Millennium Falcon Arc

Serialized between 2001 and 2010, the Millennium Falcon Arc is the fourth story arc of Berserk and, at 131 episodes, the longest to date. It deals with the fallout of Griffith's incarnation as Midland faces the Kushan Empire under Emperor Ganishka. Along the way Guts gains the witch Schierke as an ally and claims the Berserker Armor, a weapon that endangers his sanity, while Griffith advances his ambition to found a kingdom of his own.

The Holy Evil War chapter opens with Guts returning to Godot's, then confronting Griffith at the Hill of Swords, where an indifferent Griffith departs with Zodd after their duel and Guts resolves to take the broken Casca somewhere safe. Reasoning that traveling in numbers wards off both the nightly spirits and his own inner darkness, Guts accepts Farnese, Serpico, and Isidro into his company. Their road brings them to the witch Flora and her apprentice Schierke, who equips them against the trolls raiding Enoch Village. The hunt leads into the astral realm of Qliphoth, where Guts battles the God Hand member Slan, and it ends with apostles of Griffith's reborn band torching Flora's spirit-tree mansion. In the blaze, Schierke delivers the Berserker Armor to Guts, letting him overpower the apostle Grunbeld even as the armor threatens to consume his mind.

In the Falconia chapters, Casca bonds with a mysterious naked boy who appears under the moonlight, and the party pushes on to the port of Vritannis. There Farnese seeks passage to Skellig through her estranged House Vandimion, becoming betrothed to the sea captain Roderick, whose ship the Seahorse the group ultimately boards. The Kushan Empire assaults the city with demon-spawned daka, Ganishka declares open war on the Holy See, and Griffith's forces arrive to shatter the Kushan army. Withdrawing to Wyndham, Ganishka casts himself into a man-made beherit and mutates into a titanic monster to challenge a member of the God Hand.

Griffith exploits a treacherous strike from the Skull Knight, redirecting the Sword of Beherits into the transformed Ganishka. The emperor's second reincarnation tears open a portal to the deepest astral layers, and the resulting Great Wave of the Astral World merges the physical and unseen realms, loosing fantastical creatures across the land. When the light fades, Ganishka's body has twisted into a vast white tree, and a mysterious ancient city stands nearby that the Pontiff christens Falconia in Griffith's honor. Far out at sea, Guts and his companions are engulfed by the same world-altering light. The arc leads into the Fantasia Arc, was the last Miura completed before his death in 2021, and totals 2,757 pages; Miura took its name from the Millennium Falcon of Star Wars.