Rewrite That Witch
CH1400 · Rewrite
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Chapter 1400: One’s Conduct

“You’re still alive?”

Mask’s voice moved through Silent Disaster’s mind the way all communication through the Birth Tower did—not sound, but the shape of sound, arriving without traveling.

Silent Disaster turned a scrap of dark-white torn cloth in his fingers. What remained of someone’s robe. “I said it before. I will not die until every human is destroyed.”

“Very good. But do not forget that I am the determining factor for this victory, Nassaupelle. Without the new Symbiotic Demons and the Deity of Gods’s combined assault, you could have crowded three thousand Primal Demons into those crags and accomplished nothing.”

“I don’t disagree.”

Silence. A pause long enough to be readable—Nassaupelle had not expected candor. “Well then. When the King asks about the Western Front, I hope you remember what you’ve said. One more thing: Hackzord did nothing in this engagement. You witnessed it yourself. He had his reasons, I acknowledge, but contributions and achievements must be distinguished clearly.”

“I agree.”

Another silence. “I never imagined you capable of reason. Very well—let us proceed to where the lowlifes placed their artillery. I will bring the Deity of Gods to meet you there.”

“You want to retrieve their weapons?”

“That’s right,” Nassaupelle replied, and something brightened in the tone. “They are spoils of victory and proof of it—precious objects I can collect while studying the deeper mechanisms of things.”

The Deity of Gods closed its gates as it began to descend.

Silent Disaster climbed through the aftermath.

He had to admit it: Senior Lord Mask’s contribution to the battle was irreplaceable. The floating island was wider than the Impassable Mountain Range from any angle—standing beneath it, one felt that the mountains themselves might buckle. But it touched nothing. Its shadow lay across the peaks like a judgment that had chosen, for now, to delay itself. A thousand-catty weight balanced on an egg, and the egg not cracking.

The logistical advantages after the battle were immediate. Suspended platforms moved supplies and personnel vertically, the height advantage rendering the Deity of Gods as impregnable from outside as any moat had ever been—more so, because a moat could be crossed. No assault from the ground could reach the underside of a floating island. Nassaupelle had built something that simply could not be taken from the outside.

He was still thinking about this when he heard the sound.

The humans had abandoned the position. Any survivors the Symbiotic Demons hadn’t already found would not last long. Yet the sound was unmistakably there—faint and muffled, coming from beneath his feet, from the direction of a collapsed structure that had once been concealed. A hidden fortification, he realized. The stele impact had caved it in, turning whatever interior it had into a sealed pocket.

If left alone, whatever was inside would die on its own schedule.

Silent Disaster crouched and dug.

He could not have said, if asked, why he bothered. Perhaps the hope of useful information. Perhaps Nassaupelle’s interest in the Graycastle people had lodged something in him by proximity. Within a few minutes he had exposed a narrow entrance that would admit one person at a time.

The passage was dark and short. Two turns, then it opened into a room large enough to matter.

An oil lamp hung at the entrance, still burning—that detail registered first. Under its yellow light, a human male sat against the far wall, each breath louder than the last. What remained of his legs were ragged stumps; he had lost them to the collapse, or managed their loss with his own hands afterward. The floor between the entrance and where he sat bore long dark smears.

He knew the structure. Even with his legs gone, he understood there was no exit. So why did he drag himself around in here?

“A pity.” The human raised his head and looked at Silent Disaster without flinching. “The one I ended up waiting for is a demon.”

“Speak—of what you know.” Silent Disaster’s command of human language was functional but blunt; he had spent most of his conscious existence fighting the Sky-sea Realm, not conversing with humans. “Otherwise—death will be something you desire.”

The man seemed not to hear the question.

“I kept thinking—wouldn’t it be something, if the person who came was one of ours.” A short, exhausted sound that might have been a laugh. “But if a demon came… I’d be sitting here just waiting to die, wouldn’t I. Fortunately there were charges stored in here. With a detonator, I could still do my last duty.” He paused. “Though I wouldn’t have guessed a fish this big would swim in.”

Silent Disaster ran the calculation: the man had no useful information to offer, or would not give it freely. The sensible next step was to knock him unconscious and hand him to Nassaupelle.

He was preparing to step forward when something slipped from the man’s hand.

A rope.

The free end, released, snapped taut upward. It was attached to a counterweight. Silent Disaster’s gaze followed the motion—and found the room’s corners, where flat shapes he had taken for stored equipment sat stacked. Black viscous liquid dripped from the ceiling above them. Beneath the stacks, metal blocks. And there, unmistakably, was where the smears on the floor were heaviest.

He wasn’t dragging himself toward an exit. He was never trying to escape.

The oil lamp at the door. The rope held loosely in one hand, requiring only that he release his grip—whether he lost consciousness, or was killed, or chose to let go.

He had crawled back and forth through this small room not from desperation but from purpose, arranging everything precisely, ensuring that whatever entered that door by the lamp’s light would be within the radius.

Silent Disaster turned and ran at his maximum speed.

The man smiled.

“Long live—humankind!”

The light that filled the room was total and instantaneous, white beyond white, the sort of brightness that exists for a moment and then leaves only its negative image. The rumble that followed seemed to come from inside the earth rather than from above it. The collapsed cave swelled outward as if something beneath was pushing up—a fist punching through from inside—and threw gravel and packed snow in a wide arc against the winter sky.

“What happened?”

Nassaupelle stood over Silent Disaster with a frown, watching his assistant confer with two other demons in low voices.

“Lord, it isn’t clear yet. Another explosion at the mountaintop—it appears the Lord walked into the lowlifes’ trap.”

Nassaupelle made a sound of mild contempt. “Pathetic. Any other Senior Lord would have died.”

Silent Disaster lay where the Symbiotic Demons had carried him. His armor had been driven into his flesh; the two were no longer clearly distinguishable from each other in places. What was left of his face—the features that had always unaccountably resembled a human woman’s—retained only its outline. His magic power was nearly spent.

“Doesn’t this confirm your theory?” the assistant offered carefully.

“Indeed.” Nassaupelle’s tone warmed with satisfaction. “Even the finest body has a ceiling. The Symbiotic Demon’s evolutionary structure is the answer—replaceable when damaged, unlimited in growth. That is the form we should be building toward.” He turned away from the unconscious Senior Lord without ceremony. “Put him in the Red Mist Pond to soak. We have no need of him in the next phase in any case.”

He was already walking toward the Birth Tower, the thought forming into decision as he moved.

“Those lowlifes will never guess that the easily-taken Kingdom of Wolfheart was never the Deity of Gods’s true objective. Swallowing the entire kingdom in one motion is the fastest route to obtaining the legacy shard.”

He did not look back.

“Adjust course. Full speed for Hermes Plateau.”

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