The Colossal Titans!
They were Colossal Titans!
Exactly like what Gabi had dreamed—those Titans really were as tall as buildings. When they pressed down like mountains rolling forward, it felt like the sky was collapsing.
Their shadows swallowed everyone up, like the world was cracking apart—so hopeless it made people want to give up.
And yet at the same time, Gabi felt it wasn't that terrifying—nothing like how frightening she'd imagined.
Titans were still Titans. They didn't fly. They weren't like other strange creatures that could take to the sky and feel even more overwhelming.
The way they attacked was simple: they used their gigantic bodies to step down and crush whatever lived on the ground.
Just based on that, they actually seemed fairly manageable—not that hard.
Gabi thought to herself, and in her mind she was already forming a whole plan for how to deal with Colossal Titans.
She told herself that if they were that huge, then their movements had to be extremely slow—so there was nothing to fear.
A slow, massive enemy only felt terrifying because of its size. In a real fight, it might end up being far easier than people imagined. That was what she believed.
But Falco didn't see it that way.
To him, the enemy in front of them was the very definition of despair.
There was no "chance" at all—whether you looked at their size or anything else.
Falco didn't know whether they could run. And if they could run, would that cause irreversible, permanent damage to Marley?
If that happened, the entire city—maybe even the entire country—would be wiped away.
He didn't know any of it, so he was terrified and shaken.
The unknown was the source of fear.
He didn't understand Titans that well, so he was afraid.
But Gabi was different. The less she knew, the more excited she became.
When she faced unknown Titans, what ignited in her chest was nothing but the scenes Marley had drilled into her—heroes making brave sacrifices. It was brainwashing, and worse, it ruined kids.
In the Eldian internment zone in Marley, the adults had seen these tricks so many times they were numb to them. They knew it was Marley's standard method, and they resisted it fiercely—ready to expose the clumsy act the moment it appeared.
But just because adults could see it didn't mean children could.
Kids were too inexperienced. They couldn't see through it at all.
Just like Gabi—ever since those tricks had been used on her, she'd believed them immediately. She trusted them completely, as if it were real history—solid, complete, something destined to be written into the record of the world.
So the instant she saw the Titans, her heart nearly leapt out of her chest.
She was too excited.
She desperately wanted to earn glory—wanted to kill every last one of those Titans, wipe them out!
So the Marleyans could see just how strong this new generation of Eldians was, and just how much they hated the traitors who betrayed Marley!
And so, long before the Titans had even stepped onto Marley's territory, she grabbed Falco's hand and yanked him toward the harbor in a frantic rush.
"Falco, look! This is our moment to make a name for ourselves!"
As she spoke, she surged forward.
Falco immediately grabbed her. "Are you insane? Those are Titans as tall as a fifty-meter wall! If one of them stomps near you, it'll be enough to make your ears ring—you won't even be able to hear what I'm saying!"
"So what? If I can't hear you, even better!" Gabi said feverishly. "Then no one can stop me, and I can be even braver!"
She shook off Falco's hand.
Of course—Falco was still Falco. The Falco who, during training missions, only ever emphasized the damage they might suffer, and so ended up holding everyone back.
Still the same Falco all the instructors looked down on—yet they couldn't kick him out, because he never made any major mistakes either.
That useless one. That dead weight. That idiot.
Those were the nicknames the instructors used for Falco—nicknames that had never once been used on Gabi.
Gabi believed that was exactly why the Marleyans valued her.
Because she was brave. Because she was upright and kind.
Because she didn't fear sacrifice, Marley was willing to bring her along for anything.
Even the "wartime drills" that used to be reserved for only the very best Warrior candidates.
In the past, you had to be one in ten thousand to be chosen.
Training Warrior candidates took an enormous amount of resources. If they were dragged into real war, killed by stray bullets, or rendered unable to fight for any reason, it would be a tremendous loss for Marley.
But Gabi was different.
Marley had high hopes for her. They believed she would become the pillar of the nation in the future, so they sent her to the battlefield—so she could see with her own eyes how Marley controlled other countries.
Even though Gabi couldn't truly tell right from wrong, truth from lies on a battlefield, she still thought it was unbelievably cool. Watching enemies grit their teeth in hatred while she held a rifle and picked them off one by one—this was cool!
And every person they eliminated would become another effective milestone in Marley's "peace" plan toward the outside world.
The feeling was strangely intoxicating.
At first, the blood and the dead made Gabi uncomfortable.
But in the end, she endured it.
Under Marley's intense indoctrination, she grew into an exceptional Warrior.
And now a crisis had come—Marley's greatest catastrophe since ancient times. This wasn't like peacetime soldiers.
In a time like this, to still have the chance to do something as noble as defending the homeland—it felt incredibly rare to her.
So no matter what, she wouldn't miss this opportunity. Even if Falco got on his knees and begged, she wouldn't stop for even a single step.
Cannons thundered nonstop ahead. It looked like the artillery was about to halt the Titans of the Rumbling—their pace had slowed noticeably.
That made Gabi frantic.
You can't stop! she thought. If you stop, then there's nothing left for me to do—how am I supposed to become a hero?
With that, she charged forward even faster, ignoring the smoke and powder that filled the air around her.
Many soldiers rushed ahead in a trance, too consumed to spare a thought for restraining a foolish little girl.
With her head tucked under a soldier's helmet, the soldiers even mistook her for some underdeveloped new trainee they'd just thrown into the fray.
Only this "trainee" had more resolve than any of them.
She snatched up a rifle no one wanted from the ground and sprinted forward, stepping across the bodies scattered everywhere. The soft, yielding feel of the corpses beneath her boots was deeply unsettling.
But she warned herself: this was necessary. This was required on the road to becoming a hero.
Because her instructor had told her that every successful general climbed up on mountains and fields of soldiers' corpses. If you wanted to become a true pillar, then seeing dead bodies had to become an everyday thing.
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