I’ve finally finished my research into Gilgamesh’s legend.
The golden king.
Though it was admittedly in the dawn of civilization, the man had once obtained all the world.
There have been numerous sovereigns and leaders in the history of humanity.
There had been a conquering king who swept east.
There had also been a founding emperor who raised a vast empire.
However, Gilgamesh makes a conspicuous figure even among them.
He had placed himself before the nation and the people.
He had neither curiosity nor desire to conquer.
He probably had too much to begin with.
And so he put himself first.
That led to the quest for immortality.
The anecdote of the herb of immortality
in humanity’s most ancient tale, “The Epic of Gilgamesh.”
“Hmm? What is it with that glum look?
Some useless worry again?
Very well, speak. I shall allow it.”
Fortunately, the King of Heroes appeared to be in a good mood.
All right. Then I’m just going to ask.
It doesn’t feel right to go to the final battle still hung in suspense, anyways.
So―――
> Why did you let go of immortality?
“―――What?”
Rather, why did he quest for immortality in the first place?
Though in the legend it says that he did so “in fear of death”―――
There’s no way that this Heroic Spirit is such a goody-two-shoes!
“I see.
So you’ve finished reading the epic.
Then I’ll not ask you the reason for your question.
However, that question is one that concerns the depths of my being.
Though I shall certainly answer if you wish to know,
do you have the mental preparation necessary?
After all, you are about to make me speak of that confounded affair.
You will be burdened with a debt that you’ll be unable to repay your entire life.
Even so, do you still wish to know?”
…..It was an unexpected response.
His tone was neither angered nor amused.
It was as dispassionate as never before.
He was serious.
I―――
“Then I shall speak of it.
Oh, it will not take long.
After all, the circumstances are the same as in the epic.”
wait, didn’t you just start talking all on your own―――?!
Typical Gilgamesh;
the choice between “yes” or “no” never even existed to begin with!
“Dim the lights.
Though this is far from worthy as a stage,
the atmosphere needs some livening up.”
[lighting and BGM change]
“To the king before the previous, Lugalbanda, and the goddess Ninsun-Rimat I was born,
given a body that was of the highest grade by mortal standards,
and knowledge reaching truth.
It would seem that I was benevolent enough in my childhood.
After all, I was apparently cherished as the pride of the people,
who had, it was said, rejoiced that they had ‘gained the best king there was.’”
...Wait a second.
That’s not how one should speak of his own past.
Not that I, with my own memory happily impaired, am in any position to say it,
but does the King of Heroes not remember his childhood well?
“Of course not. My younger self and I are utterly different in nature.
I cannot even perceive my younger self.
My younger self would doubtless be the same.
Had he known that he would become me as an adult,
he may even have stopped his growth.
Well, it is but idle supposition.
I reached adulthood, and ascertained my course.
That I would live not as a king who governed the people,
but a storm who castigated the people.
From thereon it is as it was in the epic.
I seized and collected as I willed.
The nation and the people were mine.
All the treasures and possibilities they brought forth
I collected and made my own.
Why?
To adjudicate, of course.
Though humanity is the epitome of ingenuity, it does not possess a shared standard.
No, precisely because it has no shared standard, humanity continues to bring forth new advancements.
Thus, an absolute standard is indispensable.
An adjudicator who was human while more than human,
who belonged to the gods without being a god.
If merely to govern, a human would do;
if merely to menace, a god would do.
To the very end, the gods had not understood that.”
Adjudicator...come to think of it,
Karna had referred to Gilgamesh as such.
Observer. Sentencer.
Punition personified, uncolored by human values.
So that’s what was at Gilgamesh’s core...?
“This was before the Code of Ur-Nammu.
Later Hammurabi established his with further delineation,
but the basic idea is law for humans to prosecute humans.
I lived by my standards.
I collected riches, bedded women, fought with my friend,
and purged the earth of banes.
And after that work was completed,
a certain life had returned to dust.
Met death, to put it concretely.
Until that moment, not once had death inspired in me either grief
or fear. It had never even been in my mind.
However, before my eyes, one who held equal power to me perished.
Though I had known that death awaited all, that was the first time it had truly registered with me.”
By “equal,” he must mean Enkidu.
According to the epic, upon witnessing Enkidu’s death,
Gilgamesh had realized that he too was fated to die and became frightened.
And in the end, to escape from death,
he visited the sage who was said to have overcome death.
The final adventure of the King of Heroes.
The quest for immortality in the underworld, Kigal.
“Needless to say, it is not that I hadn’t thought of the herb of immortality before then.
My vault must contain all the treasures of the earth, after all.
Even if he had not returned to dust,
it was a task I would have one day needed to undertake.
In addition, I now had a reason to do so.
I loathed, feared the death that took him away.
For the first time since birth, I was frightened of my own life.
The journey from that point could be summed up in a single word: a farce.
It was said that there was a man in the underworld who had overcome death.
For the same length of time as I had lived up to that point,
I wandered the wilderness, seeking the underworld.
Well? Just as in the epic, no?
