Enveloped by a massive black sun, the world seemed to plunge into the eerie gloom of an eternal dusk.
Guts stood frozen in place, the blood in his veins seemingly turning to ice.
He stared at the Egg of the King in Griffith's hand, watching the eyes and mouth open upon its surface.
He looked up at the massive, blood-red vortex in the sky, formed by countless faces twisted in agony.
"No! Don't!"
"It's all my fault!"
"It was me..."
"I was the one who saved him..."
"I was the one who brought him out of the dungeon..."
"I was the one who brought him here!"
Endless remorse, fury, despair, and agony drowned his reason.
What he had seen earlier was no dream.
Those damned visions weren't a dream at all!
In the sky, four colossal shadows slowly descended. Their forms were both twisted and divine, exuding a terrifying aura that transcended this dimension.
Their voices echoed directly within the depths of every Band of the Hawk member's soul. Cold and majestic, they extended an invitation to Griffith, who was now shrouded in resentment.
"Griffith, will you offer the sacrifice?" they asked, shifting their gaze toward the members of the Band of the Hawk.
"Choose to sacrifice, and you shall be reborn. You will become one of us, the exalted Fifth Demon King."
A glimmer of light returned to the hollow eyes of Griffith, the absolute lowest of scum.
"I sacrifice."
He spat out the words, exhausting the last of his strength.
"No!"
The next moment, countless grotesque monsters, driven by an extreme thirst for flesh and blood, lunged at the bewildered members of the Band of the Hawk on the ground, who had already been branded with the mark of sacrifice.
A one-sided slaughter began.
Guts let out a beastly roar. He swung his greatsword, trying to charge toward his comrades, but was pinned down by several Apostles who had already locked their sights on him.
He watched helplessly as Rickert—who was usually a bit timid but never backed down when it mattered most—was impaled from behind by a locust-like Apostle, a look of sheer disbelief frozen on his face.
He saw Corkus wildly swinging his dual blades in a desperate fight, only to be grabbed by a massive monster and crushed into a bloody pulp like a squashed tomato.
Blood stained the twisted earth.
Screams and the sickening sounds of chewing filled the air.
Just as Guts's spirit was about to be completely torn apart by this hellish scene, at the very moment his mind was on the brink of total collapse...
Boom!
A memory that did not belong to him flooded his mind!
In the vision, a man with an obscured face floated silently in the endless starry void.
His presence was so overwhelmingly powerful that he felt like the universe itself; every subtle movement could dictate the birth and death of stars.
The man seemed to be instructing him.
"Feel your anger."
"Embrace your pain."
"These negative emotions are the purest, most powerful source of strength!"
The majestic voice exploded directly within his soul like a thunderous bell.
Then, the martial principles of a technique called the Killer Whale Overlord Punch—a supreme art driven by pure will to distort the universe's magnetic field—were forcibly implanted into the depths of his consciousness.
This technique felt as if it were tailor-made for him!
He had struggled to survive amidst mountains of corpses and seas of blood since childhood. Sold out by his adoptive father and betrayed by his comrades in arms, his life was built upon countless layers of agony and despair.
The negative emotions accumulated within him had long become a massive powder keg compressed to its absolute limit.
And now, the descent of the Eclipse, the tragic deaths of his companions, and Griffith's betrayal were the very sparks needed to ignite it all!
BOOM—!!!
The negative emotions suppressed in the deepest recesses of his soul for so long finally found an outlet, detonating with explosive force!
Guts's intensely tempered physique, which already far surpassed that of an ordinary human, combined with the dense negative emotions of this moment, allowed him to instantly cross a threshold that ordinary martial artists could never reach in a lifetime!
Bzzzt!
Blue and white lightning, like a dense swarm of serpents, began to frantically crackle and course across the surface of his skin!
Without undergoing any prior training, he reached the terrifying realm of Current Push in that fleeting instant!
But this was far from over!
The monstrous hatred for Griffith!
The boundless fury at the impending defilement of Casca!
The bone-chilling helplessness of watching all his friends die right before his eyes!
The endless remorse for failing to heed that prophetic dream!
Every emotion, every ounce of willpower, absolutely everything transformed into fuel for his advancement, causing the power within his body to surge wildly at an inconceivable speed!
Magnetic Field Rotation!
Ten Thousand Horsepower!
Twenty Thousand Horsepower!
Fifty Thousand Horsepower!
Seventy Thousand Horsepower!
Ninety Thousand Horsepower!
Finally, the surging power firmly stabilized at the realm of One Hundred Thousand Horsepower!
A terrifying force rivaling that of a god among men surged through his veins and roared within his body!
Guts slowly, ever so slowly, raised his head.
In his one good eye, there was no longer any pain or despair. All that remained was the purest, heaven-scorching fury—a burning desire to obliterate every god and demon before him into absolute dust!
"GRAAAH!"
Right now, he only wanted to do one thing.
And that was to use his own fists to viciously smash Griffith to pieces.
To blast him, their so-called 'gods', and this entire hell into oblivion!
"Hm?"
High above, a subtle shift appeared on the stitch-covered face of the Leader of the God Hand.
He was the first to notice the insignificant anomaly among the sacrifices below.
An abnormally powerful energy source—one that had no right to exist—had just been born.
"Roar!"
A low-level Apostle failed to sense the qualitative change in this power. It only smelled the rich, mouth-watering scent of life force radiating from the human before it.
Roaring in excitement, it opened its blood-soaked maw and lunged at Guts, eager to tear this delicious chunk of flesh to shreds.
Guts didn't even spare it a glance.
He merely kept his gaze, burning with endless fury, dead-locked onto Griffith in the distance.
Then, casually, he threw a punch in the direction of the noise.
Magnetic Field Rotation: One Hundred Thousand Horsepower! Killer Whale Overlord Punch!
The moment the punch was thrown, time and space seemed to freeze for a split second.
The next second.
The massive and resilient body of the Apostle leading the charge instantly disintegrated.
Before it could even let out a scream, it was completely pulverized by that overwhelmingly absolute force.
Severed limbs and foul-smelling organs splattered outward at high speeds.
Splat! Splat! Splat!
Those fleshy fragments carried a kinetic energy more terrifying than a siege ballista.
Several nearby Apostles were instantly pierced through by these 'cannonballs', crashing to the ground with expressions of utter bewilderment.
Every Apostle currently reveling, slaughtering, and gorging themselves froze in their tracks.
As if by prior agreement, they all stopped what they were doing and turned their gazes in unison toward that terrifying man.