Setting: Cursed Forest
Cold, foreboding winds cut through the maze of leafless trees, swaying the naked branches in off-putting motions. The outstretched wooden limbs creaked and groaned as they waved about, the darkness of the forest making them seem like arms reaching to grab anything around them. Their haunting sways would scare no one, however – the forest was completely deserted and without life. In fact, there seemed to almost be an overpowering sense of evil essence strewn all about the dark wood, suffocating the very air itself.
Silva alium vindicat.
Opening his one eye as he awakened from a trance, Guts, the black swordsman, came to his senses amidst the barren trees. As soon as his vision focused and he got to his feet, the decrepit environment hastily put him on edge. He had no recollection of such a forest being along the way of his travels, and he certainly didn’t remember venturing so far into such a foreboding wood. The groaning and creaking of the trees in the wind did nothing to ease his nerves, and with one hand on the hilt of the enormous blade on his back, he stepped deeper into the abyssal forest, seeing no alternate route to take.
Guts’ armored feet trod across the decayed grass on the forest floor as he adventured through the winding maze of dead foliage, the withered plants beneath his heel crunching with every step. As he continued to head further into the dark, he could almost hear whispers from the far reaches of his surroundings. The faint noises were indistinguishable from the gentle breeze cutting through the winding, twisted branches around him, but they were assuredly there – Guts’ experience with all things demonic could tell him that much. The malicious aura in the air was not lost in the demon slayer, either. He felt it pressing down on him, weighing down his every step and assaulting his senses.
After what seemed like an eternity of passing by dead trees and bare brush, Guts was surprised to see several scratches in the base of a tree. There was also a set of human-like footprints leading beyond the tree, and through the murky shadows cast by the thick of the forest’s canopy, Guts could see even more slash-marked trees leading down a relatively clear path. Some trees even had large chunks of their trunks seemingly ripped out. Deciding this was a better use of his time than plainly wandering about a seemingly endless forest, Guts began to follow the path of marked trees, tracking whatever beast was roaming the woods.
The further Guts followed the trail of scratched trees, the more violently they seemed to have been marked – in fact, it got to a point where the trees looked more attacked than territorially marked. Some were even outright reduced to stumps, the collapsed trees around the stumps seeming burned and smashed. Before Guts could get a closer look at them, however, he heard a loud shout from up ahead, followed by a resounding boom and a sickening snap. The black swordsman’s attention quickly snapped to the direction of the shout and proceeded to take notice of one of the taller trees in the canopy falling toward him.
Grunting in exertion, Guts flung himself out of the way of the collapsing tree just before its full weight came crashing down on the spot where he had just been crouching. While the echo of the collapsing tree’s impact thundered across the woods, Guts drew Dragonslayer and stood back at full height, facing the direction of where the tree had fallen from.
Guts: You! Show yourself!
The figure, concealed in shadow, was barely visible to Guts’ single working eye, but as the man responded to his demand, his sight adjusted more and more to the heavy darkness around him, making out the shape of his armor. Several spikes protruded from the mold of his silver and crimson suit, and his solid, windowless helmet reflected what little light there was shining through the tangled mess of treetops above them. The spikes on the outside of his suit were child’s play, however, to the dozens of spikes laid inside his armor, piercing his scarred flesh with every move he made. Only one man alive could don such a painful garb: Penance.
Maledictus lignum vertit animum.
Penance: Tch… What do you want?
There was a clear venom in the stranger’s words. While it wasn’t apparent to Guts, Penance had woken up in this forest much earlier – and the dark, cursed presence occupying the forest had infected his mind, filling him with unreasonable rage and contempt. Such emotions were no strangers to the former Thunderbolt, but now they were elevated to a fever pitch. They clouded his thoughts and actions, leading him to regard the black swordsman with little respect – an attitude that was not lost on Guts.
Guts: Where am I, and what is this place?
Penance, blinded by the darkness his mind was infected with, continued to shrug off Guts as the negative emotions stirring inside him swelled over and over, filling him with an incessant itch to lash out at anything he could.
Penance: Hell if I know. And if you’re just going to stand there and talk, I’m not interested in telling you anything anyway. Get lost.
Turning back toward the path beyond him, Penance clenched his fist and wound up to strike another tree as the malice in him stirred once more. However, Guts’ irritation with the stranger’s dismissive behavior formed a vulnerability in his mind that allowed the darkness to infect him as well, and he swiftly raised his metallic arm, firing an arrow from the crossbow in his iron prosthetic that smacked into Penance’s armored fist, knocking it off course and taking Penance by surprise.
