Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 627: The Intertwined Battle of Fate (II)

“I’ll admit,” Zero said, crouching beside him, “your comprehension surprised me. You’re the first to counterattack without being given any explanation.”

She picked up the rifle from the ground and turned it over in her hands. Her fingers moved across the mechanism with the unhurried interest of someone encountering an elegant problem. “Rare materials. Exquisite tolerances. Another snow powder weapon?” She set it down. “The things you create are genuinely impressive. But they don’t threaten me—I observed your entire battle. The tubes in your bunkers, the cannons behind your camp: everything depends on its operators. You can’t track what you can’t see.”

She shook her head. “You cannot win this. I have consumed over a thousand warriors across the years. One of them was an Extraordinary.”

A green plastic box appeared between them on the rooftop floor.

The explosion was not large. It didn’t need to be.

The blast took out three square meters of floor and stripped the glass from the nearest classroom windows. The old iron stairwell door was hurled off its hinges by the pressure wave.

Roland reappeared in the rooftop’s corner, gasping. The memory of the detonation—of being blown apart—clung to his nerve endings like heat. He was beginning to understand what the amputees in his hospitals felt during surgery.

“Not comprehension,” he said, still catching his breath. “Your stage setting has obvious holes.”

Zero’s expression sharpened. “It’s drawn from your memory.”

“But built by your ability. It’s six in the evening on a university campus—the busiest hour of the day. Where is everyone?” He looked at the empty field below, the silent windows, the frozen perfect stillness. “It looks right but feels hollow. The rules don’t hold if you look at them directly.”

He was stalling, and she probably knew it, but stalling bought him time to think.

Her speed approaches Ashes’s—which means ordinary firearms won’t work reliably. She can only be damaged by blasts she can’t escape. But I can’t escape them either, and the score after that exchange was three deaths to one. Sweat had gathered at the back of his neck; his heart hadn’t fully steadied. If resurrections are finite, I’m already behind.

Zero tilted her head. “Isn’t surrender wiser? Death is a torment for anyone. Even you.”

“Keep that for yourself.”

Roland straightened and said: “Ironman.”

The red metal armor assembled itself in front of him—chest piece, pauldrons, helmet. He stepped in from the back and recited the activation command.

No display. No response. The suit stood motionless around him like a tomb.

Zero’s blade found his neck while he was still trying to move.

The world inverted. He watched his own body kneel as his head ceased to be attached to it.

“You ought to have given it joints,” Zero said, knocking on the hollow plate. “And this shell is far too thin.”

Fourth resurrection.

Roland arrived back on the rooftop understanding something he had resisted accepting: anything he created without truly understanding its mechanics was a prop. The helmet’s display screen had been a camera connected to nothing. The suit’s joints were fashion, not engineering. He had been dressing up concepts rather than building them.

Stupid method, then.

He made no elegant weapon this time. Several steel plates, each ten centimeters thick, dropped from the air beside him and arranged themselves into a small blockhouse—barely large enough for one person, but with walls that could absorb serious punishment. He mounted a 40mm automatic grenade launcher on a protected weapon station above it, dropped inside, sealed the hatch, and opened fire.

The grenade launcher changed the arithmetic.

Zero could not close the distance. The weapon’s destructive radius was too wide; there was no line of approach that didn’t pass through its cone of fire. He walked rounds around the blockhouse in a systematic pattern, and even when she used her speed, the fragments found her—punching through armor, through flesh, through whatever sustained a pure witch’s body in this space.

She was reborn at the far corner, near the stairwell door. He tracked her there and continued firing.

Then the sky changed.

He had been concentrating on Zero’s position when a radiance appeared above the clouds—gold, swirling, the dazzling light of something enormous gathering itself. He recognized it. He had only seen it once before, but it had left an impression.

The Sigil of God’s Will came down on the building like a hammer.

The blockhouse melted. The floor around it charred but held. The explosion of light consumed Roland entirely.

Fifth death.

He sat up in the cold sweat of resurrection, shaking—legs, arms, involuntary tremors that took a moment to bring under control.

The blockhouse was gone. The roof was scorched.

“Give up,” Zero said. She had not moved to press the advantage. “Your energy has reached its limit. Any additional battle gives you only more pain. You won’t gain anything.”

Roland wiped his face and looked at her. Why doesn’t she close? She could press the attack and finish this right now. What’s the difference to her between killing me exhausted and having me surrender?

“You should understand by now,” she continued, extending both arms slightly—a gesture almost relaxed, almost generous. “Both creation and death consume energy. When it runs out, you lose. Everyone carries a different amount—I’ll confess that you’ve lasted longer than I expected.” She paused. “For context: I have lived over two hundred years. If you count the time spent in soul battles, I’ve endured hundreds of deaths and remain standing. Your energy is nearly gone. Continuing is not strategy—it’s only suffering.”

Roland looked at her for a long moment.

Is she telling the truth? She looked entirely at ease. The depletion in his chest—the sense of a reservoir going low—was not visible in her. If she had truly been doing this for two centuries, her depth would dwarf his.

I’m nearly out.

He said nothing. He sat down on the charred rooftop and let himself think.

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