The darkness swallowed me whole.
The heavy iron door clicked shut, cutting off the faint light from the second floor.
I stood in the pitch-black stairwell, breathing in the scent of stagnant water and old rust.
And blood.
The smell of Titan blood is unique.
It smells like burning copper and ozone.
It smells like the end of the world.
I took a single step down the stone stairs.
My boots made absolutely no sound.
My Leon S.
Kennedy combat programming had entirely hijacked my motor functions.
Every step was a masterclass in kinetic absorption.
I rolled my weight from the ball of my foot to the heel, silently gliding down into the dark.
My Peter Parker intellect was rapidly calculating the acoustic reverberation of the enclosed space.
‘Basement dimensions: roughly one hundred by two hundred feet,’ my brain mapped out.
‘Ceiling height: twelve feet.
Stone pillars spaced every twenty yards.’
‘Three hostile biological anomalies.’
‘Four-meter class.’
I reached the bottom landing.
I paused, pressing my back flat against the cold stone wall just outside the open archway leading into the supply depot.
My threat-assessment radar was pinging violently.
I could hear them shuffling inside.
I could hear the heavy, wet slapping of their bare feet on the stone floor.
I was exhausted.
My muscles were burning with lactic acid from the extreme high-G maneuvers outside.
My chest still physically ached from the hollow, jagged hole Eren’s death had left behind.
I needed an edge.
I closed my eyes and mentally summoned the blue interface of the Gacha Survival System.
I had earned exactly three Exchanged Tickets over the last two months of wall duty.
I had traded stolen Garrison rations and fixed boots to farm the system.
I hadn’t used them.
I was saving them for a catastrophic emergency.
This technically qualified.
‘System,’ I thought coldly.
‘Execute a multi-pull.
Now.’
The digital slot machine materialized in the darkness of my mind.
It spun rapidly, the mechanical chiming echoing silently in my skull.
The first slot slammed to a halt.
A solid, reliable silver light illuminated my vision.
‘[Congratulations!
Host has pulled a [Rare] Tier Reward!]’
‘[Item Acquired: Industrial Blueprint – High-Tension Steam Winch.]’
A rolled-up parchment materialized in my inventory.
My Peter Parker intellect instantly analyzed the theoretical schematics.
It was a design for a compact, highly efficient winch system that could pull ten times the weight of our current ODM gear.
It was brilliant.
But it was entirely useless to me right now.
I couldn’t build a steam winch in a basement with two swords.
The second slot clicked into place.
Another silver light.
‘[Item Acquired: Minor Health Recovery Serum.]’
A small, thick glass vial dropped into my digital inventory.
It was filled with a bright, glowing green liquid.
My Leon template instantly recognized it.
It looked exactly like a highly concentrated green herb extract.
‘[Utility: Instantly repairs minor tissue damage, seals shallow lacerations, and stabilizes blood pressure.]’
Useful.
But I wasn’t bleeding.
I was just tired.
The third slot slammed into place.
A blinding, vibrant purple light flashed across my mental interface.
‘[Congratulations!
Host has pulled an [Epic] Tier Reward!]’
My heart skipped a beat.
Epic?
I had never seen purple before.
‘[Item Acquired: Adrenal-Stim Synthesis Syringe (Leon S.
Kennedy Variant).]’
A sleek, modern medical auto-injector materialized in my inventory.
It was loaded with a glowing, amber-colored fluid.
‘[Utility: Instantly purges lactic acid, temporarily overrides fatigue receptors, and boosts kinetic reaction time by forty percent for exactly ten minutes.]’
‘[Warning: Host will experience severe physiological crash upon expiration.]’
I didn’t hesitate.
I materialized the auto-injector directly into my left hand.
It was heavy, made of brushed steel and hard plastic.
It didn’t belong in this medieval world.
But I didn’t care.
I jammed the needle directly into my thigh, right through my leather pants.
I pressed the trigger.
The hiss of the pneumatic injection was loud in the quiet stairwell.
The amber fluid shot into my bloodstream.
The effect was absolutely instantaneous.
My eyes snapped open.
The suffocating exhaustion vanished entirely.
The burning ache in my shoulders evaporated.
My heart hammered a frantic, mathematically precise rhythm against my ribs.