Guts: Rrgh… You’re testing my patience. If you won’t tell me what this place is, we’ll see what you have to say once you’re introduced to my blade!
Seeing Guts raise Dragonslayer in front of him in a combat-ready stance, Penance’s right fist clenched shut in anger and sparked with violent energy as he slightly turned to face the black swordsman. Even through his holeless mask, his fury was evident, and the darkness in both armored fighters called forth in them an itch to kill.
“Fine, then.”
With a burst of hyperkinetic energy, Penance launched himself at Guts, flying through the thick, dark air with one arm extended as Guts readied himself for his opponent’s arrival, his colossal broadsword prepared for a duel.
Penance: You’ll be more fun to smash than the trees anyway!
Lunae clara curat caede.
Penance’s fist plowed into the broad face of Dragonslayer, which Guts had shifted upward to block the incoming strike. Shoving back against his midair opponent’s punch, Guts forced Penance to flip backward in the air and land as quickly as he could, for the black swordsman was now on the move. Grunting with exertion, Guts swung his blade in semi-slow slashes, striking twice on either of Penance’s sides only for his strokes to be blocked by hyperkinetic barriers projected from his foe’s hands. Following those blocked attacks, Guts swung Dragonslayer over his head for an overhead strike. Penance raised his fists to block the blade, but the maneuver turned out to be a fake out, a sharp kick to Penance’s knee from Guts’ armored foot knocking him off balance.
As Penance fell to one knee, Guts reached around his thorned head and grabbed the back of his helmet before slamming the center faceplate of Penance’s helmet into his iron-clad knee. The helmet went undented, but it was not Guts’ intention to harm Penance with the attack, but rather to daze him. The second knee strike he delivered to his foe, this time to Penance’s less armored throat, on the other hand, was definitely intended to hurt, and that it did. As Penance gagged and coughed harshly from the solid jab to his windpipe, Guts removed his hand from his foe’s helmet and grabbed the hilt of Dragonslayer with both arms, swinging the blade upward and into Penance’s chest plate, knocking him high into the air.
Recovering from being struck in the neck and being sent skyward by the sword, Penance recovered his senses and midair balance with the help of some hyperkinetic energy. Turning his attention groundward, he could see Guts unsheathing several small throwing knives from the straps on his armor, tossing them up at Penance. Scoffing, Penance shot down toward Guts with a burst of energy behind him, the sounds of Guts’ throwing knives deflecting harmlessly off his iron breastplate barely audible over the intense crackling of hyperkinetic energy in his palms.
Penance slammed into the ground like an armored meteor, the resulting shockwaves throwing Guts off his feet and into the air. Balling up a fist, Penance delivered a hyperkinetic punch to his enemy’s gut, a huge burst of power following the initial strike. Before the hyperkinetic burst could send Guts careening away, though, Penance reached out with his free hand and grabbed Guts’ left ankle, swinging him over his head and slamming him into the ground on the other side of him. Not wasting any time in continuing his offensive front, Penance released Guts’ ankle and charged up an intense hyperkinetic shockwave in his right fist. The time it took to well up enough power to satisfy him allowed Guts to shrug off the dazed state the devastating attacks had left him with, and he rolled away just before Penance unleashed an explosive punch to the ground, scorching the land beneath his knuckles.
Standing up and readying his blade, Guts shouted with fury as he charged forward, holding Dragonslayer in front of him as if to run through Penance. This intent, however, was denied as soon as Penance clasped his hands on the flat faces of Dragonslayer, digging his feet into the ground to fight against Guts’ ballistic bull rush. Hyperkinetic energy, combined with his claw-like fingertips and spiked gloves, scraped and grated against the sword’s thick iron hide, slowing its forward momentum enough for the Thunderbolt to shove the forward-extended weapon off to the side, denying Guts’ attack the infliction it desired. With the weight of Dragonslayer unsettling Guts’ footing, Penance swiftly stepped in and delivered swift but sturdy punches to Guts’ face, the small spikes and thorns running along the armor on his hands scraping and slicing open Guts’ facial skin with every strike.
After several punches had been delivered, Penance reared his head back and slammed his armored forehead into Guts’ nose. Although Guts recoiled in pain from the heavy slam and there was a visible spurt of blood from his nostrils, the black swordsman held his ground, refusing to stagger. Penance was surprised by this tenacity, and Guts glared him down as he clenched his entire face before returning the favor, headbutting Penance despite his helmet with as much force as he could. Impressively, Penance could feel the strike through the thick hide of his faceplate, and the impact of Guts’ head against his pushed the spikes lining the inside of his helmet further into his skin. This assuredly hurt, but it also augmented Penance’s power, more and more hyperkinetic energy rushing through his body with the increasing pain he felt.
