"The enemy... is Marley... The enemy is Marley..." Eren repeated this phrase over and over again, as if he had fallen into some kind of obsession.
Gale left him alone for the moment, allowing the boy's mind to keep working for a while longer. He was not mature enough yet; he had not even gone through puberty.
Human development takes time; he has not yet accumulated enough experience.
But thinking about it carefully, Eren's life is quite unfair. At such a young age, he has to face such complicated family relationships.
Is this perhaps a tragedy of this era? What consequences do conflicts between people have on a child's mind?
…
Around noon, Gale saw a signal flare being fired outside the wall.
It was a green flare; it was a signal that they were returning.
"Levi and the others are coming back."
Under Hannes' orders, the garrison soldiers quickly lowered the wooden wheeled crane, and in the distance, horses appeared. It was Levi and Hange returning on horseback.
Levi and Hange were covered in blood, looking as if they had gone through a fierce battle.
Everyone entered the crane platform and was lifted to a position out of the Titans' reach, before those near the city wall could pounce on them.
"We found the blonde, smiling Titan," Levi reported to Gale after returning to the city walls.
"Let's go inside and talk." Gale's eyes turned cold.
After entering the house, Levi and Hange removed their bloodstained clothes.
"I cut off that Titan's arms and legs," Levi said, taking a big gulp of water before continuing, "and Ymir, in her Titan form, dragged it to the ruins of a cabin, and we tied it down with stones."
"That thing won't be able to move for quite a while," Hange suddenly said while wiping the sweat from her forehead.
"How far is the place from here?" Gale handed glasses of water to Hange and Ymir.
"About five kilometers," Hange replied immediately as she took the glass. "It's an old village. We killed all the Titans around it."
"Five kilometers…" Gale stroked his chin. "Let's not delay. We'll transport that Titan to the city walls after sunset today!"
"Captain Hange, could you do this once more and prepare the equipment capable of restraining a Titan of that size?"
"Ugh... are we going out again tonight?" Ymir complained from the side.
"You've worked hard, Ymir. You'll just accompany us without doing anything. Let the oxen and horses do the work tonight, but you still have to come," Gale smiled slightly and said, "I'll definitely give you a few days off when we return to the capital. Ah, and there's also the unlimited fried chicken coupon you can use in the dining hall."
Ymir shrugged and stopped complaining.
After assigning the tasks, Gale got to work quickly.
Levi and Ymir located the local soldiers and consulted nearby maps to determine the target.
Hange gathered her men to cut down trees inside the wall, sharpen stakes, and set up opaque tents.
Gale and Hannes went to find tools to move the Titan. The Titan that Dina Fritz had transformed into was twelve meters tall, and even without hands or feet, it was still a monster over ten meters high.
They found five wooden-wheeled carts used for transporting hay, removed the side panels, and crudely assembled them.
Inside the decoy city, construction was in full swing.
Finally, night fell, and the Titans outside the wall remained still.
The soldiers of Karanes opened the city gates, and Gale led his troops outside.
Tonight, the weather did not favor them. There was no moon, and the sky was covered with dark clouds.
Even with an oil lamp, one could barely see three or four meters ahead.
Visibility was extremely low, and all the garrison soldiers who had been summoned were on edge, not daring to make a single sound.
Along the way, they encountered a sleeping Titan. In the darkness, a medium-sized Titan, about seven meters tall, lay on its side in the grass, its eyes wide open and piercing, as if it might move at any moment.
A young soldier was so frightened that he wet himself. It must be said that the quality of these soldiers is worrying.
A large portion of them were recently recruited soldiers.
The reason for becoming a soldier was not complicated; it was simply to make a living.
Thanks to their physical advantages and talent, they passed the recruitment selection, but compared to real soldiers, they were far from qualified. They only knew how to use three-dimensional maneuvering equipment, and none of them would survive on the battlefield.
These soldiers would need to be eliminated from Gale's plans later on.
They had attended military academies, could read, and were better suited to become teachers; soldiers needed to be recruited and retrained.
From now on, Paradis Island would not need these parasites; what it needed was an army capable of executing orders quickly.
Under the cover of night, the column marched in silence, and only the creaking of wooden wheels and the breathing of oxen and horses could be heard.
Five kilometers was not a long distance, and soon they arrived at the old village.
Nearby, there were still some Titan skeletons that had not completely disappeared, but only fragments remained.
Judging by the number of vertebrae, Levi and his squad had killed quite a few—around twenty.
Dina Fritz, the blonde Titan, was trapped against a stone wall in the middle of a collapsed house.
The reddish light of the fire dispelled the darkness and illuminated her face, which showed a sinister and rather unsettling smile. Her limbs appeared deformed and undernourished compared to her unusually well-developed ribs.
She was a Titan that could scare children to tears with a single glance.
Eren raised his head and stared at Dina with a blank expression.
This Titan had eaten his own mother right before his eyes.
"No... no... It's Marley!"
"The Marleyans destroyed the wall, so they ate Mother!" Eren clenched his fists, his gaze sharp.
Dina's amputated limbs had begun to heal, though not completely. At night, she remained motionless, just like the other Titans.
Even royalty, once transformed into Titans, is no different from other Pure Titans.
"Eren, can you lift her onto the platform?" Gale said without looking at him; he did not care about his feelings. In war, feelings do not matter—everyone must keep that in mind.
"Leave it to me." Eren nodded.
"Everyone stand back, give him enough space!" Hange ordered the other soldiers.
The crowd dispersed, and Eren cut the palm of his hand with a knife.
A golden flash of lightning shone, and the sound of thunder was like the chirping of birds.
The Attack Titan stood majestically above the crowd.
Eren looked at Dina Fritz, slowly bent down, and removed the stone wall pressing against her.
He extended his hand and touched Dina, intending to lift her onto the wooden cart.
The moment he touched her, something suddenly crossed his mind.
They were memories—fragments of memories, countless pieces and images flooding his mind.
For everyone else, that moment was still just an instant, but for Eren, it felt like an eternity.
The sudden flood of information in his mind made him dizzy.
He was not sure whether those things were real, and there were many things he could not understand, but he could also see scenes from the past.
That day... at the foundry... Why did he drag Armin to see the blast furnace? Why did he do that?
It was because of... curiosity... right?