Rewrite That Witch
CH717 · Rewrite
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Chapter 717: Hunting Competition

The preparation took nearly a week, which was longer than Roland had expected.

The problem was transportation. Moving barrels of gunpowder to preset positions outside the city wall required carriages, and the carriages required roads, and the roads had acquired half a meter of snow that turned wheels unreliable. Every encounter with demonic beasts — and there were several — required the convoy to stop until the threat was managed. Lotus helped: she could open the earth, shape trenches, guide the detonator wires to the right depth. Without her it might have taken two weeks.

The detonator design was simple enough that the delay came from logistics, not engineering. A sealed copper tube, gun cotton inside, a thin copper wire bridging two leads — when current passed through the wire it burned out, ignited the cotton, and from there the buried powder charges did the rest. The wires ran from each buried position to the main control tower on the city wall. Any section of the field could be ignited from that tower by turning the appropriate hand-cranked generator. The depth Lotus achieved — nearly five meters — would protect the lines from anything demonic beasts or ground artillery might do to the surface above.

With the infrastructure complete, there was only one thing left.

Live targets.

The morning of the competition was bright and cold, the overcast sky having finally broken overnight. Six witches stood in a row on the city wall while Roland reviewed the terms.

“Friendship first, competition second. Safety is the rule that overrides everything else — no one leaves Leaf’s surveillance area. Is that understood?”

“Yes!” The six answered in unison, though Andrea Quinn’s answer had an enthusiasm that made the others sound reluctant by comparison.

She had won the Fire Dragon Wine bet before and been denied, and now there was another month of Chaos Drinks at stake. The concentration on her face was the concentration of a woman who had decided this was serious.

The three teams: Ashes and Andrea for Sleeping Island; Lightning and Maggie for the Witch Union; Phyllis and Agatha for Taquila. The original plan had included Iffy and Annie as a fourth team from Wolfheart, but Annie had declined to hunt, and the remaining Wolfheart witches had no combat abilities, so that idea had been set aside.

“One day. Only demonic beasts secured in the cages below the wall count toward your total.” Roland indicated the row of iron cages at the base of the wall. “Any team caught outside Leaf’s area is immediately disqualified. Questions?”

No questions. Lightning was already looking at the sky.

“Then — begin.”

Lightning and Maggie were airborne before his voice finished. The remaining four teams made their way down the wall on foot, spreading toward the edge of the Misty Forest at their own pace.

Tilly appeared at Roland’s shoulder, smiling at something only she could see.

“Who do you think wins?”

“Lightning and Maggie. Speed counts when you’re measuring by cages.”

“I think Sleeping Island wins.” She said it with the confidence of someone who knows something.

Roland ran the arithmetic. Andrea’s ability was long-range and devastatingly precise; Ashes as an Extraordinary could handle anything they encountered. But the competition wasn’t about killing — it was about trapping and transporting, which required precision rather than force. Half-dead demonic beasts were harder to move than dead ones and harder to capture than uninjured ones. The optimal strategy required more care, more time, and more coordination than simply overwhelming each target.

“Want to bet?”

“If I win, I’d like half the revenue from Chaos Drinks sales directed toward witches who’ve contributed to city development.”

He blinked. “That’s surprisingly reasonable.”

“And if I lose, I’ll live in Neverwinter.” She said it evenly, meeting his eyes when he turned to look at her. “Permanently.”

The word sat in the air between them for a moment.

“Really.”

“I don’t say things I don’t mean.” Something moved through her expression — not quite slyness, but an awareness that she had placed something significant on the table and was watching him recognize it. “You might not win, though.”

“I might not,” he agreed.

“I forgot to mention,” Nightingale said, quietly, from somewhere behind his left shoulder. “Andrea’s magic cohered.”

He turned toward the sound of her voice. The space was empty.

He looked back toward the forest, where six witches had already disappeared into the trees, and revised his estimate.

“Wild demonic boar. One hundred twenty-five meters, your left front. It’s moving toward you.”

The information arrived in Leaf’s particular intonation — branches and green leaves shifting in sequence, each tree’s vibration carrying a syllable. It allowed her to speak to all three teams simultaneously without any of them losing track of their own surroundings.

Andrea stopped walking and looked at Ashes. “How far is a hundred twenty-five meters?”

“Two steps per meter. Count them.” Ashes was already unscrewing the sword from her back.

“So that’s two hundred fifty steps—”

“It doesn’t matter. I can hear it.”

Something heavy was moving through the underbrush ahead. The sound of branches snapping, then the specific dull impact of snow falling from a disturbed tree. A moment later the boar broke into the clearing: large as a draft horse, grey tusks like forearms, eyes the color of exposed wounds.

Andrea raised both hands and shaped her fingers into a frame — index finger and thumb forming a diamond, the boar visible through the center of it at perhaps ten meters and closing. She could see the drool on its tusks. The mane rising along its spine.

“Bang,” she said.

The word was quieter than any weapon ought to be for what followed it. A column of compressed air punched from her palms with a sound like a cannon and met the boar in the center of its chest. The animal left the ground. It rolled twice on the way down and hit the snow with all four legs in the air, vomiting blood, and didn’t get back up.

Ashes looked at the boar. Looked at Andrea.

“Your turn,” Andrea said pleasantly. “For transport.”

“Why is it my turn?”

“Because you’re strong and this is a team effort and if we lose because you moved slowly I’ll tell Princess Tilly.” She gestured at the fallen animal. “I’ll be looking for the next one.”

Ashes expressed her displeasure through her face and said nothing with her voice, which was the expression of someone who has correctly identified an argument they can’t win. She bent and shouldered the boar.

“Don’t go anywhere,” she said.

“Of course.” Andrea was already looking at the trees. “Leaf? Where’s the next one?”

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