Queen

Guts and a towering elf size each other up. Though she recalls the smaller elves that serve her, she stands apart from them: the most insect-like of the group, entirely bare, and no larger than a child. The blood weeping from his Brand marks her as an apostle. He names her the elves' ruler, yet she insists she is simply an elf. Springing from her perch, she dives at him, and in a blur of matched strikes only Guts is wounded, his upper arm pierced clean through.

As she loops overhead crowing like a child, Puck darts to his shoulder with a revelation: both the queen and her tiny servants are actually human children, their real nature plain to his senses. The apostle spots Puck, orders him not to address humans, calls him Peekaf, and brands him an outcast before diving at him. Jill rushes between them to shield the pair and shouts a name at the creature, Rosine. The apostle veers off at the final moment and climbs back skyward. Hovering there, the two girls stare, slowly recognize one another, and speak each other's names.

Rosine wheels around and departs with her elves, leaving Guts to crumple from the poison shed by her wings. As Jill steadies him, the villagers arrive, see their barn ablaze, and accuse Guts of wrecking it and baiting the elves with a boy named Thomas. He laughs and throws their cowardice back at them: when Thomas fled his home after his parents were killed, the townsfolk only watched from behind bolted doors. Shamed but unmoved, they demand the return of Thomas and Jill. When the burned elves revert to the human children they truly were and the parents recognize their own, Guts seizes Jill, sets a blade to her throat, and forces a path out of the village.

Guts confronts the apostle queen of the elves and is wounded through the arm. Puck reveals that she and her servants are transformed human children. Jill and the apostle recognize each other as childhood friends, and the creature is named Rosine, prompting her to break off the attack. Poisoned by Rosine's wing dust, Guts collapses, then takes Jill hostage to escape the villagers after the dead elves revert to their children's corpses.

The one-hundredth chapter belongs to the Conviction Arc and appeared in Young Animal issue 11, dated May 1997. It confirms Rosine as an apostle born from a human child and deepens the tragedy of the Misty Valley elves. Farnese, Serpico, Azan, and Zepek are listed among the chapter's cast.