Episode 96: Elves of Misty Valley

The living tree moans the word sacrifice and lashes out in a pincer, striking from both sides, but Guts slices the branches from the air and springs clear with startling speed. He weaves through the assault until a cluster of limbs pins him just short of the tree's central face. His head sags as if he is beaten, yet a wild grin gives him away: he has forced his mechanical arm into the face's mouth. A pull of the switch bares the cannon in his forearm, and its ball tears out the back of the trunk while his descending sword splits what remains.

Jill watches in stunned horror as spirits rise from the wreckage. Sprawled on his back from the swing's momentum, Guts looks up to see the clouds break and sunlight return for the first time in three days, and the beams melt the spirits away. When one still lodged in the bark lunges at the girl, a chestnut shell drops onto it, thrown by Puck, the small elf who reluctantly travels with Guts. Jill shrieks and blurts that he must be from the Misty Valley, a place neither Guts nor Puck recognizes.

Printed across twenty pages in Young Animal issue 6 on March 14, 1997, this Conviction Arc chapter trails the fleeing bandits into a sudden mist where winged, light-trailing elves crowd the canopy. Their leader, Rosine, a girl-sized figure with moth antennae and wings, tells the thieves they have wandered into a fairy tale, marking her debut.