Blood Flow of the Dead (2)

Alone in her cell, Nina condemns her own cowardice, torn between rescuing Casca and saving herself, until frantic pounding warns her that monsters have overrun the tower. Blood seeps up through the flagstones, and her terrified blows burst the freshly unlocked door open. Cowering from her presumed jailers, she instead finds Luca, Isidro, and Jerome come to release her. Isidro frees the other captive heretics to serve as a distraction, while Luca thanks Jerome for risking his standing as both heretic hunter and Holy Iron Chain Knight.

Luca refuses to leave without Casca, and Jerome guesses she lies in the underground chamber, but a swelling wall of faces made of blood advances on the group through the dark. Elsewhere Guts forces the chamber doors and finds it drained, littered with the skeletons of heretics who were alive moments earlier. A trembling helmet yields Puck, who reveals Casca was engulfed like the others yet, unlike them, is still sensed as alive, giving Guts a flicker of hope.

Farnese, who saw only Guts muttering into a helmet, at last perceives Puck and recalls glimpsing him during her own possession, a memory she had buried. Guts tells her she may do as she likes and departs, leaving her among puddles that stir into faces. High in Mozgus' prayer room, his strongest disciples brace the doors against the blood; it bursts through just as the mysterious egg-shaped being drops from the ceiling, dangling by a single tentacle.

This Conviction Arc chapter appeared in Young Animal issue 2 on January 14, 2000. It confirms Casca's survival inside the blood, reintroduces Puck to Farnese's awareness, and brings the Egg of the Perfect World into direct contact with Mozgus. Nina, Luca, Isidro, Jerome, Guts, Puck, Farnese, Mozgus, and the egg-shaped being feature.