Sea God (2)

Bounding across the sea slugs and swatting away tentacles, Guts finally hurls himself into the Sea God's mouth, and its teeth snap shut behind him. Bonebeard, certain the fight is over, orders his ship and the slugs to leave the cave and set upon the Seahorse. Inside the creature, a valve in its throat opens and spits Guts down into the stomach, a cavern strewn with dozens of ruined, swallowed vessels.

Guts and Schierke catch a booming noise she takes for cannon fire, but he identifies it as the Sea God's heartbeat and names the heart their target. Sensing its od, Schierke pinpoints the organ just beyond the stomach wall, above their heads. As Guts weighs how to breach the ceiling, Schierke notes large pores beginning to gush stomach acid. The sight sparks an idea: he can perch on one of the wrecked ships and let the rising acid float him upward toward the heart.

Climbing onto an overturned hull to position himself, Guts finds giant isopod-like parasites scrambling aboard to flee the acid, and he must beat them back. Outside the cave, a crewman aboard the Seahorse spots the Captain Sharkrider and the slugs approaching. Trusting Farnese's ward, Roderick orders the cannons opened on them. The shots barely dent the soft-bodied slugs, yet the barrage keeps up.

Guts is swallowed by the Sea God and ejected into its stomach full of wrecked ships. He and Schierke identify the heartbeat and mark the heart, located beyond the stomach ceiling, as their goal. Guts plans to ride rising stomach acid up to it while fighting off isopod parasites. Outside, Roderick opens fire on the advancing Captain Sharkrider and sea slugs with little effect.

The second Sea God chapter of the Fantasia Arc, this twenty-two-page installment was published in Young Animal issue 9 on April 22, 2011. It continues the running battle split between Guts inside the deity and the crew defending the Seahorse.