Nerd In the North: 3-7

(An Interlude I’m writing ahead of time. You can skip this till later)


III-7: And Glory

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

The campfires of the Band of the Hawk flickered across the plains like dying stars, weak shit against the void above. Smoke twisted up thick enough to choke on, marking where men huddled around their fires like moths to flame. Their laughter and drunk singing carried over the camp, steel on steel as mugs clashed in endless toasts. Same sounds, different night. Always celebrating something. 

Always pretending tomorrow wouldn’t bring more blood and death.

Guts barely noticed.

He sat at the edge of it all, where the darkness started winning against the firelight. The rock beneath him was cold and hard, like everything else worth trusting. His sword—the big bastard that’d kept him breathing through a hundred fights—leaned against the stone beside him, its notched blade catching the weak light. Blood still crusted in some of the deeper gouges. He hadn’t bothered cleaning it yet, letting his hands rest on his knees instead, fingers tapping out the rhythm of an imagined fight.

His mind kept circling back to Griffith’s words from earlier, each one precise as a knife between the ribs. “Each of us has our role, Guts. A place in this world. And yours—yours is here, with me. With the Hawks.” The way he’d said it, like he was offering salvation instead of a chain. Like being someone’s attack dog was supposed to be a fucking gift.

The words churned in Guts’ gut now, sitting alone in the dark. He watched the nearest fire, embers spitting and dying in the night air. The heat barely reached him here. Story of his damn life—always on the edge, never quite fitting in the circle of light where normal people lived. Where they played at being soldiers while drinking their fears away.

His fingers dug into his knees, the rough fabric of his trousers catching on calluses earned by the sword. Every scar on his hands had a story, each one bought in blood and steel. But they were his choices, his fights. Not moves in someone else’s game.

“My role,” he spat the words like bitter medicine, tasting copper on his tongue. His jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth. Griffith and his dreams of kingdoms, his plots within plots. Always talking about destiny and fate like he could see the threads of it all, weaving everyone’s lives into his tapestry of ambition. 

Making it sound pretty, making it sound right. Making you believe you wanted the collar he was sliding around your neck.

The metal plates of his armor clinked as he shifted, the familiar weight a comfort against the night’s chill. Against his will, his eyes dragged back to the center of camp. 

To the biggest fire, where Griffith held court like some kind of bloody king already. His silver hair caught the firelight, making it look like spun moonlight.

He was talking, that same measured voice that could make men march to their deaths with a smile. Casca stood at his right hand like always, straight-backed as a sword, drinking in every word like it was holy water. Something twisted in Guts’ chest at the sight of her—sharp and painful as a blade between the ribs. The way she looked at Griffith, like he hung the fucking moon. 

Like he was worth dying for.

Not tonight. The thought cut through the rest, cold and final as an executioner’s blade. The decision had crept up on him like an enemy in the dark, but now that it was here, it felt right. 

Felt like the first honest thing he’d done in months.

This place—this life of following orders and playing soldier in someone else’s army—it was slowly strangling him. Every day the walls closed tighter, every victory just chain. His fingers curled into fists. 

Time to cut himself loose.

He pushed to his feet, each movement controlled and precise, same as when he was about to gut some poor bastard on the battlefield. His sword came up smooth as breathing, the grip worn to the shape of his hand. Other men called it unwieldy, a brute’s weapon. They didn’t understand that sometimes you needed something crude and brutal to get the job done.

Wouldn’t need much where he was going. 

The sword, his armor, some basic shit to keep him alive stuffed in an old leather pack. No room for sentiment in a mercenary’s life—that was one thing Griffith had right, at least.

His hands worked the familiar routine of strapping on his gear, muscle memory taking over while his mind churned. Each piece of armor settled onto him like he was building a wall between himself and everything he was about to leave behind. The weight of it all pressed down on his chest, made it hard to breathe. 

But he’d rather suffocate on his feet than live on his knees.

The noise from the camp grew louder—drunk soldiers celebrating another victory they’d probably forget by morning. Nobody noticed him moving through the shadows between the fires, boots crunching quiet on the hard dirt. Nobody except one.

Casca.

She materialized from the darkness near Griffith’s tent like a ghost, arms crossed tight over her chest. Her face was hard to read in the flickering light, but her eyes cut through him sharp as steel.

