Blazing Puppet

Guts's group fights back against the scarecrows, Isidro darting past their long scythes to strike with his dagger while Azan and Serpico press in and Roderick marshals his men to shield the women. Watching from cover, the hidden figures marvel at the party's strength and sense magic among them, one warning that the field still holds surprises. The nearby pumpkins then animate and swarm, overwhelming the crew, until Schierke casts from the group's center: wheat sprouts from a scarecrow's head to freeze it while the pumpkins around it split and blow apart. She explains that the field's spell draws on gnomes, and that she has bent it to hasten the ripening of those earth spirits.

Rattled, the shadowed figures accuse one another of going soft, and a blazing tower of a figure strides toward Guts. Schierke names it a wicker man, an effigy that draws its power from sacrificed human lives, kindled within by ancient magic. The onlookers recognize the voice of a witch called Molda; told the act is taboo, she brushes it off as fit for exactly such a moment.

The wicker man attacks with two massive flails of trunk and metal spikes joined by chains, its swings missing Guts and Isidro but torching the field and alarming the hidden watchers. As it winds up again, Guts slides beneath it and fires his cannon arm into its head. The giant topples, and one stroke of the Dragon Slayer splits it in two, releasing the souls trapped inside.

Schierke turns the field's own spell against it, ripening the earth spirits to destroy the animated pumpkins. The witch Molda unleashes a burning wicker man fueled by sacrificed souls. Guts fires his cannon arm and cleaves the wicker man apart, freeing the trapped souls.

Part of the Fantasia Arc, the chapter appeared in Young Animal issue 23 on November 27, 2015, over twenty-one pages, and brings the witch Molda to the fore as the field's attacker.