The Rumbling wasn't as fast as people imagined—but it wasn't especially slow either. It simply kept moving forward, and that alone was enough to breed endless terror in the human heart.
Can you imagine it?
Countless sixty-meter Colossal Titans, slowly walking toward you from the distance. You can run—but sooner or later they will catch you. Even if you flee to the ends of the earth, in the end you'll still be crushed effortlessly beneath their gigantic feet.
And when that happens, every dream, every love, becomes nothing—everything is erased.
Humans live in this world, and many are not afraid of sacrifice. For their country, some will even offer up their lives.
What they fear most is dying with no value at all.
That is the cruelest punishment.
A suicide squad, before they die, will be written into their nation's history. Their names will be remembered by future generations.
But these people—if they were trampled to death—were simply trampled to death.
They might not even have descendants left to mourn them.
They wouldn't even qualify as martyrs.
In that instant, all history itself would be destroyed.
All traces. All ruins—left to be explored by whatever species came after.
Maybe aliens.
Maybe something that wasn't even human anymore.
And if that were the case, what would they think when they witnessed a human extinction event as brutal as the Rumbling?
Would they sigh at it?
Would they marvel?
Would they feel pity?
No matter what they felt, it would be meaningless to the humans living now.
No matter how much you might pity them, no matter how tragic you think their deaths are—it changes nothing.
What they need now is salvation.
They need someone who can stop these Titans completely—so they never trample another inch of land again.
But that was impossible.
They understood what they had done.
They brought war to this island that wanted nothing to do with the world.
Yes, a hundred years ago their ancestors had once ravaged this land—but for a full century afterward, the island had been silent.
For those hundred years, they had never reached outward. They had even imprisoned themselves inside the Walls, never even entertaining the idea of exploring beyond.
Of course, they couldn't go out anyway—because the island was infested with wandering Pure Titans released by Marley.
And now… the island had finally erupted in rage.
And even if their ancestors hadn't wanted to start a war, the one who truly started it wasn't their ancestor at all—
It was a sinner who fled from the continent to Paradis Island.
A war-crazed madman.
When the people of the continent formed their allied army, they investigated Roger Eikam and his origins.
They searched and searched, yet still couldn't uncover his true identity.
No matter how deeply they dug, they found only one piece of information:
He had once belonged to the Tybur family.
His father had once been a legendary figure—someone who, by himself, had subdued the War Hammer Titan.
Because of that, he was called the Tybur family's only general.
And Roger Eikam… was that general's son.
As the saying goes, a hero's son is no coward. From the very beginning, the continent had prepared itself to fight this man—Roger Eikam.
But no one could have imagined that Roger would avoid battle again and again, only to unveil his final trump card at the very end.
The Rumbling—something that had existed only as a tale from a century ago, a story worthy of being called legend—was now happening for real, on this continent.
Centered on Paradis Island, with the Walls as the core, those Colossal Titans marched forward in perfect rhythm—step after step—moving on and on.
They would nearly trample every inch of Paradis Island.
And after that, they would cross the sea and march for the continent.
When that happened… everyone on the continent would suffer.
They could only flee toward the farthest edge—toward the west.
But what did fleeing west accomplish?
In the end, their fate would still be to die horribly—crushed into bloody paste.
The only ones who could possibly escape disaster were the airships in the sky.
The moment the World Allied Forces' main command saw the Rumbling Titans, many people forced themselves back into calm.
Orders were issued at once: all airships were to take off immediately. No lingering on land. They would transition into aerial combat.
Once the message came through, the air force command immediately dispatched every airship, ordering them to fill to the brim with fuel and climb into the sky.
Only in the sky could Titans be unable to attack them.
But reaching a thousand meters of altitude?
That was a pipe dream.
No matter how brave they were, they had no way to strike a super-colossal Titan that stood a full thousand meters tall—
Roger.
At best, they could target some of the sixty-meter Colossal Titans on the ground, attempting nape strikes to reduce their numbers.
But what did that matter?
The sacrifice would be far too great.
If Roger wanted to swat them down, it would take nothing more than a single wave of his hand.
So when the air force command received the higher-up order, every airship pilot felt it was an impossible problem:
First, their fuel couldn't take them to a thousand meters.
Second, they had no way to deliver precise strikes against a Colossal Titan formation—because the moment they approached, Roger's thousand-meter Titan would shoot them down.
And when that happened, every loss would be a catastrophic loss for humanity.
And that…
That was humanity's last hope.
When hope collapsed, all that would remain was death and despair.
But the ground command had no capacity to consider any of this anymore. They were already in chaos.
The army command post on the hillside watched their forces get trampled little by little beneath those Titans. Shocked, they chose to retreat immediately.
Let the air force "hold back" the Colossals—that was the last solution they could think of.
After that, they had no mind left to devise any counterattack at all.
All they could do was run—passively—withdraw as fast as possible.
Because aside from cannons, there were no weapons capable of posing a fatal threat to those Titans, the command instantly ordered all soldiers to abandon all baggage and firearms.
At any cost, they were to move every cannon—haul them to a fixed location—and use them to establish a blocking line of fire against the Colossal Titans.
And that location needed to be… suitable.
So the command debated and debated, and in the end, they decided to place them in Marley.
Because if the Titans wanted to reach Marley, they would have to cross the sea.
Shells couldn't be poured onto Marley's land—
So when they fired at the Titans, the shots would fall on their own, sinking into the vast, endless ocean.
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