My Castle received a visitor.
Not a Hero. A monster.
A monster, but human on the inside. A reincarnate.
Come to think of it, I was a monster myself when I was reincarnated. A Mofu, the weakest monster there is.
Why was I reincarnated as a Mofu, I wonder. To spite me, no doubt.
I erased the circumstances myself, so I do not remember.
Recalling them would be easy, but I went to the trouble of erasing them, so I shall not.
"So you're the Demon Lord? That look in your eyes, like you're staring down at me—you're taking me lightly because I'm a Mofu, the weakest monster there is, aren't you?"
The monster visitor was a Mofu.
Ugh, this is unpleasant. This thing was reincarnated exactly the way I was. From a human past life into a Mofu.
"I do not look down on you because you are a Mofu. I underestimate, disdain, despise, and look down on every being other than myself."
Wearing a defiant expression no ordinary Mofu would ever wear, the visiting Mofu looked up at me and hopped up and down again and again.
"Countless people have written me off as just a Mofu and paid dearly for it. It'll be too late to regret it!"
The Mofu in front of me squished its body through one shape after another, morphing-style, until it became a young man.
A handsome youth in a gaudily ornamented black robe. He looked like someone who casts spells.
"Were you listening to a word I said? I told you it isn't because you're a Mofu—I look down on everything that is not me."
He had been steering the conversation purely so that he could deliver that line of his.
He is a thoroughbred idiot. Purely and simply stupid.
"True enough. So far I've only changed my appearance, so you wouldn't understand how terrifying I am yet."
His attitude irritates me to the core.
He was reincarnated into a Mofu just as I was. I had hoped for something marginally more respectable.
"Listen. However confident you are, at least try to learn what your opponent is capable of first. Very well—since there's no helping it, I'll do you the special favor of explaining myself to a stupid, ignorant fool. I am [The Omniscient, Omnipotent, Strongest, Invincible, Absolutely Superior One]. Which is to say, an opponent you absolutely cannot beat."
Even told as much, the idiot in front of me did not drop his bravado.
"So that's your skill! Then I'll simply take it. With the power of Skill Eater!"
With that, the Mofu-bastard in his youth form raised a hand toward me. Naturally, nothing happened.
"Duuumb. It isn't a skill. It's what I am! So your Skill Eater can't take it, and even supposing this of mine were a skill, the moment it has omnipotent and invincible attached there's no way you could take it, is there."
The Mofu-bastard did at least manage a look of surprise, but the confidence had not yet drained out of his face.
"Then how about this! Status Drain!"
Once again the Mofu-bastard raised a hand toward me. Of course, nothing happened.
He had obtained [Skill Eater] with the Goddess's Gift, [The Power to Have Any One Wish Granted].
Its effect: he can strip skills from people without limit.
The one robbed, incidentally, loses the skill.
After reincarnating he stripped skills one after another from passersby, which is how he became able to transform into a human, how he acquired [Status Drain]—which siphons up a person's stats and makes them his own—and how he came to hold assorted other skills besides.
Oh, and apparently in the system this one operates under you can set your own title—and would you believe it, he has set his to [Champion].
"Damn it. You're right, I should have started by learning about my opponent. I got too strong and forgot the feeling. Time to dust it off. Skill: [Appraisal Eye]."
This one too. Every last one of them is far too fond of peeking at other people's information.
For the record, I am not peeking at these Heroes' stats. I simply know everything from the outset.
"Wh-what is this?!"
I had arranged for a message from me to display in his appraisal window.
—Don't go swaggering around calling yourself a Champion when you're nothing but a petty thief!
Ugh. I cannot stand to look at that stupid face a moment longer.
Let us end this.
"If you want one that badly, I'll make you a present of a skill of my own special make."
The skill I then forcibly bestowed on him is called [Self-Collapse].
It is a passive skill—that is, one that activates automatically and permanently.
"What is this skill?! My body just collapses on its own? And I can't even switch it off?!"
The Mofu-bastard threw healing skills at himself as fast as he could, but the collapse would not stop.
Of course it wouldn't—the skill is of my own special make. Once you have collapsed, that condition becomes your default state. However much you heal, the collapsed state is full health.
Half for the fun of it, I had given it the property of making the collapsed state the default rather than the property of unhealable damage.
The healing skills themselves were firing, so he kept using them over and over, the one trick he knew.
Before long the Mofu-bastard's brain collapsed too, he reverted to Mofu form, and he rotted away to nothing.
Incidentally, the Mofu-bastard's transformation skill was the sort that grants you the abilities of whatever you transform into.
Had he transformed into me, the contradiction of two strongest, absolutely superior beings existing at once would have arisen and the Mofu-bastard would have ceased to exist—but that scenario is distasteful to me, so I would have blown him away by my own hand before the transformation.
"Right then. Shall we erase this one's homeland as well."
I dropped a monolith on Nation H. A twenty-kilometer black object cut to the shape of Nation H's borders.
Like a puzzle piece seating into place, the monolith settled snugly over Nation H, and Nation H ceased to exist.