My Castle received a visitor.
A freshly pressed white dress shirt, a tasteful brown waistcoat, casual slacks—hair and beard both immaculately kept.
This man was a teacher of magic.
He presents well, so his colleagues and his students alike are fond of him.
"How do you do. I am a teacher of magic by profession."
"I know. What have you come for?"
Which I also knew, without asking, of course.
The aim is to get the visitor to state his business so that matters move along.
"I had originally accepted a commission to subjugate the Demon Lord. But every last one of the nations that dispatched Heroes was crushed beneath a black mass. This Demon Lord seemed formidable indeed, and judging that one such as myself could never be a match for him, I continued my research into magic and observed the course of the world from a distance."
"Those black masses are monoliths. I drop them on the countries that send Heroes at me. I also drop them on the countries that don't send Heroes, so either way, yours was next. And you've apparently been enjoying a life of smooth sailing until now—so you threw it away to come here and die?"
Which I also knew, without asking, of course.
This magic teacher will not advance past a step until the step has been properly taken, so I was prompting him along to keep the conversation moving.
"In a word: curiosity. I had grown rather bored with magical research, you see. I have grasped nearly the whole of this world's system of magic, and I have largely finished developing magic of my own. And so my interest turned to the question of what exactly this Demon Lord is, that no Hero can match him. I may well die here—but my intellectual curiosity outweighed even that fear."
I nearly yawned in spite of myself.
I am at all times in perfect condition and thus have no need of yawning, but his speech was so long that I found myself wanting to yawn at him pointedly.
But even if I did, everything that followed would only be more tedious.
I decided to move things along.
"Let me tell you, then. I am [The Omniscient, Omnipotent, Strongest, Invincible, Absolutely Superior One]. No being of any kind can ever match me. Never mind Heroes—neither a bacterium nor a god could put a single scratch on me."
Far from being awed, the magic teacher's eyes lit up.
"I see, I see. So my life ends today, beyond any doubt. Still, I should like to land at least one arrow. What do you say—might I challenge you to a contest, under certain rules?"
"By all means."
I am omniscient, omnipotent and absolutely superior, and therefore I cannot lose any contest whatsoever. Though being omnipotent, I could of course lose deliberately if I chose.
"You said that you were invincible. And precisely because you are invincible, might you not be weak to pain? Let us hold a contest to see which of us can endure more of it."
"By all means."
The magic teacher drew two sheets of paper from inside his waistcoat.
The same magic circle was drawn on each.
"These are magic circles that inflict pain throughout the whole body when one holds a hand above them. The pain doubles with every passing second. Shall we say that the first to withdraw his hand from the circle loses?"
"That's fine. Hurry up and start."
From the throne, I laid the paper on the armrest and held my hand above it.
The magic teacher set his sheet on the floor, knelt down, and held his hand above it.
Around ten seconds in, the magic teacher pulled his hand back from the circle.
The me on the throne still had his hand held out.
"Well. I concede. Remarkable, truly. One more second and I should have died of the shock."
The instant the magic teacher admitted defeat, the me on the throne took hold of the paper with that same hand and crushed it.
"And? You've still got something left to say, haven't you. Out with all of it."
"...Yes, quite. In point of fact, I had one further piece of magic already active. It runs: [should the opponent be dealt damage by my own words, the opponent shall be granted certain death]. I lost the contest just now—but within that contest, I dealt you the damage of pain. Therefore, death by magic will be brought down upon you."
The me on the throne clutched at his chest, tumbled out of the chair, and his heart stopped.
Three seconds later he revived and seated himself back on the throne.
The magic teacher's expression was one of resignation, and yet he let out a small laugh.
"So even certain death dealt by my magic, and still you return. No matter. I have no regrets. I managed to kill you, if only the once."
"You didn't kill anything."
I spoke to him from behind.
The magic teacher started violently and spun around toward me.
"What—there are two of you?!"
"The one sitting on the throne is a body double. My pet Mofu, transformed. As if I—Omniscient, Omnipotent, Strongest, Invincible, Absolutely Superior—would die because of somebody else's scheming. The moment it dropped dead you should have known it was a fake."
A little prank, that's all. I merely answered his surprise with a surprise of my own.
He had believed he had landed his one arrow; he had not; and all that awaited him was his own certain death.
Even the magic teacher, who had kept up his cool and nihilistic front throughout, could not hide his despair now, and sat down hard on the floor.
And upon that man, I proceeded to gouge mercilessly at the wound.
"So you used the Goddess's Gift, [The Power to Have Any One Wish Granted], to wish for [a genius intellect]—just how badly were you complexed about being stupid in your past life? If you'd been granted two wishes, that genius intellect might have worked out the best possible wish for the second one. But simply becoming a genius and nothing more makes you a useless man who happens to be clever. In the end, your stupidity came back on you and you wasted the Gift."
After reincarnating he became a magic teacher hailed as a genius—but in the end, resolving one insecurity only produces fresh problems in its place.
And yet this one spent a wish that could grant anything at all on resolving a single insecurity. Utterly foolish.
I waited, at length, for the magic teacher to come back to his senses.
And once his composure had returned, the magic teacher made one final plea.
"Then might you grant one wish to a pitiful man? Please—kill me without making me suffer."
"That will depend on your own magic. I'll use my omnipotence to amend the rules. The losing condition shall be death by shock from the pain. Until then, the hand shall be held over the magic circle by force."
Earlier, my body double the Mofu had kept its hand out for roughly three seconds longer. So the magic teacher must hold his hand out for three seconds before the overtime even begins.
The compulsion of my rule change stretched the magic teacher's hand out over the circle.
"N-no—no, no, nooooooooo!"
One second after his hand passed over the circle, the magic teacher's body jerked upward, his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed foaming at the mouth.
The magic teacher was dead.
"Did that hurt? Well, that's what comes of trying to take a man by deceit. I could have simply erased you from the outset—be grateful I played along with your little sleight of hand at all."
And then I dropped a monolith—a black mass twenty kilometers tall, cut to the shape of the country—onto Nation Q, the magic teacher's homeland.