Fangs of Ego

Holding Casca down and kissing her by force, Guts feels the Beast of Darkness urging him to tear her apart the way Griffith did during the Eclipse. A waking nightmare overtakes him: his own body warps into a humanoid shape of the beast that rakes Casca with its claws, savages her breasts, and bites down until a breast and then her head are torn away, all while the voice insists he kill her and turn fully to revenge. He wakes with a violent start, backing into a fallen tree without noticing it. In truth he stands in full armor, and Casca lies alive and largely unharmed except for bite marks near a nipple, weeping silently but no longer struggling. Guts sinks to his knees.

Some distance off, Puck still searches for Casca before nightfall, unaware that Guts has already found her. He spots a boy bolting down the road and recognizes Isidro, fresh from robbing travelers and claiming he has been hunting for Puck ever since the Tower of Conviction.

A thrown branch trips Isidro, revealing Serpico, who has been chasing the boy to recover stolen food. Farnese follows and coldly orders Isidro's arm severed for stealing from nobility. Puck flits up and pats her nose, asking whether she can still see him, and the shock that she can sends her toppling back into Serpico's arms. The elf leads the trio to Guts, who has by now clothed Casca and tied her wrists to a tree.

Isidro draws his blade and demands to be taught how to fight, an outburst Guts ignores while Puck mockingly names the youth a disciple of Elf Dimension Style. Guts asks the newcomers whether they are still hunting him, and after a long, weighing silence, Farnese kneels before him and asks to join the Black Swordsman on his journey.

Chapter 190 runs twenty pages within the Millennium Falcon Arc, published in Young Animal issue 21 on October 26, 2001. It reunites Guts with Puck, Isidro, Serpico, and Farnese for the second time, planting the seed of the new traveling party that will define the arc.