Vicks did not continue his attack, and Zelos did not pursue. They were both waiting—waiting for more troops to pour in, waiting for the other's weakness to reveal itself.
The border slaughter continued for half a day.
There had been no pause, no respite, not even a moment to catch their breath.
Ghostly energy tangled with flesh and blood; the shrieks of evil ghosts mingled with the roars of flesh guards; the sounds of bones shattering intertwined with the sounds of bodies regenerating.
The gray mist was dyed dark red by the reeking blood, while the living flesh layer was carpeted with powdered dry bones and flakes of dried blood.
New dry-bone ghost soldiers surged out of the Evil Spirit World, while new flesh guards rolled down from the mountain of flesh. Like two rivers that would never run dry, they met, clashed, and slaughtered each other amid this thicket of flesh thorns.
Vicks no longer confronted Zelos head-on. He drifted around the battlefield, using his incorporeal form to slip into the densest and most chaotic areas, swallowing lone flesh guards one after another.
His black mist was somewhat thicker than when he had arrived. It was not because he had grown stronger—it was because he had eaten too much.
The energy from the flesh guards he had devoured had yet to be digested. It churned, struggled, and screamed within his mist.
More than a thousand scarlet evil eyes flickered within the mist. Some watched their prey, some watched Zelos, and some watched the silver-white pillar of light in the sky.
Karon's dry-bone ghost soldiers had lost nearly half their numbers.
Scattered skeletons lay everywhere across the battlefield. Some still moved, still tried to piece themselves back together. But they reassembled more and more slowly, because their ghostly energy was