Despite the aching pain in his skull that came as a result of headbutting solid metal armor, Guts readied Dragonslayer and went on the offensive once again. Hauling his immensely heavy weapon around with impressive speed, Guts landed multiple heavy blows on the tougher parts of Penance’s armor to soften it up. This barrage of attacks was not without equal, however – toughing through the sting of the giant blade biting through his spiked suit, Penance took swings at Guts while he was in close, unleashing huge explosions of amped-up hyperkinetic energy, the increasing pain he felt as his armor’s spikes dug into his skin only fueling the fire of his attacks. Guts, however, ever the perceptive fighter, avoided the attacks as they came, ducking and dodging around his opponent’s giant blasts as he continued to whale on him with his iron blade.
Due to the rising pain and the seething rage he felt coursing through his mind and body, Penance was growing more and more aggressive with his attacks. Wilder, more careless swings left more and more openings for Guts to slip in and strike his armor, which he was getting fed up with. Finally, when Guts went for a low swing at his legs, instead of taking another crazy swing at him, Penance leaped up with a burst of hyperkinetic energy, using more smaller, consecutive blasts from his hands to spin around in midair before he extended his right leg. The tip of his foot, lined with a single large spike on the front-facing edge of his boots, swung around in a full circular motion before delivering a sharp kick to Guts’ head. The huge spike on his foot jabbed through Guts’ cheek, and as the inside of his mouth filled with blood, Guts cried out in a shout of pain, which quickly escalated into a roar like that of a wounded animal. In retaliation, Guts brought Dragonslayer over his head and down at Penance, the edge of the huge sword cutting into his shoulder region. Penance shouted as a sharp, burning sting erupted in his shoulder, and as he landed sloppily he backed far away, nursing the biting wound as Guts did the same with the hole in his cheek. No vital tendons had been pierced, but it was certainly still enough to hurt immensely, only adding to Penance’s growing ire.
Shrugging off the terrible pain he was in, Penance yelled furiously as he charged toward Guts, his hands at his sides as he readied a heavy strike. Reacting to his incoming opponent, Guts extended his left arm and fired a flurry of crossbow arrows to intercept Penance’s war march. The iron-tipped arrows hit their mark and embedded themselves in the exposed parts of his armor, but the bite of the arrows was lost on the rage-consumed Thunderbolt, and he tackled Guts to the ground with great force.
Pinning the black swordsman down with his body weight, Penance growled with ferocity as he began to deliver a harsh beating to his downed opponent, punch after spiked punch smashing against Guts’ head. Blood sprayed across the ground as more and more open wounds were inflicted on Guts, and despite his struggling, he couldn’t get Penance off of him. He tried to swing Dragonslayer at his foe’s side to knock him off, but a burst of hyperkinetic energy to his arm floored that attack. Finally, the pain of the repeated blows and the feeling of his own blood trickling down his face sparked a much deeper, more feral rage in Guts, and he swung his left arm up at Penance with reckless abandon. Penance caught his arm by the wrist, stopping the counterattack dead in its tracks. With one arm caught in his grip and Guts’ other arm pinned beneath his leg, Penance grabbed Guts by the throat, his thorny hands digging into the flesh of his neck as he began to choke the black swordsman. Guts gurgled and coughed desperately for air, and Penance only tightened his grip.
Penance: Any last words before I end you?
Despite his apparent victory over his foe, Penance was surprised to see, despite his gloating, that Guts’ expression only intensified into a new, more fiery fury in his eye. The sound of metal machinations clunking and shuttering to his right drew Penance’s attention away from his pinned opponent, and he quickly cast a glance to his right to see what was making the noise.
Guts: Just… one…
Much to Penance’s surprise, Guts’ metal hand fell away from the prosthetic, opening to reveal the muzzle of a hidden cannon. And Penance, because he was holding the metal arm by the wrist, was staring straight down the barrel of it.
Guts: DIE!
With a loud, resounding BOOM, a heavy cannonball fired from Guts’ cannon arm, plowing into Penance’s face with a direct hit. The Thunderbolt was sent flying as a result of the powerful shot, allowing Guts to catch his breath, spit the heavy volumes of blood from his mouth, and regain his footing with Dragonslayer in hand. Penance, meanwhile, landed far across the open path, his body hitting the ground heavily as the cannonball continued to sail off into the distant murkiness of the dark forest surrounding them. However, there was one clear sign of the damage done by Guts’ surprise attack: Penance’s facemask had come loose from his suit, and after flying through the air, it landed on the ground next to him.
