My Castle received a visitor.
This one was an adventurer if you want to be generous about it, and an unemployed civilian if you don't.
He had come straight here the moment he was reincarnated, so he was dressed in a linen shirt and linen shorts—character-creation default settings.
This shaggy-haired, droopy-eyed man had used the Goddess's Gift, [The Power to Have Any One Wish Granted], to wish for [The Power to Have Any Number of Wishes Granted], and had received it.
He had actually gone and granted the wish everyone thinks of at least once: taking a single miracle and multiplying it into infinity.
"Yo, brother."
The man raised his right hand lightly and called out to me.
"Save your breath. I know you came here to kill me. I also know that the support-type automatic parallel thinking you conjured up with your wish advised you the odds were poor, which is why you are trying the friendly approach. I shall not be moved by sentiment into taking you in. And frankly—do not be familiar with your betters."
He possesses [The Power to Have Any Number of Wishes Granted], but it is nothing more than a strictly inferior version of my omnipotence.
He has to go through the bother of wishing every single time, which makes him slow; and even setting that aside, Invincible and Absolutely Superior means no attack whatsoever gets through to me.
If I felt like it, I could simply erase [The Power to Have Any Number of Wishes Granted] outright.
He, of course, cannot erase my power with a wish. I am [The Omniscient, Omnipotent, Strongest, Invincible, Absolutely Superior One], and the Invincible and Absolutely Superior portions nullify any such wish.
"'[The Omniscient, Omnipotent, Strongest, Invincible, Absolutely Superior One]'—isn't that kind of cheating?"
"I shall not hear that from you. Besides, I ran a risk of my own. Had there already been an [Omniscient, Omnipotent, Strongest, Invincible, Absolutely Superior One] before me, I would have become the cause of a contradiction and been annihilated. You were lucky enough not to make a wish that annihilated you—but that also means you did not have the wit to wish to become [The Omniscient, Omnipotent, Strongest, Invincible, Absolutely Superior One]. So in the end there was never any way for you to beat me to begin with."
Because I became [Omniscient, Omnipotent, Strongest, Invincible, Absolutely Superior] before anyone else, it became absolutely impossible for anyone afterward to become my equal or my better.
No one who can defeat me will ever appear.
Had he tacked [without exception] or [absolutely] onto [The Power to Have Any Number of Wishes Granted], it would have contradicted my existence and he would have been annihilated on the spot.
That the thought never reached him was, one might say, fortunate for him.
The man's shoulders dropped and he let out a sigh.
He has already accepted that there is no beating me however he struggles, and that death is waiting for him.
He raised his own intelligence with his wishes as well, so he is very quick to swallow a situation.
"Hey. Mind if I ask you a few questions?"
"I shall answer three."
I know perfectly well that without a limit he would go on asking questions forever to stretch out his own life.
The same streak shows in how he used the Goddess's Gift.
"Three, huh......"
"Incidentally, you have fifteen minutes left to live. Do not imagine you will avoid being killed by simply never asking your three."
"You just read my mind, didn't you? Omniscience really is cheating!"
Even as he said it, he immediately began conferring in his head with his support-type automatic parallel thinking about what to ask.
The parallel thinking proposed asking after the truth of the world, but the man wanted to become the being who had pushed me the furthest even if he could not defeat me, and demanded a different suggestion.
Taking advantage of the fifteen minutes' grace he had before his questions were up, the man used [The Power to Have Any Number of Wishes Granted] to acquire the information on what conditions would kill me.
There is exactly one condition under which I die: that I take my own life with my omnipotence.
Realizing there was no making me do any such thing, the man next used his wishes to acquire the information on the conditions under which I would be annihilated.
And then he settled on his questions.
He could have learned all of it with his wishes without bothering to ask, but he had under ten minutes to live anyway, so he decided to enjoy the exchange.
"First question. It's precisely because you're [The Omniscient, Omnipotent, Strongest, Invincible, Absolutely Superior One] that even you get annihilated if a contradiction turns up, right? So if I maneuver you into contradicting yourself, doesn't that mean I can beat you?"
"I shall answer. If you maneuver me, then the candidates for the cause of the contradiction are myself and you—and since I am Absolutely Superior, you become the cause, and you are the one annihilated."
