Human strength can't fight Titans with ease; Erwin knows this well.
Any battle against Titans comes with an enormous human cost.
Erwin had never imagined that one day, within the Walls, he would see Titans fall from the sky—and not just a few, but in droves.
Roger's power can be understood as an ordinary human obtaining an extraordinarily powerful Titan ability, but what on earth were these Titans raining down from above?
Could there be, besides Roger's Titan power, some other special Titan ability that can summon Titans?
And then he saw a Titan that looked like an ape.
That Titan seemed to be the source—the one making the Titans drop from the sky.
And in Erwin's sight, when these Titans transformed, almost all of them were ordinary humans. Nothing unusual—no extra eye, no missing mouth.
They—the ones who become Titans—were all just ordinary people.
If these people turn into Titans, do they really feel no sense of loss?
Their lives stripped away, transformed into mindless, freedomless Titans—monsters—can they truly feel no pain?
Once, the truth of the Titans was for Erwin mysterious and unknowable.
Now that the truth of their transformation lay suddenly before him, he found it cruel.
He remembered—what his father had once said.
His father had said Titans come from humans, creatures manufactured by humans.
No one believed him then; he had no evidence, and it was only a hypothesis.
Erwin, just like his father, put forward hypothesis after hypothesis in the face of the Titans' truth.
Those suppositions were always rejected, never acknowledged.
Yet in the end, they would always prove correct.
"'It isn't frightening that humanity is trapped within the Walls; it isn't frightening that humans are devoured by Titans. The truly terrifying thing is if humanity loses the desire to explore, the will to pursue freedom, resigns itself to living within the Walls, and remains indifferent to the truth.'"
Those words, spoken by his father, enlightened Erwin back then; he treated them as a maxim.
From then on, he pursued that dream—worked to prove his father's hypothesis, kept exploring, on and on.
But now…
Thirty-meter Titans stood before them; with a sweep of the hand they could crush humans to death.
Standing atop the high wall, Erwin looked down; without even lowering his head he could see those Titans—giants that could reach out and touch the Wall.
Even Roger, in Titan form, looked especially small before them.
His Titan was around ten meters, while the Titans roaming inside the Walls now were, at the shortest, about fifteen.
Fifteen meters—one third taller than Roger's Jaw Titan.
Transformed and wielding weapons, Roger struggled among them.
Not only because of the height difference; for some reason these Titans' healing had surged— even with their heads severed, they regrew with ease.
Roger kept aiming for the nape.
But no matter how he targeted it—even when he lopped the nape clean off—he couldn't kill these Titans.
They had been strengthened far beyond a little.
They didn't fear Roger's scythe at all; their regeneration had already outpaced Roger's power to destroy.
Seeing this with his own eyes, Erwin didn't hesitate.
If humanity simply watched Roger be killed now, the people inside the Walls would have zero chance left.
Then, with no way to restrain this slaughter, only death would await the people within the Walls!
Death!
Devastation!
A living hell!
Erwin had already envisioned that scene.
Just like during his first expedition beyond the Walls.
The squad had been inexperienced—new recruits. Facing Titans, they couldn't master their terror; corpses carpeted the ground.
Erwin had walked out of a sea of bodies, his feet treading across the corpses of his comrades.
Blood ran like a river; he was bathed in it.
Scenes like that filled every one of them with despair, leaving deep psychological scars.
Afterward, the regiment suffered severe war trauma; at the mere mention of "Titan" or "dead," their whole bodies would tremble uncontrollably, and only injections of tranquilizers could steady them.
"We must never let that tragedy repeat!"
Erwin shouted, gathering all remaining human soldiers.
Among them were troops only recently assigned. Though they'd already been tempered by some battles, in terms of seniority they were still newcomers.
What relieved Erwin, however, was that when facing Titans these soldiers felt no fear; instead they showed a fierce desire to fight.
They longed to kill Titans and repeatedly requested to be sent into combat, begging him to approve a plan to hunt them down.
Given he truly had no one else he could use, Erwin could only send them to the front.
This was a war of defense; there was no room for choice.
Even as recruits, they had to keep fighting.
Eren was one of those new soldiers. Having finally shaken off Mikasa, he intended to rescue some civilians amid the Titans' encirclement.
That was when the Titans had not yet "mutated"—when Eren could still reach the nape and dispatch them with ease.
But afterward, when the Titans turned into thirty-meter-class behemoths, even Eren was helpless.
A thunderous crash.
A giant hand slapped down, smashing into the ground and jolting Eren off the rooftop.
Eren looked up, cold sweat beading on his brow.
"How could this be…"
His gas was spent. For the first time, helplessness washed over him.
Looking into the distance, he saw Roger locked in combat.
A wish he'd harbored in his heart for so long rose once more.
"If I had that power too!"
"I'd execute every last one of you beasts!!"
He roared, eyes blazing as he glared at the Titan before him.
Several fifteen-meter Titans heard the shout and spotted Eren. They shuffled over and peered at him closely.
Slowly, they seized him and lifted him toward their mouths.
In the distance, Mikasa saw it happen and went mad, hurtling over!
"E—ren!!!"
She screamed, burning through her gas.
Just then, from the mouth of the Titan that had swallowed Eren, a thick Titan arm suddenly thrust outward—then seized its jaws and tore the body apart.
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