She stepped into his path without a word, claiming the ground like she owned it. The firelight caught the angles of her face, the stubborn set of her jaw. Her eyes met his, steady as a sword point, and he knew right then she’d been expecting him.

Expecting this.

“You’ve made up your mind,” she said, her voice quiet as steel leaving its sheath. 

It wasn’t a question. Casca rarely wasted time with pointless ones.

Guts nodded, rough leather of his pack’s strap digging into his shoulder. The weight of it was nothing compared to the sword at his back. “Yeah.” The word came out like gravel, scraping his throat raw.

She hesitated, teeth working at her bottom lip. Her shoulders tensed, ready for a fight she couldn’t win. “Griffith will—”

“He’ll manage,” Guts cut in. His voice came softer than he meant it to, betraying shit he didn’t want to think about. “He always does.” Like a snake shedding its skin, always coming out stronger. But that wasn’t his fucking problem anymore. 

Couldn’t be, or he’d never break free of this.

Casca’s eyes dropped to the ground, dark and hollow in the shadows. Her arms tightened around herself like armor, muscles coiling.

 “And you?” The question hung in the air.

The words jammed in his throat, thick as clotted blood. Everything he could say felt wrong, too heavy with meaning or too light to matter. His scarred fingers flexed, searching for a sword grip that wasn’t there. 

Finally, he shrugged, mouth twisting into something that might’ve been a smile if you’d never seen one before. “I’ll figure it out.”

The silence that followed cut deeper than any blade he’d ever taken. Not uncomfortable—they’d shed too much blood together for that—but heavy with all the things they’d never say. All the almosts and might-have-beens dying quiet deaths in the dark.

Casca’s jaw clenched tight enough to crack, tendons standing out like bowstrings ready to snap. But she didn’t argue. Didn’t try to stop him. Just stepped aside, each movement precise as a sword stroke, controlled as a killer’s breath.

Guts didn’t thank her. 

Didn’t say any of the hundred things crowding his throat like thorns. Just walked past, the weight of her eyes following him heavier than any armor he’d ever worn. He could feel her watching until the darkness swallowed him whole.

He left before the sun could catch him, while shadows still wrapped the camp like a burial shroud. His boots barely whispered against the ground—an old habit from years of learning the hard way that noise got you killed. The air still carried smoke from the dying fires, mixed with the damp earth smell that meant rain was coming. Somewhere behind him, drunk soldiers laughed into their cups, celebrating victories that wouldn’t mean shit tomorrow.

Guts didn’t look back. 

Not when the last ember-glow faded to black, not when the sounds of camp died like a man bleeding out slow. The road stretched ahead like an open wound against the land, empty as a dead man’s eyes. Dawn was just starting to bleed into the sky, pale as a corpse.

The solitude pressed down on him for the first time in years, heavy as plate armor but somehow easier to breathe through. And underneath it all, something else stirred. Something sharp and wild, like the moment before steel met flesh.

Freedom. Raw and bleeding and his.

His grip tightened on his sword’s hilt, the worn leather giving under his fingers like it always did. Whatever waited out there in the dark—whatever truth or purpose or bloody end he was hunting—he’d find it.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

The absence rent through the camp like a wound in the flesh of destiny itself – the first flaw in what had been an immaculate tapestry of control and calculation. Griffith felt it with the same clarity that had guided his blade through countless battles, that had lifted him from the gutters to the precipice of nobility. A void that could not be filled with dreams or ambition.

The Band of the Hawk had grown dependent on Guts’ presence, his shadow falling across their ranks like divine judgment, his fury burning bright as prophecy fulfilled. His very existence seemed to fill every gap with purpose, smooth every fracture with the promise of victory. When he entered a room, silence spread like ripples in still water, conversations dying stillborn on trembling lips. When he left, the world itself seemed to shrink, diminished by his departure.

But this… this was something else entirely.

This wasn’t merely absence – it was negation, vast and hollow as an unmarked grave. The void had settled into the camp like a curse, lingering in hushed whispers, in the eyes of men who looked to Griffith seeking more than mere direction but salvation itself.

Griffith stood at the camp’s edge, his otherworldly beauty a weapon honed to perfection in the dawn’s first light. Morning crept across the plains with predatory grace, casting shadows of tents and dying fires in long, accusatory lines. The air hung thick with victory’s perfume – stale ale, cooling sweat, and blood’s sacred vintage. The Black Ram Iron Lance Heavy Cavalry lay broken upon fortune’s wheel, their armor scattered like prophecy’s bones, their banners reduced to ash and memory. He had claimed victory. He had claimed glory. He had claimed everything except that which mattered most.

