You know as they say, third time’s the charm! Well, the only problem is that this is actually my thirty-first life…

Every time I go up my doom spire (built in my first life, quite proud of it) in order to further my magical power or read mangas and light novels, some IDIOT hero cries out something about justice, charges up my spire, killing all my friends and minions, and then proceeds to stab me in the chest with some ‘Holy sword’ Excalibur or something.

I mean, sure, in my first life I may have accidentally summoned a demon portal creating a plague of demons killing millions, dropped a meteor on the holy church capital, nuked the major cities of the central continent (ultimately driving the high humans to extinction), and a few other things… but that wasn’t really my fault… mostly.

But it has literally been two millennia past then. Like WOW that is a long grudge. I’m also kinda pissed that the thirtieth hero of justice stole my entire library, but I heard he died after a long happy life, so it can’t be helped.

Meh. No use crying over spilled milk ehh? Welp, attempt 31, here I come!!!

[Dramatic Exit]

Being born actually takes a while, check back in a bit.

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Gahhhhhh this is so stupid! Thirty-one times I’ve lived, thirty-one times I’ve wreaked chaos upon the world, and thirty-one times I’ve fallen to some dip shit hero brat with an overpowered holy sword!

How the hell is a guy supposed to enjoy his life if he keeps getting chopped to pieces before he is twenty goddamn years old?!

On that day, it hit me. I would become the pope.

You may be wondering, why the pope? The answer is control. If I control the entire church faction, they can’t send an army to chop me into pieces. Because that would be regicide and regicide is bad.

You also may be wondering, why can’t I just destroy everyone that opposes me, right? Well the answer is actually pretty simple. In order to destroy a ‘Holy Sword’ such as Excalibur, an ‘Evil Sword’ of equal or greater power is required.

All you have to do is hit them together and boom. Mutual annihilation. Along with half the continent being roasted into cinders, large amounts of dust shooting into the sky, and pretty much total extinction of life on the planet.

And so, a rhetorical question, if you will. How the hell do you read new light novels, if the world is a ball of shit orbiting a star?

So then, without further ado, back to the plan.

The pope is the strongest hero in the world. The one tasked to kill the demon lord is actually the second strongest. The popes are actually really lazy so they have underlings and stuff to do everything.

The pope is elected every decade during the tournament of legends. In order to participate, you need to have a ‘Holy Sword’ of any rating. The ratings for ‘Holy Swords’ are D,C,B,A,S,SS with Excalibur being an SS class sword, obviously.

So all I’ll have to do is make a ‘Holy Sword,’ beat everyone up and be the pope. EZ.

So you’re probably thinking again, uhhhh durrrrr waaaitttt, aren’t ‘Holy Swords’ toxic to demons like you? The answer to that question requires knowledge of what ‘Holy Swords’ and ‘Evil Swords’ are.

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‘Holy Swords’ are just swords blessed by Hestia so that they glow golden and stuff, with a poison coating it so that they are more fatal and badass looking.

‘Evil Swords’ are swords, you guessed it! Swords with the reciprocal blessing on it so it glows black (don’t ask how). And you guessed it! It has the same exact poison on it so that it burns through stuff like acid and is more badass looking.

That’s why when a ‘Holy Sword’ clashes with an ‘Evil Sword,’ stuff gets destroyed. The energy in both blessings are annihilated, releasing massive amounts of [True Energy] which ignites the mana in both wielders causing it to add to the explosion.

In areas dense with mana in the air, the environment itself can explode too so annihilating demon swords should only be done inside a power plant with twenty feet thick mithril reinforced concrete walls surrounded with [Anti-Mana] runes.

All the crap you hear about light and darkness, life and death, ying and yang, good and evil, and whatever the hell else is all a load of bull.

The only elements manipulated by magic are Wind, Water, Fire and Earth. No such thing as light and darkness.

Life is just a soul being assigned from [Valhalla], death is just a soul being recalled to [Valhalla]. Simple as that. None of this dark death, happy light birth shit. The first pope made up all that bullshit.

Don’t listen to their lies. It’ll corrupt your mind. Ying and Yang is some concept made up by some native tribal islanders that enjoyed starving themselves or something. Use common sense.

If a hobo told you that you should ‘try some communism,’ you wouldn’t do that, would you? Well you probably would, seeing as you are lowly human scum. Yeah, I totally don’t have anything against humans, except for my dying the last few *cough* thirty*cough* times.

Finally, the good and evil part. THE GODDAMN GREEDY BASTARD POPE DIDN’T WANT TO HIRE A POLICE FORCE!

Hell, in order to make more money for himself, he made up this weird karma shit so that he wouldn’t need a public peacekeeping force. IT ACTUALLY WORKED SOMEHOW WHAT THE ACTUAL MOTHER OF PEARL? Actually kind of smart if you ask me, but whatever.

So anyways, after being stabbed the first time, I analyzed the poison and had the genes in my respawn pad modified to be immune against it so now I just kinda scream and pretend to feel agony. It's all good mate.

Anyways, my respawn pad is a thousand feet under the capital city Mejikohl (Pronounced Meh - HE - CO). It’ll never be found mwahahahaha!

Anyways, it is time to go and build a ‘Holy Sword’. It doesn’t have to be good. It just needs to work.

Operation: Life 32

“Move out!”

Taking my ultimate trump card weapon, a wakizashi made of a Orichalcum-Vanadium alloy. It weighed almost nothing, yet was sharp enough to cut through almost anything. The blade was actually forged in two parts.

On the inside it contains a rune called “indestructibility” which would keep the weapon safe from any and all damage as long as it had access to sufficient mana.

Coating the blade in the correct weapon poison, I began my ascent back to civilization. Welp, this could take a while….