Why?.......Why do you still live?
To survive. To live........To die on my own terms.
The sound of heavy breath filled the Od-toxic air of Guts' mind and soul. His lungs were close to bursting as he couldn't continue anymore. Broken and bloody, the swordsman was left with nothing but broken armor, full of bleeding holes on his body, and gripping what was left of his massive blade. The fight seemed pointless as the demons keep coming, infinitely spawning from the stone hand he stood. Covered in crimson, his tired breathlessness and darkening sight couldn't help but to cement his growing and creeping doom. He could only hear the unending cries and chanting of the inner demons, coming for him with those familiar words.
You should have died. You should have died.
You should have died. You shoul-
"Stop it...." a simple mutter to himself as flashes of the past filled his sight with terror and dread. The inner demons had taken the forms of those who had died by his hand. The count. The apostles. Soldiers. Children. Adonis. Donovan. Gambino. The Band of the Hawk. All for the pain on his soul. Yes. It was his fault that so many lives had fallen by the wayside. Each of their faces, glare and staring into his very being of anger and guilt. "Stop looking at me like that.....Stop it! I did all of this to survive! Maybe....Maybe I should have died with my friends....." With the udder of those words, the inner monsters took shape again, shifting together into one. The only one that could match and mirror his own malice. Himself.
Do not fool yourself...............You enjoy the killing don't you?
The feeling of rage and fury in your swings. You enjoy swallowing your own hate. After all, you hate everything and everyone.....
There is no love or feelings in your heart. Only your rage. Your need to kill. Survival was just only an excuse. You are a monster. Just like the ones you hunt. You are me. And I am you.
The shadow of the swordsman smirked a toothy smile while his single eye transformed into a familiar glowing red, jagged like a razor sharp blade. The hound had been taunting him all this time, pushing him until the breaking point. Until he was the broken man he was now. The hound took no time in kicking him while he was down, hitting him hard in the face into the middle finger of the stone hand platform. It chuckled darkly at his pain and misery.
You can't reverse the tides of blood and carnage. You can't get rid of me.
You can't change what you set in motion, human.
".....Maybe. Maybe you can't c-change." The hound's ears pricked up as soon as Guts' voice muttered from the impact crater. The swordsman's head lifted up to a familiar sight of his blank single eye from the score of blood on his face....but there was something different about this time. He was in control. Pushing himself out of the impact, Guts jumped down and fell to his knees in his weakened state. Everything felt so heavy. The last of his armor and his blade were weighting he down. So he let go. He left go of his blade and placed his hand on what was left of his blackened armor, ripping it from his torso with ease. He removed his cannon arm with a heavy thud to the blood soaked floor. To be weighted down by these things was a burden he longed the get rid of.
The branded man stood up from his knee and began to walk towards his blackened rage-filled half. The hound felt something coming from Guts at that moment. That something actually pierced into the hide of the monstrous dog. For once, it felt something it wasn't supposed to feel: fear. It summoned the very same chains of will to hold Guts' power by but, even though the bruising and mashing of flesh from the chains, the man kept coming. The hound held no power over him anymore and that made the hound panic with his newfound sense of fear.
No........S-Stay Back! You understand, don't you?! Without me you will have nothing.
My rage is your power! You c-can't stand without me!
You need me! Weareoneandthesame!
"............." The swordsman walk forward that much faster until he reached the hound but instead of killing the beast within him, he simply placed his hand on the hound's forehead. In a rare moment for him, Guts showed his other half compassion as the chains broke on him. "....I......I am Sorry. I thought you were some part of me that wanted to destroy me......but in a way, you only wanted to speak the truth. In a way, I have become my own monster. My own painful twisted monster.....You are a part of me....but nothing without you is a little much, huh? We are one and and same but this is my survival. My road ahead. I will not deny you anymore. Deny that part of me anymore. Forgive me for I can't forgive myself." The sea of Od above them calmed down as the flames of his rage slowly faded out from it. The hound was unable to speak as it faded away into pieces back into the body of the man, causing him to hold his heart and drop to his knees with a single tear streaming down his face.
"Yeah.......Let's go back. To see the real world with my own eye."
The armored beast came to a stop as it held its head, exploding with light as the last of the plant energy corruption left his body in a blast of bile from his mouth. In extreme blast of pressure, the helm opened for the first time in a long time, revealing the swordsman's face drenched in black blood....but something was different this time. His hair had whitened even farther to cover most of his head, only leaving a small patch of black left. He coughed and vomited on the floor bits of blood and carnage from his lips as tears streamed harshly from his face. His hair slowly returned back to the single patch of white as he collapsed to the ground, exhausted by the whole ordeal but only with a small smile on his face, he spoke the words......
"......I survived..........."
