It was the sound of footsteps.
They seemed to come from the north, opposite from where the Survey Corps was headed. Kuklo turned to look north, but all he could make out through the clouds of dust was the hazy form of Wall Maria, the fortress city’s symbol. Yet the footfalls grew rapidly louder as though to assert their presence.
“A Titan is coming…”
“What?” Carlo had caught Kuklo’s muttered words but looked dubious.
“It knows we’re here.”
The distant roar of the footsteps approached, unwavering.
Was it drawn by the flare I fired? It was not known what the Titans reacted to, but a Green Star exploding overhead could easily command their attention.
In a way, Kuklo was fortunate. He’d risked leaving the walls in order to meet a Titan, so this was exactly what he wanted. On the other hand, the trusted Survey Corps being too preoccupied with him to register the situation didn’t do. He needed them to transport him back to town.
Within mere moments, the Titan’s footfalls had grown closer. A dim, human-like outline was now visible in the distance.
“A Titan’s coming.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I hear footsteps. I’ve heard them before.”
“Heard them before?” Carlo sounded suspicious, not seeing how, but he quickly modified his line of questioning. “Which way?”
As Kuklo pointed north with his chin, Carlo, hardly convinced, brought out his binoculars and checked to the north.
Apparently having caught sight of the enemy, Carlo’s face grew grimmer by the second. “That looks like─Ogre…”
He was not the only one to react. Kuklo, the first to recognize the Titan’s approach, wore a frozen look, his eye wide open. His body shook. The reason was plain and simple. “It’s a monster…”
The Titan was still a few kilometers away, its figure blurred like an object in the summer haze, but even then its size was extraordinary, gigantic. That should have gone without saying, but this attacking Titan was far larger than Kuklo had imagined. He realized that all of the information he’d gathered from books had only given him the most basic of understandings. If a picture was ever worth a thousand words, this was when. He couldn’t but think that he hadn’t asked for that.
The Titan charged toward them forcefully, kicking up clouds of dust as it ran. It was a little over ten meters in height. By human standards, it looked like a skinny male around twenty years old. It beamed with joy, perhaps because its first meal in fifteen years had arrived. Despite its gigantic frame, it moved with such nimble steps that it almost seemed ready to take off skipping. It was rushing in at an astonishing speed, fast enough to rival a horse.
It was humanity’s dearest wish to drive away the Titans, to regain the world the monsters had stolen. Yet human hands seemed completely powerless against the huge horror that closed in on them. Seeing it, one wondered if the stories of a Titan being defeated weren’t some sort of misunderstanding.
We’re bugs… Kuklo vividly remembered his days in chains. I’m the same as a bug in a cage…
It was only a difference in scale. Humans were like dishes lining a table to the Titans. All that puny humanity could do was wait patiently to be shoveled into a Titan’s stomach.
“Don’t just stand there! Run!!”
Kuklo’s thoughts were snapped off by Carlo’s bellowed command. By the time Kuklo noticed, the soldiers flanking him were gone, and the Survey Corps was assuming an arrow formation in preparation for retreat. They seemed to be planning to charge straight through.
That they did not have a moment to spare was clear from the surging form that was almost upon them. The footsteps that had sounded like distant thunder were now like the roaring cracks of a storm, and the Titan looked as imposing as Wall Maria itself. Its wicked pressure threatened to crush Kuklo’s spirit and to force him to his knees.
Pounding some life into his chattering knees with his fists, he ran and hopped into the covered wagon at the back of the formation.
“Retreat!!”
At Carlo’s order, the corps began to advance with the force of an unleashed arrow. They must have undergone extensive training in preparation for this expedition. Their immaculately ordered movements resembled a single living being’s.
“Damn it!” Kuklo spat and inspected a few weapons in the cargo, carbines and explosives. His safety assured so long as he stayed with the cargo team? It was the kind of pipe dream thought up by someone with no real combat experience.
Now that he’d seen a Titan with his own eye, he understood.
I am not a Titan.
The confirmation, that he was not a Titan’s son, meant he’d accomplished his goal. But in exchange, his life was now in danger. Mortal danger.
Kuklo sliced through the canvas with his knife and tore it off with all his strength. When he did, gusts came at him from the front. The pressure contorted his face and he found it hard to breathe, so violent was the wind. Kuklo used one arm as a shield and turned a defiant gaze forward. The Titan, about five hundred meters in front of them, maintained its unwavering, nimble sprint.
The soldiers at the tip of the arrow formation drew their short swords. As though sure of their chances, they charged the enemy without a moment’s hesitation.
The Titan responded with a swing of its mighty arm, but the soldiers skillfully maneuvered their warhorses around it, swinging their swords as they passed. Due to the size difference, however, their attacks were concentrated below its knees. Its medulla, known to be the Titans’ weakness, remained completely untouched.
But the commander didn’t seem to be trying to take out their foe. With its legs chopped to pieces, walking looked to have become difficult for the Titan, and its mad rush interrupted, it staggered and fell on one knee. Taking advantage of this opportunity, the troops began to rush past the Titan’s side, the wagon and its stowaway bringing up the rear.
Opening his eye, Kuklo imprinted the image of the Titan onto his mind. It’s a monster… He did not think this only because of its immense size, which defied the laws of nature. Its recuperative abilities were extraordinary, too. Some sort of metabolic reaction seemed to have been triggered, and steam erupted from the sword wounds the soldiers had inflicted, shutting them right away. It might begin to move again at any moment.
There was no doubting that the Titans were absurd monsters. If the soldiers were able to go and fight against one nonetheless, it was not only because they were strong and fearless but because they knew that a Titan could be slain.
While Titan flesh was known to be difficult to so much as scratch, the hard Iron Bamboo-forged blades sliced through it with ease. Without the Equipment they could not mount a direct attack on the Titan’s weak spot, but the soldiers must have felt at least something upon striking a Titan.
In an instant, the wagon passed by the Titan’s side.
A hundred meters, two hundred meters, three hundred meters─
The Titan’s figure was fast fading into the distance, but Kuklo still vividly felt the overwhelming presence, along with the fear, that it had planted in his heart.
He looked ahead. Five kilometers to the gates─an eternity to him, a distance far enough to induce despair. While he did not know the warhorses’ limits, it would surely take five minutes to get there no matter how they whipped and urged them on.
Can we actually escape?! The fact that he had this thought was proof of their precarious situation. Everything was now up to what the Titan did next.
Damn it, he nearly cursed, but the Titan’s condition came first. A hundred or so horses had galloped at full speed and kicked up dust behind them; visibility was so poor it could have been a foggy day. No matter how Kuklo strained his eye, he couldn’t see the Titan.
It may not have been visible, but its presence was painfully clear. Although Kuklo could not glimpse it with his single eye, his hearing rendered its every single movement. He could tell just how the thing rose off the ground to give wild chase to the fleeing column.
“It’s coming…”
The Titan was running four or five hundred meters behind the wagon, hot on their trail. Astonishingly, the Titan had the edge in speed, and little by little it was closing the distance.