Guts

Guts is introduced having sex with a young blonde woman. She says that he fell right in her trap and is about to kill him when the barrel of a cannon is shoved in her mouth, cannon fire rings through the air. He clothes himself and departs, leaving the charred body of the monster behind. The next morning, entering a nearby town, he watches as a wagon carrying a cage full of young girls passes by, moving in the opposite direction. Entering a tavern, he sees that a elf is struggling to break free, and tosses a few coins to the barkeeper as payment for the upcoming mess before shooting at the bandits with a repeater crossbow. Walking along the street the elf follows him and introduces himself as Puck. He then attempts to explain the situation that town finds itself in, but is swatted away by Guts, who warns the elf not to touch him.

The pair are suddenly surrounded by soldiers, with Guts being apprehended and later tortured in the town's castle. The torturer becomes annoyed at Guts lack of screams, and when Guts spits blood in his face, he attempts to begin the torture once more. However, he is dismissed by the town mayor, who had wandered into the dungeon and is inspecting the Guts' vast arsenal of weaponry. Assuming that he is a mercenary, the mayor accuses him of having doomed the entire town for having killed the bandits in the tavern; their boss, the baron of Koka Castle, is some kind of monster that, the mayor says, no human can kill.

Guts says he is familiar with such monsters; he accurately surmises that the baron eats human flesh, and that the mayor is providing the baron with his meals. The mayor, affected deeply, orders more torture be inflicted upon him. Later on, Guts awakens lying face-down in a prison cell. The torture has left him unable to move. He glances at the mound of hay and sees a deformed fetus-like creature lying on it; "You again", he says, as it begins to crawl towards him, he orders it to stay away. Only when the sudden sound of Puck and a ring of keys falling into the puddle of water does the deformed creature disappear. As Puck looks over his wounds, he explains that he has returned to free him from prison as thanks for saving the elf from the bandits. Despite Guts orders not to be touched, Puck moves closer and spreads a powder from his wings onto his wounds, immediately dulling the pain he feels.

He then looks out the barred window, predicting that the baron of Koka Castle will soon come, both to kill Guts and to raze the town. Puck accuses Guts of not caring for the townspeople, and Guts confirms it; his only concern is to kill the baron. As Guts explains that weak humans are not deserving of life. Puck asks for the reasoning behind Guts' saving him if the weak are not deserving of life but the question causes Guts to break out in laughter. As Guts sits in the cell and scratches deep gashes into his own arm, pain flares from his Brand, alerting him to the baron approaching the town. Shortly afterwards, when bandits begin to ride towards a pile of corpses, Guts, now armed and armored, bursts out of it. He kills many of the charging bandits with his repeater crossbow and finishes the survivors with his sword.

The Snake Baron steps out of the house, only now he is transformed into a giant lizard-like creature, and he proclaims that he cannot be killed by mere humans. He advances on Guts and attacks continuously with his tail, making Guts spit up blood. As Guts lies defeated on the ground, he is lifted into the air by his fleshy right arm by the Snake Baron. Feigning unconsciousness, Guts waits until he is close enough to the Snake Baron's mouth to aim his prosthetic arm and tug on a piece of string connected to it with his teeth. The hand of the prosthetic flips downward, revealing a hole in the arm piece. A cannon ball is fired out of it, blowing a hole into the Snake Baron's face. As it recoils in pain, Guts grabs his giant sword and cleaves the Snake Baron in two.

The force of the swing causes Guts to collapse, but he quickly stands back up to look down on the defeated, yet still-living, Snake Baron. So Guts ceases torturing him and walks away.