My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered, No One in This Other World Stands a Chance Against Me! - Volume 3 - Chapter 10

Chapter 10 — What? 

A Foundation Eater that had acquired sentience made its way into a Celestial Foundation. The foundation was covered in a solid shell known as a canopy, but for a Foundation Eater who had consumed countless worlds along with their canopies, opening a small hole through which to infiltrate was easy. 

There was no reason in particular it had picked this foundation. It had just happened to be the closest option at the time. The Foundation Eater’s objective was to observe intelligent life, and as a general rule, all Celestial Foundations housed such life. 

The Foundation Eater chose to take the form of the most dominant race on that world, and placed itself in the most populous social class. As such, its aim was to become a human farmer. Compressing the information that made up its being into an embryo, it implanted itself into the womb of a suitable person, creating for itself an ordinary human body. And so it gained the perspective of a human baby. 

At that point, the baby was only an avatar of itself. It was something like a probe for observing humanity while its true body remained in the Sea, the void that housed each Celestial Foundation. 

The Foundation Eater decided that it would let the child live as an ordinary human. It would not interfere in the slightest. So the avatar of the Foundation Eater managed to live an ordinary life. It worked in the fields since its time as a child, grew up to marry a woman from the village, and began having children of its own. Though they were poor, it was a life full of joy. 

As its first real experience with life, the Foundation Eater found it engrossing to observe, but over time it began to grow bored. It may have had a good life as a farmer, but the daily routine consisted of constant repetition with very little change over time. 

The turning point came after a poor harvest led into a hard winter. A group of thugs came and occupied the village out of nowhere. No doubt they intended to hide there, fleeing from someone or other, but rather than lie low, they lived with wild abandon. Recklessly wasting what precious resources the village had, they laughed as they killed anyone who stood against them. When they finally decided to leave, they abducted the women, burned down the houses, and poisoned the wells. 

That was where the Foundation Eater’s avatar died, killed alongside its family as its wife was stolen away. And yet the Foundation Eater felt only joy. The sudden tragedy had shocked it out of its boredom. It had grown tired of the sedentary, peaceful life of a farmer. Turning its eyes upon the world at large, it saw that there was a great amount of stimulus left to be experienced. 

So the Foundation Eater decided to invest itself further. Still in the process of developing its own personality, it wanted to experience this world to the fullest on its own. So it thought to create a second vessel for itself. The death of its first creation was somewhat irritating, so this time it decided to create a stronger body. And now there would be no meaningless rules to hold it back — it would live its life as normally as it could, but when the time came, it wouldn’t hesitate to wield its power to the fullest. 

It didn’t need to start as a child again, either. Creating a suitable body to serve as its vessel, the Foundation Eater entered the world once more. 

Everything went exactly as it desired. At first, it wreaked destruction and killed everyone in its path, but that was only interesting for a short while. It was effectively like having no enemies at all. 

After living that way for some time, it grew bored again. So it next took an interest in ruling over and controlling the lives of others. Ruling was simple. When it revealed its power to the people of the world, they bowed down before him of their own accord. So the Foundation Eater organized its followers into an army. 

That was truly entertaining. War became the greatest pleasure it had ever known. Creating an army, conquering cities, and conscripting new soldiers to fight, it wasn’t long before it had taken over an entire country. That was not thanks to any talent for warfare that it possessed, though — while it generally allowed its armies to fight on their own, if it seemed they might lose, it would step in and exercise its power like a god. 

Establishing the Empire of Arganda, the Foundation Eater set its sights on world domination. That domination consisted entirely of conquering the surrounding countries, but the conquest itself held no particular meaning for it. As far as the Foundation Eater was concerned, it was only doing what it considered to be fun. So its invasion of the inviolate Kingdom of Manii was nothing more than a game. It didn’t care that there was a Dark God sealed beneath. Rather, it felt that if the Dark God were revived, more interesting developments would arise. 

At first, the Foundation Eater exercised restraint with its miracle-like abilities. They were a last resort, and although it ended up using them rather regularly, its true interest was in watching the people fight, so it eventually turned its mind to military tactics. 

The plan that it hatched was to concentrate its forces on the Meld Plains and launch a sudden surprise attack on the capital. The region, also known as the Crystal Plains, was an evil land inhabited by crystal monsters, where everything was transformed into their own crystalline makeup over time. No one would think to hide an entire army there. After all, it was impossible to leave anyone in the territory for any real length of time. The incessant attack of insects would exhaust and overwhelm the intruders, eventually turning the soldiers themselves into crystal. Stationing an army there was absurd, but that was what made it so effective for a surprise attack. 

The Foundation Eater became determined to carry out its plan. It was most interested in the fun of executing its own strategies, so it didn’t care how many of its people died. First, it would seize the railway passing through the plains. That was the only safe place in the region, the only area habitable by humans. It would then set up an encampment in the center of the plains from which to order its troops. 

Everything went smoothly at first, but at some point it lost contact with one of the troops sent to take over the nearby train station. Suspicious, it dispatched another group of soldiers to investigate and soon learned that the first batch had been killed. 

This was an ill omen. There was no way the railway staff should have been able to fight back against trained soldiers. Someone else must have been in the area. Logically, it was likely someone from the Kingdom of Manii. 

Reports soon came in of a vehicle heading towards the capital. The Foundation Eater decided that it couldn’t afford to let them escape. If it did, its plans would all be for nothing. So it gave its orders: stop them at all costs. 

