The moment of the explosion was silent.
A blinding white light swallowed half the night sky, followed by a massive, twisted mushroom cloud rising into the air. Rolling flames dyed the surrounding clouds an eerie orange-red.
Only a few seconds later did the dull, suffocating boom arrive, vibrating through Levi's chest and making his head ring.
The heat wave followed, rushing across the vast distance to lick at his face—adding an utterly inappropriate trace of warmth to skin that was already numb from the cold.
Then, the awe inspired by that apocalyptic spectacle was instantly ripped away by raw, primal terror.
I'm falling.
The thought struck like an icy bolt of lightning, cleaving through a brain dulled by hypoxia and shock.
A seemingly eternal sense of weightlessness wrapped around him. He felt like a pebble shot from a slingshot, helplessly plummeting toward the bottomless black abyss below.
The wind screamed like countless knives, slicing across every inch of his body with ghostly howls.
He tried to shout—anything—but the instant he opened his mouth, the wind forced its way in, choking off all sound, leaving only a pathetic wooo like a leaking bellows.
He struggled to open his eyes, but the pressure was overwhelming. Tears streamed uncontrollably, and the world dissolved into warped, flickering shadows.
The ring! The parachute ring!
At last, the most critical detail surfaced from the chaos.
His gloved hands began frantically searching his body. The cold had dulled his sense of touch to near uselessness. Chest. Abdomen. Thighs. Everywhere was packed with gear pouches and webbing. All he felt were icy metal buckles and coarse canvas.
Fuck! Where is it?! Levi roared inside his head. His heart hammered like a runaway metronome, so loud he could hear blood roaring in his ears.
Dugan had demonstrated it on the plane—but who would've thought they'd need it less than an hour later? Levi forced his mind to replay that brief lesson. Right chest. Red-painted T-shaped pull ring. Designed to be found in the dark.
But he was spinning wildly in midair now, barely able to tell where his right hand even was.
Calm down! Calm the hell down, Levi! he screamed at himself.
In his past life, he'd been a programmer—his specialty was finding the one bug that crashed an entire system. This was the same. Before he turned into human jam, he had to find the life-saving "switch."
He suddenly remembered something he'd read in a magazine—spread your limbs like a starfish to increase air resistance and stabilize your fall.
He forced his arms and legs wide. The effort nearly exhausted him; his muscles strained against the roaring wind. But slowly—agonizingly—the spinning eased.
At last, he managed to stabilize into a face-down, back-up diving posture.
Good. Now up and down made sense.
With his left hand gripping the metal buckle of his chest harness, he used his right to carefully search his right chest. His fingers brushed the cold stock of his M1, then a rigid canvas magazine pouch.
Nothing. Still nothing.
Did I remember wrong? Or is this chute defective?
On the battlefield, faulty equipment wasn't exactly rare.
His heart sank. For one horrible second, he imagined it—dying twice over. First life: worked to death. Second life: killed by quality control issues.
That's some top-tier black humor…
Just as he began mentally cursing the quartermaster's entire family tree, his fingertip brushed something different.
Cold. Smooth. Metal.
A circular ring, fixed in a clasp.
That's it!
Adrenaline exploded through him. Without another thought, Levi grabbed it and yanked with everything he had.
SKREEEE—
A teeth-grinding metallic screech rang out—
—and then it felt like a rhinoceros slammed into his back at full speed.
An overwhelming force surged from the parachute pack, transferring through the straps and into his entire body. It was as if an invisible giant hand had violently jerked him upward, instantly killing his insane downward momentum.
"NNGH—!"
Levi let out a strangled groan. The brutal deceleration nearly tore him in half. His shoulders felt like they were being ripped clean off, and the pain between his legs was so intense it transcended language—he seriously wondered if his future happiness had just been permanently canceled.
But amid the agony, something familiar stirred.
The healing factor.
He could clearly feel muscle fibers on the verge of tearing knitting themselves back together at an impossible speed.
The soul-rending pain lasted only a few hellish seconds before degrading into intense numbness and soreness—then gradually fading.
He still felt awful, like running ten kilometers and then doing five hundred squats—but he hadn't blacked out, and nothing vital had actually been torn off.
He could breathe again.
Above him, the massive canopy bloomed open in the darkness, like a white dandelion flowering at midnight. The howling wind vanished, replaced by an eerie quiet broken only by his own ragged breathing.
He was alive.
Levi dangled in midair like a sausage on a hook, swaying gently with the currents, completely drained.
He looked up at the vast sheet of white canvas, then down into the abyss below, and a powerful sense of survival-driven gratitude washed over him.
Anyone who ever tells me parachuting is fun again—I'm throwing them off the Empire State Building. No parachute.
After catching his breath, he began surveying his surroundings.
The night sky was pitch black, moonless, with only a few scattered stars peeking through gaps in the clouds. The distant fireball from the crash had already begun to fade.
By that faint light, he could just make out several other small black dots drifting through the sky.
His teammates.
Good. Everyone had made it out.
He struggled to remember the two and a half sentences Dugan had taught them about steering a parachute, tugging awkwardly at the control lines to drift toward the others.
Instead, a sudden crosswind shoved him even farther away.
…Forget it. Levi gave up.
At this point, landing safely was all that mattered.
Reality, however, had other plans.
"Shit—!"
Without warning, his feet dropped hard.
The edge of his parachute snagged firmly on the dense canopy of a tall pine tree.
THUD!
His back slammed into the rough bark, rattling his bones and sending stars exploding across his vision. It felt like his spine had nearly snapped.
"Cough—cough…"
Levi spat out pine needles and snow, every inch of his body screaming in protest.
The healing factor went to work again, repairing scratches from branches and sending waves of maddening itchiness through his skin.
Fantastic. First mission, and I end up as a hanging bat.
He pulled out his knife and cut the straps.
WHUMP.
He plunged headfirst into a soft pile of snow.
Finally. Grounded.
He fished out his waterproof compass. After wobbling briefly, the needle settled—north.
He glanced toward the faint glow on a distant ridgeline, barely visible now. East. The factory.
He needed to find his team—or at least somewhere to hide. Wandering alone through an enemy forest at night was basically suicide.
He took two steps.
Then—
Crack.
A subtle sound. Very soft. But in the dead silence of the forest, unmistakably clear.
Like someone snapping a snow-covered branch underfoot.
Levi froze instantly.
His submachine gun came up on pure instinct, the dark muzzle aimed straight at the sound.
His heart leapt into his throat.
Teammate…?
Or a German soldier?
Or something else living in this forest?