Between Man and Demon

Guts crashes down through the branches, which soften the descent without sparing him fresh wounds, and lands battered but living. What stings most is that his cannon shot went wide. He retrieves the Dragon Slayer from where it stuck blade-first in the ground while Rosine, still brimming with energy after absorbing the blast and the fall, storms through the burning woods hunting him. Expecting to soon pass out from blood loss, Guts lashes his working hand to the sword and pours his last reserves into his rage.

Out of ideas and too drained to close in or fire again, he is drawn by Jill's screams. He first moves to pull her from the encroaching flames, but the sight of her sparks a ruthless idea instead. Jill, panicking, begs Puck to abandon her, and he refuses; his suggestion to burst a pod and smother the fire with its fluids she flatly rejects. She crumbles, admitting Puck was right that she should have left the valley, and he demands to know whether she now intends to simply die. As her resolve hardens, a burning branch drops toward her, only to be caught midair by Rosine, who folds the girl into an awkward embrace and promises another paradise.

With Rosine's back turned, Guts strikes, ramming the Dragon Slayer through her spine and into both her human torso and moth body. She drops Jill toward the fire, but Guts kicks a cocoon down to shield the girl from the flames. Rosine bolts skyward with Guts riding her back, twisting to throw or kill him, while Puck grasps that Guts deliberately let Jill be endangered, knowing Rosine would rush to save her. Laughing hysterically at her blood-drenched body, Jill watches as Rosine demands to know why Guts is so set on her death. He answers that it is for every human she and her elves ever devoured, and the reply cracks one of her deepest convictions, that a human has wounded an elf. Her fury swells, and she flings him off her back into the night air.

Guts survives the fall and binds himself to the Dragon Slayer. He uses Jill's danger as bait to draw Rosine close, then stabs her through the back. Guts rides the airborne Rosine and tells her he kills for the humans she preyed on, breaking her belief that a human cannot harm an elf. She hurls him off into the sky.

Running in Young Animal issue 3 on January 23, 1998, this twenty-page Conviction Arc chapter exposes the calculating cruelty behind Guts' tactics as his fight with Rosine nears its end.