Assassin (3)

Cloaked and armed, Guts waits outside the manor of Julius under cover of darkness. A recollection fills in how the target was identified: during a study conversation, Griffith explained that the poison coating the crossbow bolt was rare enough that only a single Wyndham physician supplied it. The shooter, one of Julius' own White Dragon Knights, had visited that shop, and a bribed maidservant later saw him leaving Julius' quarters after they discussed the botched attempt on Griffith's life.

Bound by orders to stay unseen and to breathe a word of the plan to no one, Guts enters the sprawling residence. From a rooftop he watches Julius drilling his boy Adonis in swordwork under the eye of the child's caretaker, Hassan. Guts sees the father knock the sword from his son's grip and leave him beaten, a scene that stirs memories of his own brutal schooling under Gambino.

Afterward Julius broods by the fire with his wine, glimpses Griffith's face in the flames, and hurls his cup in anger. A draft betrays the opened balcony door, and Guts steps from the firelit shadows. Julius lunges for a decorative sword but is far too slow; Guts drives forward and cuts him down across the chest. Spotting a silhouette in the doorway and honoring Griffith's rule to leave no witnesses, Guts runs his blade through it, only to see the figure fall into the light as the small body of Adonis, stabbed in the stomach.

A flashback reveals how Griffith traced the poisoned bolt back to Julius through the rare toxin, the White Dragon Knight who bought it, and a bribed servant. Guts infiltrates Julius' manor and watches him abuse his son Adonis during training. He kills Julius by the fireplace, then fatally stabs a doorway silhouette that proves to be the boy Adonis rather than a guard.

This 20-page chapter of the Golden Age Arc ran in Young Animal issue 06, dated March 1993. It closes the three-part assassination sequence with Guts' accidental killing of a child, a burden that shadows his character afterward. Both Griffith and Gambino appear only within flashbacks.