Above Partis, the Dream City, the battlefields divided by the Stern Stone Pillar remained locked in stalemate.
Judith, the Gray Witch, had known the Balam Empire's Death Consul since the middle of the Fourth Epoch. During the pale era, she had worked closely with him, following Death and the Primordial Demoness in their attacks on the nations of the North Continent and unleashing the terrifying pale calamity.
Yet now, the two angels stood on opposing sides, attacking each other without restraint.
The Demoness of Catastrophe constantly adjusted her position using mirrors formed from ice crystals, avoiding the gaze of Azik Eggers, whose eyes could cause exhaustion and death. Meanwhile, the undead he continually summoned from the Underworld rapidly rotted under the powerful plague, or burst into Black Flame and turned to ash under a chain of Harvests.
Azik himself also had to enter the Spirit World from time to time and return to reality from another direction, lest Judith's equally lethal eyes lock onto him and inflict a curse or turn him into solid stone.
But he was not anxious, because the two sides wanted different things from this battle. The Demoness Sect's target was the Demoness of Despair advancing inside the city, while the defenders only needed to hold out. Soon, they would receive support from the city's collection of grade 0 Sealed Artifacts and the Hand of Order himself.
Time was his friend.
The same was true on the other divided battlefields.
Tisha Vika, the Yellow Witch, repeatedly used Mirror Substitution to evade the weathering and death unleashed by Bernadette's Pale Death, which reaped all life. Even so, she had already crumbled to dust a second time and emerged anew from the Mirror World. Her Cursed Flame, meanwhile, had burned through Bernadette's dress in several places and left