What the hell was this?!
What did this even mean?!
The Marleyans couldn't understand why the Rumbling had suddenly stopped, why the Titans had suddenly gathered together and formed walls, encircling Marley.
At first, none of them could figure out what Roger Eikam was trying to do.
If he wanted to kill them—wipe their people out—then wouldn't it be enough to just have the Rumbling Titans stomp them one by one? Why "raise" them like livestock instead?
Is it to torture us? the Marleyans thought.
Sure—they could imagine what it felt like to be imprisoned inside giant walls, just like the Eldians had been: trapped, caged, with no freedom at all.
But so what?
The Marleyans didn't feel like this was some moment of utter despair.
Being trapped inside Marley didn't mean they would definitely die inside the walls.
They could coordinate trade through the south and the north, achieve self-sufficiency—they could absolutely rely on themselves.
And they had the technology to rebuild airships. When the timing was right, they could slip out over the wall while Roger Eikam wasn't paying attention. It wasn't that big a deal.
So they began preparing for exactly that.
Outside the walls, when the global allied forces saw this situation, they felt relieved—and at the same time, they felt Marley was truly unlucky.
How could Marley of all places have produced an Eldian like Roger Eikam—a demon in human skin?
But in the end, it was self-inflicted. Marley had been far too brutal toward its own Eldians, pushing them into extremism, into revenge.
No one else could be blamed for that.
After all, Marley never treated Eldians like human beings. They only ever wanted to use them as tools to invade other countries.
Now that Marley was the one being besieged—and Marley had, through this method of drawing hatred, succeeded in stopping the Rumbling completely—strictly speaking, that wasn't even a bad thing.
With a small breath of room, every nation felt the tension ease.
At last, they no longer had to live under the Rumbling's oppression!
But they could also predict what would happen next:
Once the Marleyans were dead—once Roger Eikam had trapped them inside the walls and slowly tortured them to death—the Rumbling would restart. And the next country to be surrounded could be any nation in the world.
So while the Rumbling Titans still couldn't move, the safest method was to destroy them completely.
And so, the instant the Rumbling Titans formed walls and "sealed in" the Marleyans, the allied forces began stockpiling war supplies again, shipping ammunition back near Marley, preparing to launch a new round of fierce attacks against the walls.
After imprisoning Marley, Roger Eikam didn't return to human form.
He remained a thousand-meter Titan, sitting silently beside the wall, one hand braced against it, watching as the allied forces gathered their supplies.
He was waiting.
Waiting for the right moment—and that moment would come from the Eldians inside the walls.
That's right.
Even though Roger Eikam had surrounded Marley with Titans, in the very heart of Marley there were still Eldians who had been abused and humiliated for generations by the Marleyans.
They were confined inside the internment zone, whose walls looked exactly like the Titan walls surrounding the country now.
They were all prisoners—but one group was imprisoned by another.
Roger Eikam didn't want to kill Marley with his own hands.
He wanted the Eldians inside to break free of their servile nature and kill the Marleyans themselves.
Now everything was ready.
The Marleyans were sealed in, with no one escaping—except for those Marleyans who had already been outside.
From here on, everything depended on the performance of the people inside the walls, and Roger Eikam wouldn't even need to lift a finger.
Because he believed that in the end, Marleyans would destroy themselves.
What he needed to do now was prepare to withstand the allied forces' attacks.
Gabi and Falco had followed the routed Marleyan troops back into Marley, but they never expected that the very next second after they crossed into the country, the entire nation would be surrounded by Titans—Titans that became walls, sealing Marley so tightly it was airtight.
There was nowhere to escape except through the sky.
Only a life of scraping by inside the walls.
Compared to the confused Marleyans, Gabi felt like this was nothing at all.
She had lived inside walls from the beginning—she had never been able to leave.
The farthest she'd ever gone was the edge of the internment zone, where she could stare at the distant ocean.
If she wanted to walk on the beach herself, she would have to climb over the internment zone's wall and cut through the electrified fence on top.
Once, she'd wanted to plan something secret with her friends—climb over the wall, walk on the sand, see the blue sea and golden shoreline up close.
But that plan was shattered by her dream of becoming a Warrior candidate.
Because the place was heavily guarded. There was no chance to climb out.
And if the guards caught her, her Warrior-candidate record would carry a stain that could never be wiped away.
And because of that stain, she could even drag her family down with her.
Back then, her uncle Reiner had only just managed to become the Armored Titan, becoming the pride of the whole family. If she wanted to inherit a Titan, she had to obey Marley's requirements strictly—only then could she successfully inherit the Armored Titan.
So for that greater dream, she had no choice but to give up her wish to see the sea.
And after years upon years of training, she had stopped caring about things like that anyway.
If they wouldn't let her out—fine.
At worst, it was just boring and lonely.
But the Marleyans didn't think that way.
Sure, some of them felt it didn't matter—so what if they were trapped? As long as they lived, that was enough.
But more people craved freedom. They didn't want to be imprisoned, and they didn't want to be treated like livestock.
So they cursed the Marleyan army, cursed them as useless trash with no ability.
But no matter how much they cursed, they didn't have the power to fight back.
The only ones they could hurt—where they could vent their rage—were people even lower than them:
Eldians.
Hatred seemed to reach its peak. The Marleyans shoved all blame onto the Eldians, but because they couldn't defeat the Eldians inside the Titan walls, they could only bully the "cowards" inside the internment zone.
They rounded them up and executed them one after another.
Before beheading them, they gave a reason:
"These people could all become Titans that bring disaster. Rather than let Roger Eikam turn them, it's better to eliminate the threat now."
But it was absurd beyond belief.
The Eldians in the internment zone were furious to the limit. If fellow Eldians had already broken out and gained freedom—if someone had even turned around and surrounded Marley itself—then for them to remain this weak and submissive would be unforgivable.
So they decided to send representatives—using the chaos as cover—to slip out into Marley, climb up onto the Titan wall, and tell Roger Eikam:
They also wanted to become Titans.
They also wanted revenge.
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