I felt like I had just drank ten cups of my infinite espresso all at once.
The world around me slowed down to a crawl.
My perception of time was dilated.
‘[Leon Template Integration increased to 35%.]’
‘[Parker Template Integration increased to 48%.]’
The dual personas in my head surged forward, fueled by the chemical adrenaline.
I wasn’t just Kai anymore.
I was a terrifying fusion of a sarcastic superhero and a lethal, wisecracking survivor.
I stepped out from behind the stone wall.
I walked directly into the massive, dimly lit basement.
The air was thick with dust and the smell of Titan breath.
The gas canisters were stacked in massive iron racks along the far wall.
And standing directly between me and the gas were three four-meter Titans.
They were hideous.
One was entirely bald, its jaw distended in a permanent, grotesque grin.
The second had disproportionately long arms that dragged on the stone floor.
The third was staring blankly at a stone pillar, drooling heavily.
They heard my boots on the stone.
All three of them turned their massive, unblinking eyes toward me.
They didn’t roar.
They just smiled, their biological programming registering fresh meat.
I held my steel blades in a loose, relaxed reverse grip.
I didn’t take a defensive stance.
I just stood there, my head tilted slightly to the side.
A strange, unfamiliar smirk crept onto my face.
It wasn’t my smile.
It was Peter’s nervous bravado mixed perfectly with Leon’s absolute contempt for biological horrors.
“You guys are entirely too ugly to be standing this close to me,” I said out loud.
My voice was casual.
Almost bored.
The bald Titan lunged.
It was fast for a four-meter class.
It threw its massive hands forward, attempting to grab me and crush my ribs.
I didn’t fire my ODM cables.
The ceiling was twelve feet high.
I would have brained myself on the wooden rafters.
I relied entirely on the Adrenal-Stim and my integrated reflexes.
I stepped into the Titan’s guard.
I moved so fast I felt the air pressure crack around my shoulders.
‘Targeting the patellar tendon,’ my Parker intellect calculated instantly.
‘Leverage point optimal.
Execution,’ Leon’s CQC programming finalized.
I ducked completely under the grasping hands.
I spun on my heel, bringing my right blade in a devastating, sweeping horizontal arc.
The razor-sharp steel sliced cleanly through the back of the Titan’s knee.
It severed the hamstring and shattered the joint capsule.
The Titan’s massive weight betrayed it.
With its structural support completely destroyed, the monster collapsed backward with a deafening crash.
Its head slammed into the stone floor, bringing its nape directly down to my level.
“Watch your step,” I quipped.
I didn’t even look down.
I reversed my left blade, driving it straight down into the exposed flesh of the fallen Titan’s neck.
I flicked my wrist, severing the spinal connection.
One down.
The Titan immediately began to vaporize into boiling steam.
I stepped through the burning fog without breaking stride.
The long-armed Titan was already swinging at me.
It threw a sweeping backhand that would have pulverized a normal cadet against the stone wall.
My threat-assessment radar painted the trajectory in glowing red.
‘Kinetic impact in 0.2 seconds.
Evasion route: vertical.’
I jumped.
I didn’t just jump; I used Peter Parker’s deep understanding of kinetic transfer.
I planted my boot directly onto the incoming, massive forearm of the Titan.
I used its own swinging momentum as a springboard.
I vaulted directly into the air, flipping over the Titan’s head.
“Going up,” I muttered in mid-air.
As I passed over its shoulders, I brought both blades down in a flawless, scissor-like cross-slash.
The blades bit deep into the nape.
The friction sparked as steel met bone.
I landed softly on my feet on the other side.
The long-armed Titan froze, a massive, X-shaped wound carved deeply into its neck.
It crumpled to the floor, instantly dissolving into steam.
Two down.
I let out a slow, controlled breath.
The adrenaline was singing in my veins.
I was moving with a fluidity and a lethality that completely defied the physical limitations of a twelve-year-old body.
I felt untouchable.
I felt like I could take on the entire world with a rusty spoon.
I spun the blades in my hands, locking my eyes onto the final Titan.
The drooling one.
It hadn’t moved.
It was just standing there, watching its companions dissolve into burning fog.
It tilted its head, its grotesque smile stretching wider.
It let out a low, guttural hiss.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I deadpanned, slowly walking toward it.
