Paragorn's Infinity Trial - Part 4

With his fifth Infinity Stone wedged firmly in the socket on the back of his Infinity Gauntlet's thumb, Paragorn left that mass grave and ascended back up to the Tower of Convictions. Before he would implement the great change to this world, he wanted to visit a couple of people first and disappeared from Albion. When next he reappeared, he was high up in the skies in a desert, looking down at a massive worm looking Apostle being in the middle of a battle against the Skull Knight. And from the looks of it, the Apostle was not doing so well. Patiently waiting until the Skull Knight had vanquished the Apostle, Paragorn landed beside him when he was done.

"Hello Skull Knight." Paragorn announced himself beside the Skull Knight when he had killed the Apostle.

Turning around with a startle, the Skull Knight was about to fight whoever was behind him until he saw who it was and even then he only said.

"You."

"How have these last 22 months been for you?" Asked Paragorn.

"Strange. The flow of causality is disturbed by your presence and deeds so much that I have been reduced to hunting down those creatures of the dark instead of foiling the machinations of the God Hand." Said the Skull Knight. 

"I have come here to share some news with you then. My time here in this world has come to an end. But before I go, I will first ensure that the God Hand and their servants will never be able to hurt anymore people. And secondly, I will steer humanity towards a path that will ensure that they achieve greatness beyond your ken." 

"How so?" Asked the Skull Knight intrigued.

So Paragorn told the Skull Knight about his plans. He told him about the reason why he came to this world was to kill Apostles and to find an artifact with godlike power hidden upon this world. And now that he is in possession of the artifact, he can, together with the other artifact he has, change this world for mankind. He will free mankind from the predations of demonkind and usher in the enlightenment which will usher it into an age in which mankind will transcend the bound of their world and venture out into the stars and ascend to become a Type-III civilization and possibly even higher.

The Skull Knight just looked at him with puzzlement, unable to follow what Paragorn was talking about. That was until Paragorn spoke up about what was needed to be done ensure that future for mankind. And for that future to have a possibility to come to fruition, what was needed was a total severing of the connection and eternal separation between the Physical World and the Astral World and a radical rearrangement of the human psyche. And that second to last comment was what caught the Skull Knight's attention, protesting that the Physical World and the Astral World could never be wholly separated for they are intrinsically linked to one another. 

"That is where you are wrong Skull Knight. With these artifacts…" Said Paragorn as he showed the Skull Knight his five Infinity Stones. "…I can change the fabric of reality and its very laws that govern it. And for the sake of humanity, the Astral World and the Physical World must from now on be separate from one another."

"What about the Astral beings that live in the Physical World? What is to be of them?" Asked the Skull Knight.

"They will lose their connection to the Astral World and be given the choice of remaining in the Physical World without any connection to the Astral World or to leave behind the Physical World and live in the Astral World." Said Paragorn.

"Except for any remaining Apostles and those Behelits. The Apostles will immediately die and any Behelit will crumble to dust and there will never be another Behelit in this world or another Apostle." 

"Then… then…" Stammered the Skull Knight.

"Indeed." Confirmed Paragorn nodding along.

"When I am done, nevermore will the God Hand have any more influence upon the fate of humanity and nevermore will another Apostle be born. As for you, Skull Knight, your quest is at an end, so this is farewell."

And with that, Paragorn teleported away from there, in search of the second person he wanted to contact before leaving. Finding that person also engaged in battle against an Apostle, against a mutated praying mantis-human hybrid Apostle. And from the looks of it, it would seem that the Apostle was doing better. So coming to the rescue, he dragged the Apostles into sky with his telekinesis all the way up till it was level with his face. When that Apostle saw who it was that dragged it up in the sky, its face went from confident cruelty to frightful pleading, begging Paragorn to not kill him and that he would nevermore kill a human. But Paragorn ignored him and clenched his fist and set that Apostle ablaze till there was nothing left but ashes. Once that was done, he floated down and landed in front of the person he sought out, Guts. And from the looks of it, his fight against that Apostle injured him. With a simple wave of his hand, he healed his injuries.

"Hello Guts, remember me?" Said Paragorn to Guts who kept staring at him with wide open eyes and slack jawed. He kept stammering and tripping over his words while pointing a shaking finger at Paragorn until he finally had taken control of his nerves.

"You're the one who saved us from that hell."

"Indeed I have." Said Paragorn with a genuine smile on his face. "Whilst I did save you and Casca from the Eclipse, my motives for doing so were more selfish. I didn't want you in my way whilst I killed all the Apostles in there."

Then… then. Does that mean that Griffith…?" Asked Guts cautiously, who to his dismay he got an answer to when Paragorn shook his head.

"Though I had killed all the Apostles that were present there, the God Hand managed to escape me, only after I wounded them severely."

"But that is not why I came to you. I have come here to tell you that this single minded quest of vengeance of yours is at an end."

