Companions

Impaled on the Dragon Slayer, Slan screams in ecstasy, then leans down to kiss a stunned Guts before scattering into troll entrails. His hope that he has slain her collapses when her disembodied voice pledges to meet him once more. The corpses of the ogres and trolls around him and the Skull Knight begin to melt, their flesh sprouting fresh copies of themselves. Nearby, the troll leader Isidro wounded erupts into flame from the salamander dagger's strike, and the boy snaps out of his daze only to find himself sitting defenseless with his back to the horde.

Schierke, having recruited the Rotting Root Lord from the astral world, unleashes its power over decay to dissolve the trolls behind Isidro, then urges Guts to flee, though he answers that he is too occupied. Surrounded by the mutated creatures spawned from Slan's forced passage through Qliphoth, the Skull Knight resorts to his trump card: he lowers his ordinary blade into his skull helmet's mouth and draws it out coated in melted beherits, its edge studded with eyes, noses and mouths. Slashing the ground, he tears a portal into another dimension that sucks in the astral creatures, then pulls Guts onto his horse and cuts open a second portal to escape the soul-tentacles reaching from the vortex. As the Rotting Root Lord strains to purge the cave and Schierke fights to restrain it, Guts emerges intact with the Skull Knight behind him. The armored rider explains he traveled through a different layer of the astral realm, effectively teleporting, then vanishes. Leading the villagers out of the collapsing Qliphoth, Guts reaches Enoch as families reunite and Serpico greets Farnese, and he quietly realizes he has gained companions like the ones lost at the Eclipse.

This chapter of the Millennium Falcon Arc, twenty-two pages long, appeared in Young Animal issue ten on May 9, 2003. It introduces the Skull Knight's Sword of Beherits and its dimension-cutting ability, and closes on the emotional beat of Guts accepting his new traveling group as genuine friends. Flashbacks recall his fallen comrades Corkus, Judeau, Pippin and Rickert.