Zondark

In their first meeting, Zondark is sheathed in heavy plated armor topped by a custom faceplate cast as a man's visage, right down to a sculpted nose, mouth, and brow, its eye-slots hollowed so he can see out clearly. Under the helmet lies a coarse, thuggish face beneath cropped, ragged black hair; out of his armor he wears a white sleeveless shirt with dark trousers and boots. Turning into a pseudo-apostle sharpens his teeth to fangs and lights his eyes so fiercely that the pupils vanish. Because he regenerates, the wounds Guts inflicts warp his body grotesquely, spawning growths that even rebuild severed limbs, so that both arms return as tentacle-like appendages, and when part of his skull is cut away the Count's parasitic shoot pushes out of the gash.

At their first clash Zondark brims with arrogance, sneering at Guts and eagerly daring him to fight even after seeing him cut down a swath of the guards. A good contest appeals to him, and he tests his war hammer against the Dragon Slayer just to measure it. All that bluster wins him nothing; beaten, he is left unhinged and swallowed by a thirst for revenge. Remade by the Count, he loses whatever mind he had and sinks to the level of a witless brute, a mere tool of his master with nothing left but the urge to kill.

In life Zondark is a powerful, well-drilled fighter, at home with a war hammer or a battleaxe, yet nowhere near Guts' equal. Their opening bout goes poorly for him: dodging the charge, Guts leaves him to cut down his own men by mistake, and when the captain finally pins the swordsman against a brick wall and swings to finish him, Guts meets the blow with the Dragon Slayer. The hammer's shaft buckles and its head bursts into fragments that tear into Zondark's face, dropping him to take a kick and a humiliating defeat before he sends his soldiers after Guts, who slips into the sewers with Vargas' help.

Hauled back into the castle to be treated, Zondark is consumed by his lust to kill and beats his own head against a pillar until the Count seizes him from behind to halt it. When he swears he will pay any price for vengeance, the Count spews a great slug-like thing that slides down his gullet and remakes him as a pseudo-apostle, and the newly hollow captain laughs at being assigned to hunt the Black Swordsman. He later smashes into Vargas' laboratory to renew the fight; Guts shears off his right arm, only for tentacles to sprout from the stump. Gripping his battleaxe with them and moving at frightening speed, Zondark hacks through the lab's supports and brings the roof down, but Guts blinds him with his cloak and splits his head open from temple to crown. Still upright, he becomes a vessel for the Count's offshoot, which praises Guts before the collapsing ceiling crushes the body. Zondark endures even that, returning in monstrous form to ambush Guts inside the Count's castle, where the swordsman destroys him at last and dashes the escaping parasite against a wall as it tries to burrow into him.