By **570 AD**, the "Aethelgard Accord" had effectively unified the fractured Frankish heartlands. But as the physical borders expanded, the internal pressure on Julian began to warp.
The "NEET" who had once found comfort in the predictable loops of a video game was now trapped in a simulation where the NPCs had developed souls, demands, and—most dangerously—dogma. He had become a victim of his own efficiency.
### The Council of Dissent
Julian stood in the center of the **Athenaeum**, the first university building in the West. It was a marvel of architecture, featuring high-vaulted ceilings and the first large-scale application of Julian's "Double-Pane" glass for insulation.
Before him stood his first generation of "Masters"—men and women he had personally tutored.
"You called us to debate the 'Moral Calculus' of the East," Elara said. She was graying now, the lines on her face a sharp contrast to Julian's eternal youth. "But the people don't want calculus, Julian. They want to know why you have forbidden the worship of the Old Oak in the northern provinces."
"Because the 'Old Oak' encourages the sacrifice of livestock that we need for the spring plowing," Julian said, his voice flat. "It is an inefficient use of resources based on a misunderstanding of weather patterns."
"It is their *identity*," Pippin countered. The young architect was now a man of thirty, his hands scarred from decades of stone-work. "You are giving them a world of glass and steel, but you are stripping away the stories that tell them who they are. They feel like gears in your great clock, Julian. And gears eventually grind down."
Julian looked at his students. He had taught them logic, and now they were using it to dissect his soul. He felt a surge of pride, quickly followed by a cold, hollow dread.
### The Imperial Ledger
Later that evening, Julian reviewed the census. The population under his influence had reached fifty thousand. To manage them, he had introduced the first **Double-Entry Bookkeeping** system. It allowed him to see the empire as a flow of energy—grain in, labor out, health maintained.
But the ledger couldn't account for the "Shadow." A movement was growing in the fringes of the empire—the **Iconoclasts of the Unfading**. They didn't want his medicine or his roads; they wanted a world where a man's life was short, meaningful, and his own. They saw Julian not as a savior, but as a "Levin-Drake"—a dragon who sat on a hoard of knowledge and refused to share the secret of his own immortality.
"They think I'm holding out on them," Julian whispered to the empty room.
He looked at a vial of clear liquid on his desk. He had been experimenting with **Penicillin**—extracting it from *Penicillium* molds grown on cantaloupes. He had the power to end the era of infection. But he hesitated.
If he gave them the "Cure for Death-by-Sickness," the population would explode. The 6th-century earth couldn't support a 21st-century growth rate without industrial fertilizers—and his chemical plants were already polluting the rivers.
### The First Fracture
The tension broke when a group of farmers in the southern district burned a shipment of Julian's "Improved Seed." They claimed the grain was "cursed" because it didn't rot in the rain like the natural wheat.
Julian traveled to the site. He didn't bring the "Hollow Thunders" or the Imperial Guard. He walked into the blackened field alone.
"Why?" Julian asked the leader of the farmers, a man whose family Julian had saved from the plague a decade prior.
"Because the land belongs to the seasons, not to your numbers!" the man shouted, his voice cracking. "We eat your bread, and we feel like we are eating your shadow. We want to be hungry again, Julian! We want to wonder if the sun will come back without *you* telling us it will!"
Julian looked at the man's angry, fearful eyes. He realized that by removing the "Terror of Nature," he had become the new Terror. He had provided security, but he had stolen the **Mystery**.
### The Withdrawal
That night, Julian did something he hadn't done in twenty years. He shut the heavy iron doors of his tower and refused to see anyone.
He realized that an Empire of Reason cannot be forced upon a people who still live in a world of Myth. To move forward, he had to disappear. He had to stop being the "Living King" and start being the "Absent Founder."
He picked up his pen and wrote in his modern journal:
*> "Log: 570 AD. The paradox is complete. To save them, I must abandon them. If I remain as their sun, they will never learn to build their own fires. I will begin the transition to a **Republic**. I will draft a Constitution on my new paper, and then I will fade. I will watch from the shadows, not as a ruler, but as a guardian. It is time for the 6th century to find its own way into the dark."*
As he wrote, he heard a sound outside his window—a low, rhythmic chanting. The people were gathered at the base of the tower. They weren't there to revolt. They were there to pray to him.
Julian looked at the vial of penicillin, then at the ticking clock. He realized that the hardest thing for an immortal to do is to allow things to die.
**He began to pack a small bag. He wouldn't take a crown. He would take a microscope, a compass, and a single loaf of heavy bread.**