※ NOTE ※
This chapter contains sensitive material (mental illness).
Reader discretion is advised.
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My Castle received a visitor...... of course it did not.
When someone who has died in another world is reincarnated into this one, they are given, at minimum, a perfectly healthy body.
This particular reincarnate, however, had a mental illness. The Goddess had not gone so far as to fix that.
The line between mental illness and a person's original character is admittedly a difficult one to draw—but abandoning the question wholesale is nothing but negligence on the Goddess's part.
I considered handing the Goddess fresh retribution over it, but I am already retaliating against her constantly, and I judged it best to keep this business of roasting her over a low flame exactly as it is.
And so: a reincarnate exists, and whoever they happen to be makes no difference. I set out to go and thrash the reincarnate.
I teleported to a ruin somewhere in Nation S.
An abandoned three-story building, nothing inside it but concrete floors and pillars. Most of the window glass was clouded over, and in some rooms outright broken.
In one of the rooms of that ruin was the man.
Arms and legs wasted thin, hair and beard grown out in every direction, only his belly swollen round.
Rather than say he was wearing clothes, it would be closer to say he had draped himself in scraps of ragged cloth.
This man, as a rule, does absolutely nothing.
He pilfers his food from what the market throws away.
He borrows a toilet at some shop or other and does not bathe. I am invincible, so the man's stench does me no harm.
"Oi."
At my voice, the man turned his face weakly toward me.
"What? Who are you? You want something from me?"
"I am the target you are supposed to strike down. The Goddess set it as a condition of your reincarnation, did she not."
"Uhh."
Having pushed that syllable out, the man looked down and was silent for a while.
He seemed to think I would go home if he ignored me; on realizing that had not worked out, he began working out how to drive me off.
"Oi. Putting on a face in front of me is pointless. Stop using your mental illness as a shield to hole up in here."
The man let out a slow breath and looked up at me again, almost glaring.
"Let me guess, you're going to tell me mental illness isn't a real illness, it's just weakness of the heart."
The look the man aimed at me was cold in a way that managed to look down on me while looking up.
"No. Mental illness is a genuine illness. A disorder brought on by physical abnormality. It is not weakness of the heart. Do not lend your ears to fools who insist their own assumptions are the truth of the world. It is a waste of time."
"Huh. You actually get it. Overbearing and sympathetic, both at once."
"Naturally. But you—you are already cured, are you not. You did indeed have a mental illness at the time of your reincarnation, but your environment changed and a great deal of time passed, and the illness healed; you are well. What you are now is simply lazy."
"You're not even a doctor. How would you know that? Even a doctor couldn't tell on a first meeting without examining me."
"It stands to reason that I know. Because I am [The Omniscient, Omnipotent, Strongest, Invincible, Absolutely Superior One]."
The man seemed a little startled by that, but he hardly believed a word of it.
"Huh. Well, if that's true, then there's nothing I could do that would let me strike you down anyway, is there?"
"But you haven't even used the Goddess's Gift, [The Power to Have Any One Wish Granted], have you. You've got a shot at me and you're not taking it—why not? For your information, wishing for the power to have wishes granted any number of times doesn't weaken the wish-granting power one bit. So rather than hoarding it, all you have to do is make it so you can have any number of wishes granted. You don't, because the mission the Goddess handed you is a hassle. So you use your mental illness as a shield and laze around without spending your wish."
"I'm apathetic because of my mental illness. That's why I can't even work up the will to make a wish. A healthy person would normally jump at a power like a Goddess's Gift. The fact that I don't is the very proof that I'm mentally ill."
Knowing full well that a person cannot tell from the inside whether they have recovered, he intends to keep insisting on the illness even though he is completely cured.
"Oi. That is not proof, that is merely grounds. Use words correctly. I am Omniscient and Omnipotent, so I can see straight through your thinking. You are deliberately not spending your wish so that you can use it as an excuse for abandoning your mission. And your meta-reading—that wanting nothing might get you rewarded—is pointless too."
I let a little killing intent off at him to give him a scare, and the man flinched hard.
And still did not shift his position.
"I haven't used the Goddess's Gift. So I'm under no obligation to carry out this mission of yours."
"Do not get it twisted. The obligation arose the moment you died in your previous life and got yourself reincarnated. The Goddess's Gift is a bonus on top of that. There is not one speck of a reason you are permitted to abandon the mission."
This one was, from the outset, a lazy sort of person. Strong sense of responsibility all the same—and because other people forced unreasonable demands on him that did not suit his nature, his mind gave out.
Up to that point it is simply misfortune, and there is room for sympathy.
But what he is at bottom is not sloth. It is greed.
He is forever pursuing how large a return he can get for how little effort. He puts on the look of a man who wants nothing, and takes everything that is handed to him. A new life. A Goddess's Gift.
And when he receives something, he never repays it. He does nothing, ever, and only ever hunts for excuses. A grasping, underhanded creature.
As witness the fact that he is no longer mentally ill and is still milking it for all it is worth.
"Yes, yes, fine, I get it. So what am I supposed to do? What do I wish for to beat you? You're the one forcing this on me, so tell me."
I knew it was coming, and it still drew a sigh out of me.
Dealing with him is no fun. People who are all mouth and no action are genuinely tedious human beings.
"Working that out is your mission. And the mission was given to you by the Goddess; I am not forcing anything on you. You seem to be confused, so let me tell you: I did not come here to make you carry out your mission. I could have killed you from a distance and chose not to—I came, out of mercy, to give you a chance to stand and fight."
"But you came here to kill me, right? Where's the mercy in that? Don't make me laugh."
Mm. That will do. It never reaches him that what he does changes his own future enormously. Let him learn firsthand where a man ends up when he begrudges the effort of thinking.
"Okay. Mercy ends here. I shall carry out the treatment I had in mind for you from the start, and that will be that. You are going to be reincarnated again. Do your very best with your third life."
I snapped my fingers as a signal, and the man blinked out. Reincarnated into another world.
What he was reincarnated as: a low-ranking humanoid monster in the Demon Realm of a world other than this one.
Worked like a slave for his labor, and revived every time he dies.
Forced into heavy labor for all eternity.
I teleported back to My Castle and dropped onto Nation S a monolith—a twenty-kilometer black object cut to the shape of the country.
Even I am starting to tire of the monolith-dropping routine, but I am doing it as retaliation against the Goddess, so I intend to keep at it until every country in this world has been crushed.