My Castle received visitors. A great many of them.
There is no one here but me and my pet Mofu, and yet the ten soldiers who had poured into this castle were signaling to one another with hand signs.
Approaching the empty rooms with tremendous caution, peering in and chanting "Clear! Clear!"
The visitors did not stop at ten. Outside the castle some three hundred soldiers were standing by, warming up tanks and rocket launchers and the like.
The soldiers were taking their sweet time reaching me, so I fast-forwarded the world's clock.
And at last they arrived in the throne room where I sat.
"A kid? Captain, there's a kid!"
"Careful not to frighten—no, wait! Do not drop your guard. We don't know what this Demon Lord looks like. That child could be him. We probe carefully."
Standing right in front of me, and still they keep me waiting.
It was tiresome, so I made every one of them recognize what I was, instantly.
"[The Omniscient, Omnipotent, Strongest, Invincible, Absolutely Superior One]?!"
"He's practically a god. And yet he's neither a god nor the Demon Lord?"
"Do we have any chance at all?"
Understanding exactly what I am and still showing hostility—that takes nerve.
Point a muzzle at anything with the faintest hint of danger about it. A bad habit of soldiers.
One of them casually fished a stick of gum out of his pocket and started chewing it noisily.
Easing his nerves, presumably—but guns, gum: standing before me, it is the height of rudeness.
Highly lethal weaponry serves as armor for the mind, which lets them go on believing in their own advantage even against an absolute superior.
Get ten men together, though, and one of them will be a coward exquisitely sensitive to danger.
"Ah—ah—aaaaaaaaaah!"
Without warning, one of the squad emptied a submachine gun in my direction.
"Hey! Stop! What are you doing?!"
The captain's voice did not reach him in the slightest. The panicking soldier fired off all thirty rounds and then went on clicking the trigger, swallowing hard.
The bullets hung motionless in front of me.
"I make a point of repaying a gift generously, you see. I'll return these doubled. Oh—doubled in speed, that is."
At twice the velocity they had left the submachine gun, all thirty rounds went back to the soldier at once.
His body burst apart, scattering scraps of flesh across the room.
Ah well. Better one of the dull ones than the oversensitive sort.
"Now then…"
One glare from me and the captain wavered. But he came to a decision quickly.
"Fiiiiiire! Spend every round you have. Keep shooting until you exceed his capacityyyyy!"
He seemed to have already forgotten what I am.
Seeing the grisly end of their comrade, the urge to avenge him had detonated in them before the gulf in class between us could sink in. My overwhelming strength was itself part of what robbed them of their composure, admittedly.
A downpour of bullets came at me head-on, with a few grenades tossed in among them.
But not one of them managed to function as a weapon. They all came to a stop in front of me.
And then their weapons ran dry, and silence fell.
"You chose wrong."
Bullets and grenades hung in the air, circling above my head like an orrery.
The soldiers stared at them, rooted to the spot.
"W-wait! We surrender! We won't lay another finger on you. So would you let us go?"
The captain stripped off all his weapons, put both knees and his left hand on the floor, and held out his right hand to me in supplication.
"Oh, come on. You attack me at length with lethal weapons and then say that? How many times over do you think I'd have died if I were an ordinary human? The instant you're in trouble it's let's settle this peacefully—there are limits to shamelessness. You can't seriously expect a deal that convenient to fly, can you?"
"What will it take for you to forgive us?"
"Before that—your attitude is far too big!"
The captain hurriedly prostrated himself and ground his forehead into the floor. Only then did the other soldiers disarm and drop to their knees.
"What might it take for you to grant us your forgiveness, sir?"
He had corrected his attitude, so let us give him a small chance.
"Let me think. Ordinarily I wouldn't forgive you at all—but whoever kills everyone except himself, him alone I'll forgive."
A brief silence.
Then the captain shouted into his radio to the men outside.
"Emergency! Attack without regard for us! Bring everything you haaaaaave!"
An instant later, one of the soldiers opened the captain's throat with a combat knife.
That soldier went on to kill his comrades one after another.
He lost the fight against the last of them and died.
"Haah… haah… Um. I'm the one left. You'll forgive me, won't you?"
I erased the bullets and grenades orbiting overhead.
A smile bloomed across the last soldier's face.
"What exactly are you misunderstanding, fool? Did you hear me say kills everyone except himself? You only killed one person. Therefore: die."
The last soldier's neck twisted round and round until it tore, and his head dropped to the floor with a thud.
I looked coldly down at the head as its consciousness guttered out.
Outside My Castle the attack began as well. A row of tanks opened fire in unison.
Powerless, of course. Shells and bullets alike puffed out of existence the moment they touched My Castle.
I temporarily turned the ground around the castle into a bottomless swamp and sank every tank and every soldier into the depths of the earth.
In Nation I, army after army was being sent through from inside a colossal gate—but word had evidently reached them from an officer who had made it as far as My Castle, and they destroyed the gate themselves at once.
"Protecting your own country and nothing else? Do that and I'll forgive you even less!"
I made a transfer gate appear in front of me.
This gate connects to the soldiers' home world.
I tossed a small black hole through it. Calibrated to disappear once it has swallowed roughly one country's worth.
I dispelled the transfer gate and began lowering a monolith onto Nation I, slowly, very slowly. With a transparent wall so that no one could get out of the country.
The monolith should finish coming down in about twenty-four hours.
"Right up until the moment your end arrives, savor the terror as best you can."
Incidentally, Nation I's reincarnate was the captain who came to attack My Castle.
When he was reincarnated into this world, he used the Goddess's Gift, [The Power to Have Any One Wish Granted], to wish for the use of the army he had belonged to, and a colossal transfer gate linking his home world to this one appeared.
He looked like a sensible captain, but he was a fool.
Wanting to use the army's power—in the end, a fox borrowing the tiger's roar.
For thanks to that wish to have someone else do the work, both of his homes, the one before reincarnation and the one after, are to be destroyed, country and all.