My Castle is to receive visitors. Such is the schedule.
There is one tiresome thing about this schedule. The visitors are numerous, and their timing is all over the place.
I have no intention of waiting for the lot of them. I shall deal with a handful, and the moment I tire of it I shall call proceedings to a halt.
As for why so many visitors are coming in the first place: the Goddess, well and truly out of road, went and reincarnated a great heap of them at once. One entire class from a certain high school.
She had marked out a region where food poisoning looked likely and sat watching it, her bloodshot eyes glittering.
And the instant every last member of a certain class at a certain high school died of it, she gleefully reincarnated the lot of them.
The students, having received the Goddess's Gift, [The Power to Have Any One Wish Granted], each had a wish granted.
Some among them cannot make up their minds and are still agonizing over it.
And while keeping the business of slaying me somewhere in mind, they are enjoying life in another world at their own leisurely pace.
Now, the reincarnates number forty-one including the teacher, and with that many there are bound to be some odd ones.
And the odd ones tend to be the quick movers.
The first to visit My Castle was a male student.
Red hair spiked straight up in the manner of a visual-kei band member.
Beneath a school uniform jacket unbuttoned down to the second button, a bright red shirt peeked out.
The look was textbook delinquent, but the contents were nothing of the sort. He is the kind of fellow given a wide berth not only by the serious students but by the delinquents as well.
And this fellow bowed—right hand curved across his stomach, left hand bent around behind his back.
"How do you dooo."
"Just as you wished. You are the first."
He had spent the Goddess's Gift, [The Power to Have Any One Wish Granted], on the trifling wish [to reach the target before anyone else in the class].
Though he was first less because of that than because he made straight for My Castle the instant he arrived.
"So. What did you come here to do?"
I know without asking, obviously. I ask so that he will state his business and we can get on with it.
"Might I humbly beg you to keep me at your siiide? I have always held death and ruin to be the most artistic and precious things in all existence. And then I heard tell of your deeds, and it was as though I had received a revelation. You are magnifiiicent! Simply the beeest! I beg you, allow one such as myself to view your deeds for myseeelf."
"If death is precious, why not die?"
"Naturally, my own death is precious tooo. But you see, once I have died I can no longer witness any further deaths. And yet! If it were you who granted me death, the joy would be beyond all compare. Ahh, I too wish to become part of a work in the great lineage of aaart!"
With that, the first student bowed again.
"I don't kill humans out of any desire to spite them, so even if being killed by me delights you, I shall kill you all the same and not care. Even so?"
"Of couuurse!"
There was no lie in it. He was not playing an angle, nor being outlandish for effect. He meant it.
I knew from the start. I ask what I already know from the start. For the drama.
"I could rewrite your sensibilities into the sort that is desperately terrified of dying, and then kill you. Even so?"
"Of couuurse! In fact, pleeease do!"
No lie in that either.
Mm. However I kill him, it plays right into his hands.
And not killing him plays into his hands too, of course.
Well, I don't especially mind that—but it does make one want to be just a little bit spiteful, doesn't it.
"I see, I see. I have taken a liking to you. Just as you first wished, I shall show you my deeds from the very best seat in the house."
"Wh-what! I am overcome with graaatitude!"
"Go into that room there and wait. I'll call you when the time comes."
The first student opened the wooden door I had produced and stepped inside.
The door closed, and then it quietly vanished.
"All of which was a lie, obviously."
The room beyond the door is an empty box about the size of two tatami mats. Floor, walls, and ceiling of white stone, and no windows. In the ceiling, a lamp that will never go out.
He is sealed in there completely.
After some two days he will finally realize he has been deceived.
He will even be delighted by that, at first—but the hunger will grind the delight down into irritation until it is gone, and in the end he will breathe his last inside a sense of nothingness.
He held an unusual set of values, the sort no one else would ever understand.
Even values like that, I am capable of understanding. Which is no reason whatsoever for me to keep him company.
I am omnipotent; I can understand the values of any human alive. And having wiped out every last one of them, am I going to extend a hand to a single solitary human merely because his values are a little unusual? Of course not.
To me, every existence, human or otherwise, is equally worthless. To one who is omnipotent and can produce anything at all, scarcity value means nothing.
So much for the first one.
Now then, let us process the second.