I groveled along pathetically,
with no thought in my mind but wanting only not to die.
The same motive as you all.
Not even a child of the gods was different in any way whatsoever
when faced with death.
However, even my idiocy exceeded that of humans.
......Revoltingly, I continued to ingurgitate my own baseness.
Without knowing even
for what purpose, for whose sake,
was I attempting to overcome death.
Just glared at the sky,
determined to be unfading.”
He reminisces with a hint of nostalgia.
Gilgamesh, who’d wandered the wilds for decades.
Flinging aside the pride, the authority, the power of a king.
All from the fear of death, because he didn’t want to die.
―――But was that really true?
No doubt he had told the truth about having feared death.
But is it not only one of the reasons?
To begin with, why did he loathe “death”?
Was it anger towards the death of his friend,
or fear from the realization that even one equal to himself would die?
...No.
I don’t have proof, but I can say firmly that that’s not it.
No doubt he couldn’t forgive himself, abandoning his role.
He had determined to be the observer.
He had determined to be the adjudicator of the people.
He had determined to see through to the very end,
not the everyday contentment, but the deeds, the future of the people,.
That was his kingship.
And that’s why―――
To witness their end,
he had sought an enduring body that would last until the end of this world.
“Reaching the underworld, I learned the secret of immortality from the sage.
It was nothing special.
The sage had simply joined the ranks of the gods,
and gained longevity.
A farce indeed.
The sage had half become a plant.
That is what it means to join the ranks of the gods.
I had to be immortal with the desires of a human intact.
What would come of living eternity in a body with no appetition?
I left the underworld. I became of a mind to return to Uruk
and bring my vault to completion.
However.
Likely the sage had grown doubtful, having his way of existence rejected.
He told me a certain secret.”
Or perhaps, the sage had wanted to condemn him, he who would deny immortality from the gods, to the same existence.
The sage said:
“I understand that you cannot obey the gods.
I will not tell you to beg the mercy of mighty Anu.
Instead―――let me impart to you a certain secret.”
The sage told Gilgamesh a method of becoming immortal without seeking the mercy of the gods.
The root of an herb that grew in the deep.
That was the true secret behind immortality.
“Consuming it was out of the question
since I would only become a plant,
but it was a rare treasure in of itself.
It would serve to decorate my vault as an exotic wonder.
I stopped by the deep, jarred the herb,
and returned above ground.
That is all there is.
I returned to Uruk, completed the walled city and my vault,
and went to my rest.
That’s about it as to why I had sought immortality.
Mm. All exactly as in the epic,
the completely unabridged truth!
And so we’re done.
I shall contemplate what to charge you for this question at my leisure.
Look forward to it, hmm?”
Huh...? N-no way!
I object as Gilgamesh was about to conclude.
What I wanted to know wasn’t the reason he had sought immortality.
I wanted to know why he let go of the herb he had gone through so much to acquire!
“(sigh)....... Hakuno, how many times
do you intend to make me repeat that it was as it is in the epic?
I let the serpent have it.
I am he of the carelessness, immortality snatched from me as I bathed.
I, who affirm desires,
was brought down by the desires of the serpent that crawled the wilds.
The simple appetition of “hunger.”
The serpent that consumed the herb gained the property of shedding.
Not immortality, but the restoration of youth.
As it is quite the rare potion, I have it in my vault as well, you know?”
That’s it.
I finally understood.
I had been bothered―――
no, tripped up by that part.
In the epic, the herb was stolen from Gilgamesh by the serpent.
The strange part was after that.
Without returning to the underworld, he returned to Uruk.
Why had he given up on the immortality that he had chased after?
What had he seen then? That was what I wanted to know.
“Something so trivial―――
but, well, it is curious indeed.
Even I cannot put into words my state of mind at that point.
I had no need of such immortality as that modeled on the gods―――
even as I declared so,
nevertheless some part of me must have been hopeful.
Returning above ground, I could not help but smile at my accomplishment.
With this I could overthrow death.
With this I could avenge my friend, I thought.
And I imagined the voices of the people of Uruk.
If I brought back immortality, the acclaim of the people
would reach unprecedented levels.
In the end, I too was but the child of a human....
The rashness of youth, as it is called.
However, once that happens vanity soon follows.
I became bothered by the ragged state of my being,
to which I had not spared a single thought until that moment .
Deciding to cleanse my body before returning to Uruk,
I rested at a nearby spring to recover from my fatigue.
It was fatigue that had accumulated over decades.
Like the breeze of the sky, the snow of the sacred peaks,
the water healed me warmly, coolly, gently.
―――“Peacefulness,” I suppose you would call it.
It was like being released from a prolonged malaise,
in both body and mind.
I have never been as ecstatic in any accomplishment of my own as in that moment.
It was such euphoria as to make one want to shout.
To tell you the truth, that was my first experience of joy.
Amassing treasures is an instinct to me.
Like breathing. It is not joy.
However―――that was different.
For the first time, I was thankful, joyous that I had been born into this world.
Despite claiming to have the perspective of humans,
until that moment,
I had not been human.