His fingers found the edge of his cloak – an anchor in the tempest of his thoughts. The fabric whispered against his skin, cool and smooth as fate’s own touch. Around him, his soldiers’ laughter rolled through the camp like thunder before the storm, each sound a reminder of what he’d gained and what he’d lost. His attention kept returning, inexorable as tide to shore, to the gnawing void that threatened to swallow his certainty whole.

Guts.

The name turned over in his thoughts like a blade blessed for sacrifice, heavy with portents he’d failed to divine. He had known, in that abstract way all men know their own mortality, that this moment might come. Guts had always been too vast for any single destiny, too restless for any command – even his. But Griffith had believed, no, had known with the certainty of one chosen by fate itself, that Guts’ restlessness would bend before his dream, would be consumed and made whole by the grandeur of his vision.

Now that certainty lay shattered, a fault line running through the foundation of all he’d built.

Casca’s approach carried the weight of inevitability, each step placed with the care of one who understood the delicacy of this moment. Her footsteps barely stirred the grass, but Griffith felt her presence like a change in pressure before a storm. She stood beside him in silence, her eyes following his across the horizon as though searching for the same absence that haunted his thoughts.

“He’s gone,” Griffith said finally, his voice calm, measured. The words tasted foreign in his mouth, as though they belonged to someone else.

Casca didn’t respond immediately, her lips drawn taut with a tension that mirrored the camp’s unease. She shifted her weight, arms crossing over her chest in a gesture that served as both shield and challenge. The motion drew Griffith’s attention to the way she held herself – straight-backed yet coiled, like a blade waiting to strike. “He needed to leave,” she said at last,, her tone low as a prayer before battle.

Grief, he observed, watching the play of emotion across her features. 

Like steel, it could be tempered in the fires of reason, shaped into something useful. 

She always spoke like that, Griffith noted, his mind cataloguing every nuance. Direct, unadorned, yet beneath each syllable lay currents deep as fate itself. Her words carried weight precisely because they lacked ornament – a trait he had cultivated in her, though perhaps not for this moment. He allowed the silence to stretch between them like a drawn bowstring, considering her words as though they were pieces on a chessboard where kingdoms hung in the balance.

“And yet… our needs…” His hand tightened again on the edge of his cloak, the gesture so minute it might have been mistaken for a trick of the dawn light. He shifted his stance with practiced grace, turning slowly toward Casca with a smile as carefully crafted as any battle strategy. “The Hawks are stronger together,” he continued, his voice carrying the faintest edge of something that cut deeper than steel – determination and frustration mingled like blood and wine. “With him, we could…”

“He wasn’t yours to keep, Griffith.” Casca’s interruption struck with the precision of the sword she wielded, her words sharp and undeniable as prophecy. The statement landed between them like a killing blow, clean and absolute as judgment.

Griffith tilted his head, every movement a study in controlled grace, as his gaze slid from the horizon to Casca’s face with predatory intent. Her eyes met his, steady and unyielding as the foundations of fate itself, and for a moment, the air between them crackled with something unsaid, something neither of them would give voice to.

“Perhaps,” Griffith breathed, the word carrying the weight of inevitability in its softness. His expression remained a masterwork of serenity, the perfect mask of composure he had crafted through years of calculation and necessity. Each subtle movement, from the angle of his jaw to the set of his shoulders, projected the divine certainty his men had come to worship.

But beneath that mask of celestial grace, the void gnawed like a starving beast.

The absence lingered, a wound that refused to heal. The Hawks continued their meteoric ascent, their victories stacking like stones in the foundation of Griffith’s grand design, each triumph bringing him closer to that distant castle in the clouds. Yet the loss of Guts had left something broken in that perfect architecture—a fracture that widened with each forward step, threatening the very stability of his dreams. 

Guts had been more than merely a soldier, more than simply another weapon in Griffith’s carefully assembled arsenal. He had been a constant, a force of nature that had anchored Griffith to reality in ways that defied his usual precise categorization.

Griffith’s jaw tightened imperceptibly as he turned back toward the camp, each step a calculated display of grace and purpose. His men needed him now more than ever, their devotion hanging desperate and heavy on his every word, every gesture. He would give them what they required, as he always had—the perfect leader, the living embodiment of their hopes and ambitions. But in the quiet moments between performances, when the noise of celebration faded and shadows grew long across his thoughts, the absence crept back in like a thief, stealing certainty from the edges of his mind.

