Makara

The advancing makara terrifies the group, but Schierke recognizes it as another flesh-and-blood animal ridden by an astral spirit and steered by a sorcerer. The creature is far too large for her ward to hinder, and it stands between the travelers and the shore, hemming them against the inland cliff. Serpico springs at its head, only for a torrent of water from its trunk to fling him back; the sylphs in his cloak cushion his fall. Schierke finds the beast's handler aboard a ship at sea, well out of reach.

A sweep of the trunk shatters the cabin roof, shrugging off the barrier, and Guts steps up looking troubled. His warnings from Schierke no longer register as the Beast tightens its hold. He turns aside the trunk and rams the Dragon Slayer into the makara's eye, blinding its right side. His flurry of strikes fools Isidro into thinking he has recovered, but a jolt from the Beast freezes him, and the trunk hurls him into the cliff. Isidro's exploding berries buy a moment before the makara rounds on the others.

Refusing to stay down, Guts rises as the helmet snaps shut over his head, the Beast of Darkness now fully in command. Wearing the Berserker Armor, he vaults onto the makara and buries his blade in the already ruined eye, springs off the cliff to dodge a crushing fin, and launches himself back to shear the trunk clean off. The effort tears open the wound on his chest, and blood pours from it. Watching him unravel, Schierke steels herself to force his mind back under his own control.

"Makara," a twenty-two page installment of the Millennium Falcon arc, first appeared in Young Animal issue 11 on May 21, 2004. It stages the full onset of the Berserker Armor's danger, with Guts losing himself to the Beast even as the suit lets him topple a foe no ordinary swordsman could face.