The harmonic frequency of a standard-issue military steel cable vibrating under extreme tension is a deeply unsettling sound.
It hums at a pitch that resonates directly in your teeth.
I hung suspended against the vertical, fifty-meter stone face of Wall Rose, my right hand gripping the trigger of my ODM handle, my left hand firmly gripping the thick leather collar of Samuel’s jacket.
Beneath my boots, the drop to the cobblestone streets of Trost District was dizzying.
“Oh god!
Oh god, we’re going to die!
You’re going to drop me!” Samuel shrieked, thrashing wildly in my grip.
His panic was violently swaying our center of gravity, putting unnecessary kinetic strain on my embedded anchor.
“Samuel,” I stated, my voice echoing flatly against the cold stone.
“The tensile strength of this braided steel wire is rated for roughly two thousand pounds of dead weight.
Together, factoring in our gear, we weigh approximately three hundred and twenty pounds.
Statistically speaking, the only way you die right now is if you continue to thrash and I intentionally let go out of sheer annoyance.”
He froze, his hyperventilation hitching in his throat as he stared up at my completely unbothered, deadpan expression.
Before he could process the physics lesson, the atmosphere around us violently ruptured.
BOOM.
The sound was not an explosion.
It was the catastrophic, world-ending sound of millions of tons of solid bedrock and reinforced steel violently shattering all at once.
The Colossal Titan had just kicked the outer gate of Trost.
The resulting shockwave rippled through the very foundations of the wall.
The stone face beneath my boots shuddered violently.
A massive, suffocating cloud of dust, splintered timber, and pulverized cobblestone blasted into the district, instantly painting the clear blue sky in apocalyptic shades of grey and brown.
My threat-assessment radar, permanently hardwired into my central nervous system, painted the expanding debris field in a glowing, mental overlay.
The gate was gone.
The logistical chokepoint was shattered.
The Titans were officially inside the city.
“He broke it…” Samuel whispered, his eyes wide with absolute terror as he stared down at the rising dust cloud.
“The gate is gone.”
Above us, on the top of the wall, a furious, blood-curdling scream echoed through the boiling steam.
“I’LL KILL YOU!”
‘Ah, there goes my idiot brother,’ my brain noted coldly, tracking the unmistakable, chaotic hiss of Eren’s ODM gear launching directly toward the sixty-meter biological anomaly.
I squeezed my triggers, firing my retracting spool.
The high-tension coil whirred flawlessly, dragging Samuel and myself back up the vertical face of the wall in a smooth, rapid ascent.
I vaulted over the stone parapet, dumping the terrified cadet onto the walkway, and landed perfectly on my feet.
The top of the wall was completely engulfed in thick, burning steam.
The heat was suffocating.
I drew my blades, my spatial awareness mapping the invisible terrain through the fog.
A massive gust of wind cleared the steam.
The Colossal Titan was gone.
It had vanished entirely, leaving no trace behind except massive, scorched footprints on the outer wall face.
Eren was kneeling on the edge of the parapet, his blades drawn, panting heavily as he stared down at the empty air.
“I missed…” Eren gasped, his green eyes wide with shock and adrenaline.
“He just…
disappeared.”
“Command structure is broken,” I announced loudly, cutting through the panicked murmurs of the surviving squad members on the wall.
“The vanguard gate is breached.
Hostiles will funnel into the residential district within exactly three minutes.
We need to fall back to the central staging area immediately.”
Connie was gripping his hair, his knees shaking.
“Titans…
they’re getting in again.
Just like Shiganshina.”
“Connie, panic restricts oxygen flow to the prefrontal cortex,” I said, walking past him and slapping him firmly on the shoulder.
“Keep your breathing steady.
Retreat to HQ.
Go.”
The descent into the city was a chaotic, disorganized nightmare.
The Trost military headquarters was a massive stone courtyard in the center of the district, and it was currently operating in a state of total, unadulterated pandemonium.
The Garrison regiment was running in circles, shouting contradictory orders.
The supply lines were instantly clogged.
Cadets from the 104th were huddled against the stone walls, weeping, shaking, and hyperventilating.
I landed softly in the courtyard, immediately walking toward the supply depot.
My mind was processing the battlefield not as a horrifying tragedy, but as a massive, complex logistical puzzle.
‘The civilian evacuation route is bottlenecked at the inner gate.
The Vanguard squad will be entirely wiped out within ten minutes due to severe numerical disadvantage.
The Middle Guard, comprising the cadets, will be used as cannon fodder to buy time.
Survival probability without intervention: twelve percent.’
I hated intervening.
I deeply, profoundly hated exerting effort.
But dying sounded significantly more exhausting.
I found Armin kneeling near a stack of gas canisters, trying to assemble his gear, his hands shaking so violently he couldn’t align the brass nozzles.
I crouched down next to him, gently pushing his trembling hands aside.
I grabbed the gas canister, aligned the threads with mechanical perfection, and twisted it into place with a sharp, satisfying click.
“Armin,” I said, keeping my voice low and terrifyingly calm.
He looked up at me, his blue eyes filled with unspeakable dread.
“Kai…
we’re going to die.
