The Emperor is a Lifelong Post

“Oh, come on — just abdicate. Abdicate! Pick one of my kids, any one of them!”

“Your Majesty! We implore your benevolence!”

The imperial court assembly.

Ministers civil and military, high officials and low, all bowed their heads and spoke with one voice.

Seated on the throne, I stared back at them in disbelief.

“Hey. What more do you want from me? I drove out the Seven Sin God, I unified the races and built this empire, I dragged civilization up by its bootstraps. How much more do I have to give you people?”

“Your Majesty! It has been a mere twenty years since the empire’s founding! How can you speak of stepping down already!”

“Hey, a normal human being doesn’t even live to a hundred. Add everything up before the empire was established and I’ve been at this for forty years. Don’t I get to clock out?”

I let out a long, heavy sigh and looked out across my ministers.

A handful of humans among them, but the majority were elves, dark elves, celestials, demon kin, and beastmen.

Races that lived for hundreds of years. Thousands. Some even tens of thousands.

“I need a break. This old man is tired. I want to retire — watch my kids get married, bounce my grandchildren on my knee. Is that so much to ask?”

“Your Majesty! The imperial princes have only just learned to walk!”

“How can you abandon us like this?”

“You must govern the empire until the princes and princesses come of age!”

The elven chancellor’s voice rang through the hall, and heads nodded all around him.

I let out a strangled cry.

“By your standards, ‘coming of age’ is two hundred years from now! I’m human — I’ll be dead! Dead, you hear me?”

“Your Majesty! You are in the prime of health — how can you say such ominous things……”

“……”

I was losing my mind.

I pressed my hand over my eyes and exhaled.

Ah, when I was young, I loved all the fun that came with beautiful women.

And the non-human races — these otherworldly beings — they were breathtakingly beautiful.

Back on Earth, I’d treated women like sour grapes I couldn’t have. Yet somehow I ended up getting married eight times.

An elven princess? A dark elf queen of assassins? A winged celestial? A blue-skinned demon beauty? Yes, please, and thank you!

“Except it wasn’t a blessing, it was a curse. That was the recklessness of youth. I shouldn’t have done it. I should never have filled the empress roster exclusively with non-humans.”

“Y-Your Majesty!”

“Surely you’re not thinking of deposing the empresses! We implore your benevolence!”

“We implore your benevolence!”

“I’ve been implored enough. Now I just want to weep, you lot.”

In the Millennial Empire I had built, humans made up roughly twenty percent of the population.

The remaining eighty percent were non-human races who lived for centuries, millennia — and their sense of time was completely alien to mine.

“……Right. So what you’re all saying is you want me to rule this wretched empire for another hundred years. Two hundred. Three hundred. You want to simmer my bones until they turn to broth.”

“……”

They exchanged glances, then hurriedly nodded, every last one of them.

I stared at them in hollow disbelief.

“……And after those three hundred years, when my children are finally ‘grown up,’ you’ll just say they lack experience and I should keep going, won’t you.”

“Your Majesty! Under your inspired leadership, the Millennial Empire shall flourish without end!”

“Long may you reign, a thousand years!”

“A thousand years! Long may you reign!”

The civil and military ministers prostrated themselves in unison.

I looked up at the high ceiling of the assembly hall, exhaled slowly — and then —

Thwack!

— hurled the imperial crown right off my head.

It sailed straight and true into the skull of the elven chancellor who’d been yelling about a thousand-year reign.

“Y-Your Majesty!”

“His Majesty is having another fit!”

“Compose yourself, Your Majesty!”

I ignored them and grabbed the imperial scepter leaning against the throne, and flung that too.

This time it found the head of the dark elf Director of Intelligence.

“I’m well past composed — I’ve come completely undone, you fools!”

While I was at it, I yanked off my mantle and threw that.

Then my shoes — both of them, one after the other.

The empire’s most distinguished ministers ducked and curled in on themselves, shielding their heads.

In the midst of all this, the Grand General — Lerik, a wolf beastman — snatched my shoes right off the floor as they rolled past, then came sprinting over.

He held them out to me, head bowed.

“Your Majesty, your feet must be cold……”

“Oh, get out of my sight!”

I kicked at him. Lerik yelped and scrambled back, watching me with nervous eyes.

But even then, he clutched my shoes to his chest like they were something precious — which was honestly something else.

“They’re shoes. They’re not a love letter. Why are you guarding them like state secrets?”

“Your Majesty, please calm down……”

“This is me calm. Now get out.”

I bared my teeth. Everyone fell silent and began edging away.

“Well? Nobody leaving? Shall I become a tyrant who dances with swords?”

“Y-Your Majesty!”

“We, uh, shall take our leave for today. Please temper your divine wrath……”

The ministers retreated in a shuffling backward procession, but not without collecting my discarded mantle, crown, and all.

The hall emptied.

One person remained.

The court recorder — stationed to the last. I shot him a withering look.

“Is this a game show? The final contestant? Get out.”

“I have been entrusted by Heaven to record all of Your Majesty’s words and actions……”

“I’m about to pleasure myself right here. You want to stay and document the exact shape and dimensions? Fine — write that the august emperor experienced ecstasy upon the imperial throne, and then get the hell out.”

The recorder gave a stiff bow.

“I— I hope you enjoy yourself, Your Majesty!”

“Yeah, thanks and go to hell.”

With the recorder gone, I slumped back into the throne and breathed.

“……God, this chair is hard.”

My own design, of course.

The ruler of the Millennial Empire — the nation carved from rivers of blood to end the war against the Seven Sin God — had no business being comfortable!

“……I was too caught up in the romance of it when I was young. I shouldn’t have done this to myself.”

