Will-o'-the-Wisp

Puck reacts first to the standoff, flying into Guts' face to scold him for taking their one sympathetic villager hostage and for confirming, through the fairy's own presence, the crowd's belief that the swordsman is allied with the elves. Guts edges through the parting townsfolk, who give way to protect Jill. When one man creeps up with an axe, Guts wheels around and raises the girl as a shield, though the poison in him keeps sapping his strength and he has no wish to fight. Passing through the village, Jill glimpses her father Zepek watching from behind a wall, only for him to vanish the instant their eyes meet, wounding her with his apparent unwillingness to save her.

Clear of the settlement, Guts lets Jill go and tells her to return home, apologizing for endangering her. Guessing he means to reach the Misty Valley and confront the moth apostle, she asks to come along, certain the creature is the friend who vanished years earlier. He flatly warns her off, declaring he fully intends to kill the apostle regardless of any friendship, and departs with Puck. Jill lingers, thinking nothing would improve if she went back, and touches the cut on her neck left by Guts' blade.

On the road Puck chides Guts for his cruelty toward Jill and, noticing the blood he trails, offers to treat the wound. Waved off, the fairy erupts in a tantrum over Guts refusing all help. Guts snaps that they were never truly companions or friends and orders him gone, then plucks him from the air and flings him into the grass. As the sulking Puck lands, a stranger's shoe drops beside him. Later, having made camp, Guts vomits from the poison, forces down a snake he catches, and braces for the night when the spirits will come. Drowsy, he is caught off guard by the Demon Child resting atop his fire, having brought with it the blazing spirits of the village's dead children.

Guts shields himself with Jill to leave the village, then frees her and refuses to let her follow to the Misty Valley. Jill sees her father Zepek turn away rather than rescue her. Guts drives Puck off, and an unseen newcomer approaches the discarded fairy. At his camp, poison-sick Guts is confronted by the Demon Child and the burning spirits of the incinerated children.

This 20-page Conviction Arc chapter ran in Young Animal issue 12, dated June 1997. It hardens Guts' resolve to hunt Rosine while showing the cost of the villagers' cowardice on Jill. The closing appearance of the Demon Child ties the Misty Valley pursuit back to Guts' cursed existence.