“I’m not on the menu today.”
The Titan charged.
It didn’t swing its arms.
It simply opened its massive jaws and threw its entire body weight forward, aiming to bite me in half.
‘Frontal assault.
Highly predictable.
Center of gravity heavily pitched forward,’ my Parker brain analyzed.
I didn’t move left or right.
I ran directly at the charging monster.
At the absolute last possible millisecond, I dropped into a baseball slide on the smooth stone floor.
I slid directly underneath the snapping jaws, passing right between the Titan’s wide-set legs.
As I slid underneath, I raised both of my blades straight up.
The sheer forward momentum of the charging Titan did all the work.
My blades acted like an industrial meat slicer.
They ripped directly through the Titan’s abdominal cavity, carving a massive, devastating trench from its stomach all the way up to its chest.
The monster shrieked, stumbling forward and crashing blindly into a heavy iron gas rack.
The metal groaned and buckled under the impact.
I popped back up to my feet behind it.
The Titan was trying to turn around, clutching its steaming, ruined stomach.
I didn’t give it the chance.
I sprinted up its massive, hunched back.
I planted my boot directly between its shoulder blades, generating maximum downward leverage.
I raised my right blade high above my head.
“Class dismissed,” I whispered.
I drove the blade straight down into the nape, burying it completely to the hilt.
The Titan went rigid.
Then, it collapsed entirely, dissolving into the familiar, suffocating steam of death.
Three down.
The basement was completely silent, save for the hissing of the evaporating corpses.
I stood in the center of the room, my chest heaving despite the chemical adrenaline.
My hands were trembling slightly.
Not from fear.
From the sheer, overwhelming power surging through my unified nervous system.
I looked down at the blood evaporating off my steel blades.
‘[Combat Engagement Complete.
Flawless Execution.]’
‘[Parker Template Integration stabilized at 48%.]’
‘[Leon Template Integration stabilized at 35%.]’
I wiped a bead of sweat off my forehead with the back of my leather glove.
The quipping.
The one-liners.
The absolute, fearless arrogance in the face of monsters.
It wasn’t an act anymore.
It was just who I was becoming.
The terrified, lazy boy who just wanted to take naps on a clay roof was slowly, inevitably dying.
He was being replaced by a weapon.
A highly cynical, mathematically precise, incredibly sarcastic weapon.
I hated it.
But as I looked at the massive iron racks filled with hundreds of fully pressurized ODM gas canisters, I knew it was the only way to survive.
If I had remained a lazy coward, my entire squad would have died in that alleyway.
If I had remained a normal cadet, I would have been eaten in this basement.
To save the people I cared about, I had to let the templates take the wheel.
I sheathed my blades with a sharp clack.
I walked over to the heavy iron doors at the base of the stairwell.
I grabbed the handle and hauled the door open.
I looked up the dark stone steps.
“The basement is clear!” I yelled, my voice completely devoid of panic.
“Send the resupply teams down!
You have exactly three minutes before the chemical adrenaline in my system expires and I completely collapse!”
There was a moment of stunned silence from the floor above.
Then, the frantic, echoing sound of dozens of boots scrambling down the stone stairs.
Jean was the first one through the door.
He stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes wide as he took in the scene.
The basement was completely empty.
The stone floor was covered in massive, evaporating puddles of boiling Titan blood.
The air was thick with white, burning steam.
And I was just standing in the middle of it, leaning casually against a rack of gas canisters, looking incredibly bored.
“You…” Jean stammered, his jaw practically hitting the floor.
“You killed all three of them?
In two minutes?
Without cables?!”
“It’s a simple matter of leverage, Jean,” I deadpanned, grabbing a fresh gas canister and sliding it into my left hip holster.
“If you shatter the structural support, the target will always fall to a highly convenient stabbing height.”
Marco jogged into the room behind Jean, completely speechless.
The rest of the cadets flooded into the basement, their terror instantly replaced by desperate, frantic relief.
They swarmed the iron racks, rapidly swapping out their empty gas canisters for fresh ones.
“Kai,” Marco breathed, walking up to me, his eyes filled with absolute awe.
“That was…
that was incredible.
You saved us.”
“I didn’t save you, Marco.
I secured logistical supplies,” I corrected him, swapping my right canister.
