Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 1455: Pioneer

Two days later, the Eleanor Skycruiser completed its final resupply at a cliff pier, rose into the sky, and turned toward the hinterland of the Land of Dawn.

A hundred thousand citizens came to see it off.

They filled the streets, climbed the rooftops, and scaled the lower slopes of the Impassable Mountain Range — any elevation that offered a sightline. The entire western face of the city pressed itself against the light. Another record, for attendance. And that number counted only those who had left their posts to watch.

More people remained behind — at the factories, the port, the farmlands — each of them contributing to the expedition in the only way available to them.

It was, by coincidence, the same day the Border Area and Longsong District’s combined population broke through the million mark, more than half of that increase drawn from the Kingdom of Wolfheart and Everwinter. These newer arrivals were unlike the early migrants, who had come with wariness and suspicion; they had come knowing what Neverwinter was. Even so, the sheer surge of population pressed a kind of understanding on everyone who felt it — that something had changed, and the day was more than ordinary.

The ceremonial cannons fired. The Eleanor Skycruiser ran parallel to the mountains, turned west past Longsong Stronghold, and moved steadily into the distance until the crowd lost it.

The mood on the streets did not settle.

Graycastle Weekly’s tracking reports drove sales to records not seen since the Miracle Building. On every corner, in every tavern, the subject was the same. Gradually the day acquired a name — Miracle Day. Humanity’s new beginning of conquering the skies. The second event hailed as a miracle.

On the floating island, the atmosphere was quieter.

Once the initial exhilaration faded, the engineering teams returned to the work that had never stopped — tense, ordered, purposeful. The Aerial Knights were the same: aside from the detection squadron’s routine patrols, every student pilot flew at least once daily to familiarize themselves with the terrain below. The vast floating island, the busy runways, the thick smoke curling from the furnace area — together they formed a scene unlike anything the world had produced before.

“How does it feel? Has the new body become easier?”

In the core region of the floating island, Roland stood at the base of the mine and looked up at Eleanor, lashed firmly to the God’s Stone pillar.

In the past month, the pillar had grown. Eleanor herself had put out more tentacles, driving them down into the soil like a tree’s roots finding water. By her own account, the tentacles were additional perceptive organs — extensions of her sense into the island’s material. The island was the body; the tentacles were the nerves.

“Much better than before.” Eleanor’s voice had acquired a lightness that hadn’t been there in the early weeks. “I can see. I can hear. I can think. How can I be dissatisfied with that? Compared to Elena and the others, I am already extremely fortunate.”

“Lady Chief, you mustn’t say that,” Pasha lowered her main tentacle and spoke. “Everyone knows that if not for your choice to merge, none of us would have survived. You couldn’t have known this day would come. That act of courage alone—”

“I’m speaking of the outcome, not the process,” Eleanor interrupted, without sharpness. “I believe I wasn’t the only one willing to sacrifice for the Union. My sisters would have done the same. I was simply first.”

She’s doing well, Roland thought. He’d carried a quiet worry — that a witch who had fought demons for decades might, upon waking in this new form, drift toward something hard and cold. But Eleanor had no interest in that direction. She looked forward, not back.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Eleanor said, turning her attention to him. “You were afraid I’d be unable to accept this and become depressed and reclusive. If I were alone in the world, perhaps. But nearly everyone is here, the state of the war is far better than it was four centuries ago, and there is so much new knowledge demanding study. Where exactly would I find the time to wallow?”

“Studying?”

“For the Union to lead humanity, it was never enough to have abilities alone. We were always equipped with the most advanced technology and ideas of our era — three representatives, and that wasn’t an exaggeration. The Union’s glory has passed, but I still need to understand the current generation’s progress. I still need to keep pace.”

Roland was briefly speechless. The terms she’d used — casually, without explanation — were clearly borrowed from the God’s Punishment Witches. Whatever they had been teaching her, they had not been conservative. “And how far have you gotten?”

“College level,” Eleanor said. “Nearly to graduation.”

“We had Celine, Ling, and the others guiding Lady Eleanor at first,” Pasha added with a small laugh. “But now, Lady Eleanor is the one teaching them.”

She woke less than two months ago and has already completed a full college curriculum. Roland kept the reaction from his face. He had perhaps underestimated what dozens of brains working in concert could accomplish.

“In passing — I’ve built a miniature core apparatus that may be useful in the coming battles.”

At Eleanor’s signal, Pasha produced a palm-sized frame and set it on her “palm.” It floated silently, pulsing at its center with a blue light that recalled the color of major magic power cores.

“What can it do?”

“To a certain degree, it can imitate telekinetic force. Influence external objects — the rotation of handles, the depression of triggers, similar actions. If integrated with specific machinery, I can operate that machinery using magic power alone.” Eleanor let the explanation settle. “Mask removed all my mobility, but he did not fully seal the magic power. When enemies come, I am capable of operating weapons and fighting personally. The theory is somewhat similar to the automatic weapons of the Dream World.”

Roland stared.

“A gun can be treated as a computational problem, which I happen to be proficient in. Against a comparable soldier, I can raise the effective hit rate of firearms to ninety percent within maximum effective range. The limitations are that I cannot move, the firearm must be matched to a turret, and the tentacles and miniature core must be positioned in advance. But as a fixed defense, the gun turrets will be highly effective.”

“How many can you control simultaneously?”

“That depends on how many tentacles I have.” A pause. “A few hundred, I expect.”

The image of several hundred machine gun turrets — or even cannons — all operated by Eleanor with ninety-percent accuracy at maximum range pressed itself on Roland’s imagination. But that wasn’t what moved him most. What moved him was the thing Eleanor had done: she had taken Nassaupelle’s knowledge of magic power cores and fused it with what she’d learned from the Dream World. She hadn’t merely absorbed the information — she had combined two separate bodies of knowledge into something new. Given more time, what wouldn’t she change?

“If this mission hadn’t required the floating island, I would never have sent you personally into battle,” Roland said. “What humanity needs most right now is guidance in this direction. Someone to lead the way.”

“Oh? You’re not afraid that I’ll surpass your own understanding?” Something in her voice suggested she was smiling.

“Lady Eleanor—” Pasha tried, and found no clean way to finish.

“Why would I be?” Roland returned without hesitation. “Successors surpassing their predecessors is civilization’s entire mechanism. If humanity’s knowledge is bounded by the limits of what I know, that is when I will genuinely despair for our future.”

A silence followed — longer than most pauses, shorter than a decision.

“You are truly not suited to be a King,” Eleanor said at last.

“But you are absolutely worthy of being called a trustworthy leader.”

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