We can’t stop them.
We’re just trainees.”
“You are not a trainee.
You are a biological engine of pure, unrestricted intellect,” I told him, locking my eyes onto his.
“You understand spatial geometry better than anyone in this regiment.
Do not look at the Titans as monsters.
Look at them as mathematical equations.
They are large, slow, and deeply inefficient.
We are small, highly mobile, and armed with lethal velocity.
It is a simple matter of kinetic distribution.”
Armin blinked, his breathing slowly beginning to stabilize as my cold, completely detached logic broke through his emotional panic.
“Kinetic distribution…”
“Exactly.
Now stand up.
We have a job to do,” I said, patting his shoulder and standing up.
A Garrison officer climbed onto a wooden crate in the center of the courtyard, screaming at the top of his lungs.
“All cadets!
Form up into your assigned squads!
You are the Middle Guard!
You will deploy to the residential sectors and engage the enemy until the civilian evacuation is complete!
Desertion will be punished by immediate execution!”
Eren was already standing at the front of the courtyard, his blades drawn, radiating a manic, suicidal energy.
His squad was forming up behind him.
Armin, Thomas Wagner, Mina Carolina, Nac Tias, and Mylius Zeramus.
I was technically assigned to a different squad holding the rear, carefully placed there by my Rank Eleven status.
I looked at Eren.
I looked at the terrified faces of Thomas and Mina.
My brain instantly ran a combat simulation based on Eren’s current emotional state.
‘Squad Leader Yeager is compromised by severe emotional distress and childhood trauma.
He will lead with aggression rather than tactical positioning.
He will attempt a frontal assault.
The squad will follow him to maintain cohesion.
Casualty rate projection: one hundred percent.’
I let out a long, heavy, deeply depressed sigh.
I unclipped my ODM harness from the supply rack, bypassed my assigned squad commander entirely, and walked directly over to Eren’s group.
“Kai?
What are you doing?” Eren asked, turning around as I joined their circle.
“You’re assigned to the rear guard.”
“I am officially executing a hostile takeover of this squad’s logistical operations,” I deadpanned, checking the seals on my dual gas canisters.
“If I leave you in charge, you are going to get Thomas and Mina eaten within five minutes, and I am not going to attend their funerals.
I hate wearing dress uniforms.”
Thomas blinked, his face pale.
“Wait, eaten?”
“Do not listen to my brother’s incredibly poor bedside manner,” Eren snapped, glaring at me before turning back to the squad.
“We trained for three years for this!
We can kill them!
We just have to strike hard and fast!
Advance!”
Eren didn’t wait for confirmation.
He fired his anchors into the nearest bell tower and launched himself into the city, screaming a war cry.
Thomas, Nac, and Mylius immediately followed him, caught up in the suicidal momentum.
“Idiots,” I muttered.
I fired my anchors, launching myself into the air.
The residential sector of Trost was a labyrinth of red clay roofs, narrow cobblestone alleys, and towering brick chimneys.
The smoke from the breached gate cast a heavy, suffocating haze over the battlefield.
As we swung over the rooftops, the true horror of the situation became undeniably apparent.
The Titans were pouring in.
Dozens of them.
They were grotesque, lumbering anomalies, their skin flushed red with heat, their faces stretched into terrifying, unblinking smiles.
They weren’t predators.
They were deeply inefficient biological machines driven by a singular, illogical consumption directive.
And they were currently dismantling the Vanguard Garrison squads with horrifying ease.
Eren was swinging wildly ahead of us, completely ignoring the structural layout of the city.
He was locked onto a twelve-meter Titan lumbering down a wide avenue.
“There’s one!” Eren yelled, his blades flashing.
“I’ll take it!”
Suddenly, a massive, abnormal Titan burst through the brick wall of a three-story building directly beneath Eren’s flight path.
It was an erratic, leaping anomaly.
It launched itself into the air, its jaws unhinging, aiming directly for Thomas Wagner, who was swinging blindly behind Eren.
Thomas froze in mid-air, his eyes wide with absolute terror as the massive jaws closed in on him.
Eren didn’t even see it.
He was too focused on his own target.
‘Target velocity: twenty meters per second.
Intercept window: 1.2 seconds.
Distance: forty yards,’ my tactical radar processed in a microsecond.
I didn’t think.
I simply engaged the mechanical perfection I had built into my own gear.
I slammed my thumb against the hidden brass restrictor valve on my right grip, completely unlocking the gas pressure.
I squeezed the trigger.
The deployment didn’t hiss.
It detonated.
The anchor fired in 0.4 seconds, biting deep into the brick chimney of a nearby roof.
The unbridled gas pressure released with the concussive force of a cannon shot.
The G-force hit my chest so hard my vision briefly fractured into static.
I was violently ripped through the air, completely shattering the standard speed limits of ODM mobility.
I was moving so fast the wind tore the breath from my lungs and flattened the clothes against my body.
I was a dark, blurred projectile of lethal kinetic energy.
I intercepted the leaping Abnormal exactly 0.1 seconds before its jaws closed around Thomas.
I didn’t try to slash the nape in a sweeping arc.
