Declaration of War

The hushed guests take in the wreckage Guts and his companions left behind. Watching her daughter among them, Lady Vandimion realizes Farnese trusts this band more deeply than she ever trusted her own kin, and receives from them a warmth the estate never gave her. Guards storm in and ring the group, but Federico waves them off and thanks Guts on behalf of every guest for slaying the pishacha, drawing a wave of applause.

Reading the tigers' warped bodies, Federico judges them Kushan war beasts sent to butcher the assembled nobles. When the crowd begins to suspect dark arts and turns wary eyes on the elves and on Farnese's apparent magic, he silences them with a cover story: the wine was laced with a drug, a Kushan scheme to make the elite hallucinate elves and sorcery and then disgrace themselves in public. His swift command of the room impresses Guts and Farnese alike, and convinces Lady Vandimion that he far outstrips Magnifico in composure.

Then Guts feels his Brand flare and Schierke senses a rift in the Astral plane. Fog streams from the tiger corpses and gathers into a sphere above the guests, swelling into the enormous misted face of Emperor Ganishka. He mocks Federico's tale of illusion and formally declares war on the Holy See and the nations under it, while Guts, recognizing an Apostle before him, is seized by rising fury.

As the fog thins, the nobles are left terrified and Guts left brooding. He reasons that Ganishka, being an Apostle, must serve Griffith, which would make Griffith the true hand behind the Kushan invasion. Schierke tries to reach him, but her voice drowns under the crowd's panic as the sky beyond the windows glows red, lit by burning ships in the harbor.

Federico thanks Guts publicly, then covers up the supernatural attack by blaming drugged wine and a Kushan plot. Guts feels his Brand react as fog from the dead tigers forms Ganishka's giant face, which declares war on the Holy See. Guts identifies Ganishka as an Apostle and deduces a link to Griffith behind the invasion. The harbor fires turn the night sky red as the chapter closes.

This is chapter 262 of the manga within the Millennium Falcon Arc, running twenty pages. It was first printed in Young Animal issue 18 on September 9, 2005. Grunbeld, Zodd and the Skull Knight appear only in flashback.