Guardian Angels of Desire (3)

Trailed by his retainers and Dahl, the Count carries a caged Puck into the chamber of his daughter Theresia, meaning the elf as a gift. He keeps the girl locked away out of dread that heretics fill the world, and when she shrinks from his touch he departs wounded in spirit. Elsewhere Guts ascends the castle stairs and meets Zondark, now even more grotesque. He fells the captain but takes a lash from the still-living arm before learning that only a severed head can end the thing, which he promptly delivers. The Count's head, once lodged in that body, tries to absorb him, so Guts dashes it against the stone and presses on despite heavy blood loss.

Freed from her cage, Puck listens as Theresia describes losing her mother seven years earlier, killed when the Count refused pagan captors' demands for open worship, an event she was too young to recall. She senses her father is no longer truly human, unaware he has become an Apostle. Guts reaches the throne room, cuts down Dahl's guards, and looms over the trembling official without noticing him, his focus fixed on the shadows where the Count waits. Puck, overhearing talk of an intruder, coaxes Theresia into opening her window and flies off to rejoin Guts, vowing to come back one day and set her free.

Facing Guts, the Count abandons his human body for a vast slug-like form that regrows every limb Guts severs, and their clash shakes the castle to its foundations. A shattered wall lets Puck return to Guts while the tremors knock Theresia's door from its hinges, and she gathers her courage to step out of her room at last. Spotting a black cloak behind a pillar, the Count strikes and kills the figure, only to find it is Dahl wrapped in Guts' cloak. Guts seizes the opening but the Count parries and beats him savagely, calling the Brand on his neck the mark of his coming death. Tentacles snatch Guts by the leg and hurl him into the columns, yet he refuses to release his sword, and he is left slumped against a pillar as the Count gloats over him.

Guts destroys the last of Zondark and the fragment of the Count occupying him. Theresia learns from Puck about her mother's death and her father's lost humanity, then leaves her locked room for the first time. The Count reveals his full Apostle form, kills Dahl by mistake, and overpowers Guts.

The chapter marks the first appearance of Gerico and confirms Theresia's ignorance of her father's Apostle nature. It expands the tragedy behind the Count's transformation, tied to his wife's death, and pays off the earlier decoy trick with Dahl dying in Guts' cloak. Puck's promise to free Theresia sets up his role in the arc's close.