Guts had chosen to leave. 

Had chosen to walk away from the dream, from him, from everything Griffith had offered. He had extended his hand, offering Guts a place in something greater than himself, something eternal as the stars themselves. 

And yet…

The nights grew quieter, the victories colder, each battle lacking that essential spark of chaos that only Guts had brought to the field. And somewhere in the depths of Griffith’s mind, past the layers of control and careful manipulation, a small seed took root.

After all, dreams require sacrifice… right?

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

The air hung heavy with the copper tang of blood, thick and cloying, mingling with the rank of old shit and the sickly-sweet stench of rot. 

Like a slaughterhouse left to bake in the sun. 

Guts wrinkled his nose, lip curling as he stepped over what might have once been a villager.

 Now it was nothing more than a twisted smear of gore, limbs bent wrong as a broken puppet’s. The dirt beneath his boots clung, sticky with the filth of something better left unnamed. Each step made a wet sound that reminded him too much of splitting skulls.

He moved with the careful precision of a predator, every sense straining against the weight of the dead air. His eyes cut through the shadows of the ruined village, marking possible threats, escape routes, anything that might try to kill him. Broken houses leaned against each other like drunk soldiers after a battle, their walls black with soot and decay. 

Somewhere in the dark, something was feeding. The wet, tearing sounds of meat being stripped from bone echoed off the ruins.

His hand found the hilt of his sword without thought, scarred fingers wrapping around the worn leather grip. Pure instinct, like breathing or killing. The familiar weight of steel across his back steadied him as the world tilted sideways, gone wrong in ways that made his teeth ache. Blood shouldn’t smell this strong. 

Darkness shouldn’t move like that.

“Shit,” he muttered, the word barely a growl in his throat. 

The buckle of his chest strap needed tightening—always did after a few hours of walking. His armor creaked as he adjusted it, the sound too loud in the dead air.

Movement caught his eye. 

A woman stumbled into view like a ghost made flesh, covered in filth and something darker. Her eyes were wide as copper coins, wild with the kind of fear that turns people into animals. She clutched a bundle of rags to her chest like it might save her, like anything could save her from whatever had torn through this place. 

Her head jerked side to side, searching for threats. 

Finding him.

“You—” The word cracked like dried bone, hardly louder than a breath. 

Then her eyes locked onto the massive sword hilt rising over his shoulder, and whatever she’d meant to say died quietly in her throat. 

Smart woman. 

Steel that big usually meant trouble.

Guts raised an eyebrow, kept his face flat as a blade. “You’re still breathing,” he said, voice cutting through the thick air like an executioner’s axe. “Good for you.” 

No point in softer words. Nothing soft survived in places like this.

She didn’t waste breath answering. 

Just scrambled backward, stumbling over broken stones and scattered bones until the shadows swallowed her whole. 

Like she’d never existed at all. 

“Hn,” Guts exhaled hard through his nose, the sound more beast than man, and rolled his shoulders against the weight of his blade. The sword shifted, settled. 

He didn’t know why he was here. 

Not really. 

Boredom, maybe. 

Or that persistent, nagging voice in the back of his head that told him to keep moving, keep fighting, keep doing something or risk sinking into the void that waited at the edges of his thoughts.

He hated that voice. 

But he listened to it anyway.

A raw sound cut through the quiet like a blade through gut-flesh, low and harsh enough to vibrate the air itself. The kind of sound that belonged to something that had no right existing in this world. A woman’s scream pierced the night right after—high, desperate, terrified—before it choked off into wet silence.

Guts froze, muscles coiling tight as bowstrings. His body knew what was coming before his mind caught up. The wet slap of something heavy hitting packed earth echoed across the dead village—the sound of meat meeting dirt. 

He’d heard it enough times to know.

His hand moved on pure instinct, the way it always did when death came calling. The sword pulled free with a hungry rasp of steel that bounced off broken walls. 

The weight of it felt right in his hands. Ready.

The thing that emerged from the shadows took its sweet fucking time about it, like it owned every inch of darkness it crawled through. What was left of the woman—bloody rags and half a leg—disappeared into a maw big enough to swallow a horse. Bastard’s showing off.

