Setting Sail

Inside Vritannis, defenders notice both the Daka and the city's fog thinning out, while Daiba retreats aboard another Kushan warship, content to let the pishacha and Daka die rather than pause to take them aboard. Guts' companions hurry to the crash site, where Zodd rises first and demands their fight begin, but Guts lies half-conscious and can only drag himself upright using the Dragon Slayer as a crutch. Seeing that neither of them is fit to battle, Zodd calls the duel off until both have healed. When another Apostle swoops in wanting to devour Guts, Zodd seizes it by the throat and reminds it their orders were to war on the Kushan empire.

As Zodd turns to go, Guts asks whether Griffith is near. The question interests Zodd, who warns that he will kill Guts should the swordsman move against Griffith in the city. The two lock eyes until Serpico steps between them, reminding Guts of his own words to Ganishka that he wants no part of quarrels among monsters. Guts looks at his group, concedes the point, and dismisses Zodd, who departs with the other Apostles.

Left alone, Guts abruptly collapses from overexertion. Isidro finds an intact dinghy, and the party sets out to ferry the unconscious swordsman to Roderick's vessel, unaware that a blanket-covered sleeping knight, the one who fought Bonebeard's pirates, already lies inside. While the others row clear of the harbor, Farnese gazes back at the wrecked city, anxious for her parents, and she and Schierke tend the blood-soaked Guts. He briefly wakes to see a lone rider, Griffith, watching him from a far cliff before slipping under again as the boat nears Roderick's ship.

The twenty-one-page chapter closes the harbor battle of the Millennium Falcon Arc and ran in Young Animal issue 16 on August 11, 2006. The sleeping knight in the dinghy is Azan, quietly reintroduced here. The distant glimpse of Griffith on the cliff renews the central thread between the two former comrades as the party sails away from the ruins.