"Armin... where's Eren?" Mikasa seemed to have already guessed something, but she refused to believe it. She wanted to hear Armin say it himself.
Armin looked at Mikasa and Arthur. After holding it in for so long, he finally broke down and burst into tears.
"From our Squad 34... Thomas Wagner, Mina Carolina, and Eren Yeager bravely gave their lives. They all died in battle." Armin sobbed as he delivered the terrible news.
The brutal news shocked everyone present.
After saying those words, Armin lowered his head again, as though his soul had been drained away. He braced both hands against the ground as large tears kept falling.
"It's all my fault! I was so cowardly that I got too scared to move. If I hadn't, Eren wouldn't have had to sacrifice himself to save me!" Armin was overwhelmed with guilt and self-reproach.
"..." Arthur and Mikasa froze. Neither could quite believe it. They had never expected Eren to actually die.
"Have I lost my family again...?" Mikasa, who also considered Eren family, murmured bitterly. She hadn't expected that she would still be so weak, still unable to protect her family.
"Eren, you..." Arthur wanted to curse Eren out, but the words simply wouldn't come. He, too, had grown deeply attached to Eren. At some point, he had begun to see that hotheaded idiot who did nothing but cause trouble as his little brother.
"How could this happen...?" Hearing that Eren, Thomas, and Mina had all died, Jean and Connie struggled to accept such a cruel reality.
Only days ago, their comrades had been raising their glasses together and shouting about wiping out the Titans. Now they were gone forever.
"Eren, weren't you going to wipe out every last Titan? How could you..." Grief and anger drove Jean to punch the chimney beside him so hard that fine cracks appeared in the bricks.
Although Jean liked to bicker with Eren and disagreed with his ideals, that didn't change the fact that he truly considered Eren a close friend.
"Only one person from Squad 34 survived." Connie clutched his head, terror written across his face. He was afraid that what had happened to Squad 34 would happen to him.
"What...?" Sasha and Christa stood stunned as well. Both were deeply saddened. Mina, one of the three who had died, had been a close friend of theirs in the Training Corps, but now...
"I'm sorry... Arthur, Mikasa, it's all my fault! I was so scared. A Titan almost swallowed me, and Eren risked his life to save me. But I just stood there like an idiot and couldn't do anything... I'm sorry."
Tears streamed down Armin's face. He was in unbearable pain, hating himself for being so cowardly, so afraid.
He blamed himself for Eren's death. To him, if it hadn't been for him, Eren would surely still have been safe and sound.
Everyone remained silent, standing quietly where they were, but the despair on so many faces did nothing to hide the fear in their hearts.
"Phew..." Arthur looked up at the sky. The calm that had once filled his eyes was gone, replaced by madness and fury.
He lowered his head to look at the weeping Armin and crouched down. He knew Armin shouldn't be blamed for this.
"Armin, stand up. This isn't the time to cry or grieve." Arthur's voice held no emotion, as though he were a machine.
"Huh?" Armin raised his head in confusion, and their eyes met.
At that moment, Armin could faintly see a scorching flame blazing in Arthur's eyes.
"If Eren died to save you, then live on and carry his convictions with you! Don't let his sacrifice be for nothing." Arthur tried to guide Armin out of his despair.
Arthur's words reminded Armin of Eren's final expression when he had saved him, and of his last words, telling him to live on.
At that moment, something seemed to click. Armin stopped crying and firmly grasped the hand Arthur held out.
Arthur pulled him to his feet.
"So if we wipe out all the Titans surrounding Headquarters, everyone can get supplies, return to the wall, and evacuate, right?" Arthur asked the others, pointing toward Headquarters in the distance.
"That's right, but the number of Titans gathered at Headquarters..." Marco nodded, but he still had serious reservations. In the end, he was afraid of dying.
"Titans, huh... heh. So what if there are ten thousand?" Arthur drew his blade and pointed it toward Headquarters, brimming with fighting spirit. Even if there were tens or hundreds of thousands, he would simply kill them all.
He turned around, raised his blade, and swept his gaze over the others before demanding, "Do you want to wait here for reinforcements that might never come, or follow me and risk your lives fighting your way through the Titans?"
