My Castle received a visitor.
Two of them.
One was a woman Hero decked out in golden armor with a golden sword.
The other was a mage in a white magic robe. This one a man.
The Hero possesses outstanding swordsmanship, but suffers from the defect of low physical strength.
Had she the strength, she has the makings of the finest blade not merely in Nation V but across all the surrounding countries as well.
The partner who props her up is the mage.
He is not much good at offensive or defensive magic, but where support magic is concerned he is an expert—her strength, naturally, and every other buff besides.
And conversely he can lay all manner of debuffs on an enemy, as well as status ailments such as sleep, paralysis, and poison.
"Are you the Demon Lord?"
The Hero, who had been standing beside the mage, stepped forward and put the question to me with a hand resting on the hilt of the sword at her hip. A clear, steady voice, befitting a warrior.
"Not the Demon Lord. Your enemy nonetheless."
"Then allow me to strike you down."
Behind a helm opened just far enough to show the front of her face, a gallant, beautiful face was fixed on me.
"How well-mannered of you to announce it first. Let us see what you can do."
The Hero glanced at the mage, and the mage nodded and began laying spells on her.
"Strength up. Attack up. Endurance up. Magic resistance up. Movement speed up. Reaction speed up."
Granted there is no need for the opponent to hear any of it, but watching him mutter it all under his breath was not a pleasant experience.
Having run through the full set of buffs on the Hero, the mage started casting on me instead.
"Strength down. Attack down. Endurance down. Magic resistance down. Movement speed down. Reaction speed down."
He attempted the full set of debuffs on me, and naturally not one of them took.
Sensing as much, he switched to the spells that inflict status ailments.
His proficiency with ailment magic was quite respectable—enough to land an ailment even on something as formidable as the boss of a monster pack.
Hence the confidence showing on his face.
"Inflict sleep. Inflict paralysis. Inflict poison."
"It doesn't work."
I put some weight behind my glare, and the mage flinched.
He is the type whose feelings do not much reach his face, but inside he was quaking.
The Hero stepped forward as though to shield him.
She drew her sword and leveled it at me.
"You face me!"
"No—he's been slinging spells this whole time; you don't get to talk like it's a one-on-one. At least have the decency to admit you're double-teaming me."
"I see. My apologies, then. Here I come!"
Using an acceleration skill called Godspeed, the Hero closed on me and brought her sword down on my head with everything she had.
Her blade came to a complete stop against my head. Of course no edge was ever going to pass through me—I am Invincible.
She stared, eyes wide, and I raised a knife-hand and brought it down.
She snapped her upper body back in a movement faster than human reaction permits, and her body, golden armor and all, was split lengthwise clean in two.
"No..."
"You as well, of course."
I said it and turned a fingertip on the mage.
Standing there dumbstruck, he had a great hole opened in his chest, and he toppled over with blood gushing out of it.
I walked over to the Hero and tore the pouch from her waist.
And drew out a single object.
A stone.
A mouse-gray pebble of the sort lying around anywhere at all. About half the size of a fist.
"You're made."
I tossed the stone, and it floated gently in the air.
This was the reincarnate.
"How did you know?!"
"I am [The Omniscient, Omnipotent, Strongest, Invincible, Absolutely Superior One]. Which is why I also know that you used the Goddess's Gift, [The Power to Have Any One Wish Granted], to wish to become [a being that works unseen in the shadows], and that the result was [a stone that can use telekinesis]."
This stone had always been helping the Hero and her partner from the shadows.
Even a moment ago, when I cut the Hero down with my knife-hand, it was this thing that jerked her aside with telekinesis, trying to make her dodge.
"If I'm made, so be it. Now that you know what I am, I'll have to erase you."
The stone's telekinesis is stronger than human bone, so with it a person can be snapped to pieces and killed.
It attempted to move me with that telekinesis.
Naturally nothing of the kind has the slightest effect on me.
Its telekinesis could not shift so much as a single hair on my head.
"So invincible doesn't just mean unkillable, it means no attack works at all. Having an ability that strong is cheating."
"Cheating? Not a word I'll take from you. Skulking about in hiding and doing nothing but using other people—isn't that the underhanded, cheating part?"
The stone hovered there rotating round and round, up, down, side to side, working out a reply. That it had privately conceded my point came through loud and clear.
It managed a retort anyway.
"I'm simply playing it smart and avoiding the risk of standing in the line of fire."
"You mean you aren't good enough to stand on the main stage. And on top of that you're drunk on your own image as the schemer in the wings, which puts you beyond help."
By 'beyond help' I did not mean beyond even my omnipotence. It was 'garbage,' wrapped in the thinnest possible coating for the sake of politeness.
The floating stone bobbed furiously up and down to express its anger.
"Don't get the wrong idea. Lurking in the shadows doesn't mean being weak."
"Then demonstrate your own strength here and now. I shall oblige you."
The stone shot backward, gathered momentum, and came hurtling at me. Bullet speed—no ordinary human's eye could have followed it.
To me it is no different from footage I may step through one frame at a time at my leisure.
I flicked the incoming stone with my index finger.
The impact was tremendous enough to blow away its telekinetic barrier and shatter the stone completely.
"Right. Thank you for your service."
As the stone turned to dust and vanished, the reincarnate's soul lodged inside it evaporated and ceased to be.
Afterward, onto Nation V, the stone's homeland, I dropped a monolith—a twenty-kilometer-tall black mass cut to the shape of the country.