The next to arrive was also a male student.
A boy in black-rimmed glasses with an undercut. His crisp, alert expression suggested the sort of high-achieving honor student who volunteers to be class president.
"You're the lord of this castle, correct? Pleased to meet you. My name is—"
"Don't bother. You intend to get friendly with me and use the Sealing Vial the moment I'm not looking. All of it comes through to me. And even supposing you sincerely wanted to be friends, I have not the slightest interest."
The second student fell silent. His plan had failed and he was turning over what to do next.
He had used the Goddess's Gift, [The Power to Have Any One Wish Granted], to obtain a skill called [Search Anything, Anytime].
With it he can look up whatever he wishes—not only in this world but in the world of his previous life as well—with all the ease of using the internet.
What he had in mind was making money.
Having established that Nation Y had no mayonnaise, he looked up how to make mayonnaise, mass-produced it, and sold it off.
Having amassed a respectable fortune, he used the money to purchase an extremely expensive magical item, the [Sealing Vial].
The Sealing Vial has the power to seal an opponent away and render them powerless.
However, the rendering-powerless comes after the sealing, so it cannot seal an omnipotent and invincible me.
And of course, even if it were the sort of effect that disarmed the target first, it would not work on me, being absolutely superior.
When the second student grasped that he had no schemes left to deploy, he came running straight at me, the Sealing Vial uncapped and pointed my way.
I forcibly twisted the second student's wrist.
The Sealing Vial reversed direction and sucked in its owner.
"Achieving this much within half a day of being sent over—that is no small drive. But however good you are at gathering information or turning a profit, there was never any chance of beating me."
I teleported the Sealing Vial into the sludge lake of Nation Y.
Now, the third.
A female student this time.
She wore a navy cardigan over her sailor uniform, her brown hair straight and past her shoulders, her face assembled with a full application of makeup.
Being a beauty, she had been one of the top one or two most popular girls at the school.
"Heyyy, hey, are you Mister Strongest? How about making me your heroine?"
What is this thing. Straight out of the gate she was confidently throwing out sultry poses and cute poses.
"Are you making fun of me?"
"N-no, of course not, never! You're lonely, aren't you? Wouldn't you like to keep a cute girl like me close by?"
She had used the Goddess's Gift, [The Power to Have Any One Wish Granted], to acquire the trait [More Popular Than Anyone].
It resembles the Charm magic of the villainess of Nation G.
Where her trait differs from Charm magic is that, while it lacks the compelling force of the magic, it is not magic—so powers that nullify magic have no effect on it. It is innate.
"Let's have a nice fun chat. And lots of other fun things besides chatting!"
The third student smiled and shot me a wink.
"Ten seconds will do."
I answered without lifting my chin off my hand on the throne.
"Don't stop at ten seconds—you can savor me for as long as you liiike~"
The third student tilted her head and put on a cute voice to tempt me.
I stopped restraining myself and let out what I actually thought.
"I did not mean I would make do with ten seconds. I meant I require no more than ten. This being a matter of conversation with you. And the ten seconds have already elapsed."
"Wh—! Hold on! Why? Why is that?!"
What baffled her was not that the popularity trait she got from her wish had failed to work, but purely that her own charms had failed to land. How much confidence can one person have.
"Fine. I shall tell you. Look at this."
I produced a girl. Created her out of nothing.
"Wha..."
The third student lost her words.
Standing before her was a peerless beauty that not even the most determined cynic could find fault with.
I had not built her to my own taste. I decomposed the ideal held by the men of the world into every constituent element, quantified them, and applied the statistical median of each to this girl.
"Compared to the women of this world, she is head and shoulders above them in looks, personality, intellect, athletic ability, and every other element there is. A perfect specimen, as they say. Is there so much as one element in which you beat her?"
"...Self-love?"
"You lose. Somewhere beneath the surface, you have already registered that she is more attractive as a woman than you are. Even the self-love is gone now."
My peerless beauty bowed and vanished.
The third student writhed, clawing at her own face, fell into respiratory failure, and died.
"That'll do."
The reincarnated students and the one teacher are off in Nation Y chatting away without a care.
Submissions being closed, I dropped onto Nation Y, with no further ceremony, a monolith—a twenty-kilometer-tall black mass cut to the shape of Nation Y.