Booming Heart

Isidro and Bonebeard duel with two weapons each, the boy using Morgan's knife and the salamander dagger against the pirate's cutlass and crutch. Bonebeard remarks on how much sharper Isidro has grown since Vritannis, the fruit of his training with Azan at sea. Spotting an overturned wicker basket on deck, Isidro jams it over Bonebeard's head and stabs at the blinded pirate through it. He misses, but his salamanders set the basket alight. Impressed, Bonebeard again offers him a place among his pirates, and again Isidro refuses.

Bonebeard reaches for a crossbow concealed in his crutch, only to be struck in the forehead by a divider Isma hurls, though his tentacle nature lets him survive. Enraged, he commits his whole crew to the Seahorse in one final push. Isma starts feeding provisions into the mouth of the great tentacle controlling Bonebeard and his men, and a moment of clarity leads Isidro to light a single bomb and toss it inside, where it detonates. Bonebeard calls a retreat, his ship detaching and sailing off with the slugs toward the island.

The crew celebrates, Isidro and Isma trading compliments while Roderick and the rest cheer Farnese for her strong bulwark. Serpico gazes toward the island, knowing the last blow against the Sea God rests with Guts and Schierke. Inside the deity, Guts has cleared the parasites and pushes deeper toward the heart, the pounding pulse so fierce it wracks his whole body with pain. He finally reaches the organ, an eyeball-covered mass many times his size. As he nears it, the beat quickens, the Sea God begins to move, more parasites descend, and the eyes on the heart start to open. On the Seahorse, the black-haired boy points everyone toward the island as a huge section of cliff bursts apart and the Sea God surges out.

Isidro, now more skilled from training with Azan, drives Bonebeard back, and a bomb thrown into the controlling tentacle's mouth forces the pirate to retreat. The Seahorse crew celebrates and cheers Farnese's ward. Guts reaches the Sea God's enormous eye-covered heart, but the deity awakens, stirs, and bursts out of the island cliff.

This twenty-two-page Fantasia Arc chapter ran in Young Animal issue 13 on June 24, 2011. Dark Horse Comics rendered the title incorrectly as "Booming Art" in its translation.