"She is a Fate Goddess Paragon!"
"He is the Kraken God Paragon reincarnation avatar!"
The accusations flew simultaneously, overlapping in the tense air of the outpost. Just as John’s direct question had landed, Cissel and Ricky had reacted like cornered beasts.
Before Luke or Elena could even begin to grasp the full, earth-shattering weight of what had just been said, the two were already pointing fingers, throwing bla and exposure without a second of hesitation.
"What are you talking about?!" Luke was the first to find his voice after a long, suffocating period of silence. His eyes darted between Cissel and Ricky, his mouth hanging slightly open. "Are you telling you two are Paragons? No way! That’s... That’s insane!"
"That’s impossible," Elena chid in, her head shaking in a frantic motion as if trying to physically rattle the idea out of her brain.
"That can’t be true. Paragons aren’t just strong; they are insanely strong and unreachable by people like us. They don’t join institutions like Azure Academy in the first place!"
She moved her gaze back and forth between her two friends, searching for a laugh, a smirk, or any sign that this was a poorly tid joke. Yet, the two kept their silence. Cissel and Ricky were both looking down at the ground now, their shoulders tense, neither taking responsibility for the bombshell they had just dropped.
"And Paragons don’t move solo," Elena added, her voice trembling slightly as she struggled to reconcile her lifelong education with the reality standing before her. "They work with the massive support of their factions, surrounded by their most loyal elite warriors, protected by entire legions... They aren’t anything like the two of you!!"
Luke nodded vigorously from the side, agreeing with every word. To them, a Paragon was a sun; you didn’t find a sun hiding in a basent pretending to be a candle.
"Paragon reincarnation, huh?"
Out of the blue, John spoke. He had been quiet, observing the fallout with a stillness that was almost eerie. He was speechless and surprised by the revelation, yet he didn’t find himself doubting it for a second.
For a man who had effectively travelled through ti and space, the concept of reincarnation wasn’t a hurdle; it was just another variable in a world already gone mad.
"So PARIE ant Paragon Reincarnation?" John added.
The ntion of the specific term acted like a lightning strike, snapping everyone’s attention toward him.
"How... How do you know about that?" Ricky was visibly shaken, his face turning a shade paler. "That term... That should be a top secret; soone like you shouldn’t have heard it, nor related it to . Who explained it to you?!! How did you know I’m a PARIE?!!!"
"That’s it then," John’s face suddenly bead with a warm, almost frighteningly calm smile. In fact, he felt a genuine sense of relief. This tiny, nagging piece of the puzzle, the mysterious acronym in Ricky’s encrypted file, had haunted his thoughts for a very long ti. Today, the mystery had finally been stripped bare.
"Don’t look so surprised," John’s smile shifted from relief to sothing a bit more evil, a glint of dark amusent in his eyes. "I’ve already seen your academy profile, Ricky."
"No way! It should have been locked away under tons of protection asures!!" Ricky’s eyes went wide with a mixture of fear and disbelief. "A new student, a commoner, shouldn’t have had the ability to even see the file na, let alone the contents!"
"And yet I did," John said, totally ignoring Ricky’s sputtering protest. He turned his gaze towards Cissel, whose face was a mask of silent dread. She looked like she was waiting for a gavel to fall. "A Fate Goddess Paragon... So you can see fate and read the future?"
"She can’t," Ricky interrupted. He was still the most shocked person in the room, his ego reeling from the exposure. "She is a Regressor. I’m a PARIE, and she is a PAREG, a Paragon Regressor!"
"Hmm, regressor?" John looked at the all-silent Cissel.
Under his steady gaze, Cissel felt like she was being interrogated for a heinous cri. For a fleeting mont, she felt a wave of intense, suffocating regret.
She regretted not being open and honest with John from the start, regretted not explaining her burden, her struggle, her life story before it was dragged into the light by a rival. Being exposed to this put her in a terrible, manipulative-looking spot.
"John... Listen... I can explain..." She tried to speak, but her voice cracked and failed her. She was utterly terrified of John’s reaction towards all this.
In her mind’s eye, she could already see the scene playing out: John snapping in a rage, shouting and cursing at her, accusing her of using her knowledge of the future to puppet him for her own ends.
She wanted to defend herself, to explain that he was the only variable she didn’t know, but the courage wasn’t there. Sothing deep inside her soul, the weight of a thousand failed tilines, kept whispering: You are already guilty.
"John, you can’t truly believe any of this, right?" Luke suddenly stepped forward, breaking through his own shock. He looked at John with wide eyes.
"I know you co from a humble background, so you might not fully grasp what the word Paragon truly ans. A Paragon is a supre leader, the mightiest figure in the world.
You can’t possibly believe our two friends, the ones who have bled with us, walked the sa halls, and fought alone without any guards or entourage, are real Paragons?"
He looked between John and Elena, searching for confirmation that he hadn’t lost his mind. Elena nodded slowly, her logic firmly on Luke’s side. But John simply shook his head.
"I don’t know a lot about Paragon politics, that’s true," John said slowly, his voice carrying an undeniable weight. "But I’m sure these two have a lot of explaining to do. As for them being Paragons... I can honestly say I’m not surprised in the slightest."
"..."
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