Paragorn's Infinity Trial - Part 3
And that was Paragorn's life in the Berserk universe for the foreseeable future. He would set out from his base, hunt down Apostles, and then return home to rest up and repeat the process again. Ever since the Eclipse, the Apostles have come to fear him very, very, very, very much and had even attempted to go into hiding and not draw attention to themselves. Which was an exercise in futility since Paragorn, with the Mind Stone in his possession, could read the minds all people in the world and use to locate and kill the Apostles. Even though he was branded, he did not experience nearly the same amount of problems that other like Guts suffered.
The only thing that annoyed him were the restless spirits each night that gathered around him in a futile effort to take over his body. In light of that, he had bought the Spirit Manipulation ability from his system and with that, created these special boxes to act as containers for these restless spirits. He called these containers Spirit Boxes.
So with that, he travelled the lands, disguised as a regular human, killing Apostles, exorcising abandoned villages, former battlefields and other places that had restless spirits in them. To ensure that those Spirit Boxes wouldn't become major sources problems later on for this world, he stored them in his inventory where they'd be safe and sound until he had the Soul Stone. Once he had that, he could take all the restless spirits he'd captured and turn them in the energies of the Soul Stone itself.
As for Guts and Casa, their stories were the same as before. Casca had reverted to a childlike mute state, whilst he went out on his quest of vengeance against Griffith and the Apostles. As for what the Skull Knight told him, it was all the same as in the story. But when Guts asked the Skull Knight about Paragorn, the Skull Knight told him that he didn't know who that was and left, leaving Guts to his devices.
This went on for months, since he wasn't in a hurry to complete this Infinity Quest, Paragorn took his time to finish it and explore this world. But the more he explored this world, the more he saw just horrible and god awful it was. The presence of the Apostles and the restless spirits was one thing, but to see just how horribly oppressed the people were, how there was no hope for a better future, it hurt him. The Saiyan blood in his veins just wanted to continue hunting down the Apostles, but his human subconscious did not agree. He had all the power and way more to positively affect these people's lives for the better and he decided to do so. And so it was that though he continued on with his Apostle hunt, he also used his powers to make people's lives better.
He would subconsciously impart knowledge onto the people to make their lives better, from the standard reading, writing and counting to more impactful knowledge like newer farming techniques for better crop yields, the knowledge about how to synthesize ammonia and produce fertilizer, knowledge about how micro-biology and how diseases spread and how antibiotics could be made, knowledge about sanitation and how to be cleaner in live and keep vermin at bay that could spread diseases. Though he did make sure to not impart too much knowledge at the same so as to not arouse suspicion towards them from other people considering the fact that religious zealots are rive in this world and anything they'd see as suspicious would end up with these same people being burned as witches. He gave them the lifesaving and -altering knowledge piecemeal and awakened an inquisitive drive in them to further explore this sudden inspiration and to make something of it and thus improving their overall quality in live. And was how he had spent 22 months in this world, hunting Apostles, exorcising restless spirits and improving the quality of life for the people of this world. At the end of those 22 months, he had reached his goal of slaying 10,000 Apostles and was given the location of the Infinity Stone. It was located at the bottom of the Tower of Conviction within the city of Albion.
When he reached the city, he came across a scene of utter depression. This city was bursting at the seams, with its downtrodden population living in tents or ramshackle huts and dying from starvation and disease while its religious elite were living in opulent luxury. And there at the center of this pigsty of a city stood the Tower of Conviction looming over the city of Albion. Landing at the outskirts of the city, beyond anyone's vision, Paragorn walked towards the Tower of Conviction. And along the way, he influenced everyone's minds to ignore his presence completely, even if he'd open a door with guards next to them or walked through a room packed with people, they'd move out of his way and continue to ignore him.
Upon arrival at the Tower of Conviction, he was suddenly assailed by a deluge of dark emotions emanating from the tower and this staggered him for a second. The moaning, anguished wails of the dead spirits and the pain and screams of the people being tortured in and around this tower were like a sudden spike of pain in his head. This had caused his subtle influence on the people around him to dissipate with the unfortunate consequence that he was now perceived by the guards around him as he was about to enter the tower. Those guards who took up their weapons and ordered him to surrender and identify himself were immediately teleported away from there and to middle of the ocean and left to fend for themselves. After soothing the pain in his head and reapplying the subtle influence on the people around him once more, he made the decision to destroy this tower and eradicate this barbaric religion from the face of this planet once and for all once he found that Infinity Stone.
