Attack on Titan: Kuklo Unbound

It was the thick scent of death that could only come from a mass of corpses numbering in the thousands.

Not a single one of the bodies seemed to be resting in peace. Some had bloodshot eyes frozen wide open, while others had grotesquely twisted faces. The expression on their faces was one of despair, as though every single one had seen hell.

“I’d imagine this isn’t too far off from what damnation looks like.”

Carlo Piquer’s austere face turned grim as he looked out at the smoke-covered town.

Shiganshina, once a proud district of thirty thousand people and the most thriving area of the country, now looked like pure misery. Over a hundred homes had been mostly or completely destroyed, and that number was rising. A recovery team largely consisting of members of the military had been working nonstop, but they were not making the kind of progress they had hoped for. The scattered mountains of rubble made it difficult to find any kind of footing, and to make things worse, flames and smoke kept workers from where they needed to go.

The total extent of the damage was still unknown, but it seemed certain that at the very least, nearly half of the town had been affected in one way or another.

“This is just terrible…”

As hints of displeasure began to color Carlo’s chiseled face, he clenched his blistered hands.

Yet the demolished buildings were ultimately of minor importance. Considering what had happened, the number of casualties, reaching only into the thousands, could be seen as the silver lining on a very dark cloud.

A little over thirty years had passed since the nation’s founding. While it had faced many challenges like natural disasters, famine, and plague that imperiled its continued existence, this event was significant enough to make history. A bungled response could have even meant the destruction of the human race. Carlo should have been celebrating that the damage had been kept to merely what was before him, but he couldn’t. Though a simple soldier, he was still a member of the Survey Corps. He could not help but feel responsible for the gruesome scene before his eyes.

Though things could hardly have turned out better even if I’d busted my ass…

Sighing, Carlo turned his eyes to Wall Maria, the lynchpin of the fortress city.

The giant wall, a tenacious structure called “indestructible” by some, measured over fifty meters in height. It had kept enemy intruders out for all of recorded history, and its presence was still overwhelming.

Yet look at the town now.

Wall Maria was the impregnable barrier it had always been, but even then the unruly destroyers who had delivered a scathing blow to the town had gotten past it.

Straight through its front gates, thanks to humans showing them in.

“Titans…”

That was the generic name given to the humanoid terrors that were mankind’s nemesis. They varied in size, but the largest ones to ever be recorded easily surpassed ten meters in height─true monsters. The extent of the utter destruction they unleashed from their gigantic frames was evident from a single glance at Shiganshina District’s calamitous state. Mankind had moved to living inside of walled cities out of fear of the Titans.

“The team leader’s gonna smack you if he finds you spaced out like that.”

Carlo’s body stiffened a little when the male voice flew at him from behind, but smiling wryly the next moment, he turned with a relaxed motion to face the speaker.

Standing there was Solm Hume, a fellow Survey Corps soldier who’d joined the military in the same year. Despite Solm’s tireless involvement in the recovery effort, there were no signs of fatigue on his face. Only eighteen, bursting with youth, his body no doubt brushed off the days and nights of toil. While he and Carlo were the same age, Solm was on the smaller side for a member of the Survey Corps, whose ranks were full of grand, muscular specimens. If not for the winged emblem sewn into his uniform jacket, few would recognize him as a corpsman.

“Is something on your mind?” Solm asked with a serious look.

Carlo shook his head. “I was just wondering what’s in store for us…”

“The royal government will figure that out.” Perhaps Solm actually thought otherwise, as his handsome face wore a deeply grim expression.

So he doesn’t expect much from them. Indeed, it would be difficult for the royal government’s officials to come up with an eye-opening solution. Reducing taxes and squeezing out a recovery budget would most likely be it. Dealing with the situation on the ground always falls on us.

Still, it was beyond exceptional for the Survey Corps to be sent to aid a recovery effort. Defense and peacekeeping efforts inside the walls was the Garrison’s job, while the Survey Corps was created in order to explore beyond them.

“In any case, let’s just worry about getting this place back to normal.”

“Right…” Carlo sighed. “I guess that means we should start by clearing this rubble.” He shifted his vision to the townscape, which resembled a burnt-out field.

“The bodies will have to be moved quickly…”

“To prevent disease, you mean?”

“We can’t deny the possibility that the Titan brought sickness in with it as well,” Solm stated dispassionately, pointing forward with his jaw. Carlo followed the gesture with his eyes to arrive at a grim object a few meters ahead─a meat dumpling, if he had to describe it as anything. Made up of the bodies of multiple individuals, it was a Titan’s vomit.

“They just spit their victims out, half-digested… They can’t rest in peace like this,” Carlo made a face and muttered. He approached the mess the Titan had regurgitated. “If you can’t keep them down, don’t eat them!”

“You can’t hope to understand their actions.”

“Nor do I want to,” Carlo spat.

So long as humanity made no efforts to know them, however, Titans would forever be man’s nemesis.

What a fix.

Not only that, any orders to do so would fall on the Survey Corps’ shoulders.

Yeah, bring it on…

Carlo and Solm closely examined the warped clump of vomit. It was held together by a jumble of limbs from five bodies, almost like a three-dimensional puzzle.