I was set free from everything.
Burdened with no doubts, no fears, no fixations, no duty,
I quivered in the overwhelming sensation of omnipotence.
This was élan vital. This was the reward of selfish desire.
I reveled in the belief that, for all eternity, I could do as I pleased with this joy.
However, what awaited such a fool was the theft of the serpent.
The herb was lost. The serpent gained a new body and left.
―――What struck me then, was laughter.
I laughed and laughed until my sides ached.
It was all just so absurd that I couldn’t help it.
Look, this is the conclusion, I said to myself.
I guffawed at my own foolishness.
All that I stand to gain, all that I stand to take pride in, is “naught.”
Oh, it is not that I cannot attain anything.
At the end of it all, not one thing shall remain for me ―――
and that, I understood then, is my sole reward.
The fulfillment in life, the joy of living that I’d attained for the first time,
vanishes in the blink of an eye, like so.
This was the world of humanity.
This was what I must observe.
What would I understand of this unique appeal in an undying body?
Immortality is but the incompleteness of the common fool.
The dream of the mongrels who cannot face the end.
I had no need for immortality.
These eyes foresee the future to begin with.
There had been no reason whatsoever to fear death.
Existing in that era, unfading in that moment,
even without experiencing the passage of time,
I’ll nevertheless gaze at the distant future.
―――Humanity’s most ancient tale.
If as a hero passed down through the ages,
my duty will be fulfilled.
That is all there is to it.
At that moment in time, I was born a human,
and after I learned of joy, I died a human.
Apologies. It was a mistake when I had said before that I was complete since birth.
I too had my times of inexperience.
It took nearly the entirety of my life to complete my development.
I reached physical maturity in the days with my friend,
while my mind reached maturity at that moment.
―――My youth had come to an end at last.
The sky I beheld stretched far and wide.
It was such that even with my eyes,
it would take long to see through it all.
By that time, my body will have since rotted.
But the knowledge
world of humanity will continue to expand.
One day, humanity shall see even light from millions of years away.
...That is the kind of future I saw.
And it was an exhilarating sight.
Thinking back, I must have lost my drive.
I had collected all that should be collected.
There was no further joy to be had in that era.
Then it is a simple matter of departing with integrity.
I’ll experience death as many times as necessary.
Time and again I shall revive.
Time and again I shall observe.
Until the end of this world.
Until the day comes when humanity reaches beyond my garden
planet,
setting sail for the dark sea―――until the day comes when humanity reaches the end of the sky
and strikes its final note.”
......That was his dying dream.
Gilgamesh, who’d laughed away the serpent’s theft of the herb.
Before he knew it, the sun had already risen.
Smiling at the human joy that had blossomed within his chest for but a fleeting second,
he set to return to Uruk.
The end of his adventures.
Afterwards, he governed Uruk as the ruler of heroes,
and departed this world.
As humanity’s most ancient hero.
As the illustrious king who was the first in this world to have “become a story.”
The long narrative was over.
Through the connection between Master and Servant,
I sense Gilgamesh’s state of mind at that time.
Indeed, the herb of immortality was of little importance when compared to the truth that he had arrived at then.
“―――Well, after I brought Uruk to completion,
I stole back to the deep and retrieved it.
It was a rare treasure in of itself.”
Retrieved it?!
You’re not free of cravings at all, King of Heroes.....!
“Mm. Don’t say that.
Amassing treasures is like an instinct to me;
just wordlessly brush it aside.
‘Better safe than sorry,’ as it is said.
You never know, there may one day be a situation that I can only tolerate as a child.”
Is that so.
I pray that something like that never happens.
.....however, even I was finally able to understand.
Whether astute judgment synonymous to universal truth,
or misrule during a drunken stupor,
if he was the one to carry it out, would become the indisputable sentence of the king.
That is the absolute king.
That is the true identity of the one who had guided me thus far.
“Oh? Could it be that you are looking at me with respect?
Very well. Look all you want.
I do not mind changing, if you so wish.”
No thank you, I rejected with all my might.
To begin with I don’t respect you one bit.
I was simply working to gain a tactical advantage as a Master by comprehending Gilgamesh.
So, it’s not like.....it’s just that I was a bit happy to know that what was at his core
wasn’t something sinister.
Ah, no, even so there’s not a chance that Gilgamesh is a good person;
he’s still as much of a headache as ever, and―――
“Hah. So you were the one to give in first.
It’s that, is it not?
The same as Rin’s first SG?”.
Absolutely not!
I would never, ever adopt such an embarrassing way of expressing my emotions!
“Come now, don’t cover it up so;
you know you only make it more obvious.
Even I cannot help but grin in spite of myself.
But it is a good place to stop. Enough talk of the past.
It is time to return to battle, Hakuno.
Any more conversation will become a source of carelessness.”
Gilgamesh stood up, laughing in amusement.
I clear my throat and pull myself together, and nod. Of course.
I got the answer I wanted during the brief break.
Now all that is left is to return to the battlefield as a Master, together with Gilgamesh.
