Consumption

At the breached entrance of Wall Maria, everything was now a field of ruins and wreckage, the air thick with the stench of blood.

Only a few Seven-meter class Titans wandered nearby.

Swoosh, swoosh~

The sound of rapidly spinning steel cables rang out as several figures, working in seamless coordination with the aid of Omni-directional Mobility Gear, easily sliced away the flesh at the Titans’ napes.

Before the Titans could even react, all of them had fallen to the ground.

A vast cloud of dust billowed up, making the earth tremble.

Several figures in Survey Corps uniforms landed. They showed no concern for Wall Maria’s breached gate. Instead, they silently stared beyond it at the corpses sprawled in every direction, all clad in matching uniforms, their faces dark and grim.

There were not many Garrison Regiment corpses at the gate. Perhaps they had been swallowed by the Titans outright. The bodies left here all wore gray-white uniforms printed with rose patterns.

Some were curled up against the corners of walls, some hung from the ruins of houses, and some lay directly in the streets. The Yanzi Squad had been completely wiped out! Other than Shen Yan, whose whereabouts were unknown, none had survived!

Among the group wearing Survey Corps uniforms, the man at the front, who had a mole at the corner of his mouth, walked over in grief to a corpse leaning against a ruined wall. Its eyes were filled with death, still open in an unfulfilled stare.

Looking at the half-shattered mask, the beautiful face exposed beneath it, and the scarred body occasionally visible through the torn clothes, he tremblingly reached out to touch her cheek. His eyes brimmed with frenzied hatred.

"Who was it?! Who the hell attacked Xiao Yan’s squad?!"

"Xiao Yan! It’s all your brother’s fault. I never should have brought you into this damned space!"

The man’s face twisted with madness as he roared. Worried about his sister’s first mission leading a team independently, he had trusted her ability to handle unexpected situations, yet still felt uneasy enough to beg the commander to use an Authority Item to send him in.

He had fortunately reset once in this Mission Space. After starting over, he had successfully entered the Survey Corps ahead of time. The task of investigating humans transforming into Titans had been assigned to him!

Xiao Yan had taken on this mission to help him!

"Yan Jun, what happened to Xiao Yan is indeed regrettable, but don’t forget our mission. The commander went to great lengths to arrange our entry here. We have to give him a sufficient explanation."

After allowing Yan Jun some time to calm down, one of the people behind him finally stepped forward and spoke solemnly.

"I understand."

Yan Jun gritted out the words. Then he set down his sister’s body and said coldly,

"You all know the Yanzi Squad’s strength. They were our reserve elite squad, and every one of them had reached the level of an official Reincarnator before their third mission. Yet they were all killed! Only Reincarnators could have done that!"

Titans killed by swallowing people whole or crushing them. While the Survey Corps did possess the strength to wipe out the Yanzi Squad, they had already infiltrated the regiment and knew it could not have been the Survey Corps!

If so, then only Reincarnators remained!

"If Reincarnators with such strength exist, then their objective may very well be the same as ours. I think it’s necessary to eliminate this hidden danger first!"

Yan Jun’s words stunned the others briefly before they all fell silent, because the reasoning was indeed barely plausible.

"But this is cooperative mode. The penalty for attacking rashly is too great, and there are plenty of restrictions once fighting begins."

"Hmph. Since they attacked the Yanzi Squad, they clearly received sufficient penalties as well. I don’t believe they could have suffered no losses at all. We absolutely cannot let Xiao Yan die for nothing!"

"In that case, fine. I agree as well."

Though they knew their companion was still blinded by hatred, the other teammates agreed. What he said was not wrong, and in their eyes, Xiao Yan had been like a younger sister as well. Their hatred was certainly no less than his.

"Then let’s move out. First, we’ll root out the other Reincarnators who entered with them."

