Chapter 117

Caught off guard by Hemlock's assault, Yor begs him to stop and swears she will stay out of his way, dodging both his blade and the frightened elk's stampeding hooves. He brands her a toxic insect polluting Garden's order, complaining that even Gympie has been influenced by the life Yor leads. Cover identities and "true selves" have no place among the Shopkeeper's tools, he argues, condemning her ties to civilians. Yor tries a counterattack while urging calm, but he swats it aside, forcing her to retreat with the realization that stopping him will require dropping her restraint.

Tossing his sword skyward and catching it in the curved handle of his cane, Hemlock uses the extended reach to slice Yor's neck and pronounces her unworthy of the Thorn Princess title. Internally he admits he once admired her skill, an admiration that curdled after she joined the Forger family and, in his eyes, traded an assassin's pride for playing house. He batters her with a storm of strikes while preaching the love of solitude he credits for his strength, describing a life deliberately cut off from everyone, Garden included, down to the barbershop ties he severed and the hair he lets grow wild. Meanwhile the elk, finally calm, wanders off toward water. Judging Yor unwilling to fight back, Hemlock announces his solution: kill her family so she can grow stronger.

The threat changes everything. A thunderous thrust of Yor's weapon halts him mid-stride, and her sudden ferocity puts the delighted Hemlock immediately on the defensive. She shatters a boulder to pelt him with debris, kicks a fragment into his skull, catches his desperate knife throw in her teeth and spits it back. His final lunge ends with his sword trapped against the pommel of her stiletto, snapped in two, and her blade stopped a hair short of running him through. As Yor warns him never to menace her family again, Hemlock collapses in shock, his lifetime of self-imposed solitude suddenly worthless against the "Make-Out Merry-Maker." Keekee arrives bearing Matthew's note that the poachers' base has been located, and with Hemlock catatonic in defeat, Yor simply drags him along to the rendezvous.

Hemlock cuts Yor's neck and strips her, in his own declaration, of the Thorn Princess name, then makes the fatal error of threatening the Forgers. Yor fights at full strength for the first time in the arc, breaking his sword and defeating him decisively while sparing his life. Matthew locates the poachers' camp, setting up the arc's climax, and the beaten Hemlock is left questioning the philosophy of isolation he built his identity on.

The chapter is a near-continuous action piece, rare for the series, and doubles as a character study of Hemlock, whose backstory of chosen loneliness unfolds mid-battle. It runs 20 pages in the Poacher Hunting Arc, released June 9, 2025, and is collected in Volume 16. Matthew and Gympie appear only in flashback, while Yuri, Melinda, Loid, and the Shopkeeper are mentioned.