Wizard General

Lodged in the Berserker Armor, Schierke's astral body perceives the world exactly as Guts does, every surrounding threat swollen and monstrous. Where she sees the makara, Guts sees only a void of gaping, saw-toothed maws. He plunges into one such mouth, and in the real world he has split a makara's head clean in two.

Watching from the ground, Isidro tells Roderick and Magnifico that Guts will not stop until every makara lies dead. Serpico privately completes the thought Isidro leaves unspoken: once the beasts are gone, Guts will turn on the group and mark them as enemies.

One makara catches Guts midair, swatting him with its trunk and snapping him up in its teeth. The group watches in dread as it bites into his abdomen and he coughs up blood, but he raises the Dragon Slayer inside its mouth and drives it up through the roof until it juts from the beast's head, killing it. He springs away, blood seeping from his helmet and a deep puncture where the teeth pierced the armor.

With the makara all slain, Guts notices a huge Kushan galleass gliding into the harbor. He leaps onto its bowsprit and meets the floating Daiba face to face. Unafraid, Daiba shows only curiosity about the armor Guts wears and remarks that Schierke's magic seems unlike anything Kushan.

Inhabiting the Berserker Armor, Schierke experiences Guts's distorted, threat-amplified vision of the battlefield. Guts is bitten through the abdomen by a makara but kills it from inside its mouth with the Dragon Slayer, taking a deep wound. Serpico realizes Guts will turn on the group once the beasts are gone. A Kushan galleass arrives, and Guts confronts the floating Daiba, who is intrigued by the armor and by Schierke's non-Kushan magic.

This is chapter 270 of the manga, part of the Millennium Falcon Arc, running nineteen pages. It appeared in Young Animal issue 6 on March 10, 2006.