The Child

A sharp hiss rang out, followed by the thunderous sound of steam venting.

"Squad Leader Vig! Come look! H-how is this possible?" A voice reached Yago's ears.

Yago's mind was a haze. He struggled to open his eyes, but his eyelids felt as though they had been glued shut.

"What is it? What's so interesting about a Titan's corpse?" another voice asked, followed by footsteps.

Yago sensed someone approaching. He wanted to speak, wanted to open his eyes, but he had no strength anywhere in his body. Gradually, his consciousness grew hazier until he slipped into darkness.

Outside, in a lush forest, many towering trees lay toppled on the ground, as though something had rampaged through them. Enormous bodies littered the earth, human in shape, but visibly dissolving.

The Titans' bodies were evaporating like water. Each had a massive wound across its nape, as though it had been sliced open by a sharp weapon.

The ground held not only Titan corpses, but also many mangled human bodies. They wore green cloaks, with strange mechanical devices strapped to their waists and sharp, utility-knife-like blades clutched in their hands.

On their dark green cloaks was a shield-shaped emblem bearing two overlapping wings, one blue and one white.

Any Attack on Titan fan from the real world would have screamed in recognition at the sight of the famous Survey Corps! Naturally, that meant this was the world of Attack on Titan!

Vig was a veteran of the Survey Corps. He had brown hair, and the stubble around his mouth showed that he was no longer young. He had joined the Survey Corps in the year 835.

It was now 845. After taking command, Erwin, the new commander of the Survey Corps, had launched the 38th expedition beyond the walls. He had also employed a brand-new formation, the Long-Distance Scouting Formation, which had considerably reduced the Corps' casualty rate and given its morale a tremendous boost.

Unfortunately, this expedition beyond the walls had still yielded nothing. Even though they had traveled farther than on previous expeditions, the Survey Corps had suffered heavy losses.

Vig walked toward his comrade, asking as he went, "What is it, Giso? Did you find something?"

Giso's eyes were wide with fear and shock. The Titan corpse before him was rapidly evaporating, but at its nape, where a Titan's weak point should have been, lay a naked, black-haired little boy with his eyes closed. Disgusting Titan blood and membranes clung to the boy's body, and the slight rise and fall of his chest showed that he was alive.

Vig reached Giso's side and sucked in a breath, his face just as incredulous. How could there be a human inside a Titan's body?

Vick Squad was an ordinary squad in the Survey Corps, led by Vig, a former member of an elite squad. They had been responsible for scouting the right flank when an Abnormal Titan and seven or eight other Titans had suddenly ambushed them.

Of the squad's eighteen members, sixteen had died in battle, leaving only Squad Leader Vig and the soldier Giso. Just as they had been cornered, a strange fifteen-meter Titan had charged over. Rather than attacking them, it had launched a frenzied assault on the other Titans.

The Abnormal Titan responsible for half the squad's casualties had died in its jaws.

After killing the other Titans, the strange Titan had also collapsed with a crash and begun evaporating. Finding this odd, Giso had jumped onto its corpse and sliced open its nape with his blade, revealing the scene before them.

Giso swallowed hard and looked at Vig. "Squad Leader, is-is this child a Titan?"

"This is unbelievable," Vig said. "How could this child be inside a Titan's body? Was he eaten?"

Giso shook his head. "Squad Leader, that's impossible. We're outside the walls, a long way from Wall Maria. How could there be a child here? Besides, he's still showing signs of life."

Vig fell into thought as well.

"Squad Leader, should we...?"

Giso raised his blade. His meaning was clear: should they eliminate this potential threat, which might be connected to the Titans?

Vig said nothing. Hesitantly, Giso placed his blade against the child's neck, but just as he was about to strike, Vig stopped him.

"Stop!" Vig said firmly. "This child might be the Survey Corps' hope-our hope of uncovering the secrets beyond the walls and learning where the Titans came from." As he spoke, he picked up the boy. Perhaps it was because that strange Titan had saved them earlier.

Whatever the reason, Vig was far from calm, and Giso breathed a sigh of relief as well. If he had really been made to kill this child, who looked only eleven or twelve, he might not have been able to bring himself to do it.

Wooden wheels creaked as two tall horses pulled a flatbed wagon carrying the fallen soldiers of Vick Squad, their bodies wrapped in white cloth. Giso drove the wagon with a heavy heart. The comrades with whom he had spent every day were now cold corpses. Many of their bodies had not even been recovered intact.

Ahead of the wagon, Vig rode on horseback. A small figure sat in front of him, wearing a shirt and trousers far too large for his frame and clutching a bag of dry rations, which he gnawed at like a hamster. Whenever he ate too quickly, he took a sip of water to wash it down. He looked as though he had been starved for ages.

The little boy was, of course, Yago, who had woken up.

"Yago, do you really have no idea why you were here?" Vig asked helplessly.

Yago swallowed the food in his mouth and rolled his eyes. "Old man, I've told you dozens of times. I don't know where this is, either. All I remember is that my name is Yago Norman."

Of course, Yago had kept quite a few secrets to himself. For example, there were strange memories in his mind in which he lived somewhere full of tall buildings. Those memories were very hazy, but judging by what he could make out, had he undergone what was called transmigration?

And the language he was speaking now seemed to be called Japanese in those memories. It was strange. Yago also had another hazy memory of a crowded place, like a concentration camp in a documentary. A flash of gold kept appearing in it, and he instinctively felt that this golden flash was important to him-very important!

Seeing that he could get nothing more out of him, Vig sighed and ruffled Yago's hair.

Yago impatiently ducked away. "Don't touch my head! You'll stunt my growth!"

Giso heard him and laughed. "So what if you don't grow tall? There's a short guy in the Survey Corps who's ridiculously strong."

"You little punk," Vig said. "If Levi heard that, you'd be in for it."

"It's fine, it's fine," Giso said. "As long as you don't tell the captain, Squad Leader."

Vig shook his head with a helpless smile, but when he remembered that he and Giso were the only survivors of his squad, grief welled up inside him.

Yago seemed to have lost his memory and knew nothing about anything inside or outside the walls, so Vig could only slowly explain their history to him.