"Second question. If nobody maneuvers you and you contradict yourself all on your own, does even you get annihilated?"
"Oh, certainly. But I have arranged to be born anew after being annihilated, and in any case, being omniscient, I know every single thing that would place me in self-contradiction. Being Omniscient and Omnipotent, I am a perfect being who does not make such mistakes."
Five minutes left.
The man understands by now that there is no beating me however he struggles.
"Hey, brother. You went to the trouble of giving me fifteen whole minutes. Mind if I spend the rest of it trying things, on the off chance?"
"I have no objection."
Which is to say, the man had secured my consent to attack me one-sidedly for the last five minutes of his life.
This man is overfamiliar and impertinent, but he made the wisest use of the Goddess's Gift so far, and he came straight to me to carry out his mission.
In consideration of that, I chose to grant this request masquerading as a final question.
While I am at it, I shall let him be called a Hero.
Many Heroes have visited before now, but those visitors were self-proclaimed Heroes, or Heroes by trade.
This one, though, I have named a Hero myself. Which makes him the first true Hero to visit My Castle.
Determined not to waste time, the Hero moved at once.
"I want a sword that can absolutely cut anything!"
A silver-gleaming longsword appeared in the Hero's raised hand.
The Hero, who had greatly boosted his physical capabilities with his wishes before coming to My Castle, closed the distance to me in a heartbeat the moment he had the sword.
"Hraaaaah!"
Seated on my throne, I tipped my upper body lightly aside and let the sword go past.
The back of the throne slid off onto the floor.
The Hero turned his wrist and swept the descending sword sideways instead.
All of it inside a fraction of a second—but I hopped clear of the sword's reach like a sea angel dancing through open water.
A sword that cuts anything is meaningless if it does not connect.
The Hero, whose thinking had been accelerated as well, caught on immediately and granted himself another wish on the spot.
"I want this sword that can absolutely cut anything to hit its opponent without fail!"
The Hero thrust the sword out. It came driving at me, fast.
The flat of his blade grazed the back of my hand and went by.
"You did touch me. Not with the part that cuts, though."
"Then how about this! I want this sword that can absolutely cut anything to hit exactly where I aim it, without fail!"
The Hero swept the sword sideways again.
The blade cut my stomach open, and the instant it had passed through, my body regenerated.
Which makes it no different from the sword passing straight through me. I feel no pain, of course.
The Hero changed his approach.
"I want to use fire magic that burns its target away without fail!"
The Hero held out a hand toward me. Flame enveloped my body.
But I regenerate even reduced to ash, and I regenerate even when not so much as ash remains.
"A wormhole that flings its target into another dimension!"
I took a trip to another dimension and came straight back.
"A black hole that annihilates existence completely!"
"That one is void. Up to now I have been reading the concept of invincibility broadly and taking your attacks on purpose, but accepting that would fall entirely outside the definition of invincible."
Invincible can mean any number of things: never taking a scratch, or being undying and regenerating no matter how badly wounded. The definitions vary.
Being omnipotent, I can change that definition at will.
As a rule my invincibility admits neither wound nor damage of any kind, but for this occasion only I loosened the definition so that the Hero's attacks would land.
One minute left.
"I want [The Omniscient, Omnipotent, Strongest, Invincible, Absolutely Superior One] returned to the state he was in before he got those powers!"
"Void as well. So long as I am Absolutely Superior, no state in which I am at a disadvantage can come about."
Every wish of the sort that would erase my powers comes out void.
And then, thirty seconds left.
"Uh, uhh......"
The Hero wanted to know how he was going to die.
But there was no time left to wish for it.
If he had to die, he thought, he would at least like to die easily.
Then it struck him that a man who thought that way was exactly the sort I would never allow an easy death, and the Hero reconsidered.
Ten seconds left.
The Hero spoke his final wish.
"A ridiculously flashy self-destruct attack!"
The Hero detonated his own body.
The throne room filled with hellfire, and then vivid lights flashed and glittered all over it.
Naturally, both I and my pet Mofu were unharmed behind a barrier.
"Whew. Right then......"
Afterward, I dropped onto Nation R, where the Hero had been reincarnated, a monolith—a twenty-kilometer black object cut to the shape of the country.