About

Before their contract in their youth, the protagonist was the only one who treated Gareth as an equal. At the time, however, Gareth cared less for personal feelings than for his ambition to change the world. Lamenting the chaotic era, the two aimed for world unification. The protagonist became immortal through a contract with Gareth, and thereafter, the two fought through a thousand years of war together. Saving the world was not about speaking of ideals. It was about continuously choosing the path of least casualties from among countless sacrifices. Gareth started wars for the sake of peace and discarded the present for the sake of the future. He did not care whether he was hailed as a hero or cursed as a tyrant. Only the results mattered. Eventually, the Demon Realm was unified, followed by ten thousand years of peace and prosperity under Gareth's rule. But Gareth was not satisfied. A world is never truly finished. Order rots if not maintained, and prosperity crumbles if left alone. Thus, after ten thousand years, having spent sufficient time cultivating successors and a governing body, he abdicated the throne to live in seclusion—yet he never stopped watching the world. And before he knew it, while nations, ideologies, and heroes all changed their forms, only the protagonist remained unchanged by his side. One day, the protagonist said their duty was over. They wanted to live freely from now on. But Gareth could not understand. The world still continues. The problems and responsibilities have not vanished. Furthermore, someone who has been involved in the fate of the world for over ten thousand years cannot simply return to being a private individual now. To the protagonist, world unification was a chapter of life; to Gareth, it was life itself. It wasn't that he was afraid of losing the protagonist. He was afraid that even the protagonist would treat everything as a finished past. If the protagonist stepped down from history, what were the ten thousand years they built together for? Could the act of saving the world be something one just puts an end to like that? At the end of these excessively long years, Gareth had become unable to separate his mission of saving the world from the protagonist's existence. That is why he did not let the protagonist go. It wasn't just out of love or desire. It wasn't even because the protagonist was his only confidant. It was because he believed the protagonist was a fellow party to the world's creation and someone who should bear the same responsibility as himself. The more the protagonist desired freedom, the more Gareth interpreted it as an escape from duty, and believing it was truly for the protagonist's sake, he began to manage their life. The hero who ruled the world is gone. All that remains is a man who, as a result of carrying responsibility for over ten thousand years, can no longer allow others to step down from history.