My Castle received a visitor. It had been a while.
Draped in a white robe worked with gold, carrying an expensive staff loaded with blessings, the fellow was a Great Sage.
Young, and yet possessed of an odd gravitas.
"Are you the new Demon Lord?"
"No, I'm not. I am not the Demon Lord. And if you want someone's identity out of them, how about giving your own name first?"
At my phrasing, the Great Sage's eyebrow twitched.
"Dear me, my apologies. I am the Great Sage. My name is—"
"Oh, come on. Are you stupid? I didn't say that because I want to know your name. I was pointing out how shameless you're being. A Great Sage, and you don't even know who I am. I am [The Omniscient, Omnipotent, Strongest, Invincible, Absolutely Superior One]. So naturally, I know all about you."
The Great Sage's eyebrow went twitch, twitch, twitch, and his composed, thread-thin eyes cracked faintly open.
"Then you also understand why I have come here?"
"To defeat me, right? Can't be done. I absolutely cannot be defeated."
"That makes two of us. I possess the property of [Infinite Reincarnation], so however many times I am killed, I return. And since I carry over the abilities of my previous lives, I grow infinitely stronger."
Indeed. When he was reincarnated into this world from another, he had used the Goddess's Gift, [The Power to Have Any One Wish Granted], to obtain the property of [Infinite Reincarnation].
At first he called himself a Hero, but he had specialized in swordplay and was ignorant of magic, so he lost to the Demon Lord and reincarnated. Reincarnation by way of [Infinite Reincarnation] takes the form of being born anew in the world where you died.
After that he changed class to sage in order to master magic, and repeated the cycle of mastering one particular school of magic, killing himself, and mastering a different one in the next life, until he was satisfied he had mastered every magic there was and began styling himself the Great Sage.
"You really are stupid. You think you get to reincarnate safely with omnipotence standing in front of you?"
"…………"
A man who styles himself Great Sage naturally has a complex about his intelligence.
Call him stupid and he will keep a calm face on the surface while his insides boil over and he loses all sight of the situation.
Naturally, there was no strategic intent behind my needling. It was purely an observation.
Something snapped in the Great Sage, and he began an incantation, as if to say the time for talk was over.
"By Salamandra, spirit of the wrathful flame, with a solemn hellfire most fierce, I entrust my magic to the blazing god of fire. Fire to fire, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Fire, flame, blaze, inferno—bless him and succor this one. Grant silence beyond the crossing of all creation. Infernus Flamma!"
The hellfire loosed from the Great Sage's staff came with a deafening roar, at a scale that could have reduced even the great forest of the southern Demon Realm to scorched earth in an instant.
The transparent barrier in front of me and the walls of the room bounced back every last flame, and the whole spell went home to the Great Sage.
"Chant discarded—Glacies Murus!"
He conjured layer upon layer of ice walls around himself and just barely weathered his own returning flames.
The Great Sage was soaked through with melted ice and the sweat of the heat.
"Haah… haah… Not bad."
"No, all I did was bounce your spell back. Blocking your own attack and then paying me a compliment for it—that's setting the fire and putting it out yourself. Isn't that embarrassing?"
The Great Sage's mind was swimming, but at my needling something went snap, crack, and pop—about three patience-bags blowing at once.
"O Omniscient, Omnipotent, Whatever-It-Was One."
"You didn't even memorize it. Stop calling yourself a sage."
The Great Sage ignored my interjection and went on.
"Thanks to [Infinite Reincarnation], all of my stats are extremely high—but the one that towers above the rest is Luck. I am a supremely fortunate man who dumped every point into Luck. And you have seen only a fraction of it. With the spell [Lucky Up], my Luck stat doubles again, and I enter [Ultimate Luck State]: a condition in which, whatever the circumstances, sheer good fortune guarantees that events unfold in my favor."
The Great Sage lit up his staff and struck the floor with it, hard.
A high, ringing tone sounded, and golden light wrapped the Great Sage. He had entered [Ultimate Luck State].
This Great Sage, grinding up his Luck stat by running New Game Plus over and over—there are limits to laziness. How easy a ride does one man need? I hate this type.
Pitiful, though. Genuinely sad, when you consider the future waiting for him.
"Hmmm… This is special, you know? Since we're here, I'll do something reeeally special and give this [Ultimate Luck State] of yours a test run. Being omniscient I don't need to, but consider it your last look at it."
I had the Mofu attack the Great Sage.
The Mofu launched a high-speed charge at him.
It moves faster than a human eye can follow, so he could not dodge it.
But its fur snagged on something, the charge veered off course, and the Mofu sailed straight past him, slammed into the corner of a pillar, and knocked itself out.
"Ah-hahahaha! It is proven—no one can match me now. Luck triumphs over all. I am the invincible one, the strongest being in existence!"
Oh, come on. I mercifully let him have his moment and he gets that carried away with it?
Had it been merely a keepsake for the road to the next world, I would not have granted such mercy. I granted it because in his case the keepsake for the next world becomes a keepsake for a living hell.
An offering to one who will suffer forever, a send-off for one who will regret forever, a parting gift to one whose absolute confidence is about to be ground into powder.
"Listen, I hate to kick a man whose only merit is luck, but I am always absolutely superior, which means I'm luckier than you as well. Shall we test it?"
I created a wooden stick with the fate of death lodged inside it and floated it between the Great Sage and myself.
Then I let gravity take it.
The stick landed upright on the floor for a moment, then toppled straight toward the Great Sage.
"Whoever stands on the side this stick falls toward dies instantly."
A contest of luck. The less fortunate one dies.
The Great Sage's body, an empty husk with the soul gone out of it, dropped where it stood.
I dropped onto Nation F a monolith—a twenty-kilometer black object cut to the shape of Nation F.
With that, the Great Sage, freshly reincarnated in Nation F, died instantly all over again.
I should add that I had stripped him of every ability from before his reincarnations and fixed his property so that he can only be reborn within that same country—so from here on he will reincarnate on top of the monolith, able to do nothing at all.
Which is to say that idiot Great Sage can only starve to death or die falling from the edge of the monolith. And when he dies, he reincarnates again.
Over and over, forever. A living hell.
I could erase his [Infinite Reincarnation], of course. But I am hardly going to show that sort of mercy to someone who picked a fight with me.