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"Who is that?"
Luo Ao stared at the tall, thin man, his heart full of confusion.
What was he going to do?
"Holy shit..." Jared, who had also made it to the surface, watched the scene unfold. "He's really going to fight the MUTO head-on." The guy hadn't listened to a word he'd said.
"UWOAH!!"
The MUTO's roar tore through the dim city ruins. Every pane of glass left in the collapsed buildings shattered. Even the green moss clinging to the rubble trembled. It had sensed something unusual. Its hundred-meter body stood among the desolate wreckage, crimson eyes sweeping downward.
It saw the man who had already raised his arms.
"Dr. Serizawa! An ultra-high energy reaction has appeared inside San Francisco!"
"The readings are extremely similar to the mysterious luminous body the satellite captured earlier!" Inside the Monarch outpost, the technician monitoring the San Francisco area had caught the sudden anomaly and was already reporting to Dr. Ishiro Serizawa.
"Is there any live footage?" Dr. Ishiro Serizawa stepped forward immediately, eyes on the screen, expression tight.
The Titan had appeared , and now this mysterious entity had followed right behind it.
He couldn't help but wonder about the connection between them. Coming to Earth from space. Could the Titans be the target?
"The MUTO's electromagnetic pulse destroyed our remaining surveillance network in that area. No live footage." The technician reported.
"Contact the Air Force. Route their feed here." Dr. Ishiro Serizawa said, frowning.
"Copy."
U.S. Air Force fighters were already closing on San Francisco airspace.
Conventional weapons couldn't hurt a Titan , everyone knew that , but the military couldn't sit completely still. The first wave was primarily reconnaissance. If things escalated to the worst-case scenario, they might have to consider the ultimate weapon that had been developed specifically for the Titans.
Five years since the first Titan appeared before the world. Five years, and no country had been idle.
"Image sync authorized. Routing live feed now." The technician patched through the Air Force connection.
The central screen in the monitoring room switched to a night sky. Fighter jets, their silhouettes perfectly sculpted for fluid dynamics, cut through dark clouds. From a great distance, the ruins of the San Francisco battle zone were already visible below.
"A female MUTO." Dr. Serizawa narrowed his eyes, identifying the gray-black Titan. Female. Extremely similar to the individual that had appeared in San Francisco before.
"And..."
Not far from the MUTO, a blazing pillar of light was rising from the ground.
In this dim, silent battlefield, it looked sacred. It looked staggering.
"What... is that light?"
Behind his glasses, his gaze was dead serious. Nothing like this had ever appeared on Earth before. Monarch had dealt with Titans for decades. They had never seen anything like this.
The pillar of light shot skyward and flooded the surrounding ruins with brilliance. In an image that looked like the end of the world, something in that light felt like hope.
"37.8050° N, 122.4785° W. Titan confirmed, codename MUTO."
"Two hundred and sixty meters ahead of the MUTO — a mysterious pillar of light."
"Requesting instructions."
The fighters screamed through the night sky. The pilot in the cockpit, breathing mask on, took in the scene below and relayed the report to his superiors over comms.
"WHOOSH—"
The pillar of light began to fade. A powerful gust of wind rolled outward from the point of dissipation.
Jared, pressed into a corner of the ruins, instinctively threw his arm up and stared at the dimming light.
"A giant... emerging from the light."
"Is that your true form?"
As the light cleared, what stood before them was a giant , visually, somewhere over eighty meters tall. Its body was silver, traced with red that pulsed like something alive. Its limbs were long and lean. Its eyes gave off a soft, steady glow. At its chest, a crystal shone blue.
It looked exactly like what humans had always imagined when they dreamed of aliens. But there was no terror in it. What you felt instead was harmony. Order.
The moment the giant appeared, every fighter pilot in the sky and every soldier on the ground reached the same instinctive conclusion: this thing had come to save them.
"UWOAH!!"
The MUTO stared at the giant and took one involuntary step back. Its crimson eyes moved slowly, scanning every inch of the other's body.
The Apex organization's ORCA device was destroyed. Its consciousness was no longer leashed. It registered the light pouring off this giant that had appeared from nowhere, and something deep in its instincts pulled tight with wariness.
In the memory written into their genes, things that glowed were generally not worth the trouble.
But.
The energy radiating from this creature was something else entirely. Purer than anything it had encountered. Far more enticing than nuclear power. If it could absorb all of that energy, it was certain it would evolve.
"UWOAH!!"
The MUTO made its decision. It would hunt this giant. The crimson light in its eyes blazed brighter. It moved, all six slender limbs striking the ground as it launched itself toward the giant.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Its weight exceeded seventy thousand tons. Every step through the ruined city gouged the earth. Concrete cracked and split across wide swaths of ground. Debris and rock flew. Wrecked cars tumbled and spun. The shockwaves alone were a spectacle of raw, crushing force.
"Run!"
"Move! NOW!"
Luo Ao watched the Titan surge into motion. His pupils snapped tight. He was already shouting, already waving his soldiers back, pushing them toward the distance.
Caught between two colossal bodies. This was as close to hell as it got.
Tactical flashlights swept across the shattered ground beneath their boots. The earth was heaving so violently they could barely stay upright. The MUTO was getting closer with every second. They were sprinting against death and losing.
Humans. Under two meters tall on average. Against a Titan a hundred meters high. The monster's limbs, seen from directly below, were thicker than bridge support columns. Its movements looked almost slow from a distance. From down here, it was a speed no human legs could ever match, no matter how hard they ran.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
The giant didn't yield. It moved to meet the Titan, each footfall driving a deep pit into the earth. The ground shook harder. Buildings that had been swaying on the edge finally gave up and began to fall.
The giant raised its arms and caught the MUTO's limbs as they drove in to clamp around it.
They collided.
Tens of thousands of tons meeting tens of thousands of tons. The impact was catastrophic. The already-crumbling buildings around them didn't just crack , their surfaces blew apart.
"WHAT THE F,—"
Luo Ao's squad was standing right at the epicenter. There was no time to run. A massive force slammed into their backs and they were airborne, hurled by the shockwave, crashing down somewhere in the distance.
The worst part , the part that made it feel like a nightmare , was that the fear was completely real, but their bodies were completely unharmed.
Was this the price for getting too close to Titan power?
➤ Next: My God! — Clash
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