And so, he traveled through the Tower of Conviction down to its deepest level, passing by so many torture and execution chambers along the way that the air reeked horribly of death and decay that he had to put on his armor with the helm in order to block out the stench. Once he reached the basement level of the tower, he searched for the hole that would lead him further down to its deepest depths, to the hole where the corpses would be throw down. A much searching around he found a hole in the wall. And without going down the hole, he knew that that was what he was looking for on account of a veritable tsunami of dark emotions coming out of it. Stepping through that hole, Paragorn let himself slowly float down to the bottom of the hole. Along the way he asked his armor to analyze the air content around them and what he got back was that it where the normal values of the air content around them. But what interested him though were the incredibly high levels of putrescine and cadaverine compounds in the air around them, meaning that he was on the right track.
Upon arrival at the bottom of the hole, he was greeted by a sight that would mentally scar everyone else for life. There at the bottom of the hole in the darkness, he could see hundreds of human corpses in various stages of decay in. No care has been given to these poor people and many of them that hadn't completely decayed still displayed scars from torture. And as expected from the deluge of dark emotions lingering in this hole, it was home to an ungodly amount of restless spirits and with him having a Brand of Sacrifice, these restless spirits were stirred up into a frenzy and attacking him in a vain attempt to take over his body. But like any of the other restless spirits that attacked him, he trapped them inside a Spirit Box. As the restless dead swirled around him, cursing him and attempting to get inside his mind, Paragorn ignored them all and took a shiny black cube from his inventory. Making a series of hand signs and speaking in a tongue never before spoken upon this world, the topside of the black cube opens up and a vortex appears out of it sucking in all of the restless spirits around him and into the box. In fact, the box's area of effect extended to the entire city of Albion and all the restless spirits were sucked into the Spirit box.
There in the distance, inhabiting this dark realm, was a creature that bore witness to all this. The moment that it saw the golden armored warrior descend from the tower up above, it knew immediately that its doom had come for him. It had heard about the golden armored warrior hunting down Apostles with reckless abandon. So much so, that there were but few of them left in this world. After witnessing its doom trapping all of the restless spirits in the entire city within that shiny black box, it stood rooted to its spot in fear. When the shiny black box disappeared from the golden warrior's hand, it looked around the mass grave that it calls home until its gaze fell upon it. Looking at the golden warrior's face, it saw a helmet covering its head unlike any it had ever seen before with two big red lenses where its eyes are. At this point, it's fight-flight-freeze response had gone from freeze to flight and it bolted out of there. It hadn't even managed to make it 5 feet before it felt its body involuntarily freeze on the spot. And as much as it tried to resist this alien force holding it in place, it was unable to do so.
"Hallo there Egg. Fancy meeting you in this cesspool." Said the golden armored warrior that suddenly stood behind it.
"Please… please, don't kill me. I cannot die. I have to make a new world." Whimpered the Egg.
"I know." Said the golden armored warrior to it gently. "But you will not be the one to make it, I will make a new world. A better world."
The Egg felt the golden warrior place its hand upon it, and for a very tiny dreadful fraction of a second, it feared what the Bane of Apostle kind would do to it. But before it could comprehend what was happening, it was lights out for the Egg and its existence had come to an end. Paragorn had placed his hand upon the Egg and summoned a singularity within the Egg's body that consumed it instantly. After the Egg was gone, he dismissed the singularity from existence. The only reason he had given the Egg a painless death was because, unlike any other Apostles, it did not kill/torture/main/devour humans for its own sick amusement. With the agent of the God Hand gone, Paragorn had once again intervened in the God Hand's plans and upended the flow causality.
With that out of the way, Paragorn went back to doing what he came here to do. Scouring this macabre cesspool, he came across an antechamber wherein a macabre shrine. It was a shrine of the Holy See's image made from the skin and bones of humans. Filled with disgust, Paragorn took out a flamethrower and doused the antechamber first in gallons of flammable liquid before torching it. As he was about to walk away, he suddenly stopped and looked back into the flaming antechamber. For reasons unknown, he heard a whisper call to him from the antechamber. Walking through the flames, safe in the knowledge that his armor was impervious to fire, he walked all the way towards the back of the antechamber, beyond the currently burning shrine. At the back end of the antechamber, he heard the whisper call to him from beyond the rock wall. Balling his fist, he punched through the rock and came upon another antechamber, but this one was smaller the previous one. And inside this antechamber was a tiny pool in which a blood red liquid was sloshing around.
"Found you." Said Paragorn with a big smile on his face as he entered this smaller antechamber.
Sticking his hand inside the pool, the blood red liquid reacted to his presence and attempted to enter body. With an effort of will, he forced the blood red liquid to coalesce instead and it formed into a red stone. This was the fifth Infinity Stone, the Reality Stone. There, in the palm of his right hand it lay. Picking it up, he brought the Reality Stone open socket on the thumb of his Infinity Gauntlet and placed it in there. With a shockwave of power being released upon connection, Paragorn felt himself be one with the world around him. With the Reality Stone in hand, he could change this world for the better before he left it for good.
Weekly Power Status
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