Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 810: A Dilemma

“Ugh — I feel absolutely disgusting.”

Agatha climbed out of the worm carrier’s narrow esophagus, pressed her hand to her mouth, and retched. “Like being packed into a mucus-filled bag and hurled against a wall. Repeatedly.”

“Is that really the best you can do?” Nightingale stepped from the Mist and looked over the group — every one of them glazed in slime. “If Fran hadn’t collapsed the cave mouth, we’d have been in far worse shape.” The advantage of the misty world was exactly this: she moved through spaces, not around them, which meant the worm carrier’s stomach had never been required. She had not been bathed in any of this.

“I’m sorry,” Fran said, her enormous voice gone small. “Was I impulsive?”

Agatha was too busy retching to answer.

“It was fine for me.” Lightning wiped mucus from her hair, then sniffed her fingers with an expression of pure scientific assessment. “Being swallowed by a giant worm and crawling back out alive is a singular experience. No explorer I know of has managed it.”

“Don’t be too greedy about your firsts,” Elena said, rolling her eyes, then turned to Agatha. “For those of us who’ve lost all sensation, even the smell and the clammy touch of this would be something to envy.”

The other God’s Punishment Witches made sounds of agreement.

“Enough.” Agatha coughed, her voice hoarse, and cut them off. “The next problem. What do we do?”

Even a few minutes of distance had not entirely dispelled the fear of what had happened before Fran’s intervention. The sound — that strange, resonant buzz — had bypassed every intention and every prepared reaction. By the time the mind processed Fran’s warning, instinct had already turned the eyes upward toward the source. More than one of them had failed to look away in time.

None of them had seen the whole creature. Only the eyes. Ten thousand scarlet eyes, gathering into a single burning plate of red in the dark.

They were reasonably sure the mass of eyes belonged to a Multi-eyed Demon coiled at the top of the tower. The black stone tower itself had apparently been swallowed by the worm at some point prior — which explained why the pagoda’s position had shifted. But unlike any Multi-eyed Demon they had encountered or read about, this one’s scope was far wider, as if the body had been stretched and pressed flat, its natural form distorted into something that could cover the ceiling of a cave dome.

When the buzzing stopped, hybrid demonic beasts had come from everywhere — the deep ruins, the walls, the water, the dark overhead space. Nightingale, watching from the Mist, had seen the magic signatures appear all at once, like lamps being lit simultaneously across the entire cave. Bright streams of moving power, their raspy roars drowning out even the river. It had been as if the mountain itself had decided to repel them.

Fran had not hesitated.

She swallowed the group — everyone except Nightingale — and bored into the cave wall. Once she was fully submerged in the rock, the demonic beasts attacked her tail without restraint. Even with Nightingale providing what cover she could, she could not drive them all back. Fran took the blows and kept moving, tunneling thirty feet deeper before she rolled back against her own rear end and drove her enormous body against the cave wall, crushing the beasts between herself and the rock. Then she lashed her tail against the ceiling of the tunnel, brought the stone down, and sealed the mouth of the passage behind her.

The witches inside had experienced this — the rolling, the sudden impacts, the jostling in a space that smelled of rot and processed meat. Several had been on the verge of losing their composure. All of them, in the end, were safe.

“First things first.” Elena looked at Fran. “How did you end up trapped down here to begin with?”

“I think the rock formation must have been worn down by water over many years.” Fran’s voice had a heavy, depleted quality. “It gave way suddenly while I was tunneling. I was already falling before I understood what had happened. I hit something and blacked out. When I woke, dozens of the invisible worms were transporting me — and then they left me in that spot.”

“Ah.” Elena raised an eyebrow. “They took you for an empty carrier. Convenient for us — though not, I imagine, for you.”

“We were lucky,” Fran said. “Very lucky. Especially that we weren’t simply eaten on the spot.” She paused. “The pity is that I accidentally looked at the ceiling when I was about to escape.”

“Was it really a Magic Eye?” Agatha asked.

“I don’t know. The moment I saw it, it saw me — but I couldn’t determine what it truly was. This one was far larger than any Multi-eyed Demon I’ve seen in the records.” Fran exhaled, a slow, rank wind that made several people step back involuntarily. “Ah — I apologize. Elena and the others lost their sense of smell long ago, so I stopped paying attention to that.”

“It’s nothing.” Agatha held her breath carefully before continuing. “When you had time to observe it — did you get an overall impression of the creature’s form?”

“After I was bound, it descended and spent some time in the lake below. I was able to watch.” Fran was quiet a moment, clearly searching for words. “I don’t know how to describe it correctly. It looked like a failed experiment — like a mass of flattened guts draped over the body of a Multi-eyed Demon. The two parts don’t fit together; they look forcibly joined rather than naturally grown. Tentacles moved in the gaps between them. I could not tell if the tentacles were separate worms or part of the creature’s own body. And that mass of guts was considerably larger than the Multi-eyed Demon beneath it — larger even than the Fearful Beast of Hell.”

“Could it be consuming demons?” Nightingale frowned. “If it is, it cannot be classified as a simple hybrid demonic beast.”

“More pressing than classifying it,” Elena said, “is how we get out of here.” She set her hand briefly against Fran’s jaw. “Next time, warn us before you tell us the details. Understood?”

“Yes,” Fran answered, deflated.

“Can you move?”

“Not now. I’ve exhausted everything.” She shook her head. “I consumed all the food reserves in my stomach while we were trapped. I need fuel before I can tunnel at all.”

“If we give you the last of our food supply?” Lightning offered.

“Barely enough for a hundred steps.” Elena inhaled slowly. “So: we either wait for rescue, or we break out and hope for the best.”

Agatha shook her head. “Waiting is not safe. This space is too small — we’ll suffocate within a day. And even if Sylvie manages to locate us, the First Army will have to destroy the beasts before anyone can reach us.” She let the silence settle, then added: “And the enemy also has devouring worm carriers. They can tunnel in after us.”

“If we charge out now, we risk being overwhelmed before we’ve gone twenty paces.” The God’s Punishment Witches exchanged glances. “And Fran — she cannot move to defend herself. There is no way to extract her from this many enemies.”

“I’ll check the situation outside first.” Nightingale turned and slipped away, clearly preferring action to an argument with no current answer.

“Don’t be concerned about me,” Fran said suddenly. “Taquila witches do not fear death. Whatever I’ve become, I still belong to them.” She seemed to reach some kind of decision. Her body shifted — a slow, uncomfortable contraction — and several sticky iron boxes slid from her mouth onto the cave floor. “I also happen to have some things in my stomach that may help.”

“What are these?”

“Garrison supplies the First Army asked me to carry.” She coughed. “They said the boxes were too heavy for anyone to manage, so I swallowed them all.”

Agatha opened the boxes one by one. Shovels, spades, wire netting, building tools. Standard camp equipment. She moved to the last box — noticeably smaller than the others, but far heavier. Inside, packed in shockproof wheat straw, were a dozen smaller wooden containers labeled: Second Chemistry Plant, Sample 64, Qualified.

Agatha went still.

She recalled that most of the nitrogen generated during decomposition had been directed to that factory’s output chain.

The wooden containers held explosives.

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