“Now fill your gear and get ready to move.
We are climbing the wall in exactly two minutes.”
I stepped back, allowing the other cadets to access the rack.
My vision suddenly blurred.
A sharp, violent spike of pain lanced through my temples.
The Adrenal-Stim syringe was reaching the end of its ten-minute half-life.
My heart rate began to plummet.
The crushing, suffocating weight of my physical exhaustion came crashing back down on my shoulders like a falling piano.
My legs felt like lead.
I leaned heavily against the stone wall, pulling my flat cap down over my eyes to hide the grimace of pain on my face.
‘Ten minutes of absolute power,’ I thought miserably, rubbing the injection site on my thigh.
‘Followed by a physiological crash that makes me want to sleep for a week.’
“Kai?
Are you okay?” Armin asked.
He had quietly slipped down the stairs, his eyes red and puffy from crying.
He was holding two fresh gas canisters, looking at me with deep concern.
I straightened my posture, forcing the weakness down.
“I am functioning at optimal parameters, Armin,” I lied smoothly.
“Fill your gear.
We are leaving this district.”
Armin nodded slowly, clicking the canisters into his harness.
He didn’t mention Eren.
I didn’t mention Eren.
We just existed in a hollow, silent void of shared trauma, completely focused on the mechanical task of surviving the next five minutes.
Suddenly, a massive, deafening roar echoed from the streets above.
It wasn’t the high-pitched, garbled shriek of a normal Titan.
It was a deep, guttural, earth-shaking roar of pure, unadulterated rage.
It sounded like a wild beast challenging the heavens.
The stone floor of the basement vibrated violently.
Dust rained down from the ceiling.
The cadets froze, dropping their gas canisters in fresh panic.
“What was that?” Jean whispered, his eyes darting to the ceiling.
“That didn’t sound like a normal Titan.”
My threat-assessment radar was going absolutely insane.
A massive biological anomaly had just manifested less than two blocks away.
And its acoustic signature was entirely focused on extreme aggression.
I recognized that roar.
I hadn’t heard it in this life, but I knew exactly what it was.
I looked at Armin.
His blue eyes were wide, staring at the ceiling, a strange, undeniable spark of recognition flashing in his pupils.
‘The Attack Titan has entered the chat,’ I noted internally.
I grabbed the handles of my ODM gear, the fatigue completely pushed aside by a fresh wave of adrenaline.
“Change of plans,” I announced to the frozen cadets, drawing my blades with a sharp, echoing ring of steel.
“We are not climbing the wall.”
Jean spun around, glaring at me.
“What do you mean we’re not climbing the wall?!
We have gas!”
“I mean we have a new tactical objective,” I stated, walking toward the stairs.
“There is an anomaly outside that is currently dismantling the primary hostile swarm.
We are going to provide it with close air support.”
“You want us to help a Titan?!” Jean yelled, completely bewildered.
“I want to utilize a massive biological weapon to clear our extraction route,” I corrected him, climbing the stone steps.
I didn’t wait to see if they followed.
I pushed the heavy iron doors open and stepped back into the burning, smoke-choked reality of Trost District.
It was time to go meet my brother’s new, incredibly ugly form.
And maybe, just maybe, figure out how to explain to him that he owed me a massive apology for traumatizing me.
“Let’s go,” I whispered to the smoke.
“Time to go to work.”
_______________________
Author’s Note
Yawns so hard my jaw pops and adjusts my screen brightness to ‘blinding’…
Typing_In_My_Sleep here!
First off, I just want to give a massive thank you to all of you for the wonderful support and honest feedback!
I have been reading through the recent reviews and comments pointing out that our MC was acting a bit too much like a tactical robot lately.
You guys were totally right—my fried, exam-cramming brain was definitely bleeding into the story.
I have taken all of that feedback into consideration and actively changed things up for this chapter to make his personality shine through much better.
No more robotic stat-blocks!
Help yourselves to this new format of writing, and let me know if it feels like a step in the right direction.
And since you guys have been so incredibly supportive, let’s keep the bonus train rolling.Drop the stones, and my zombie hands will get right back to the keyboard to churn out another one for you today.
Enjoy the new chapter!
Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to try and catch a 15-minute nap before my textbooks consume me alive.
Snore…