Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 987: A Duel

The giant Devilbeast watched its master fall and made its decision.

It flapped its wings and began to climb, attempting escape. The creature had sensed the shift, understood that what was unfolding below was not what it had anticipated. There were too few Devilbeasts still airborne to draw fire away from it, and its gigantic body worked against it, slowing the ascent. The decision to fly was the wrong one—had it remained on the ground, the machine gun squads would have hesitated, fearing they’d hit their own people. But once it lifted into the air, no such scruple applied.

Most of the anti-aircraft guns on the campground swung toward it.

Bullets lashed the creature in a sustained torrent, sparks flickering off its armor until the flesh beneath was exposed and torn open. It plunged back to earth with a desperate screech. Black, putrid blood streamed from dozens of holes and pooled beneath its body.

Pasha let out a long sigh.

Zooey had been right. The God’s Punishment Witches were a genuine threat to Senior Demons. It was no wonder so many voices in the Union had rallied behind the Queen of Starfall City’s plan.

A God’s Punishment Witch could nullify magic power—reduce an enemy carrying multiple magic stones to a common fighter’s level—while their own strength rivaled an Extraordinary’s. Conversion had the potential to steady the fluctuating power within a witch and render them unrivaled against a demonkind outnumbering them. In the routed, desperate final years of the Union, it had been an undeniable ray of hope.

Lady Alice’s plan, had it been fully realized, would have transformed thousands of witches into first-class warriors—half the non-combat witches converted, the combat witches handling the demon masses, the God’s Punishment Witches targeting Senior Demons, and the Transcendents left for the worst the enemy could field.

Given that the God’s Punishment Witches were built to kill demons, it was no surprise that three of them could bring a Senior Demon down so swiftly. If it had cost ten of them to kill one, the Queen of Starfall City would never have staked everything on the plan.

But everything had come too late.

Agatha watched Zooey—satisfied, almost serene—and felt the weight of it settle in her chest. Had the Union implemented this from the beginning, the second Battle of Divine Will might have ended differently. Even after the retreat to the Land of Dawn, thousands of cities and towns still stood on the Fertile Plains, nearly ten million people living in them. That was a population from which an army as powerful as the demons’ could have been built.

But when the Battle of Divine Will was lost, the Queen of Starfall City had held almost nothing. Less than a million barbarians. The plan had been a last attempt at survival, not a strategy for dominance.

“Did you kill it?” Agatha asked as she walked toward Zooey.

The Senior Demon was not dead. These grisly enemies were sometimes more resilient than Transcendents. Even without a Stone of Measuring, Agatha could observe the shreds of magic power still running wild inside it—the demon trying to knit its ruined body back together.

It was not immortal, though. There was a limit to how much damage a demon could repair. Even without a final blow, it would die when its magic power was spent. Or when the Red Mist ran out.

Agatha had assumed Zooey wanted it to suffer.

“I want to let him live a little longer.” Zooey’s answer surprised her. “There are many demons this time—we should be able to recover a good number of mist storage tanks. Treat his wounds and give him some Red Mist. He should last a few more days.”

“What are you going to do with it?” the Ice Witch asked, frowning.

“Rest assured. I do want him to suffer eternal torment, but I know this isn’t the time for personal revenge.” Zooey’s tone was somber. “If I remember correctly, there’s a witch in another unit who can link two individuals?”

“You want her to link with the demon?” Agatha asked, startled.

“I know it’s risky. But if it works, we’ll have a chance to look directly into the demon’s mind. He’s a commander—the risk is worth taking.”

In the age of the Union, the executives would have found such a suggestion impossible to resist. But the Union was gone. Neither Roland nor Tilly Wimbledon would force a witch into something so dangerous.

Unless Camilla Dary volunteered.

Agatha was still turning it over when a series of loud bangs rolled in from the far end of the battlement.

She turned. Clouds of ash and dust were rising from the northern front—as if something had swept across the field. But there were no intense gunshots, no sustained fire. Just those brief, heavy detonations and then the silence of settling debris.

Another flight of Devilbeasts? Or had the demons broken the line?

She activated the Sigil of Listening. “What’s happening at the front, Sylvie?”

“A monster we’ve never encountered is attacking us.” Sylvie’s voice was strained, the calm she usually wore stripped back. “We need the Longsong Cannons. Now.”

The moment the cylinder detonated, the mortar shells arrived among the Army of Demons.

The Mad Demons wore animal bones and leather—protection that neither the mortars nor the 152-caliber howitzers had any difficulty defeating. The mortars were more lethal still: faster and more numerous. Bullets and shells streaked across the field in opposite directions, killing demons as they sprinted across open ground without cover. The explosions raised clouds of blood mist. The firing did not stop, and eventually the demons did—their advance stalled under the relentless hammering.

Sylvie barely registered any of it.

She kept the enemies in the air in her peripheral awareness, but her full attention had fixed on the four crawling monsters below. The mortars were useless against them—black stone and metal turned the shells away, unless a round struck directly at the face. Otherwise, the shells simply glanced off.

Then the crawling monsters ejected a stone pillar. Sylvie watched in dismay as she understood what she was seeing: the pillar was not external ordnance. It was part of the monster itself. Stone and veins peeled free and combined, forming a new cylinder.

These things could grow their own ammunition.

She had to eliminate them fast. Their first attack had caught everyone unprepared—more than a hundred soldiers injured, some of them nailed to the trench floor by stone needles a meter long, the field medics forced to pull them free before any treatment could begin. That delay had cost lives directly. Worse than the physical damage, the sight of an attack that no one had a response to had cracked the soldiers’ confidence.

Fortunately, the monster’s regeneration was slower than a soldier loading a cannon.

“The Artillery Battalion is working to bring the Longsong Cannons back online.” Agatha’s voice steadied Sylvie. “I’ll connect you directly to the battalion commander.”

“H-hello, Miss Sylvie.” The commander’s voice was a shade nervous. “I’m Van’er, the battalion commander. It’ll take a little time before all the cannons are fully operational. Fortunately, one wasn’t damaged at all. Tell me the parameters and I’ll have people supporting you immediately.”

Sylvie clenched her fist, suppressing the surge of relief, and fixed her eye on the compass in front of her. She pronounced each number slowly and precisely.

“10′ 17″ to the north. 2,310 meters. Fire.”

“Copy that. 10′ 17″ to the north, 2,310 meters.” Van’er’s voice sharpened into command. “Sixth squad—fire!”

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