A ghostly green flame suddenly appeared in Yan Jun’s hand. Under the hesitant gazes of the others, he pressed it into Xiao Yan’s corpse. Then he silently took out a Sealing Scroll, sealed his sister’s body inside, and rose with a fierce expression. His entire being radiated ruthless savagery, like a beast ready to devour its prey…

Not yet as burly as he would become five years later, but already far more mature than his peers, Reiner Brown had a rope tied around his hands. He followed the figure holding the other end with a gloomy expression, pacing through the ruins within the walls behind Wall Maria.

Wall Maria had fallen three days ago. The Titans that had poured in were slaughtering everything within the territory, and few people still remained in this region, barely clinging to life before escaping into Wall Rose.

As the inheritor of the Armored Titan, Reiner Brown would later infiltrate the Training Corps and graduate in second place, surpassed only by Mikasa. Yet now, whenever he looked at the figure ahead holding the rope, a flash of terror passed through his eyes.

It was hard to imagine that after transforming into the Armored Titan, he had been defeated by a single human rider. After being subdued, he had even been humiliated by having his bone marrow extracted.

"Hey, only one intelligent Titan can exist at a time. It’s useless if you don’t kill me and only extract my bone marrow."

Unable to endure the oppressive silence along the way any longer, Reiner Brown, who could still be considered a child, spoke in a hoarse voice that did not suit his age.

"What, do you want me to kill you that badly? I’m only collecting bone marrow for research. I have no interest in the power itself."

Xu Yue’s Wood Clone Two wore a calm, indifferent expression, seemingly conserving his stamina by every possible means.

The cost of subduing the Armored Titan had actually been within his calculations, but Xu Yue had not expected the Yanzi Squad members to ambush him first in cooperative mode.

Although Clone Two had never trusted them and had remained on guard, ultimately dealing with them all, the penalty that halved damage had not been removed even for defensive counterattacks. It merely reduced the other point-deduction penalties, and it had taken quite a bit of effort to resolve them one by one.

Xu Yue had never intended to keep any secrets in the first place. This Mission Space was meant to be exploited by force anyway, taking away the Titan Spinal Fluid to fill the gap left by the Mangekyo.

As for others learning intelligence at this level, so be it. By the time anyone else came to exploit it, he would already have sold the first batch at the highest possible price.

As for the price of selling intelligence, he was the first person to obtain this information, and the plot item was in his hands. At most, those who had witnessed it could make use of it themselves. If they sold it under the Mission Space’s protection, they would have to pay an intelligence tax, which would not affect his profits much anyway. On the contrary, it would spread the news that the Titan secret had been cracked, allowing him to wait for people to come and hand over money.

Besides, he had used the Transformation Jutsu. They had no idea who he was, and would probably assume he belonged to some large corps coming to complete a mission.

But Xu Yue had not expected them to be so greedy. Those people, whose formation had been scattered by the Titans and who were all wounded and at the end of their strength, had actually dared to ambush him after seeing him subdue the Armored Titan.

In a sense, beneath the mask he had always worn, he had saved them.

Even his original intent had been to follow the persona he was used to and stop the Armored Titan from destroying Wall Maria. The mission reward gained from such a convenient action that could drastically alter the plot was not something to pass up for nothing.

Yet those bastards had completely disrupted his plans. They had repaid kindness with hatred.

It seemed simply using an item to stop the Armored Titan’s advance had not been intimidating enough. If he had known, he would not have tried to conserve Chakra. He should have used a more brutal method.

The human heart truly was the greatest variable.

If not for their ambush, the Armored Titan would never have found an opportunity to continue destroying the gate.

Damn it…

No matter what, his overall expenditure was greater than expected. This clone did not have much Chakra left now.

Although Wood Clones were excellent, they could not survive indefinitely on their own. They had not surpassed the limitations of clones.

He had to deliver the goods to the main body as soon as possible. Hopefully, it could hold out…

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The color of Conqueror’s Haki was merely something I set myself. After all, this is a realistic world, and it was stated to be a nerfed version. The protagonist also showed confusion.