The True Hunt
After Shiganshina District, the outer city beyond Wall of Maria, fell, the gate between the outer region and Shiganshina District was immediately smashed apart by the suddenly appearing Armored Giant.
Traveling in the opposite direction from Eren and the others, Lianye, who had turned his hunting blade toward the Titans, also discovered the Armored Giant under the pull of his hunting instincts.
However, the traits of this ultimate prey were even more troublesome than those of the Colossal Giant.
Its extremely tough armored body, along with the unparalleled speed granted by its streamlined physique—unlike the bloated bodies of other Titans—allowed the Armored Giant to smash through the gate in a single charge after accelerating, while remaining completely unharmed.
Yet afterward, before Lianye and the Pride Stalker could turn their spearhead toward the Armored Giant, it vanished as mysteriously as the Colossal Giant had, disappearing from the Giant Hunting Ground as though it had never existed.
----To put it in an outdated phrase: it showed off and ran. So damn thrilling.
Both the Armored Giant and the Colossal Giant disappeared shortly after appearing and smashing through the walls.
Even with the crimson vision of Hunting Rhythm activated and his heightened senses, Lianye was unable to find any trace of the two prey.
The effects of Hunting Rhythm could not compare to Card Master's skill, Fate.
The former activated the Pride Stalker's ultimate predatory instincts, allowing him to sense a prey's direction, even its shape and tracks. The latter, however, allowed him to obtain vision by glimpsing others' figures; more importantly, Twisted Fate's effect was to divine fate.
In other words, the former precisely sensed a prey's location to aid in the hunt, but once the Colossal Giant and Armored Giant disappeared, it lost their trail. Fate, on the other hand, could peer into everything—even which Titan's mother had given birth to it, whether it needed its diapers changed as a child, and how many times it wet the bed. Let alone divining why the Armored Giant and Colossal Giant had appeared and disappeared.
Limited by his ability, Lianye's pursuit of the ultimate prey came to a temporary end.
In truth, Lianye was not certain that, having possessed the Pride Stalker's Hero Ability for less than a month, he could kill the Armored Giant, whose combat instincts and fighting skills far surpassed those of ordinary Titans and whose body possessed overwhelming defensive power.
Even the ultimate hunting technique under Brutal Reward depended on Lianye's base attributes.
-----Therefore, before setting his sights on the Armored Giant and Colossal Giant, Lianye planned to increase the stacks of his Bone Tooth Necklace first and strengthen his basic attributes.
As proof of the glory of the hunt, each Titan he killed would become another strand of essence within the Bone Tooth Necklace, feeding back to strengthen the hunter's power.
To kill those two ultimate prey in the next pursuit, the Pride Stalker was honing his hunting blade and preparing for the next hunt.
Titans continuously poured in from southern Shiganshina District until they had completely occupied the vast outer region between Wall of Rose and Wall of Maria.
Humanity's already precious living space shrank even further. Of the three regions enclosed by the three walls, the largest had fallen to the Titans.
A year later, the Royal Government dispatched a fighting force made up of two hundred and fifty thousand refugees, launching a "counterattack" against the Titans occupying the outer region under the pretext of reclaiming lost territory.
But that—rather than a counterattack—was more like suicide.
With the disparity in strength so extreme, it was nothing more than eggs thrown against a rock.
War was supposed to be a contest and struggle between two sides of equal strength. Refugees with no combat awareness, no fighting skills, and no firearms could not possibly be compared with the ferocious Titans that specifically preyed on humans.
The counterattack launched by the two hundred and fifty thousand refugee soldiers against the Titans in the outer region was nothing but a march toward death.
----Well, in truth, they intended to send those refugees to their deaths.
Lianye understood this clearly. The land and food resources in the interior could not possibly sustain so many refugees alongside the local population. Only by sending enough refugees to die could the remaining people barely survive.
Whatever cruel clashes of human nature or deceitful political struggles were involved had nothing to do with Lianye. As long as they did not interfere with his hunting Titans in the hunting ground, that was enough.
Before you continue