Guts could hear Penance grunting in pain, clearly telling him that his enemy was not yet finished. Holding Dragonslayer in a prepared stance, Guts began slowly advancing toward his enemy, the pain from Penance’s beatdown resonating across his body. It seemed Penance was equally in pain, but that didn’t keep him from slowly propping himself to his feet. As his vision refocused, he could see clearly that his facemask was ripped from its rightful place on his armor, and additionally, he could see Guts, still alive and well, marching slowly toward him. The intense pain of the cannonball’s impact, combined with the multiple spikes piercing his body, the pain from attacks he’d already sustained during their fight, and the darkness of the forest plaguing his mind… These multiple factors drove Penance’s fury to a fever pitch. Streams of bright, luminescent hyperkinetic energy began pouring from his eyes and hands, and a deep scowl formed on his scarred face. Guts tensed up, stopping his advance. It was clear his foe had fight left in him yet, but nothing could have prepared him for just how much fight that would turn out to be.
Penance unleashed an explosion of kinetic energy behind him, sending him rocketing toward Guts at a breakneck pace. Yelling at the top of his lungs in a blind rage, he drove a punch into Guts’ left arm, powering up his strike with a shockwave blast. Guts unleashed a tortured scream as his elbow joint shattered under the force of the powerful shockwave, twisting his forearm in a horribly broken manner. Fighting through the horrible pain of his now-broken left arm, Guts swung Dragonslayer with his remaining arm toward his foe, only for Penance to react with another shockwave-powered punch to his right arm’s inner elbow. Guts cried out again as his arm was deeply fractured and fell limply at his side, his mighty sword going flying across the bloodstained grass.
Guts met Penance’s exposed eyes and stared into the crazed bloodlust flaring within. As the tortured hero brought both of his arms over his head, Guts could see the familiar fires of hatred and anger burning in his pupils. That recognition made something flicker in Guts’ chest, which he clenched his teeth together tightly as he tried to suppress it through the arduous pain of his broken arms. His concentration was shattered, however, upon Penance slamming his fists onto Guts’ shoulders, the force of the following shockwaves snapping Guts’ lower leg bones. Another pained scream escaped the black swordsman’s lips as his legs gave up under him, falling down to his knees before his armored adversary. His head was spinning and his vision was hazy, and that same fire in his chest leaped higher and higher, burning hotter within his ribcage despite his efforts to quell it. Beyond the ringing in his ears, Guts could hear Penance shouting loudly, and he could dizzily see one of his arms was brought up.
Penance: THIS IS OVER!
His fist, like a grenade of barbed wire, slammed directly into the middle of Guts’ armored chest, the following explosion of force proving strong enough to put a dent in the black swordsman’s armor. With his extremities flailing uselessly, Guts only mustered a grunt to express the terrible pain he was in. His back was the first thing to hit the ground, and as his body bounced off the dead grass and slowly flipped over in midair, Guts forced his body to press against the ground, the friction of his shattered body parts grinding him to a halt. The burning in his chest was now an inferno, and with all four of his limbs splintered at their joints and Dragonslayer far beyond his reach, there were few options left to him to continue the fight.
Across the dark forest clearing, Penance shattered the base of a dead tree before growling as he hoisted the entire tree over his head with all his strength, both hands gripping the body of the rotting plant to support its weight. Taking careful aim at his broken adversary, he brought the tree back before throwing it with the help of a hyperkinetic shockwave.
The black tree soared toward Guts in a deadly beeline with enough momentum to break a brick wall. Guts could see the giant cylindrical object flying at him through his fading vision, and with no other option to defend against it, Guts closed his battered and bruised eye as the back of his armor’s collar began to snake up the rear of his head rapidly. Just as the trunk of the tree was inches from pulverizing the black mercenary’s skull, the helm of his armor slammed shut like a bear trap, biting through the thick wood with intense force. Its bite completely shattered the middle of the tree, sending the halves of it spinning off harmlessly to the side.
Grunting in confusion and surprise, Penance stared down Guts as the black swordsman’s arms and legs began to twist unnaturally. The eyes of the armor’s helmet flared to life with a sinister red glow, and sickening sounds of bone and muscle being pulled and twisted rang out across the forest, accompanied by a cursed roar. The Berserker Armor had taken control of Guts, consuming his mind with twisted, demonic whispers and filling his entire body with rage. And with the cursed forest’s dark embrace, his madness only swelled into pure insanity.
