Surfacing

Schierke has Roderick steer the Seahorse alongside the monster's carcass, explaining that Guts lies wounded and imprisoned within it. Serpico hopes the creature expelled him along with all the blood it vomited, but Isma's mother reports no sign of the swordsman anywhere in the water. After thanking the crew, who bow to her in respect, she warns that the deflating body is sinking and leaking blood that will soon lure sea dragons. Roderick lowers a rowboat, and the merrow pledge to aid the search. Farnese volunteers her glowing form, yet Schierke needs that barrier held ready against the coming predators and tries to project her own light, only to find she lacks the strength.

Guts wakes flat on his back in total darkness, numb, and bumps into soft flesh when he tries to rise, confirming he is still inside the beast. His attempt to reach Schierke by thought is jammed by the corpse. Resolving to carve an exit, he makes a single cut and is drenched by a surge of blood, briefly certain he will perish there. Then a glow blooms before him, swells until it wraps around him, and the flame-child reappears to wave him onward.

A boarding party rows into the creature's gaping mouth, but their lanterns reveal little and neither elf can feel Guts nearby. Isma relays that the merrow are sounding a kind of ultrasound to pinpoint him, without success. Serpico orders everyone out just as seawater pours into the flooding maw. Following the silent spirit, Guts slashes through a wall it points to, water rushes in, and several merrow drag him free and lift him to the surface, where the relieved crew and the watching dark-haired boy see him ferried home.

Isma's mother confirms Guts was not ejected and warns of approaching sea dragons. The flame-child appears once more and leads Guts through the corpse. The search party is forced out of the flooding mouth. Guts cuts an opening, and the merrow haul him to safety, returning him to the Seahorse.

Running twenty-three pages under the title "Surfacing," this Fantasia Arc chapter was published in Young Animal issue four on 10 February 2012. It resolves the immediate danger of Guts being lost inside the slain Sea God.