The entire army was mobilized in pursuit of that one vehicle. The creature was confident that they would overtake their enemies in no time. After all, the soldiers of the Argandan Empire were equipped with powerful magical weapons as well as technology that was like science fiction to this world. These had all been developed from the knowledge the Foundation Eater had acquired by devouring other worlds, making each soldier in his army a mighty hero. 

But as time went by, good news failed to arrive. Tired of waiting, it used a small amount of its power to investigate the situation directly. The armored vehicle was still in flight, the soldiers of the Argandan Empire still in pursuit. Men riding horses, dragons, and even armored tanks all collided into each other or ran headlong into crystal boulders and trees without ever firing their weapons. It didn’t know what was happening, but it was clear that they were terrified. 

Don’t run away. Kill them at any cost! 

The Foundation Eater gave a direct order to its army. At this point, they had already deviated significantly from their normal tactics, but it didn’t bring its own power to bear against the fleeing vehicle because it was quite enjoying the fight. If it wanted to simply destroy the Kingdom of Manii, it could do so at any time. Its power as a Foundation Eater would make that an easy task, but doing it so quickly was no fun. It had no intention of losing in the end, of course, but it wanted to keep things exciting to the last. 

However, even as it thought that, its soldiers continued to collapse one after another. The dragons and horses that had lost their riders milled about in confusion, the tanks that had lost their drivers crashed and went up in flames, and the bodies continued to pile up. 

The Foundation Eater couldn’t figure out what was happening. It had no idea why they were all dying, but the army was at the end of its rope. In no time at all, it had lost forty percent of its forces. They had all died following the Foundation Eater’s orders loyally until the last, but at this rate they would lose the ability to function as an army. 

The Foundation Eater sighed in resignation. Stubbornly refusing to give up on its plan to attack the capital from the Meld Plains, it decided to put an end to the armored vehicle itself. It moved its point of view to the inside of the truck. 

A girl was driving the vehicle with a boy sitting beside her. Seeing that, the Foundation Eater became angry, and immediately began plotting the best way to kill them. Should it incinerate them? Or perhaps manipulate them into killing each other? Or maybe killing them would be too easy, and it would be better to pluck off their arms and legs and drop them, still alive, into the army’s latrines. 

As it considered this, it abruptly realized that its own death was only ten seconds away. 

“What?” Caught completely off guard, it froze in shock, wasting two of its precious remaining seconds. 

For a creature like the Foundation Eater, time and space were only a part of its existence. It could freely control the universe around it with its thoughts, and even predicting the future was trivial. But now, it couldn’t see anything beyond the next few seconds. 

What did “death” even mean? It had an objective grasp of the concept, and had even experienced it after a fashion in its previous body, but it didn’t really understand what it meant at its core. The very concept of death being applicable to the Foundation Eater itself was totally beyond its ability to comprehend. 

Reviewing the information gathered from the countless worlds it had devoured, it couldn’t find a single method by which it might die. And yet it still knew that it was going to. It knew that its existence was coming to an end. It didn’t know why it was going to happen or what it really meant, no matter how its thoughts raced trying to solve this new enigma dominating its mind. It couldn’t understand anything except that the future was decided. 

Five seconds left. There was nothing beyond that point. Time would end after only five more seconds. So the Foundation Eater went backwards. If it was only a matter of seconds, reversing time wasn’t especially challenging. 

Fifteen seconds now remained. Despite moving backwards ten seconds, nothing had been altered, which was strange. It had recognized that it was going to die ten seconds before it was to happen, so if something had occurred at that moment to bring about its death, returning to a moment before that should have, logically speaking, freed it from that fate. But the approaching end still loomed. 

For the first time since its consciousness had first awakened, the Foundation Eater felt fear. Some invisible force had wrapped itself around it, entirely imperceptible, and it knew no way of freeing itself from it. That absolute absurdity somehow transcended cause and effect. Even going back in time couldn’t overturn its fated end. 

The Foundation Eater abandoned its human body. Leaving the emperor of Arganda where it sat, it retreated to its original form beyond the Celestial Foundation. 

The Foundation Eater awoke in its true body, floating in the Sea. It was large enough to swallow an entire world whole. It looked like some sort of fish; most of its body was a face, and most of its face was a mouth, expressing its nature as a creature that consumed. 

It began to tremble at the enormous power infused in its body. It rapidly recognized that it was no longer a tiny human. Time began to blur, and a feeling of omnipotence took over. 

It recognized its own enormity, and how trivially miniscule the humans living on the surface of that Celestial Foundation were. And as it did, anger began to bubble up within it. It had run away like a coward. It couldn’t forgive the person who had made it do that. It would simply have to destroy that entire foundation. As if to cover up its own fear, fury surged within its heart. 

The Foundation Eater mustered the power it had built up from devouring numerous other worlds. There was no value in even consuming a world like this. It would destroy it utterly, leaving nothing behind. 

That decision, at that very moment, removed any possibility of escape for it. 

It opened its enormous mouth, large enough to swallow the world in a single bite. In the depths of that cavernous maw, a light began to shine, a brilliant flash of rage that would incinerate everything before it. 

Die. 

The second it determined that it would unleash that light, it came to its senses. It felt like it had heard something. And it realized...ten seconds had passed since it had first predicted its own death. 

In that last moment, the Foundation Eater wished it had never become self-aware. 

While Yogiri and the others were listening to the king, the Empire of Arganda was already no more.