There was no data on what happened to humans inside of a Titan’s stomach after they were devoured. There seemed no greater point to what sat before the two than a hairball spat up by a cat.

“Man… What a way to eat.”

The Titan must have captured fleeing humans and swallowed them whole. Limbs were pointed in impossible directions but otherwise appeared completely intact, and the same went for clothes and belongings. There were no signs of digestion.

Since they’re vomiting it all out, they can’t really have a sense of taste. Thanks to the Titan’s perverse palate, however, they would be able to identify the victims.

Paying special attention to attire, the two determined that the victims included both residents and soldiers.

So they tried to protect the residents, in vain. That wasn’t all Carlo noticed. A familiar woman’s body was among the remains.

“This…”

The woman in loose black clothes akin to a priest’s vestments was the wife of Team Leader Heath Mansell, Carlo and Solm’s superior who’d died on an earlier expedition. Her name was Elena. Part of a heretical cult that worshipped Titans, she was guilty of the grave crime of enabling the invasion into Shiganshina District. If Elena and the other Titan cultists had not rioted, it would have been impossible for a Titan to enter.

“So the one responsible for this is dead. It couldn’t have turned out any worse…”

Elena’s fate had been sealed the moment she sought salvation from the Titans.

Looks like she’s already been punished.

Now a part of the clump of meat, Elena’s pose suggested a crucifixion.

They’d only gotten married the other day too…

Worse, Elena had been pregnant. He could tell from her large, full abdomen that she’d been nearing childbirth.

The less said about the fate of the child in her stomach, the better.

Such a shame. Dwelling on the misfortune of the Mansell family was unbearable, and Carlo decided to mourn them later. For the time being, he had to focus his energy on the recovery effort as a corpsman and prevent any secondary disasters.

“Let’s get started collecting bodies. We can’t just leave them here.”

“I’ll summon the collection team, then.” Even as he spoke Solm charged off on the path, nimbly avoiding the scattered rubble.

It was when Carlo focused his attention back on the clump of meat that he heard it: a faint noise, as of cloth being rubbed against cloth.

“Huh?”

He didn’t have to search for the source. His eyes turned toward Elena’s lower abdomen, which now squirmed unnaturally.

“No way… Is she alive?!”

Elena’s face, as white as wax, couldn’t possibly draw breath. Yet her lower abdomen was clearly palpitating.

Bugs? But Elena’s body had not rotted to the point of attracting carrion beetles. Then, what…

As Carlo gazed upon Elena, he noticed that her skirt was moist. Another matter caught his attention, too.

“Something smells.” His nose twitched as the stench coming from Elena travelled through his nostrils. A faint fishy smell unlike the odor from before assailed him, either blood or something raw.

A chill ran unexpected down Carlo’s spine, perhaps in reaction to the smell. His pulse also began to quicken. His body seemed to be getting ready for a fight, preparing for an enemy attack.

But reacting to something unseen was ridiculous. Monsters didn’t really exist.

Aside from Titans.

Carlo roused himself by slapping his cheeks, then focused back on Elena’s skirt.

If the Titan had left a spawn hidden inside its vomit, the town would be plunged into terror all over again. Humanity’s ignorance of Titan biology meant he could rule out no scenario as too farfetched.

“Let’s do this…” Carlo gulped, then reached for the short sword at his hip. He pulled it from its scabbard, held his breath, and grabbed the hem of Elena’s skirt gingerly with his left hand.

Come demon, or─

Preparing for the worst, Carlo held his weapon at the ready as he carefully rolled up the skirt. The cloth was heavy, possibly from all the fluid it had absorbed. When he moved it, the raw odor that had built up inside came pouring forth.

As he brought the hem up to Elena’s knees with every bit of caution that he could muster, something tumbled forward along with a copious amount of liquid. Carlo immediately took a step back, putting some distance between himself and the object.

“This…” he muttered, dumbfounded, his eyes wide open.

Shaking his head to regain his composure, he quietly returned his sword to its scabbard. He crouched and gazed at the flesh-colored creature that flailed its limbs about like a fish out of water.

It was an infant.

“So it stayed alive, inside her belly?”

A cursory look at the infant showed no signs of injury. Its luck must have been due to the Titan swallowing the mother’s body whole; it wouldn’t have survived any chewing. Elena’s amniotic fluid must also have served as cushioning to protect the child.

A miraculous escape from the maw of death, literally. Many soldiers had managed to return from beyond the walls barely alive after being attacked by a Titan. Yet, surviving a trip into a Titan’s stomach was absolutely unprecedented. It ought to be a cause for celebration…

Nevertheless, Carlo’s flesh was crawling.

The birth of a new life was always a joyous occasion, no matter the time, place, or circumstance. Strangely though, Carlo could not detect even the smallest seed of joy in his heart. The only thing he found there was doubt, and a question: Why only you?

The baby let out no first cry, perhaps already knowing despair. With its tiny, toothless mouth, it was desperately trying to chew off the umbilical cord instead. It was as though the infant realized that to survive in this world, it had to stand on its own two feet, and without a second to lose.

“The child of a Titan─” When Carlo heard the words slip unbidden from his mouth, he understood.

Why fear a powerless infant? The answer was simple.

He instinctively feared a baby born of Titan vomitus.