Berserker Armor (1)

Grunbeld keeps pummeling Guts until the swordsman lies pinned beneath the apostle's foot, and the giant begins doubting this is truly the Black Swordsman famed for slaying apostles and standing against Zodd. Glancing at Zodd's fierce duel with the Skull Knight, Grunbeld envies the worthy fight, declares Guts unworthy, and earns an insult in return. He kicks Guts through the air and aims his shield-cannon, judging him unfit to die by the hammer, but when the smoke clears a cluster of golems has risen to shield the swordsman unharmed. Their cores intact, the golems merge into a single giant that towers over Grunbeld, and as it advances Schierke telepathically urges Guts inside the mansion, a mental image of the armor persuading him to break away.

Barely conscious, Guts spills through a side entrance while Grunbeld dispatches the giant golem with his cannon. Schierke fears his weakened state means wearing the armor will cripple him, and she fends off an apostle battering the door with her magic, but when Guts grips her arm and smiles she resolves that he can bear it. As the apostle rams the door, she, Serpico and Isidro fasten the armor onto him, finishing just as the door gives way; Guts rises before the apostle, towering in the black suit. Elsewhere Grunbeld hunts for the vanished swordsman until the apostle that chased Guts inside comes running out screaming in agony. An armored foot then bursts from the creature's secondary mouth and the Dragon Slayer erupts through its face, slicing it apart from within to leave a newly clad Guts standing over the corpse, his stride untroubled by his injuries. When another apostle clamps its mouth over his torso, it too is split open from the inside.

The first of a pair of chapters titled after the armor, this twenty-three-page installment of the Millennium Falcon Arc ran in Young Animal issue fifteen on July 25, 2003. It stages Guts' first donning of the Berserker Armor and hints, through Schierke's worry, at the hidden costs the following chapters will lay bare.