At Arthur's challenge, Mikasa and Armin stepped behind him of their own accord. They supported his decision unconditionally.
Christa looked at her man and walked straight over without hesitation, taking her place behind Arthur. They exchanged a glance filled with trust and love.
Ymir watched Christa's actions helplessly, then followed her to stand behind Arthur as well.
"Are you really that afraid of Titans? So you're just a bunch of cowards who've already submitted to them." Arthur sneered at the others, who remained unmoved and indecisive.
"Arthur, how can you say that? That's going too far!"
"We don't want things to be like this either, but there are just too many Titans!"
"Exactly. I don't want what happened to Squad 34 to happen to me."
"We're already running low on gas. If we take this risk and get nothing out of it, we might even lose the chance we still have to survive!"
Arthur's mockery angered the others. Fear had taken complete control of them, stripping away all the fighting spirit and will to resist that a person should have.
"Too many? You don't even dare to try! What right do you have to say there are too many Titans?" Arthur suddenly roared.
"..." Everyone fell silent, because Arthur had spoken the truth.
Just then, Arthur spotted three wandering Titans: one seven meters tall, another twelve, and even a fifteen-meter-class Titan.
Arthur planned to carve out the napes of those three Titans to rekindle the others' fighting spirit.
Mikasa, standing beside him, seemed to guess what Arthur intended and wanted to go with him, but this time he firmly refused.
He wanted those useless cowards who feared the Titans to witness true strength.
Arthur operated his Omni-Directional Mobility Gear and shot forward like an arrow, charging straight toward the tallest of them, the fifteen-meter-class Titan.
Everyone watched Arthur intently, while Christa and Mikasa looked worried.
The fifteen-meter Titan quickly noticed Arthur. It suddenly struck a strange, comical pose, then lunged violently at him with its jaws open. It was an abnormal Titan.
Arthur hadn't expected the fifteen-meter-class Titan to be an abnormal, but he didn't panic. The instant it lunged at him, he maneuvered through the air to dodge.
Then, the moment the abnormal's lunge missed, he became a blade drawn from its sheath, slicing the flesh from its nape with a single slash.
With its nape cut away, the abnormal died instantly and crashed heavily to the ground, beginning to decay into bare bones.
"!!!" Everyone gasped in amazement as Arthur killed a fifteen-meter Titan-and an abnormal at that-in a single instant.
"Die!" Arthur eyed the seven-meter and twelve-meter Titans drawn over by the commotion and saw that their napes were level with one another.
He shot forward, reversed his grip on his blades, and began to spin. In that instant, Arthur became a rapidly whirling top, slicing straight across the napes of both Titans.
A moment later, the flesh of both Titans' napes was cleanly severed, killing them.
Arthur had killed all three Titans in less than a minute, even using a slashing technique that looked incredibly difficult.
After dispatching the three Titans, Arthur returned to the rooftop, covered in blood. That was also the drawback of using his whirlwind slash: Titan blood inevitably splattered all over him.
Everyone stared for a moment at the blood-soaked Arthur, who looked like a god or demon, before erupting into thunderous cheers.
Through his actions, Arthur had proved that Titans weren't so frightening, reigniting everyone's fighting spirit.
"I'll ask one last time! Who's coming with me to break through their ranks and kill the enemy? And who's staying here to cling to life?" Arthur bellowed.
"I'm coming!"
"Me too!"
Arthur's feat and furious shout finally stirred the fighting spirit in their hearts. The uncertainty on their faces vanished, replaced by resolve and a willingness to lay down their lives.
"Honestly, Arthur, for a moment there I thought that idiot Eren had come back!" Jean's blood was pumping as well, and he resolutely took his place behind Arthur.
Sasha, Connie, Reiner, Marco, Bertolt, and Annie followed, then more and more people.
At that moment, everyone made up their minds. Whatever the outcome, they would follow Arthur and storm Headquarters for that sliver of hope.
"We're heading out!" Arthur, at the front, looked at the people following him and smiled.
"Raaah!" Everyone roared.
"Everyone, move out! Our target is Headquarters!" At Arthur's command, he shot forward, closely followed by Mikasa, Armin, Christa, and the rest.