Duel

Guts' first swing levels only one pillar and lodges in the next, the one Serpico uses as a shield. Lunging out, Serpico forces Guts to bat the strike aside with his prosthetic hand, yet still opens a shallow cut on his cheek. The counterswing shears through two more columns, but the third that Serpico shelters behind holds firm, and the Dragon Slayer sticks fast once more. When Guts tries a downward cut, the low ceiling snags the blade's tip and slows it, letting Serpico slip away with only a graze to his arm.

Sensing the columns will soon run out, Serpico gambles that Guts will thrust the sword outward, and the prediction holds; using his rapier's guard he barely turns the blow and stabs for Guts' hand, only to realize too late that Guts has reversed his grip so the attack lands on the prosthetic. Serpico rolls clear as Guts falls still, the Beast of Darkness beginning to seep into his mind, and lifts the sword to strike again.

Fighting on, Serpico reflects on the composed man he used to be, one who bent to any circumstance and made peace with whatever unfairness life dealt him. Meeting the Black Swordsman changed that, and he recognizes that, like Farnese, he too is being reshaped in Guts' orbit. Above all, he refuses to let Farnese die at Guts' hand should the berserker rage take hold.

As the horrified children look on, Guts smashes through the remaining pillars until a single one stands between them. When he swings, Serpico does not hide but seizes the ornaments at the column's crown and hoists himself above the blade's arc, unscathed as it obliterates the pillar. This was his design all along, for that last column braced a stone archway directly over Guts, which now starts to fall.

With Guts distracted by the collapsing masonry, Serpico thrusts for his face, but Guts shields his head behind the broad flat of the Dragon Slayer and sweeps it forward, deflecting both the raining stone and the rapier's point at once. This twenty page chapter, part of the Millennium Falcon Arc and its Falconia Chapter, appeared in Young Animal issue 11 on 27 May 2005.