In truth, Gilgamesh hadn’t originally planned on running around all over the place.
As a soul who had been educated in modern society and had experienced death once, Gilgamesh was, at his core, a highly responsible individual.
He believed in a very simple principle: since destiny had placed him upon this throne, and since he possessed strength and wisdom far exceeding ordinary people, he was duty-bound to excel at being a king.
Regarding the ordinary citizens of Uruk, he knew these mortals were incredibly frail and sometimes even a bit foolish compared to himself.
However, he didn’t view this as a fault of theirs; it was simply that as a crystallization of god and human, his initial base stats were just set far too high.
It was exactly like a max-level player with endgame gear dropping into a beginner village.
He wouldn’t look at the beginner village NPCs as trash; rather, he viewed them as children who required his care and protection.
Under his guardianship and highly efficient governance, Uruk’s agriculture, handicraft industries, and commerce ushered in unprecedented prosperity.
Every single soul in the city-state lived a comfortably wealthy life, dwelling in peace and working in contentment.
However, the stats of this body were simply too broken.
The young Gilgamesh, from a very tender age, had already physically beaten the entire kingdom of Uruk to the point where he had no matches left.
He still remembered the military drill that had caused him to thoroughly recognize reality.
At the time, he simply wanted to stretch his muscles, so he grabbed two thick, blunt greatswords that hadn’t even been sharpened and charged single-handedly into a dense phalanx composed of a thousand of Uruk’s most elite royal guards.
The result?
Armed solely with his own power, he shattered the entire army’s formation like a primordial behemoth.
Looking at the soldiers groaning on the ground—who had been stripped of their armor and weapons by shockwaves even though he had intentionally held back his strength—Gilgamesh stood in the center of the training grounds holding his sword, suddenly feeling a deep sense of emptiness and loneliness.
He realized that within this city-state, there was likely no one left who could give him a thoroughly satisfying sparring session.
In theory, as the supreme King, he could have continuously expanded the scale of these drills.
He could have issued absolute royal edicts forcing all the young, able-bodied men of Uruk to take turns surrounding and attacking him every single day just to satisfy his desire for battle.
But Gilgamesh felt that abusing his absolute authority and personal desires to torment these inherently fragile, ordinary people went entirely against his original intentions and lacked sportsmanship.
Thus, he ultimately dismissed that ridiculous notion.
Yet, that burning desire to spar with an equal opponent with everything he had, that desperate craving to explore what fresh stories this mythical age held, continued to grow wildly like weeds in his heart.
He had already finished reading every story within Uruk’s walls; he could even recite the stone brick patterns of every street backward from memory.
What was he supposed to do next?
Harboring this stifled and bored mood, the young Gilgamesh slipped alone into the deep recesses of the temple to pray to his mother of this life—Ninsun, the goddess possessing the authorities of prophecy and wisdom.
He wasn’t seeking some solemn, majestic divine revelation.
Rather, like an ordinary boy who couldn’t find a fun toy, he simply complained about his frustrations to his mother.
After listening to her son’s venting, the gentle goddess Ninsun didn’t bind him with tedious rules and etiquette.
Instead, speaking through the divine statue in a thoroughly casual tone, she offhandedly said a single line to him:
“Uruk’s walls may be grand and tall, but the world outside is incredibly vast, you know.
In the uncharted wilderness, abysses, and high mountains that you have yet to set foot upon, there are countless deities, magical beasts, and unknown miracles.
There, you will find interesting stories that can never be exhausted.”
This single sentence instantly ignited a brilliant idea in Gilgamesh’s mind!
Exactly!
Since I can’t find any monsters capable of breaking my defense within the country, why don’t I just pack my bags, head outside, and go challenge other people’s dojos?!
At that moment, Ninsun had absolutely no realization of what kind of entity she had just unleashed upon the world.
No sooner said than done.
On the very next day after Ninsun gave her revelation, when the ministers cradled the fresh day’s clay tablets and prepared to report on state affairs to the King as usual, they were shocked to discover that the originally mountain-like pile of administrative work had been processed to absolute completion.