Damn. His tongue clicked against his teeth, disappointment and disgust mixing with a darker rage he chose to ignore.

The creature was massive, its twisted bulk barely squeezing between the broken walls of the village square. Its body was wrong in ways that made his eyes hurt—writhing flesh and rope-thick sinews pulsing with each labored breath like some kind of bloated corpse come to life. But the head was the real nightmare: wolf and man smashed together by something that didn’t give a shit about nature’s rules. 

Yellowed fangs jutted out at angles that’d make a butcher sick, and its eyes—those eyes glowed like pus-filled wounds, fixing on him with the kind of hunger that promised a slow death.

Guts’ mouth twisted into a grimace, lips pulling back from his teeth in something too sharp to be a smile. “Well,” he muttered, voice dry as grave dirt, “you’re uglier than most.” His fingers flexed on the sword’s grip, testing the familiar wrap of worn leather.

The apostle’s answering snarl sent strings of thick saliva spattering against the ground. Its lips peeled back, revealing row after row of teeth that’d put a shark to shame. The sound it made wasn’t words—wasn’t even close to human—but Guts knew a challenge when he heard one. 

He didn’t waste time thinking about it. His grip locked onto his blade’s hilt like it was welded there, the weight of the steel singing through his arms, his shoulders, down into his gut where the real fighting always started. Every muscle knew its job, ready to dance the only dance he’d ever been good at.

Then the thing lunged, and all hell broke loose. It moved faster than he expected, its bulk betraying a speed that sent the air whistling as its claws tore through the space where he’d stood a moment before.

The young man rolled aside like a cat dodging a boot, all muscle memory and survival instinct burned in by a thousand fights. His armor scraped against broken stone and blood-soaked dirt, the sound sharp as screaming steel. The thing’s claws ripped into the earth where he’d been standing, throwing up chunks of dirt and stone like a butcher’s cleaver through meat.

“Come on, then!” Guts barked, blood singing in his veins. The familiar rush of combat cleared his head better than any drink ever could. His heart hammered against his ribs, each beat a war drum that drowned out everything but the fight. 

This was what he knew. 

What he was good at.

His lips peeled back in a killer’s grin as he pushed to his feet, all teeth and battle-hunger he had mustered after twenty years on solid ground. The massive blade in his hands caught what little light remained, dull and hungry as a headsman’s axe. “Let’s see what you’ve got, bastard!” The words tasted like copper and excitement on his tongue.

The monster took the invitation like a starving dog after meat, its twisted bulk moving with the kind of speed that’d get a normal man killed in half a heartbeat. 

But Guts wasn’t normal—hadn’t been since his first kill as a boy. 

His boots dug deep into the blood-slick earth, seeking purchase as his hands locked around his sword’s grip tight enough to whiten knuckles. The blade felt like iron weights strapped to his arms now, each movement drawing curses from screaming muscles, but that didn’t mean shit. 

Pain was just another old friend.

He met the charge head-on like he always did. No fancy footwork, no battlefield poetry—just raw force and the kind of timing you learned by surviving when you should’ve died. 

The swing came wide and brutal, putting everything he had behind the steel. 

When blade met flesh, the sound was wet enough to turn a butcher’s stomach. His sword bit deep into the apostle’s shoulder, the impact jarring his arms bad enough to make his teeth rattle. Black shit that might’ve been blood sprayed out like a burst wineskin, coating his face and chest in sticky darkness that stank of rotting meat.

The hit was solid—would’ve cut a normal man in half—but he didn’t have time to appreciate his handiwork. The fucker was fast, faster than anything that big had any right to be. Its claws came at him like lightning, raking across his chest hard enough to send him flying. His back hit the wall of some dead bastard’s house with enough force to shake loose what was left of the roof. Wood groaned and splintered, showering him with debris as pain lit up his chest like someone’d stuffed burning coals under his ribs.

The taste of blood flooded his mouth, hot and familiar as an old whore’s kiss. 

“Fucking bastard,” he growled, spitting red onto the dirt as he forced his legs to hold him up. “Fuckin’ demonic shitheel.” More blood leaked between his teeth, but he’d had worse. Pain was just weakness leaving the body—or some shit like that. His old man used to say that, right before beating another lesson into him.

His eyes snapped back to the apostle just in time to watch the gash in its shoulder knit closed like someone running a needle through rotten meat. Black ichor dripped like tar from healing flesh, and those pus-yellow eyes fixed on him with the kind of hunger that promised a slow death. 