I didn’t have the time or the structural leverage.
Instead, I used my horrific momentum.
I fired my left anchor directly into the Titan’s cheek, using the tether to violently whip my body around the creature’s massive head like a pendulum on fast-forward.
As I whipped around to the back of its neck, I drove both of my blades straight down, burying them to the hilts into the precise, mathematically calculated center of the nape.
The sheer kinetic force of my swinging body acting as a lever violently ripped the blades downward, entirely severing the spinal connection in an explosive spray of boiling blood.
The Titan instantly went limp.
It crashed out of the sky, slamming heavily into the cobblestone street below, bringing a massive cloud of dust up with it.
I detached my anchors, executing a flawless, spinning tactical brake in mid-air, and landed softly on the slanted clay roof of a nearby house.
I sheathed my dulled blades with a sharp click, drawing two fresh ones in the same fluid motion.
Thomas slammed onto the roof next to me, tumbling head over heels until he slammed into a brick chimney.
He was hyperventilating, his eyes blown wide with shock, completely unable to comprehend how he was still alive.
Eren, Mina, Nac, and Mylius landed on the surrounding roofs, completely freezing in place.
They stared at the steaming, decaying corpse of the massive Abnormal in the street.
Then they stared at me.
None of them had even seen me move.
One second I was forty yards behind them, and the next, I had severed a Titan’s spine with a velocity that defied basic physics.
My chest was heaving.
The extreme G-force maneuver had severely compressed my internal organs, and my stomach was threatening a violent rebellion.
I aggressively swallowed down the nausea, maintaining my icy, deadpan expression.
“Kai…” Eren gasped, his swords hanging limp in his hands.
“How did you…
you moved so fast.”
I stood up straight, brushing a speck of ash off the lapel of my jacket.
I looked at Eren, entirely dropping the lazy, unbothered facade I had maintained for three years.
I locked eyes with my twin brother, channeling the absolute, uncompromising authority of a veteran tactical commander who had zero patience for emotional liability.
“Your situational awareness is catastrophically compromised,” I stated coldly, my voice carrying easily over the distant screams and collapsing buildings.
“You led with tunnel vision.
You failed to scan your vertical periphery.
Your erratic flight path dragged your subordinates directly into a fatal blind spot.
If I had been operating on standard-issue factory gear, Thomas would currently be a violently chewed protein source.”
Thomas let out a highly undignified whimper from his spot against the chimney.
Eren flushed, his pride warring with the undeniable truth of his failure.
“I didn’t see it!
It broke through the wall!”
“An excuse is a mathematically useless variable,” I snapped, taking a deliberate step toward him.
“You are no longer a squad.
You are a highly fragile, biologically vulnerable supply chain, and I am the new logistical manager.
Your previous command structure is hereby terminated.”
Mina Carolina gripped her blades, looking at me with a desperate, sudden spark of hope.
“What do we do, Kai?”
I turned my back to the smoking Titan corpse, my tactical radar painting the surrounding streets in my mind.
“We stop pretending we are heroes, and we start acting like a tactical extraction unit,” I ordered, pointing my blade toward the inner gate.
“Eren, you are the vanguard.
You do not engage unless the target directly obstructs our flight path.
Mina, Nac, you cover the left and right flanks.
Thomas, you stay exactly in the center of the formation.
If you deviate from my designated trajectory by even three feet, I will personally shoot your anchors out of the wall.”
“And what are you doing?” Eren demanded, gripping his handles.
“I am operating as the kinetic anchor,” I replied softly, my eyes narrowing as the heavy, thunderous footsteps of three more Titans echoed from the adjacent block.
“I will cover the rear blind spot.
If anything breaches our perimeter, I will dismantle it.
Do exactly as I say, maintain a strict pendulum interval of forty feet, and I guarantee we will reach the supply depot alive.”
I looked at their terrified, ash-stained faces.
They were just kids.
They had no idea how to survive a warzone.
But I did.
The knowledge was burned into my very DNA, a terrifying gift from a universe I completely despised.
“Move,” I commanded.
The squad fired their anchors, launching back into the sky in a tight, mathematically perfect diamond formation.
I took a deep breath, fighting down the nausea, and fired my own lines, launching myself into the smoke-filled sky to keep them alive.
I was really, really going to need a longer nap after this.
_____________________________________
Jolts awake and nearly knocks over a towering stack of heavy textbooks…
Typing_In_My_Sleep here!
I am absolutely speechless.
I literally just rested my head on my desk for a quick ten-minute power nap, and by the time I opened my eyes, my phone notifications were completely losing their minds.
You guys are actual monsters!
You completely smashed the rest of that Power Stone challenge in under ten minutes!
I didn’t even have time to properly dream about surviving my upcoming exams before the goal was already met.
Since you guys completely blew my expectations out of the water and fueled my adrenaline, I am forcing myself to stay awake.
Consider it a promise: I will be dropping another bonus chapter for you all later today once I finish wrestling with my current pile of assignments.
Thank you for the wild support and for keeping me on my toes.
Now, let me go brew the strongest pot of coffee legally allowed so I can let my subconscious get back to typing.
Catch you later today!