Plot Summary
After saving a traveling performer named Rita from bandits, Guts, Casca, and Puck come to a small castle town to rest. Upon arriving, they learn of a disease that transforms its victims into "Mandragorans", making them go berserk, killing people, even their loved ones, without thinking. As the story progresses, the ruler of the castle, Balzac, shows Guts a room in the castle where people infected with the disease are kept. Balzac says he's searching a supposed cure. Guts learns from Balzac that the disease comes from an unusual plant, the Mandragora. It grows underground in a nearby town, and has small arms and legs. It will scream as if in pain when uprooted, killing all who hear it directly.
Balzac asks Guts to retrieve its heart from the Great Tree, and Guts sets off to get it with the idea it can also cure Casca of her madness. On the way, Guts combats the Mandragorans until Nosferatu Zodd arrives. Guts asks him what Griffith's plans are, but Zodd insists on fighting. Guts beats Zodd before Zodd departs and Guts later gets the Mandragora's heart. When he returns to the town, Guts learns the truth; that Balzac only wants to use the heart to become a more "advanced" version of a Mandragoran himself. Guts then decides to rid the town of both the Mandragora and the tyrant leader of the town, Balzac. Guts makes his way through the castle, past the Mandragorans and the castle's knights to Balzac and the Mandragoran heart. Balzac reveals that he used the sample of the Mandragoran heart already on his wife, who is also going through a very similar trauma that Casca is suffering from. Balzac then takes a sample of the Mandragoran heart and transforms into a Mandragoran zombie. Guts then proceeds to "kill" Balzac, as well as the final Mandragoran, which takes hold of Casca and ironically, finds the cure back in that same room where Guts was told to get the heart. There, for a brief moment, Casca regains her sanity and is able to speak with Guts about how she had a bad dream before reverting back to her former speechless self. In his desperation, Balzac manages to grab the Behelit and sacrifices his wife and transforms into an Apostle-Mandragoran hybrid. Guts finally kills off Balzac for good and wishes Rita farewell as he walks off onto another journey, in the end the Skull Knight appears and consumes the Behelit which leads onto volume 23 of the manga series.
Read more about this topic: Sword Of The Berserk: Guts' Rage
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