My Castle received another visitor—nooope, it did not!
This pattern comes up rather a lot, doesn't it. The ones who abandon their mission and run off with their wish granted.
This time's reincarnate used the Goddess's Gift, [The Power to Have Any One Wish Granted], to obtain [The Power to Take Anything He Wants Out of a Refrigerator].
And now, in Nation L in this world, he runs a set-meal diner serving the food of the world he lived in before.
He owns an enormous refrigerator, so with [The Power to Take Anything He Wants Out of a Refrigerator] he can help himself to quite literally anything, free of charge.
Fresh vegetables and meat, obviously—he could pull out steaming hot finished dishes if he cared to.
And not only ingredients. He can furnish himself with whatever cookware he likes, and could conjure up money into the bargain.
Although it appears he uses the power for nothing but ingredients and cookware.
So then. I intend to crush the entire country anyway, but first, let us go and make some trouble for him.
What's that? He is only peacefully running a restaurant, he is useful to people, so why torment him?
You seem to be under a misapprehension, so allow me to explain it again.
To humans I am evil, and I require no justification of any kind whatsoever to attack anyone.
Anyone I dislike, I attack exactly as I please, however I please.
Saint, villain, or ordinary person—it makes no difference.
A hardworking man, a peerless beauty, a newborn infant—no difference.
Human, dog or cat, protected natural monument, endangered species, insect, plant—no difference.
And so I teleported to Nation L.
The shop stood out in the suburbs, a hideaway known only to those who knew.
First, to get the lay of the place, I walked in like any ordinary customer.
"Heyy, welcome!"
Excuse me? "Heyy, welcome"? It is "Welcome, sir," surely.
But it was too early to start finding fault. I would rather skip the jab and open with a straight right.
I took a table for two, and a cat-eared waitress brought over a hot towel and water.
"Please call me when you have decided on your order."
She is a beastfolk former slave. The owner took pity on her and bought her from a noble with the shop's earnings.
The cat-eared waitress works looking thoroughly delighted about it.
"Wait. My order is already decided. One of every item on this shop's menu."
"Huh? …One moment, please."
The cat-eared waitress went off to check with the owner.
Tedious, so I fast-forwarded time.
The owner came to confirm it with me himself, a white toque on his head, a white chef's coat on his back.
I answered that my order was not a joke and that I had the money, and the owner accepted it.
And so, to start, a karaage set meal, an oyakodon, a rolled omelet, and an oolong tea arrived in that order.
"Heyy, welcome!"
A dragonkin man who works as a mercenary came in.
He sat down beside a high vampire woman who had arrived before I did, and struck up a friendly conversation with her.
"The usual all right?"
"Yep, hit me."
The dragonkin man is a regular, and always orders the grilled-meat set.
The vampire woman, incidentally, keeps the tomato juice fixed and rotates between three kinds of parfait.
A few minutes later, the grilled-meat set was carried out to the dragonkin man.
"Thank you for waiting."
"Yeah, thanks."
I knew this would happen.
And I had decided in advance that this was the moment I would move.
"Hey, hold on. I ordered the grilled-meat set first. Why is it going to a customer who came in after me?"
"Huh?"
While the cat-eared waitress floundered, the dragonkin man came at me.
"Come on now, kid. You've got a mountain of food in front of you already. The girl was doing right by me and by you both. Don't be crass about it."
I know that perfectly well. My table was covered in dishes, so she served the customer who had nothing first. A thoughtful employee.
But as far as I am concerned, she should have checked with me before doing it.
"The reason I hadn't touched any of this food is that I was waiting for the grilled-meat set."
"Be that as it may, you can't eat that much all at once, can you?"
"No, I can. Every one of these in a single mouthful, in fact."
"Now now, no lying. Don't go making fun of grown-ups."
The dragonkin man is tall and heavily muscled, but his manner is gentlemanly.
His clothes, too—a white dress shirt and black slacks—would meet the dress code of a high-end restaurant.
But there is a conceit in him about his own toughness.
He is also rather drunk on being strong and humble with it.
Which is why he is, in fact, short-tempered, and inwardly he was building up irritation by degrees.
"It isn't a lie. If I demonstrate, will you get down on the floor and apologize?"
"Hmph, fine. If you're going to talk like that, let's see it."
I opened my mouth wide, and every dish in front of me was sucked into it in an instant. Everyone in the shop was struck dumb.
After a while, the dragonkin man finally spoke.
"Well, I'll be damned. But listen—that's still no reason to come down that hard on the owner for being considerate, is it?"
And—wrong answer, buzz! The dragonkin man has chosen incorrectly.
"That is not what you are supposed to say. Putting me to all that trouble and then breaking your word—the absolute worst. You deserve to die ten thousand deaths."
I held out a hand, and the dragonkin's whole body was wrung out like a dishrag and shredded to pieces.
There was nothing to discuss. Two more exchanges and he would have resorted to brute force regardless.
"Kyaaaaaaaaaah!"
The cat-eared waitress screamed, the customers shot to their feet, and the owner came running out of the kitchen in his chef's whites.
The cat-eared waitress buried her face in the owner's chest and sobbed.
Meanwhile, a nobleman explained the situation to the owner.
One look at the state of the dragonkin man must have told him I was not someone who could be reasoned with. The owner kept sending little glances toward a woman in a deep red dress.
That woman being the high vampire who had been sharing a table with the dragonkin earlier. She gave the owner a nod.
Vampires rank among the stronger species even in this world, and a high vampire has overcome the weaknesses peculiar to vampires; such a menace is spoken of as a disaster with a will of its own.
"I do not know who you are, boy, but you have taken your mischief too far in a shop we frequent. I shall remove you by force."
"Ugh, there it is. The popular sort who, having a great many fans, uses those fans to attack anyone in the way. Sending in the fan-drones, as they say. Coward. Come at me yourself."
The vampire woman advanced as though shielding the owner.
She, for her part, is one of those troublesome fans who brandishes her sense of justice and gets a thrill out of stepping in to mediate.
She had every intention of shoving her way in from the side whether the owner signaled her or not.
"It is too late for regrets. I, a high vampire, shall—"
I warped the vampire woman into the middle of some star or other.
She is an immortal being who has overcome sunlight and every other weakness peculiar to vampires—which means that inside a star she can do nothing but burn on and suffer on, endlessly.
I could of course have ignored her immortality and killed her, but I preferred to hand the toxic fan-drone her own "too late for regrets" straight back.
Payment for sticking her spear into a matter between me and the owner.
After that, I removed the mouths and noses of every remaining customer, the nobleman included.
Every one of them writhed and struggled and then suffocated.
That left only the owner and the cat-eared waitress.
The cat-eared waitress still had her face buried in the owner's chest.
The owner stood rooted there, utterly stunned.
And I put a barb into him.
"I don't dislike people who chase their dreams. But, you know—why did you go and spend the Goddess's Gift on making your own dream come true? You received that on a promise to fight for the peace of the world, didn't you?"
The owner met my question with unbroken silence.
He cannot answer. There is no answer to give.
He did it because he found that he could. A moment's weakness.
He justified his own desire with the excuse that he was making a great many people happy, and painted over the small guilt with it.
I burned the otherworld restaurant to ashes, owner and cat-eared waitress and all.
This was, of course, nothing in the nature of punishment or a purge. I simply did the thing I wanted to do.
My sermon-sounding remarks, likewise, were purely psychological harassment.
Afterward I returned to My Castle and dropped onto Nation L a monolith—a black mass twenty kilometers tall, cut to the shape of the country.