My Castle received a visitor.
A man in a white dress shirt and black slacks.
The shirt was left open at the chest, which gave him the air of a cocky rookie salesman.
This one was a summoner. With the Goddess's Gift, [The Power to Have Any One Wish Granted], he had become [a summoner who can summon anything].
Since he can literally summon anything at all, at will, his summoner rank is classified as SSS.
The top summoner rank is properly S, but his arrival forced them to bolt a new highest rank on above it.
Incidentally, there is still nobody at SS.
"A child...? You're the monster who's been killing off Hero after Hero?"
"That's me. So what did you come here for? This isn't a place small fry get to set foot in."
The summoner bristled.
"I see... So I'm small fry..."
"No, no, no! What have you got to look so wounded about? You go around calling yourself the weakest all the time, don't you? So are you a liar? Or is it snide little humility?"
This one habitually calls himself the weakest on the grounds that he possesses no combat ability of his own.
Please. Utterly transparent! He is entirely confident in himself once the summons are counted in.
"A truly strong person does not use strong words. That tells me exactly what you are."
"No, no, no! That's just received wisdom of yours. The strong come in as many varieties as there are people. That last question was sarcasm, by the way—I already know. Play weak at the start, then reveal yourself as a monster the moment you summon, so the awe from everyone watching lands twice as hard. That's nothing but an enormous appetite for approval. It has nothing whatsoever to do with your 'a truly strong person does not use strong words.'"
"...This is extremely unpleasant. I'll see you off the stage early. Summon: Elite Hound!"
Out of things to say, the summoner finally resorted to force.
The first thing the summoner called up was an Elite Hound.
It is the superior species of the Hound, a gray-furred wolf-type monster, with a good ten times the strength and speed of an ordinary Hound.
"Monsters answered with monsters, then. Mofu, off you go."
"Pu, pu!"
My fluffy pet Mofu sprang off my lap and out in front of me.
Mm. Small and white and adorable and refined.
"Awoooooooooooo!"
The Elite Hound loosed a howl with everything it had. This is a technique that paralyzes an opponent's senses with sound pressure.
It does not work on my Mofu. That dense white coat damps the sound pressure and keeps the Mofu's senses intact.
The Mofu leapt straight into the Elite Hound's gaping mouth.
The instant the howl stopped, the Mofu hardened every hair on its body and shot them out on end like a sea urchin.
The Elite Hound's head was skewered from the inside by countless needles, and the Elite Hound dissolved into particles of light.
"Oh—by the way, summoned monsters killed by me or by that Mofu are completely annihilated, so you can't call them back."
"What?! Don't screw with me!"
He had been intending to summon Elite Hounds all day. He believes he himself is not going to die here.
How foolish. What a pitiful creature, unable to foresee even that much of the future.
"I'll indulge you as long as you like. Hurry up and summon the next one."
"I'll make you regret this! Summon: Dark Knight EX!"
The EX in Dark Knight EX stands for Extra—the highest-grade subspecies of the dark knight.
A monster of pure armor, forged from the copper-red ultra-hard metal native to this world. It handles a greatsword and a great shield with equal skill.
The EX is held to have extremely high physical attack, physical defense and magic defense, and it uses magic in a supporting capacity besides, so it is dreaded without exception by everyone whose trade is fighting monsters.
"The Mofu is plenty for this one too."
"Pu, pu!"
This time the Mofu sprang at the opponent first.
It slipped beneath every one of the greatsword's high-speed swings, ducked inside the guard before the great shield could come up, and worked its supple body into the narrow gap between armor and helm.
The Dark Knight EX buckled at the knees and went down on the floor with a clatter.
The greatsword and great shield left its hands and slid away across the floor.
"What?! That's absurd!"
"The Mofu simply destroyed the core inside it. There is nothing here to be surprised about."
Hurried along by his own mounting panic, the summoner wasted no further breath and called up the next one.
"Summon: Brave Goblin Unique."
The monster summoned next was a goblin bearing golden armor and a golden sword.
Another top-grade species, and within that species a special individual of which only one exists in the world. It has combat power to match a Hero and intelligence to match a sage.
"Mofu."
"Pu!"
The Brave Goblin had seen through to the Mofu's strength and was on its guard. It kept its sword ready and watched to see how the Mofu would move.
"Puuuuuu!"
The Mofu scattered its fur across the whole room. The white hairs began gathering toward the Brave Goblin.
Countless hairs closing in from every direction with no gap between them can be neither dodged nor blocked.
The white hairs that fastened onto the Brave Goblin went red-hot and melted the goblin's body away, golden armor and all.
"Right, next please."
"Summon: Slime SSULR!"
SSULR stands for Super Special Ultra Legend Rare.
Which is to say, an extremely powerful slime.
It looked like a diamond with the fluidity of a liquid: a transparent body scattering light in sparkles while it rippled and reshaped itself at will.
"Mofu, that's enough."
From here on even the Mofu as it currently stood would not be a match, so I decided to handle matters personally.
I could of course have enhanced the Mofu further, but I was getting bored.
I aimed my index finger, and the Slime SSULR burst with a pop and was gone.
"Wha—!"
"Never mind that. Next! Quickly!"
"Summon: Arch Demon D."
The D in Arch Demon D is the initial of 'demise'—it signifies the end of all things.
It takes the form of an affected young man in a black top hat and tailcoat, with a monocle.
The instant it appeared, my fingertip blew it out of existence. It was the strongest being of the demon species, but that is neither here nor there.
"Right, next. Get on with it."
"Damn it—the only thing stronger than that is the Dragon Emperor. But it's too big to summon in here."
I snapped my fingers.
"Right, well, Mr. Dragon Emperor just died. Annihilated, never to be summoned again. Anything else?"
"Damn it! There's nothing stronger left! Fine—I'll do something desperate!"
The last thing the summoner summoned was the Goddess of Reincarnation. The Goddess who reincarnated me.
A single length of white cloth wound about her body lent her an air of the sacred, and pale wavy blonde hair falling to her waist lent her an air of the demure.
The Goddess looked at me and gave a pained smile.
She knows perfectly well, of course, that I have been wiping out nations to spite her.
"So tell me—what sort of mood does a person have to be in to end up running errands for a man like this? Well, I don't need to ask. I already know. Go home. Just keep on reincarnating Heroes for me to bury, forever."
A snap of my fingers put the Goddess back where she came from.
She will never be summoned by a reincarnate again. Except by me, of course.
"Well then. That's your summons exhausted."
"Kill me. Just kill me. I have nothing left to try."
He seemed to have finally grasped his situation, but sadly he had yet to grasp his position.
I summoned a pair of toilet slippers from a certain facility in Nation O and smacked the summoner across the head with them.
I did not lay a hand on them myself, naturally. I worked them by telekinesis.
"Ngh! Huh?"
"'Kill me,' is it. It's 'please kill me, I am begging you.'"
With telekinesis, I wrung the summoner's entire body out like a dishrag.
"Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow! P-please, I'm begging you, kill meeee!"
"Haaah. So in the end you never come at me yourself? After making everyone else do it for you. Oh—right, you were the weakest, weren't you. Sorry for complaining. You really were the weakest and here I've gone trampling all over that fact. So sorry. Now die!"
The summoner burst and vanished exactly like the monsters he had summoned.
And to finish, I dropped a monolith—a black mass twenty kilometers tall, cut to the shape of the country—onto Nation O, the summoner's homeland.