บท 4: Escape from Shinganshina

Kaito carried the fainted and severely injured Carla on his shoulder, her lower body hanging limply, and he sprinted toward the Inner Gates. As he passed by the inner gate, which had been broken earlier by the Armored Titan, he encountered a scene of chaos and devastation. Many members of the Garrison Corps lay crushed under the rubble, some dead and others barely clinging to life.

The area was sparsely populated as most people had already fled to the waterway, desperately attempting to escape the Titans. However, a few individuals remained, survivors who had fled in any direction they could to avoid the relentless Titan onslaught. The destruction and suffering were evident, painting a grim picture of the ongoing disaster.

"That will do," he said as he caught sight of a middle-aged woman trying to pass through the debris while running frantically.

With greater speed, he intercepted her path and appeared in front of a middle-aged woman, startling her into gasping in surprise at his sudden presence.

The sudden intrusion of Kaito brought the middle-aged woman to a state of shock. Her voice trembled as she stammered, "W-who!?"

With an unsettlingly cheerful smile, Kaito replied, "Thanks for kindly donating your life force."

Before the woman could react further, his hand pierced through her chest, and her gasp of horror was cut short. Her eyes widened as the pain coursed through her, and she could only manage strained pained breaths.

His hand moved through her body, shoving aside bones and organs until it reached her rapidly beating heart. With a swift and chilling motion, Kaito's fingers closed around the woman's heart, digging into it a bit.

The woman stared blankly at the horrific sight of his bloody hand moving through her body, her mind unable to fully process the nightmare unfolding before her.

"Sorry, Carla, gotta take a bite," Kaito muttered. He turned his attention to the fainted Carla, her lower body still hanging over his shoulder. Opening his mouth, his unnaturally large canines sank into the soft, supple, and bloody thighs of the woman.

"Ah~"

Even though she had fainted, she let out a small moan of pain. Kaito wondered how she could feel that she couldn't even feel the pain of her legs being crushed minutes ago.

As Kaito sucked the woman's life force, her body underwent a grotesque transformation, akin to a decaying corpse. The warmth of life fled from her, and her once expressive eyes turned empty and vacant. Her facial features froze as if she was a marionette with her strings suddenly cut.

"What…is.."

A look of confusion and bewilderment lingered on her face, her last moments forever sealed in an expression of unending shock.

In stark contrast to the macabre scene unfolding before them, Carla's lower body, which had been hanging limply in an unnatural and lifeless position, suddenly began to change. The dislocated bones shifted back into place, the cracked bones mended themselves, the torn muscles regenerated, and the blood that had been seeping from her wounds flowed back into her body.

Kaito pulled his hands out of the woman's body and his teeth from Carla's thighs. The woman's body fell stiffly on the ground, whereas the teeth holes from his bite in Carla's patched up.

Kaito spat a mouthful of black blood on the ground. He rubbed his tongue with his free hand to remove any after-taste.

"Fuck, that was bitter, never fucking doing this again,"

Kaito withdrew his hands from the woman's body and released his mouth's grip on Carla's thighs. The woman's body fell stiffly to the ground, her shriveled-up body serving as a gruesome testimony to her ordeal.

Kaito, with a look of mild disgust, muttered, "Fuck, that's bitter," as he spat a mouthful of black blood onto the ground.

With Carla's severe injuries miraculously healed, Kaito's attention shifted to other matters. In the recesses of his mind, Kaito struggled to comprehend the nature of the abilities he had acquired. Even more perplexing was the unsettling realization that he felt an emotional void, a numbness that extended even to the act of taking a life to save another. To him, killing the woman to heal Carla's injuries felt as mundane and emotionless as slaughtering a chicken for meat.

The stark disconnect between his actions and the absence of any profound emotional response left Kaito grappling with the profound changes that had taken place within him,

Shaking his head in an attempt to clear his thoughts, Kaito gently patted Carla's backside, but she remained unresponsive, lost in her own ordeal.

Climbing on a boulder, he turned his attention to the waterway in the distance. Kaito observed the chaotic scene unfolding as the carrier ships were being filled to their limits.

People desperately clamored to board, some even attempting to leap from the harbor into the water, often with dire consequences.

Kaito muttered, "No fucking way, I'm getting on one of those damn things,"

. He took a deep breath and let out a shrill whistle that carried through the tumultuous scene.

TWEEEET

In less than a minute, a horse came galloping to his side. Kaito climbed onto the horse, firmly gripping the reins. Unfortunately, his whistle had also attracted some other unwelcoming beings.

Several titans who were searching nearby buildings for humans raised their heads, their sight locked on the golden-brown-haired insect.

"Shit.."

He cursed his stupid mind for trying to look cool even though nobody was present. If one counts a corpse and a fainted woman, he did have an audience.

Anyway, he couldn't afford to wait for long as the horde of Titans drew closer, their relentless advance a constant threat.

With a face that looked like it had eaten shit, he spurred the horse into action, and it responded by racing in the direction of Wall Rose, the next frontier in humanity's struggle for survival, with a horde of titans in tow.