Washoe County Library System

''Created by Kentaro Miura, Berserk is manga mayhem to the extreme - violent, horrifying, and mercilessly funny - and the wellspring for the internationally popular anime series. Not for the squeamish or the easily offended, Berserk asks for no quarter - and offers none! His name is Guts, the Black Swordsman, a feared warrior spoken of only in whispers. Bearer of a gigantic sword, an iron hand, and the scars of countless battles and tortures, his...

''The evil Count uses his dark powers to transform a defeated guard captain into an inhuman horror to combat Guts, the Black Swordsman. Puck, Guts' pint-sized fairy sidekick, is captured when he attempts to stop an old doctor's execution, and he is given as a gift to the count's daughter, a sweet girl in a gilded cage, imprisoned by her father in her own room. Guts, determined to make mincemeat of the Count, assaults the castle and carves a swath...

''Now that the evil Count has been killed and dragged to Hell by the demon lords of the Godhand, Guts, the Black Swordsman, hooks up with his former benefactor, the mercenary Gambino. But it's a deadly reunion, one that nearly takes Guts' life. The following years see Guts wandering from battlefield to battlefield, where his awesome skills as a slayer catch the eye of both warring parties, including the legendary Griffith, warrior leader of the Band...

''Griffith, charismatic leader of the elite mercenary Band of the Hawk, has seen better days. His fearless champion, Guts, has left the Band, defeating Griffith in personal combat as his ticket out. With his judgment clouded by this unthinkable humiliation, Griffith eases his pain in the arms of the daughter of Midland's king. But the King doesn't take kindly to an employee picking the royal flowers, and the next stop for Griffith is the dungeon and...

''Warrior supreme Guts has returned, and just in time to save the weakened Band of the Hawk from certain destruction… and to form an intimate bond with the beautiful warrior Casca. But job one is to find a way to free Griffith, the Hawks' leader, from the dank dungeons and round-the-clock tortures of the Hawks' former benefactor, the King of Midland. But while the flayed and starved Griffith may be in isolation, he is not alone. Horrors beyond imagination...

"The Band of the Hawks' rescue of their leader, Griffith, has brought them no ease. Broken beyond healing, a frail ghost of his former glory, Griffith is now more an object of pity than a man, and the Hawks, who've grimly hung together under duress and death during his absence, are now on the verge of splintering to the winds. But Griffith's dreams and ambitions, built on the bodies of his troops and the countless enemies they have slain, have not...

There had been a battle, and the Berserker met some terrible opponents, taking an awful wound. The cavity reached through level after level of machinery, deck after deck of armor, stopped only by the last inner defenses of the buried, unliving heart. The Berserker survived and crushed its enemy.

When Hemphill saw the blasted cavity, he felt a shrinking fear, stunned by the realization of just what it means to fight the Berserker. Hemphill,

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