Bastard thing was healing faster than he could hurt it.

Then it hit him harder than the claws had—his sword was gone. 

His hand flexed on empty air where steel should be, panic rising in his gut like bile. His eyes raked across the bloodied ground, searching for the familiar glint of metal, but found nothing. “Shit,” he snarled under his breath, his chest tightening as the monster started moving again, stalking toward him with deliberate menace.

Behind him, the house groaned again, wood cracking like bones under a mace. The weakened wall sagged inward, ready to dump more shit on his already fucked day. Guts twisted to look, ready to curse whatever gods were getting their laughs, when something caught his eye. Beneath the splintered wood and broken stone, half-swallowed by shadow, metal gleamed like a wolf’s tooth in moonlight. But this wasn’t just some farmer’s rusty sword or broken spearhead.

It wasn’t even a proper blade, not by any sane measure. This thing was a monster—a raw slab of iron hammered into something that only barely pretended to be a sword. Massive didn’t begin to cover it. 

The thing looked like some crazy bastard had tried to forge a greatword using a ship’s anchor as reference. Its surface was rough as old battlefields, scarred deeper than any veteran, but even in this piss-poor light it caught what little gleam there was. 

Like it had been waiting in the dark, hungry for something worthy to grip its hilt.

“That’s more like it,” Guts rasped, voice thick with blood and something darker. His old sword might as well have been a butter knife for all he cared now. His focus narrowed to the brutal weapon before him, everything else—pain, blood loss, the demon wanting to eat his guts—falling away like dead skin. 

Each step toward it sent fresh lightning through his chest where the beast had tagged him, but pain was an old friend. Just meant you weren’t dead yet.

His hand closed around the hilt, fingers finding worn grip-wraps that felt like they’d been waiting for his calluses. The moment steel met skin, something clicked in his head like a lock falling open.

 Some truth he’d been fighting his whole life without knowing it.

This was it. 

This was what he’d been looking for since he first picked up a blade.

The weight was fucking insane, way beyond what any human arm should be able to lift, but his muscles knew what to do like they’d been training for this moment since his first kill. 

The balance was all wrong by normal measures—too heavy, too brutal, too everything. 

But that was the point. This wasn’t some knight’s pretty poker or noble’s ceremony sword. This was a tool for one job only: destroying everything in its path.

He turned back to face the demon, the massive blade resting against his shoulder like it belonged there. Even the hulking monster seemed to shrink a bit, looking less like an apex predator and more like prey. The apostle hesitated, those pus-yellow eyes narrowing like it knew something had shifted in the air. 

Like it could smell its own death coming. 

Then it threw back its twisted head and roared, the sound hitting him like a battering ram made of sound.

Guts didn’t waste time letting it finish its battle cry. 

He stepped in to meet the charge, swinging the iron slab in an arc that would’ve made a line of normal swordsmen shit themselves with enough force to rupture their trousers. 

Steel met demon-flesh with a sound like thunder fucking an avalanche. The impact sent a shockwave ripping through the dead village, scattering rubble and corpse-bits like autumn leaves in a storm.

The blow rattled every bone in his arms, vibrating straight through his chest into his teeth. But he held firm against all odds, muscles straining against the kind of force that’d tear a normal man’s arms clean off. 

Worth it to see the look in the demon’s eyes.

Heh.

“You’re not getting up this time,” he growled, feeling his face split into the kind of grin that made smart men run and brave men pray. His chest was on fire, each breath tasting like copper and victory, but something else burned hotter—something that drowned out pain and fear and everything but the pure joy of violence.

The apostle snarled, black ichor dripping from its twisted maw like pus from a wound as it started circling. Those glowing eyes tracked his every twitch, but there was something new in them now. Something that looked a lot like fear. Good. 

It was learning. 

Guts shifted his grip on the massive sword, letting its point scrape against the ground. The sound was like steel dragging over bones, a promise of what was coming.

The creature gathered itself, muscles bunching under corrupted flesh, and launched forward in a blur of claws and killing intent. Guts surged to meet it, the massive blade howling through the air like a storm made solid. His wounds screamed fresh warnings, blood flowing hot down his chest, his bones creaked and his heart pumped dangerously slow, but none of that mattered anymore.

He didn’t care if he died, so long as this thing died too.

“COME ON!!!”