Rewrite That Witch
CH559 · Rewrite
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Chapter 559: A Discussion about the System

“What do you think of it?” Edith sat back on the edge of the bed.

“The bathroom?” Cole was still glowing from the discovery.

“The new laws.”

“Oh.” He sobered. “I’m going to write father a letter tomorrow and explain His Majesty’s terms. I don’t think he’ll agree.”

“Why not?”

Cole settled into the chair by the window with the confidence of someone who has worked something out. “The promotional manual lists an earl’s eldest son as its best example—someone who had essentially a duke’s lifestyle without any actual domain. For a man like that, trading the title for an administrative salary is arguably a step up. But father is the designated ruler of the Northern Region. Duke of the City of Evernight. His power and standing are categorically beyond that earl’s son. If he agrees to His Majesty’s terms, he’s not being promoted—he’s being stripped.”

“Sound reasoning,” Edith said. She let him have a moment with it, then continued: “But you missed one thing.”

“What?”

“Whether we can keep what we have at all.”

Cole went quiet.

Edith picked up the pamphlet from the nightstand and found the opening paragraph—dense, angular, nothing like the flowing style that followed it. “You read the examples in the back. I kept returning to this.” She turned the cover toward him. “Have you understood what he’s arguing here?”

“The cause of… feudalism?” He leaned in, squinting. “I’m not sure what that word means.”

“It’s not a common term. He invented it, or borrowed it from somewhere unusual. What he means is the current system—the whole structure of lordship, land grants, and noble obligation.”

Cole looked uncertain. She shook her head slightly. The paragraph was strange—dry and compressed, nothing like a propaganda piece—but the more she turned it over, the more it revealed itself as load-bearing. This was not an appeal to noble self-interest. This was an argument from structural analysis. Roland Wimbledon had written down why feudalism existed before writing down why it should end.

That was either the move of someone very confident or someone who believed the people reading this could follow the logic.

“Let me ask you something,” Edith said. “Why does father grant lands to his knights and vassals?”

“To keep them loyal. To attract good men to serve the family.”

“And if he held all the land himself—if there were no grants at all—what would happen?”

Cole thought about it. “The knights would leave. Without property, there’s nothing to hold them. We’d be a family with a name and an army of none.” He shook his head. “And the Northern Region is too large to administer alone. It takes soldiers half a week to march from the City of Evernight to the Palisade City. Collecting taxes, managing the borders, responding to threats—you need subordinates with real authority and local presence. You can’t run that from a single city.”

“So we grant land because we have two fundamental problems: we need fighting men, and we lack the capacity to govern large distances directly.” Edith looked at the pamphlet. “Those are the two causes Roland Wimbledon identifies. And he believes both of them have been resolved.”

“By what?”

“By his army, first. No matter how many men father raises, they cannot stand against His Majesty’s forces—you saw enough on the Redwater to understand that. So the need for a network of armed vassals is already obsolete. The protection it offered is gone.” She paused. “And second, by the City Hall. He believes a professional administrative apparatus, trained and paid by the crown, can manage the whole region without noble intermediaries. No land grants needed because the administrators don’t need to be self-sustaining—they’re salaried.”

“That’s absurd,” Cole said. “Where does he find enough people? You still need someone to collect taxes, someone to settle disputes, someone who knows the local families. He can’t staff that from Neverwinter alone.”

“I agree that’s the central question.” Edith turned the last page. “But look at the final sentence: A well-functioning centralized government will unavoidably replace feudal nobles, because a unified management system makes better use of resources across the whole region and maximizes people’s potential, thereby increasing the productivity of the entire kingdom. Productivity determines the dominant power of the state.”

“Productivity.” Cole repeated the word as though testing it. “Farming output?”

“He means something larger than farming.” She set the pamphlet down. “Tomorrow I’m going to ask him to explain it. Directly.”

“That fast?” Cole straightened. “You usually reveal yourself only when pressed.”

“I can’t afford the slow approach. And don’t write to father yet.” She pulled the blanket up. “You heard what he told you—he’s given father the authority to act on his behalf.”

“You mean—you’re actually going to agree?” Cole’s voice rose. “He’ll kill you—” He caught himself. “He’ll be very unhappy with you.”

Edith raised one eyebrow.

“I’m not agreeing to anything yet.” She turned off the lamp. “He’s put his price on the table. Now I need to know exactly what I’m being asked to pay, and whether there’s room to negotiate. Sleep.”

The following morning’s injury reports arrived in sequence.

Neither firearms nor blades presented exceptional difficulty for demons—they were not physically invulnerable, only armored and fast. The real surprises were chemical. Chlorine, nitric oxide, carbon monoxide—nothing. The Dreamland Water failed to induce sleep. The Pill of Madness failed to induce madness. The demons’ physiology was simply too different from human physiology to share the same vulnerabilities.

Kyle Sichi had worked through the night on the Red Mist analysis. Its components included a flammable fraction with an acrid odor, a nitrogen fraction, and a portion that remained unidentified. His conclusion: demons appeared to depend on a faint magical charge diffused through the Mist rather than its chemical composition—which explained why the Mist degraded rapidly once separated from a living demon.

One additional finding: the Mist broke down at three hundred degrees. At eight hundred degrees, it burned.

Roland put the reports in the drawer and went back to his incendiary calculations.

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