My Castle received another visitor.
Just one, this time.
Blond hair spiked up, a long black coat thrown over his shoulders, an enormous sword slung across his back.
What he carried there was the holy sword Durandal.
The strongest sword there is: it cuts any substance no matter how hard, and can cut down even formless magic. A cheat weapon, as they say.
He was a reincarnate. With the Goddess's Gift, [The Power to Have Any One Wish Granted], he had asked for [the strongest sword], received the holy sword Durandal, and become a Hero.
"So you're the one behind demonkind attacking humanity."
As he said it he abruptly used some sort of Appraisal Eye on me, so I arranged for his appraisal window to display the following: 'Duuumb. Duuumb. Moron. Idiot. What are you, a peeping tom? You closet pervert. Sooo gross~!'
The Hero grimaced, openly.
He had plainly been caught trying to appraise me, but he maintained the barest scrap of composure and spoke again as though nothing had happened.
"Every single day, irreplaceable lives are being lost. Humans and demonkind both. What do you think the weight of a life is worth?!"
The Hero glared at me with his righteous face on. A shallow line, entirely in keeping with an impudent boor.
This fool apparently believed he was lecturing me—[Omniscient, Omnipotent, Strongest, Invincible, Absolutely Superior].
I was going to kill him regardless, but for my own satisfaction I decided to return the lecture.
"No, I'm the one who should be asking. Do you actually understand what the weight of a life is? For humanity, the weight of a life means how carefully that life gets handled. The heaviest lives, to you people, are human ones. Then non-human mammals. The closer a creature is to a human, the heavier; the further away—insects, plants—the lighter. Oh, and rare species get treated as heavy by way of exception. Tell me: did you think any of that through properly before putting your question to me?"
"Huh? Y-yeah, of course I did!"
The Hero's eyes wandered a little, and then, determined not to let his agitation show, he aimed an unfocused stare at me.
I returned a cold look and went on.
"Liar. All you have is a value system fossilized out of received ideas. So let me tell you something unfortunate. As of now, your human lives have become extremely light. Why? Because I slaughter humans with ease. By your own species' standards, a life that is easily taken is not a heavy one—so human life is light. Correct?"
Though in truth there is no such thing as the weight of a life to begin with.
It is nothing more than a value humans invented for themselves.
"It seems we can't understand each other. Fine. I'll remove you by force."
This Hero was too stupid to follow my explanation.
Argued into the ground, and unable to keep up on top of it, he fudged the whole thing into a supposed clash of irreconcilable values.
And then fell back on force. A hopeless fool.
It had not been especially satisfying, and I was about to end it quickly, when the Mofu—which had been sitting quietly on my lap being petted—hopped down and bounded out in front of the Hero.
"Pu, pu!"
It turned back to me once, making its determination clear.
The Mofu was volunteering to handle the Hero so that I would not have to trouble myself.
How very devoted.
"I see, I see. Go on, then."
I respected the Mofu's feelings and left it to the Mofu.
It was still carrying the offhand enhancement I had given it for the Hero party, so it had a fair amount of combat power on hand.
"I'll cut you down!"
With the holy sword assisting him, the Hero moved at inhuman speed.
The Mofu answered with a high-speed charge of its own.
The Hero cut fast, and the Mofu kicked off the air and slipped out of the blade's path.
But the line of Durandal's swing slid after it as though tracking, and the edge cut the Mofu clean in two.
"Well. I knew that would happen."
The furball, now in two pieces, vanished.
And then the Mofu came back, on my lap.
"So you can revive it. Then there's no way around taking down the boss."
"You can't."
I cut in over the tail of his sentence, and he bristled.
He brought the sword up in front of him, showing it off.
"This is the holy sword Durandal. Matter or magic, it always cuts, and every swing hits without fail. Nobody beats me while I'm holding this."
I shrugged and let out a long sigh.
"Then let me tell you about me. I am [The Omniscient, Omnipotent, Strongest, Invincible, Absolutely Superior One]. Whatever the circumstances, no one exists who can beat me."
"I see. On my side, a holy sword that absolutely cuts. On yours, an invincible body that absolutely can't be cut. Then there's only one way to settle it. Whose absolute is the real one."
The Hero seemed confident. Presumably nothing had ever failed to cut before.
But he understood nothing. I am omniscient, so I already knew how it ends—and even setting that aside, I had anticipated a collision of absolutes from the very beginning and written [Absolutely Superior] into my wish.
Those last two words, which look superfluous at a glance. [Omniscient, Omnipotent] or [Strongest, Invincible] might seem like plenty on their own—yet on top of those two, I judged the condition [Absolutely Superior] to be necessary.
I put it in precisely for a case like this one: the problem of the irresistible spear and the immovable shield, absolute against absolute.
"Ohhh dear, he's an idiot. I went to the trouble of explaining myself and he's looking at completely the wrong thing."
I stood and moved to stand in front of him. The Mofu was on my right shoulder now.
He drove the sword down at my left shoulder.
It rebounded with one hundred percent elasticity.
There was not a mark on my casual white shirt.
"That's impossible!"
His eyes went wide, and he swung again with the same expression still on his face.
This time fast, striking all over. With the holy sword's assistance he landed ten blows inside a single second.
I did not need to defend at all, but I chose to deflect every one of those ten with a single index finger.
And then I traced that finger across his right shoulder.
My finger never touched him. His right arm came off cleanly and dropped to the floor.
"Aaaaaaaaaagh!"
The screaming was unpleasant, so I took his voice.
And while I was at it, I reconnected each artery running out of his heart directly back into the veins of the heart.
He dropped in that instant. With the last of his strength he glared up at me.
(You look human by any measure. Doesn't it hurt you at all, killing your own kind?)
What he tried to say never made it out as sound, but I can read the thought. So I gave him an answer to take with him to the next world.
"You've missed something fundamental. I am pure evil. Asking evil about its sense of guilt is misdirected, off-target, nonsense. You really are stupid, aren't you."
He heard that much, and then he was gone.
I blew away the corpse and the holy sword Durandal together.
"Right then. Shall we crush Nation B, where this one came from."
Just as with Nation A, I dropped a twenty-kilometer monolith cut to the shape of Nation B onto Nation B, and Nation B ceased to exist.
From here on, my visitors would all be reincarnates.
I decided to treat whichever country a reincarnate had been sent into as their homeland, and to crush that homeland with a monolith after burying the reincarnate.