Episode 94: One Who Hunts Dragons

Inside the cave, Casca screams toward the opening above as her Brand answers the evil drawing near. At Godot's house, the crippled stranger sheds his human guise as an apostle and swells into a huge, hound-shaped beast, panicking Rickert, Erica, and Godot while Guts, at last given a target for his revenge, throws himself into the fight. He lands a fast cut, severs the creature's arm, and then splits its belly, but the strike snaps his fresh sword, and the apostle seizes his wrists with its own entrails and hurls him into the armory.

Half-conscious from the impact, Guts obeys Rickert's shouted instructions and aims the prosthetic hand at the monster, pulling the hidden switch. The mechanical hand folds away and a cannon buried in the arm fires a ball through the back of the apostle's skull, though the beast survives and the overpacked charge wrenches Guts' shoulder from its socket. Searching for a weapon, his gaze lands on the Dragon Slayer.

Hefting the immense blade, Guts carves the apostle's head and torso apart, drives it back outside, and brings the sword down to cleave the creature clean in two from top to bottom. The oversized weapon suits his hunt far better than the brittle one, and Godot admits he had only withheld it because he thought no one could lift it. Erica shrinks against Rickert, unnerved by how savage Guts has become.

This twenty-seven-page chapter ran in Young Animal issue 1 on December 27, 1996, closing the Golden Age Arc as Guts takes the Dragon Slayer as his own. Refusing even to bid Casca farewell, he sets out on his hatred-driven pursuit of the apostles, the God Hand, and Griffith.