin later resembles stiff, withered tree bark 27 28 39.
• Voice: Hoarse and abrasive, compared to fingers scraping glass 48.
• Public disguise: Full-body clothing or filthy rags, with a broad brim concealing his scarlet eyes 45 50.

Personality

Twenty years of confinement leave Norton submissive in public, intensely cautious, and prone to retreating into elaborate fantasies. He recognizes his habitual distraction as a serious problem, but his fears about schizophrenia are his own speculation rather than an established diagnosis. His apparent religious devotion is an act used to survive Church discipline 1 6 7 18.

His desire for freedom repeatedly conflicts with his instinct for safety. He chooses shelters with escape routes, imagines worst-case scenarios, and postpones revenge to practice, map terrain, or improve his living conditions. Simple comforts—including handmade furniture and a familiar daily routine—are enough to satisfy him 20 21 22 24 45.

Norton’s hatred of the Church centers especially on Father Mia. He imagines elaborate tortures for him and notices an increasingly violent temper when fighting as a vampire. Yet his emotional detachment is incomplete: he grows attached to his bats, is touched by Karl’s concern, and hunts werewolves partly because he feels responsible for Lino City’s danger 39 48 49 50.

Abilities & Skills

Regeneration and Undead Physiology

Norton can recover from injuries that would kill a human, though the limits of that recovery remain uncertain 15 22 40.

• Regenerates a sword cut within three to five seconds, without bleeding or feeling pain from that wound 22.
• Absorbs blood through damaged tissue; blood enables his burned organs and limbs to recover during revival 15.
• Does not need to breathe, allowing prolonged underwater concealment and escape 20.
• Adopts the temperature of his surroundings rather than maintaining ordinary human body heat 20.
• Can go months without feeding, but prolonged abstinence causes further emaciation and eventually interrupts growth 31 32.
• Cannot deliberately enter centuries-long hibernation; after sleeping, he may remain wakeful for a week 22.

Enhanced Strength and Mobility

His strength and toughness increase with transformation, feeding, and time 28 38.

• Gouges stone with his nails and carries a coffin packed with belongings 28.
• Pierces a werewolf’s chest with his hand and leaps more than five meters upward during his escape 40.
• Reduces movement noise through fine control of his bones and muscles 18.
• Remains vulnerable to being restrained by numerous attackers; he cannot outrun werewolves moving on all fours 40 41.

Heightened Senses

Norton relies on smell, hearing, and specialized vision to navigate darkness and monitor danger 17 47.

• Detects blood from approximately a kilometer away and distinguishes its source even amid a strong surrounding smell 17 18.
• Uses night vision automatically or deliberately; a gray membrane covers his eyes when engaged and also permits clear underwater vision 17 20.
• Claims he can detect a passing fly within a hundred meters through hearing and smell 47.
• Identifies Boya Empire spies through their heightened senses and the scent of their blood 49.
• Suspects an ominous, elusive blood scent may represent an enhanced sixth sense; this interpretation is unconfirmed 49.

Blood-Based Growth

The source of blood matters more than simply consuming larger quantities 31 48.

• Reports increasing benefits in the order rabbit → deer → werewolf → Holy Knight 48.
• Finds the blood of starving paupers nutritionally inferior even to deer blood 45.
• Gains his greatest documented improvement from the two Holy Knights, despite the accompanying agony 27 48.
• Has not established whether he can turn others into vampires through an “Embrace” 32.

Survival, Observation, and Information Gathering

Norton compensates for his lack of inherited vampire knowledge through experimentation and concealment 22 44.

• Builds furniture, a coffin, a rough terrain model, and a fortified wooden cabin 22 38.
• Uses underwater routes and cliffside locations as emergency exits 20 41.
• Practices greatsword use, though no formal combat training is established 21.
• Blends into the streets as a beggar and recruits Karl as an unwitting source of privileged information 46 48.

Weaknesses and Uncertainties

• Sunlight: Initially causes prickling discomfort rather than immediate destruction. Sensitivity increases as he develops, and he later cannot look directly at the sun 21 48.
• Crosses: His early experiments find slight suppression from a cross 22.
• Religious countermeasures: He fears holy water, consecrated objects, and the Church’s specialized anti-monster methods; their full effects on him are not established 22 44.
• Tracking: He eventually theorizes that exposure to light from God’s portrait marked him with a divine aura detectable by the Holy Knights. This remains his explanation, not confirmed knowledge 50.
• Extreme bodily destruction: He does not know whether he could recover after being torn apart and eaten 40.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Greatsword and Church armor — Uses them for protection, practice, combat, and woodworking. He abandons Church equipment over tracking fears, later retrieves it, and loses or discards damaged armor during his werewolf escape 21 28 38 40 41.
• Wooden coffin — Handmade sleeping place and transport container for utensils and belongings 22 28.
• Leaf-and-vine cloak — Serves as both a cape and coffin bedding 22.
• Blood containers — Initially carries a stolen earthenware pot; later makes a wooden blood bucket 19 28.
• Concealing clothes — Hides his body and scarlet eyes while gathering information in Lino City 45 50.

Relationships

• Father Mia — Former superior and principal target of Norton’s hatred. Mia arranges his ritual sacrifice and orders his corpse burned. Norton continues planning revenge long after Mia has been executed by the Church, apparently unaware of his death 12 27 48.
• Bishop Rosen — Church official who selects Norton for the Ascension Ritual after judging his thinking impure 8.
• Coal Ball — Norton’s first bat companion, initially accepted after offering him blood. Norton later names it while anticipating their eventual separation because of their different lifespans 22 49.
• The bat family — Grows to five members in Lino City. Norton watches the younger bats grow and takes pleasure in their company; no ability to command them is confirmed 49.
• Karl — Wealthy boy, confidant, and eventual pupil. Norton gives him dubious romantic advice and uses him to gather political news, but is genuinely moved when Karl offers him refuge 46 48 50.
• Archbishop Duoxia — Lino City’s comparatively pragmatic ruler. His administration makes Norton consider settling there, without diminishing Norton’s hatred of the Church 44.
• The wolf king and its pack — Destroy Norton’s cliffside home and pursue him toward human settlements. Norton severs the king’s right arm during their battle 40 41 45.

Notable Quotes

“No, Karl. Trusting someone so easily isn't the way to survive. That goes for you, and it goes for me too.” 50

“Fool! Why can't you have both?”
— His advice when Karl asks whether to leave Jennifer for Mary 48

Trivia

• The author describes the first volume as Norton’s birth and transformation toward becoming a vampire lord. The second volume is identified as the Age of Darkness, also called the Age of Norton; these are authorial statements about the larger story, not ranks Norton has attained in the documented chapters 49.