"How…?" Stammered Guts as he wanted to ask how he knew when he suddenly heard Paragorn's voice in his head and that made him stop talking.

"Because I am quite literally the closest thing to a god that your mind could comprehend. The moment we made eye-contact I read all your memories and I know everything about you from the moment you comprehended the world around you till this very moment."

And Paragorn went on to explain his reason for coming here using his voice this time.

"I am going to change this world so drastically that there will never be another Apostle again and that the God Hand will have no influence upon this world, which means that you will never Griffith ever again."

"As for the reason why I tell you this, you are one of two people in this world who have the Brand of Sacrifice and thus you know about the darkest side of this world no one else knows. And if I didn't tell you this, you would have continued on a quest that was utterly pointless. So I tell you this now so that you can make an informed decision what comes next."

"Will you disregard everything I said and continue on this pointless quest, or will you return home to Casca, Rickert, Godot and Erica and confront your trauma and move on with your live surrounded by those who care about you and that you care about yourself?"

And that left Guts stunned. He had no reason to trust Paragorn, but deep down he knew that he was speaking the truth. He still wanted nothing more than to hunt down the Apostles and finally get his revenge on Griffith, but with what he was told just now, it pointless to go on this quest of vengeance. For so long he had immersed himself in his revenge, unable and unwilling to confront what happened to him and Casca and try to make something of their lives. But now, the end of his single-minded quest for revenge has arrived, he reached the crossroads that he never expected to reach.

"Kill him." A dark whisper sounded in the back of his mind.

"He lies. He wants you to let down your guard so that he can kill you. He is one of them. Kill him before he kills you."

As Guts was going through this internal dilemma, Paragorn still had that telepathic link with him and he heard that same dark whisper that was speaking to Guts and he knew what that dark whisper was. Without warning, Paragorn placed his index finger against Guts' forehead and dragged both of them into his mindscape. Inside, they were greeted by an endless dark space. And inside this dark space, they both stood in ankle high water opposite one another. But standing behind Guts and embracing it, Paragorn could see the personification of Guts' darkest emotion shaped like a lupine beast. This was the Beast of Darkness. And the moment it saw Paragorn, it growled at him, cursed at him and told him that Guts was his and that he would never let him go.

"Begone."

What that one word, that reverberated throughout the mindscape of Guts, that Beast of Darkness was being ripped apart like paper. It desperately held on to Guts, screaming at Guts that he was alive only because of him. But it was powerless against Paragorn's overwhelming power and was excised from Guts' mind. Back out in the real world, Paragorn took his finger of Guts' forehead and told him one last thing before moving on.

"In case you wonder about Casca and what to do about her broken mind, I have restored it. I have not made her forget about the Eclipse, but her mind is strengthened greatly so that you two can process what happened to you together. And as a farewell gift to you."

Next thing Guts knew, Paragorn suddenly placed his hand upon the stump of his left arm and his empty right eye socket. When Paragron let him, Guts' right eye and left arm were restored. Looking at his left arm with amazement and feeling his right eye with equal amounts of amazement, Guts did not see Paragorn disappear from his location. And when he did notice, he decided then and there that he would return home trusting the god that just restored his body that his quest of vengeance was at an end.

As for Paragorn, after parting ways with Guts he took off again in the direction of Albion. This time, he would put an end to this whole overcrowded barbaric city of pain and suffering. Arriving high in skies above Albion, first thing he did was make the beggars and refugees and the overall lower class that comprised over 90% of Albion's population, that were suffering from disease, starvation, malnutrition and the depraved tortures of the Holy See's witch hunters, healthy again. Between one moment and the next, the suffering people were suddenly invigorated and as strong and as healthy as could be. Simultaneously, he made sure that the people wouldn't think of this as a miracle but that they were always this healthy.

Next thing Paragorn did was instill in the lower class people the idea that there was nothing for them in this city and that they had to leave. So for weeks, Paragorn floated up there in the skies above Albion, watching as the city was getting emptier and emptier by the day. The people who left were instilled with instilled with the ability to read and write, but each one of these individuals was either instilled with knowledge of chemistry, engineering, physics, mathematics, medicine etc. And as a last gift, from the minds of these people, all knowledge on the Holy See religion would be erased and they would have an instinctive desire to spread their knowledge far and wide.

Once the city was emptied out of all lower class people, the next step in Paragorn's plan commenced. Everyone in the world, save for some, had their memories from religion erased and in them a thirst for new knowledge and a drive to improve their lives was kindled in them. It would take many centuries of incremental steps of research, experimentation, development and publication and along the way wars, revolutions, natural and manmade disasters would occur but humanity would eventually elevate its civilization on the Kardeshev scale and achieve greatness. 

As the upper class of Albion, for them who abused the Holy See to enrich themselves at the expanse of everyone else, another punishment awaited them.