Episode 140 (Manga)

Template:Chapter The Witch (魔女, Majou^?) is the 140th episode of the Berserk manga series, written and illustrated by Kentaro Miura.

Summary

The heretics standing on the cliff return to the cave, not wanting to be seen by the people who will inevitably find and investigate Joachim's body. Nina doesn't return with them, instead falling to her knees and beginning to break down in tears. She calls Joachim a liar for not having stayed with her through the Hell she brought him to.

A nearby noise alerts Nina to someone behind her. At first thinking it's a heretic, Nina tells them to leave, but it turns out to be Luca. Nina orders her to stay away, but Luca slowly advances on the girl. Suddenly fearful, Nina grabs a nearby rock and throws it, hitting Luca in the head, but the latter continues her advance. Nina threatens to jump off the cliff, and yells angrily at Luca, seeing the pity in Luca's eyes.

When Luca finally reaches her, Nina weakly threatens to call for the heretics to return and kill Luca. This statement is met with a slap to the face. Nina barely has a chance to recover before being slapped again. Then, without warning, Luca grabs the girl, bends her over her knee, and begins to spank her as though she were a child.

After a harsh punishment, Luca shows that she truly cares for Nina.

The punishment is severe enough to bring Nina to tears. Luca continues to spank until Nina apologizes, and hearing the words makes Luca end the punishment and pull Nina, who by this point is bawling, into a hug. Nina tries to explain the situation with Joachim, but Luca decides that it can wait until they are safely back in their tent at the campsite. They leave the area together, only to soon come across Casca, who is surrounded by the heretics who left Nina alone at the cliff.

Hidden, Luca realizes that Casca had followed her. She and Nina watch as the heretics slowly seize the bandaged girl up. One of the men remembers Casca as part of Luca's band of prostitutes, and informs the rest that she supposedly suffers from both insanity and syphilis, and they decide to let her be. All seems to be going in Luca's favor until a particularly curious heretic approaches Casca, wanting to see the injuries on her face. He tears her bandages off, revealing the beautiful face beneath them.

Upon seeing that Casca is really quite attractive, rather than the deformed they were all expecting, the heretics move in to take advantage of her. Casca struggles with all her might, but cannot prevent her shirt from being torn, revealing her Brand of Sacrifice. She looks up at the men surrounding her and has sudden flashbacks of the Eclipse, where many Apostles surrounded her naked body in a similar fashion. Casca begins to scream in terror.

Luca runs out of her hiding place to stop the inevitable rape, but before she can get the heretics' attention, their gaze is drawn skywards, where there are giant faces swirling in the black sky above them. One of the faces, a spirit, swoops down and possesses one of the heretics, using his body to bite another heretic's face off. Luca and Nina watch in horror as the heretics begin to massacre each other in front of Casca. The situation makes Luca suspect that Casca is a witch and that she is using her powers to influence the heretics.

Casca cannot touch the thing that was once her child.

The surviving possessed heretics turn to Casca, drawn by her Brand of Sacrifice, but the Demon Child materializes in front on her. It soundlessly commands the spirits to depart, and they leave the heretics' bodies behind. Casca reaches out to the deformed demon that is her child, but when she closes her arms around it, it vanishes.

The surviving heretics now believe that Casca is a witch and bow before her. She pays them no mind.

At the bottom of the chasm, the mysterious being looks at the still-living Joachim's body from the top of the cliff before running away.