Not only that, but neatly stacked beside the throne were dozens of massive clay tablets, densely carved with an array of developmental policies for Uruk’s next six months—covering agricultural planning, wall maintenance, water conservancy engineering, and even trade routes.
And upon that completely empty golden throne, only a single clay tablet message remained, causing them to nearly cough up blood:
“The world is so big, I want to go see it.
I’ll leave the house to you guys.”
The ministers clutched that clay tablet, completely frozen and bewildered in the wind.
Then, after a few months passed, Uruk’s ministers began hearing a series of rumors through traveling merchant caravans that nearly caused their hearts to stop beating:
It was said that in the distant northern mountain ranges, a young, dazzlingly blonde hotshot had single-handedly crushed a storm dragon that had occupied the peaks for centuries.
It was further rumored that in the eastern marshes, that same blonde hotshot had beaten a mountain-sized magical beast so hard it was crying out for its mother.
From that single instance of “leaving a note and skipping town,” Gilgamesh’s lifestyle for a very long period afterward became completely set in stone.
Every single time, he would sit upon the throne and utilize a mind-boggling, terrifying efficiency to process a vast stretch of administrative duties beforehand.
He would establish flawlessly outlined strategies ensuring that even in his absence, his subordinates merely needed to follow the text verbatim to keep the city-state prospering.
Afterward, he would pack his gear and eagerly bolt out of Uruk like an unbridled wild horse.
He traveled everywhere, mapping every inch of the ancient, mythic earth.
He dove deep into perilous dead zones that even gods refused to step into just to collect all manners of scattered, rare treasures.
He without a single care challenged legendary opponents—whether they were ferocious ancient monsters, immensely powerful warriors famous across the lands, or heroes who flowed with demigod blood just like him.
In the end, without a single exception, they all fell before his incomparably absolute might.
He went to learn about all the unique stories of this world, tasting the sheer ecstasy brought by every life-and-death clash.
Then, once he had played to his heart’s content, he would drag his massive battle trophies back to Uruk.
After basking in the thunderous cheers of his citizens and dictating the city-state’s next phase of developmental strategies, he would once again elegantly slip away.
Day after day, he never grew tired of it.
After repeating this cycle, over the course of more than a decade, he had practically trampled the entire Mesopotamian plain and many surrounding regions flat.
Not only was his treasury stuffed to the brim with countless armaments, but his own close-quarters martial arts had been honed through this high-intensity, real-world combat to an absolute state of peak perfection.
Uruk’s ministers harbored a literal love-hate relationship toward this sovereign who pulled a disappearing act every other day.
They wanted to stage a risk-it-all, death-defying remonstrance countless times to urge the King to sit properly in the temple like a normal monarch.
But the core issue was…
they literally had no valid argument to persuade him with!
Gilgamesh was simply too responsible.
The governing blueprints he left behind were genuinely airtight; the ministers themselves could run the nation perfectly just by holding the plans.
Uruk’s granaries saw bumper harvests year after year, and the people lived in secure comfort.
More crucially, because Gilgamesh traveled abroad so frequently, Uruk’s name had thoroughly resounded across the entire world!
Every surrounding city-state and foreign tribe was filled with deep reverence and sheer terror toward this nation that possessed an absolute powerhouse of a king who hunted monsters for a hobby and held a flawless, undefeated record.
Not a single foreign enemy dared to even approach Uruk’s borders.
Faced with a king who could govern a nation to perfection while simultaneously deterring the entire world through raw military might, what else could the ministers possibly say?
Naturally, Gilgamesh’s arrogant and loud method of traveling inevitably stirred up a fair share of trouble.
Among the various factions he had violently thrashed, there were naturally losers who harbored thoughts of revenge.
After all, who would willingly endure the sheer humiliation of being rubbed into the dirt by a blonde brat who had appeared out of nowhere?
However, regarding all these brewing undercurrents, Gilgamesh paid them absolutely no mind.
Why should he care?
Would a king ever care about a few cockroaches gathering together?
…Unless they happened to be four cockroaches that carried damage reduction.