Ritual in the Temple

Night shrouded the land, the brilliant stars strewn across the sky like countless eyes watching the towering Uruk City-State below.

At the same time, in a side chamber of the temple at the heart of the city-state, a place dedicated to worshipping the gods.

By the light of the burning brazier,

Rovi, a black-haired, black-eyed youth, held a smooth clay tablet used for record-keeping.

He carefully used a knife to carve words into its surface.

"Rovi, you've worked hard inscribing the prayer we'll use in tomorrow's ritual."

Someone beside him spoke in a deep, hoarse voice, as aged as the speaker himself. "I'm getting old. My eyes can barely see anymore. In the future, the position of High Priest will have to be handed over to you."

It sounded very much like the empty promises made by future-era bosses, but Rovi knew the old man was not lying.

He truly was old, and his current condition no longer suited him to holding Uruk's crucial position of High Priest for much longer.

As one of the few young people in the temple, Rovi understood writing and could clearly remember the honorifics of every god of Uruk. He truly was the only candidate to succeed him.

Otherwise,

the old man would not have entrusted such an important task as inscribing the ritual prayer to someone he had only met a few times.

During the year since he had transmigrated here, Rovi had displayed considerable talent. Yet constrained by his lack of seniority, he was not particularly outstanding among the many assistant priests. Such a task should never have fallen to him.

It was an obvious hint.

So upon hearing it, Rovi immediately looked up and replied, "Rest assured, this is what I should be doing."

"What a fine young man." The old man sighed, then rose unsteadily. Beneath the linen robe unique to the High Priest, his body was little more than a frail skeleton. It swayed, and his tangled beard and hair trembled.

"Continue your work. I won't disturb you. Get some rest early. Tomorrow, you'll need to preside over the ceremony in my place."

"If only the king possessed your calm temperament..." he muttered regretfully and helplessly as he headed toward the door.

But even he knew that was impossible.

In this nation, everyone knew that Gilgamesh, Uruk's current king, was arrogant, unruly, and reckless. Not only did he treat his subordinates and subjects that way, but even before the gods, he dared to openly voice his dissatisfaction and disdain.

Of course, the old man's relief and helplessness rested on the fact that he was frail with age and dim of sight. He could not make out the words Rovi had carved, much less know the enormous folly this young man was about to commit—

What Rovi had written was not a ritual prayer for worshipping the gods at all.

It was a memorial,

advice presented by a subject to his king.

Every word was filled with Rovi's regret for Uruk as a nation, his sympathy for its people, and his condemnation of Gilgamesh, the young tyrant... It could not exactly be called disrespectful; it was simply utterly unrestrained.

Rovi had no desire whatsoever to conduct some ritual for the gods.

He only wanted to thoroughly curse out that so-called king who wore that lofty, superior expression all day long.

"With this, I should be able to leave my name in Human History, and then die, right?"

After seeing the old man out while carrying a faint sense of guilt for deceiving him, Rovi returned to the tablet. Gazing at the words upon it by the flickering firelight, he could not help laughing again.

He had not written those words because he truly cared about the nation or its people. As a transmigrator who had barely experienced the world, he did not yet feel that deeply invested.

He simply wanted to die.

—Yes.

Though it was likewise a city-state upon the Mesopotamian Plain,

Rovi had already met the King of Uruk called Gilgamesh—a dazzlingly golden-haired, beautiful figure like a god—and thus knew this was not merely the Uruk he had seen in history textbooks. This was Uruk from the Nasuverse.

In this world, all things originated from the Root, and all things would return to the Root.

The Root was the beginning of the world and also its end.

Any act of entering or leaving required passing through the Root.

As a transmigrator, when Rovi came to this world, he naturally passed through it as well.

But he had not merely passed by.

Though his consciousness had been unable to think clearly under the churning impact of the spacetime turbulence, he had seen many things within the Root.

The Root was the thing that was all and nothing.

Within it, one could touch the essential knowledge of all and nothing.

Thus, at that time, he learned that this was the Nasuverse. More than that, he learned that outside the Vortex of the Root—along the inevitable path he was about to travel to enter the world—there stood a mysterious and magnificent Throne.

A corner of the record that documented all phenomena: the Throne of Heroes.

The Throne of Heroes recorded every Hero in Human History. From ancient times to the present, outstanding figures from every parallel world formed through differing paths of development all left their traces upon it.

At that time, Rovi was about to leave the Root and fall into the Nasuverse.

Within the Root, he was nearly omniscient and omnipotent. But precisely because of that, Rovi understood that he could not take the power originating from the Root with him. The material body he manifested after falling into the world could not bear such immense knowledge and power.

So he simply engraved all that power and knowledge upon the Throne of Heroes he passed by.

At the summit of the Throne of Heroes, he carved out a Throne at the pinnacle of Human History, one that only he could sit upon.

This was the Golden Finger possessed by him, a transmigrator from a future world beyond this one.

"Although it's a pity to lose that power, as long as I can leave my name in Human History and then die by unnatural means rather than suicide, I'll gain the recognition of the Throne of Heroes and reach it once more—"

"Then I can sit in that place and reclaim the authority and power that already belong to me..."

With that power,

the Throne of Heroes would naturally no longer be able to restrain him. Instead, it would become his domain.

That was the true reason he had inscribed this memorial and painstakingly courted such disastrous death!

As the first person in history to curse a tyrant in the name of a subject, Rovi was even more certain that he would leave his name in Human History.

After death, ascending to the Throne of Heroes would be only natural.

But throughout this process, he had to be careful.

He could not let anyone hear about this, either. This world still possessed the natural manifestations of consciousness known as the Counter Force. If They discovered him, then no matter what he did, it would likely become difficult for him to die unnaturally.

Furthermore, to ensure that he himself reached the Throne of Heroes rather than being impersonated by some existence—or worse, having some fabricated being replace him and claim his achievements—Rovi had to die immediately after establishing his great deed, and he could not commit suicide.

So next, under all these conditions, Rovi had to carefully inspect it once more...

He had to make sure his insults were vicious enough.

Ideally, they would drive that king into such uncontrollable fury that he could not contain himself.

There could be no mistakes.

With that in mind, Rovi picked up the small knife used for carving tablets, sat beside the brazier, and inspected it with the utmost care.

As time passed, a faint glow gradually appeared in the night sky outside the window.

Dawn emerged, thin rays of light piercing the darkness.

Day had broken.

Figures gradually began appearing along the streets of Uruk City-State, built from rammed earth and stone, which had once been silent.

Rovi's body swayed. Someone nudged him, jolting him out of his concentration on the tablet's carved words.

"Priest Rovi." A young temple attendant woke him and said respectfully, "The old priest asked you to go to the Pantheon. The ceremony is about to begin!"

Only then did he realize it was already daytime.

"I understand." Clutching the tablet tightly in both hands, Rovi nodded. "I'll go at once."