Did being emperor of Karakas, the most powerful nation on this world, sound like a good idea?

Wake up every day to good food, beautiful women, and absolute power?

Even the most pleasurable thing grows dull when it’s all you know.

And on top of that…… I had a conscience.

I’d lived and died on Earth, reincarnated into Karakas, and lived through enough to grow one.

The war against the Seven Sin God had seen to that.

The ministers who’d just walked out — they had fought beside me with their lives on the line. They had poured themselves without reservation into building the unprecedented structure we called an empire.

The kind of loyal lunatics who would actually set their own heads on fire if I told them to.

The problem was…… they only ever came crying to me.

The Millennial Empire was a patchwork of races, cultures, and clashing values, and it was never quiet.

Ministers flip-flopped based on their own racial interests.

In the end, I always had to seize full authority and referee the whole mess myself.

For over twenty years without a break!

“I’m going to have a breakdown……”

How long was I supposed to stay in this seat cleaning up after them?

Another sigh. Then another.

“Not like I can just have them executed……”

They’d followed me into battle with their lives. They were loyal to me, all of them.

It felt like being the father of eight feuding siblings.

Precious, every one of them — but the moment I turned my back, they were at each other’s throats again. I’d scold, I’d mediate, and they’d behave perfectly in front of me, only to start brawling again the second I looked away.

“Right, I am actually a father, aren’t I.”

I had wives — empresses, to use the formal term — one from each of the major races.

Which meant I had children.

Non-human childhood lasted longer. The youngest wouldn’t be considered mature for at least fifty years. More like a hundred.

“They want me to keep doing this until the kids grow up?”

Even then, I had a feeling they’d pull the same thing on me.

“Seems endless. If I try to abdicate then, they’ll all prostrate themselves and beg me not to, same as today……”

They called it difficult to become an emperor?

Abdicating was harder.

Back on Earth, didn’t one king use the threat of abdication as a political weapon — sending ministers’ heads rolling left and right, never actually going through with it?^[1]

These ministers of mine would treat my abdication the same way — an endless true-or-false game of ‘Does he mean it or not?’ — and oppose it with every fiber of their being.

Whichever child I named as successor would probably beg me to rescind the appointment themselves.

And I still had to decide who the successor would be in the first place.

“God, I just want to quit.”

I had built this empire with so much blood. I had worked myself nearly to death making this country what it was.

My posthumous title would probably be Emperor of Eternal Overtime.

But twenty-plus years of relentless work had broken something in me.

Burnout.

At an age when any Korean would be daydreaming about their pension, and these people wanted me to work another fifty, a hundred years on top of that.

Worse…… what waited for me ahead was the succession war.

The quiet jockeying between my empresses, each maneuvering to see their own child crowned.

I could already see them probing carefully, trying to read my intentions.

I hadn’t even seen any of their faces in over ten years.

“Haaaaah.”

Thud.

I climbed down from the throne and dropped to the floor, sitting flat on the cold stone.

Another outburst. Tomorrow I’d have to mend fences again.

The Implore Brothers and the Benevolence Sisters all knew full well I’d cool down by morning — that’s exactly why they retreated when they did.

“Just how long am I supposed to……”

Even as I complained, I understood.

Races that lived far longer than humans had a different relationship with time. Twenty years governing the empire was probably less than two years to them.

“I could just convert to a presidency… no. No, these people aren’t ready for democracy yet. They bow their heads to me alone — that’s the only system they understand.”

Every racial representative, every figure of power in this empire, was stiff with pride.

I had broken them, or flattered them, or reasoned with them — wrestled that loyalty out of each one.

Which meant I had to keep going. I had to keep working.

“……”

Always the same conclusion.

I raised my hand toward the empty air and willed it.

Crackle-crackle-crackle!

I concentrated my mind and pushed my magical power to its absolute limit.

Then, with telekinesis — the psychic force I’d possessed since long before this body — I tore at the space I had claimed as my domain.

Riiiip—!

Space split. A rift opened between dimensions.

And through that rift, a familiar sight.

Towering skyscrapers. Streams of cars.

The world I had lived in before reincarnating into Karakas.

Earth.

“What if I just…… ran through?”

Time and space were not things to be tampered with, even by someone like me.

All I could do was peer through like this.

“Ah.”

I stared vacantly at the other side, and without thinking, reached out my hand.

I’d completely forgotten that touching the dimensional rift was genuinely dangerous.

Crunch—

The moment my hand crossed over, a tremendous impact slammed into my chest.

“Oh. This……”

My eyes went wide.

Pain?

I had reached the absolute peak of martial power — the unchallenged summit of this empire. The sensation was so foreign I almost couldn’t believe it was real.

“Ugh……”

My heart stopped.

I struck my chest once, twice — no response.

“……Huh.”

My power didn’t answer either.

I clenched my jaw and tried to breathe, but nothing came.

A thought cut through the haze of my fading mind.

The emperor is a lifelong post.

Die, and the job ends.

“……”

I had died on Earth and reincarnated into Karakas. I had risen to emperor.

I knew death wasn’t the end. Just the start of something else.

Was it really so bad to go?

No — wait!

I became emperor and didn’t even get to properly enjoy it, and now I’m just going to drop dead like this?!

That’s outrageous! I have to live out of spite alone!

But no matter how I fought, my breath wouldn’t come back.

Consciousness slipping away.

This was really it.

“Ugh……”

If I died like this, the ones left behind would ruin everything, I just knew it……

The worry lasted only a moment.

My eyes fell closed.

The relief of finally being able to rest.

And the firm resolution that when my eyes opened again, I would not be working.