In a blindingly fast motion, Guts exploded forward with a mighty leap across the clearing, rocketing toward Penance. Once he was in front of his red-and-silver opponent, Guts howled in blind rage as he wildly slashed with his vile blade, the impossibly fast swings of the gigantic weapon denting and cutting the spiked armor plates. The indentations in the metal pushed the spikes lining the inside of Penance’s armor further into his flesh, only increasing the countless volumes of pain washing through his scarred body.
Channeling the white-hot pain and rage building up in his body, Penance shouted loudly as his voice could muster, thrusting out his arms as he unleashed a colossal explosion of force from his body that blasted away from him in a circle. Guts, despite the ferocity of his stance, could not help but be tossed away by the burning shockwave, and he hit the ground with a heavy thump as the sounds of dozens of dead trees being ripped and burned by the wave of power echoed through the forest around him and his foe. The sting of the burning wave and the heavy impact with the barren ground, however, was lost on Guts’ armor-clad self, the cursed Berserker Armor making pain a foreigner to its wearer’s mind and body. This lack of feeling allowed Guts to recover unnaturally fast, and from across the now-wider clearing of the shattered forest, Penance stared him with energy pouring from his exposed eyes, his teeth bared and his barbed fists clenched tightly shut as hyperkinetic energy rippled from between his fingers.
The staredown barely lasted more than a handful of seconds before both combatants, blinded by the darkness of the forest and by their own seething rage, exploded towards each other. The very earth below Guts’ feet shot up in a spray of dead grass and dry soil, and another burst of hyperkinetic power ripped up the ground behind Penance, both of them poised to strike as they rocketed toward each other. Penance, intentionally overshooting the angle of his path of flight, cocked his fist back as enough power to rival a nuclear bomb welled up in his closed palm, ready to wipe the black swordsman from the face of the earth. Guts, however, was more than content to hunch over and stay close to the ground as he sprinted below Penance, halting on a dime just before his foe was above him, stomping his right foot down on the edge of Penance’s discarded faceplate. This shot the metallic faceguard into the air, and Guts used the magnet in his left arm to pull it to the exposed mouth of his arm’s hidden cannon. Once the underside of the faceplate was securely magnetized to the mouth of the empty cannon, Guts turned his arm upward, just in time for Penance to pass over him with his arm ready to strike.
The dry-firing of his cannon arm would have hurt if Guts could have felt it. However, the faceplate, launched upward by the force of the cannon’s blast, embedded its large external spikes in both of Penance’s eyes with great force, puncturing the ocular organs and blinding the tortured fighter. Penance’s agonizing shriek was proof enough that Guts’ shot had hit its mark, and the immense power in Penance’s fist, his concentration disrupted, fizzled out and faded as he fell behind Guts.
The berserk black swordsman, however, was not content to simply blind his opponent. Shifting his footing and grabbing the hilt of Dragonslayer with both hands, Guts unleashed a feral wail as he swung the mighty blade in a huge, flat sideways arc. The force of his swing cleaved through Penance’s tough, spiked armor at the waist and Penance cried out in even greater pain as the broadsword’s razor edge severed his upper half from his lower half. Penance’s legs hit the ripped-up ground first, blood gushing from his shattered pelvis and onto the exposed soil. Penance’s top half, on the other hand, hit the ground with a disgusting squish, tormented grunts and gurgles of blood being the only sounds he could make to express the agony of the grotesque wound he had been delivered.
Knowing his opponent was still there somewhere, he tried to claw at the grass to pull himself away as his strength waned, his internal organs spilling across the grass as he pulled his severed body along. Despite his useless attempts at escape, Guts pinned his dying foe beneath his heel and raised Dragonslayer up before him. Even with his eyes punctured and sightless, Penance could feel the seething rage of the cursed swordsman beating down on him. That sensation of Guts’ burning, endless fury was the last thing he ever felt, as the tip of Dragonslayer cut through his faceplate and his skull alike when Guts stabbed it downward. The full width of his blade pushed through Penance’s head and into the ground beneath it, and Penance’s quivering arms finally fell still.
Withdrawing his blood-soaked weapon from the sheath of his fallen foe’s face, Guts heaved and grunted as the torment of the Berserker Armor continued to plague him. The whispers of the darkness and the mumblings of his inner demons continued to plague his mind, and as the need to kill continued to surge within him, Guts howled in rage before storming back off into the woods, a mindless hunter on the prowl for his next kill. However difficult the exit to this haunted forest would prove to be…
…It would be nowhere close to the raging catacombs of his own mind that he was now tasked with overcoming.
