Atop Uruk's towering city wall, the night wind was bitter.
This was the highest point of the entire city-state. Looking down, one could survey the city's myriad household lights and the whole spectacle of human life; looking up, one could gaze at the dense scatter of stars, the dwelling place of the gods.
Since its construction, this place had been the domain of Uruk's king, Gilgamesh, alone. He often stood here by himself in the depths of night, surveying as an "observer" all that he had built and guarded with his own hands.
But tonight, this place welcomed a second "king."
Seiji Fujiwara's figure appeared soundlessly behind Gilgamesh. He'd brought no servants, coming entirely alone, as if keeping an appointment with an old friend, his manner leisurely and relaxed.
The two kings, one ahead and one behind, stood in silence, letting the raging wind whip at their robes. Neither spoke first, as if in a contest of patience, and as if each, in his own way, were observing the city below them, fallen into chaos and fervor because of their game.
After a long while, Gilgamesh finally spoke slowly, his voice low and hoarse, carrying a trace of barely perceptible weariness.
"Do you see it, mongrel?" He didn't turn around, his gaze still fixed on the city below. "Is this the sight you hoped to see? For an empty, intangible dream of becoming gods, they've begun to suspect one another, betray one another, even slaughter their own kin without hesitation. Order is crumbling, and the ugliest greed in human nature has been released by you without reservation."
There was no anger in his tone, only a cold calm, as if stating an objective fact.
"Is this your new age? An age built upon desire and chaos?"
At that, Seiji Fujiwara laughed softly. He walked to Gilgamesh's side and stood shoulder to shoulder with him, casting his own gaze likewise upon that ocean of human civilization formed of countless lights.
"No, you're wrong, King of Heroes." He shook his head and corrected him. "I've never released anything. I merely... let out the tiger that was already caged in their hearts."
"Greed, desire, ambition... these things weren't brought to them by me. They were always there, lurking in the depths of every soul, only temporarily caged by you with order, law, and reverence for the gods."
"And all I did was kick those cages open, in front of everyone."
His words were like a sharp knife, cutting open the glossy skin of the "kingly governance" Gilgamesh took such pride in, exposing the fragile essence beneath.
"Your so-called protection," Seiji Fujiwara's tone took on a trace of mockery, "is nothing but a low-efficiency self-satisfaction that maintains a surface peace by suppressing human nature. Like a patriarch racking his brains, you try to plan out the life of every one of your subjects, yet you've never truly asked them what they want for themselves."
"While I, I gave them a chance to choose."
"A chance to break class, break bloodline, break fate, to seize destiny back into their own hands. Even if this chance demands they pay a brutal price, even if it demands they struggle through blood and fire, in the end... it is a choice."
"Tell me, King of Heroes," Seiji Fujiwara turned his head, staring straight into Gilgamesh's golden eyes. "Is livestock penned forever in a warm sheepfold happier, or is it more satisfying to have the chance to become an evil dragon soaring through the highest heavens, even if you end up smashed to pieces?"
"..."
Gilgamesh fell into a long silence.
He couldn't refute it.
Because he knew better than anyone that what Seiji Fujiwara said was the truth.
He'd spent his entire life trying to guide humanity toward a "correct" future, one defined by him. Like a diligent gardener, he'd carefully pruned away every branch that might bring chaos, but in doing so he'd also strangled so many more possibilities for human civilization.
"Then what about your future? What does your new age look like?" After a long while, he asked in a low voice.
"My future?" Seiji Fujiwara smiled, and in that smile was a radiance of absolute rationality that felt foreign even to Gilgamesh.
He raised his hand, and immense magic and the system's data streams wove together in his palm, constructing a perfectly clear, perfectly cold three-dimensional model of a city.
It was a metropolis ten thousand times grander than Uruk. The city was divided into countless grids of clearly defined function, and the people in each grid carried out their own work efficiently, by the book. No crime, no chaos, and no... excess emotion.
"In my world, gods will become something like an ultimate server, responsible for maintaining the world's stability and allocating all resources."
"And humans will be thoroughly datafied. Every person's talent, ability, and potential will be precisely calculated the moment they're born. They'll be assigned to the posts best suited to them, engage in the most efficient work, and receive compensation perfectly matched to their contribution value. It might be better living resources, it might be a longer lifespan, it might even be... the chance to evolve into a higher life form."
"No lies, no deception, no waste of resources, no entrenched class. Everything built upon absolute equivalent exchange. Every person is a cog in this precise machine called human civilization, one that can be replaced at any time yet can exert its maximum value."
"A... perfectly rational, perfectly efficient social model that runs on forever."
"This is the future I've prepared for this world."
When he finished, he watched Gilgamesh quietly.
For the first time, the King of Heroes' face showed genuine, undisguised shock and horror.
He'd imagined countless possibilities. He'd thought what Seiji Fujiwara pursued was a tyrant's rule that gratified private desires.
But never had he imagined that his opponent's ultimate goal would be such a thing... such a "hive civilization," cold enough to chill the bones, that erased human nature entirely!
"Madman..."
Gilgamesh forced the word out through his teeth.
"You utter, thorough madman! This isn't a future for Humanity 2.0 at all! This is the ultimate erasure of the very concept of humanity itself!"
"Is that so?" Seiji Fujiwara dismissed the model without concern. "Perhaps."
"But at least my future can guarantee that the human race, as a whole, can endure forever. And yours, King of Heroes?"
His gaze turned suddenly sharp, as if piercing through the barriers of time and space to see that long-foreordained, tragic future.
"Your future holds only a silent ocean, devoured by the black mud of the Mother of Creation."
"Tell me, Gilgamesh."
"An imperfect but eternal survival, or an age destined to meet destruction, full of the so-called radiance of human nature."
"Which one will you choose?"
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