Rewrite That Witch
CH1457 · Rewrite
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Chapter 1457: The First Battle of the Floating Island!

Deep in the hinterland of the Fertile Plains, time on the Eleanor Skycruiser moved strangely — slow and tightly managed, the days measured not in events but in the turning of the course corrections. The crew felt the motion of the island beneath them; they did not feel themselves approaching anything. Only the officers and officials in the command center knew: the map showed a curved flight path, the island revising its heading east every twelve hours. By the Exploration Group’s estimates, the flight path would converge on the new Deity of Gods within eighteen days at maximum.

Peace did not last that long.

On the fourteenth day, it ended.

An aging Fire of Heaven from the Aerial Knights’ detection squadron was the first to find trouble. One of the few surviving dual-seat models, it had been retrofitted — back seat stripped of the machine gunner’s position, the space given over to a spark-gap transmitter and a wireless transmitter unit. It was not a warfighter now. It was a set of eyes, and a voice.

“Devilbeast formation approaching — bearing northeast, one hundred and fifty kilometers!”

The standing rules of engagement were clear: relay by spark-gap first, repeat by wireless, then hold position and observe. The electromagnetic environment was clean; both receivers interpreted the signal without difficulty.

When the message reached the staff room on paper, the quiet broke open all at once.

“Confirm crew identity and location — immediately!”

“Sound the early warning system — recall all engineering personnel!”

“General Staff — this is the command center. Battle stations, now!”

“Ground service reports: aerial platforms five and eleven are down for repairs. Requesting urgency—”

“At this hour? Tell them to hurry.”

Roland reached the command center at a run. “Current situation?”

“Enemy is still approximately two hours out.” Edith held a report file and did not look up from it. “Bearing northeast. More than thirty Devilbeasts sighted. The reconnaissance plane has broken contact and the enemy is not deviating from their original heading.”

“Then the demons have located the island?” Iron Axe asked.

“Unlikely, given that number. If they knew what they’d found, they’d send more. But they’ve sensed something and they’re coming to confirm.” Edith paused. “A scout force.”

“That’s not surprising.” Roland kept his voice level. No matter how careful the island’s passage, it was still a floating mountain. A target that size couldn’t hide itself completely — just as Lightning and Maggie had found the enemy’s Deity of Gods, the enemy would eventually find theirs. “Sylvie’s Magic Eye is oriented upward, toward the sky. A ground-level demon patrol stumbling across our passage was always possible.” He turned to Edith. “Your assessment?”

“Verification is likely the primary goal. With thirty Devilbeasts, the Aerial Knights can eliminate them cleanly.”

“Whether we destroy them all or allow a few to escape doesn’t change the larger picture.” The Eleanor Skycruiser could not outrun Devilbeasts, could not remain indefinitely unseen. Exposure was not a question of if. “The question is how we minimize the cost of what comes next.”

The Aerial Knights had grown steadily since the battle at the Impassable Mountain Range. Fire of Heaven and Fury of Heaven — first and second generation — now totaled more than two hundred units, two full wings. But the enemy was at full strength, freed from supply constraints and distance. The air force would be fighting under scale pressure from the moment it engaged; the Aerial Knights could not sustain heavy losses early without compromising everything that came after.

“You’re proposing Plan B, then?” Tilly asked, one eyebrow raised.

“Yes. And it will give us a chance to evaluate what the witches have been practicing.” Roland turned from the map. “Get everyone into the underground warehouse. Now.”

Two hours later, the enemy arrived.

As Edith had assessed: a verification force. But it stopped forty to fifty kilometers out. The lead Devilbeast’s rider raised something like a mounted optical instrument, scanned the island for a long minute, and then the formation turned and withdrew. No attempt to probe closer. No escalation.

“The demons have learned something from Mask.” Edith smiled with the measured coolness she reserved for opponents she found interesting. “They’ve learned to respect their enemies.”

“They haven’t surrendered.” Iron Axe watched the horizon where the formation had been. “I believe our peaceful days are over.”

“Of course.” Edith’s voice carried the temperature of the Northern Region in winter. “And this will be our best chance to weaken them.”

That same afternoon, the demons appeared on the horizon.

They had apparently decided not to wait even one day.

The troops had been at battle stations for more than an hour before the enemy arrived. Every external channel leading out from the island was sealed. Scout biplanes had returned to their hangars. The entire surface of the floating island lay empty of life; even the rebuilt bridge at North Slope Mountain had been closed. The Eleanor Skycruiser sat like a natural feature — old stone, old mass, impervious.

The senior command assembled in the command center. A magic power core projected the exterior in sharp relief on the wall before them.

The first wave came in two hundred Devilbeasts. They formed a line and charged — the sky darkened a shade as they rose.

“So many…” Tilly’s frown held something at its edge that was not quite worry and not quite respect.

“I expect this is only the vanguard.” Roland watched them come. The force behind the demon King’s City was the entire strength of the Blackstone Region; the number of Devilbeasts available to a force that size would not be fewer than a million.

This had probably been their last full day of quiet.

“They may have numbers. But what can numbers do to a mountain?”

The voice appeared in every mind simultaneously — mellow, unhurried, carrying a quality that Roland found difficult to name. It belonged to a woman who had spent four centuries in a state that had no human word, and had come out the other side with the lightness of someone who has already made the hardest decision imaginable.

Eleanor.

Roland laughed.

This was the unassailable core of their strategy. The demons had learned what a Deity of Gods could and could not withstand. The Eleanor Skycruiser presented the same problem to them that their city had once presented to humanity: immovable, solid, armed in all directions.

“I leave the rest to you.”

“Relax. This is a revenge that has waited four centuries.”

In her perception, an invisible grid spread outward from the island. Every Devilbeast that entered that grid became a set of coordinates, a velocity, a trajectory — a solvable problem.

Mathematics is truly interesting…

She threaded magic power through her tentacles, felt it travel the length of the island, and touched the hundred-plus miniature cores distributed through the stone. Blue light bloomed, one after another, like a slow breath. The machine gun turrets connected to them by mechanisms of rod and cable and spring all turned, all elevated, all pointed at the sky.

At the precise moment the Devilbeasts entered her effective range, the turrets opened fire.

Every line of tracer reached across the sky simultaneously. What had been empty air became, in an instant, a screen of light.

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