Trolls

Isidro flees through the forest with a stolen basket of fruit on his back and its merchant owner riding him down. Knocked flat and lectured for the theft, the boy plays the pitiful stray until the man offers him an apple, then repays the kindness with a suplex that drops the merchant on his head and a hurled apple that knocks him cold. On the way back, pausing to train, Isidro laments never beating Guts in their bouts. Puck points out that while Guts holds every advantage in the sword, the boy throws projectiles with lethal speed, and Isidro proves it by felling two perched birds at once, a stone in each hand.

That ambidexterity plants an idea. Sparring again, Isidro conceals a second stick and suddenly wields both, aiming low at Guts, who blocks with his iron hand and still lands the winning blow. Guts nonetheless praises the effort, urging the boy to lean into his small stature and two-handed throwing rather than imitate a style built for a different body. He adds that only real battle, where foes mean to kill and arrows and cannon crowd the field, can truly teach him, and that Isidro should keep using his wits to slip free of danger.

Off by a waterfall, Isidro recalls the night he left his village against his father's pleading, resolving that one day he will need no one's help and will become a warrior remembered in legend. Elsewhere, Guts finally answers Serpico's unspoken challenge from the Albion cliff. Dropping his friendly mask, Serpico confesses he wishes Guts dead yet will hold his hand so long as Farnese chooses to follow him and comes to no harm; the moment she does, he will fight. Guts accepts the terms.

A scream cuts through the woods. A hulking, fur-covered creature with ape-long arms, a lipless tentacle-fringed face, and a heavy axe has carried Casca and Farnese into the trees. Isidro gives chase and drops the beast with a thrown stone, freeing the women. Recognizing the shepherd's warning, he sizes the thing up as a troll no taller than himself and decides it is the perfect chance to test his new skills. From the shadows, a green-haired girl in a pointed hat and her elf companion judge that he cannot possibly win.

Puck helps Isidro realize his strength lies in throwing and ambidexterity, and Guts encourages the boy to forge a style suited to his own build. Serpico openly tells Guts he wants him dead but will stay peaceful for Farnese's sake. A troll abducts Casca and Farnese, Isidro rescues them, and he prepares to fight the monster while a young witch and her elf watch, expecting him to lose.

Part of the Millennium Falcon arc, this twenty-one-page chapter ran in Young Animal issue six on March 8, 2002. It develops Isidro's growth as a fighter and clarifies Serpico's uneasy truce with Guts, while introducing the first troll encounter and the shadowed debut of the witch later named Schierke alongside her elf Ivalera.