Two Worlds of Swords
Kirito hit the ground hard, knocking the wind out of him. Flat on his back, he stared up at the sky and tried to recover his breath. Then a shadow fell over him. An enormous head blocked the light. Then a giant hand reached for him.
Kirito tried to spring up, but laying as he was, the tips the swords on his back were beneath his hips, making bending impossible. Surprise at the self-induced immobility cost him almost two full seconds. He rolled to the side, evading the creature's grasp and freeing himself.
He was in an open field. There were a few small trees nearby, and larger trees in the distance. Neither the trees nor the rolling hills provided any reliable cover. Fighting was the only option. He drew both blades and evaluated the monster.
Eight, maybe nine meters tall. It looked like an oversized caricature of a naked human male, except it lacked any genitals. Kirito silently thanked Kayaba for the morality filters on the game. It had the rough appearance of a man in his mid 20s, but behind the eyes was the mind of a toddler. Kirito preferred the monsters that looked like bugs or goats or tentacled things; the ones that looked more or less human unnerved him. But human-looking or not, it was making another grab for him.
Kirito crossed his swords in front of him and when the thing reached out, he scissored the swords against each other, slicing the hand cleanly off. It fell to the ground but instead of shattering into crystalline shards, it began to steam and evaporate. Well, that's different, he thought.
The monster looked confused for a moment then started to reach for him again with the stump of the arm, but even while reaching for him, he stump began to regenerate the hand.
Kirito didn't wait for the regrowth. He charged in and sliced the thing across the midsection. The monster doubled over. Then it scooped up its guts and held them in while beginning to heal itself.
Kirito attacked again, using a multi strike combo, followed by another and another. With greater damage, it was healing more slowly now, but it didn't stop its attacks.
Kirito leapt back to reevaluate. The game was harsh but not fundamentally unfair. It could be this monster was intended for a party and not for a solo player, but Kirito could deal as much damage as most parties. There must be a critical weakness. He scanned the monster. Not one of the areas he'd already hit. That left the ankles, the knees, the heart, the neck, the head.
The head seemed like the best bet. But the monster was tall. With his stats, Kirito could jump pretty high, but eight meters might be pushing his luck. He could bring it down by taking the leg then going for the head while it was on the ground, but the thing healed pretty quickly. As a team strategy, that would work, but solo maybe not. He wondered if he could run up the monster without getting caught. It sounded stupid, but he'd gotten six or seven meters up the wall of the ice cave on floor 55, and this thing was bound to be less slippery. He backed up to give himself a running start, when he heard horse hooves pounding on the sod and a woman screaming a battle cry. What flew in was a brown blur. A bay horse carrying a woman with reddish-brown hair, wearing a brown coat with tan pants and a green cloak. As she neared the monster, she kicked her feet free of the stirrups, rose in the saddle and fired something. Two grappling hooks shot out and lodged in the monster's flesh. The lines reeled into a device at her waist and she was propelled straight at the monster. For the second time in the same battle, Kirito froze.
She had a sword in each hand.
Duel wielding was not a unique skill.
Oh thank God, Kirito thought. A rare skill would not earn him nearly the same spite and envy a unique skill would.
Kirito started to charge. The monster lunged at him. The woman sliced downwards, severing the muscle and tendons at the monster's shoulder. The arm went limp. Without missing a beat, she turned and sliced through the monster's neck. The nearly severed head fell forward and ripped off the body. The carcass fell forward and she rode it all the way to the ground. "Suck it, Oruo!" she crowed. "That makes 10 solo."
•-|-—- -—-|-•
Earlier that morning, Petra had checked the smoke canisters and loaded them onto the saddle before mounting up for the midday patrol. The Scouting Regiment was in unfamiliar territory, north and west of the walls, and Levi squad was riding the flank; the least mapped and therefore most dangerous territory. The 103rd Cadet Corp was no longer green, but they weren't exactly seasoned either, and orders or no, they tended to bunch up in the center, drawing Titans in like a magnet. To make it worse, the horses had run hard yesterday. They needed a rest. The entire corps was camping for the day.
Once she spotted Oruo heading in from the morning patrol, she mounted up and rode out to meet him. "How is it out there?"
The full report would go the Captain Levi, of course, but the terse, heads up version was always helpful. "Dead as your dating life," he said. "You won't close on my kill score today."
"You are such a pompous ass," she rolled her eyes. But the sly comment was comforting. Oruo was good at this and if he hadn't seen Titan signs, there probably weren't any to be seen. She squeezed her legs and the horse took off at a light trot.
Only a few years ago, these gently rolling hills had been prime pasture land, providing the people inside Wall Maria with meat and dairy. Petra wondered if maybe on the return trip, they couldn't round up some of the stray cattle and bring them back. The meat and leather would fetch a good price and help pay for the Scouting Regiment's expedition and would serve as excellent PR to boot. Who didn't miss real meat? She'd mention the idea to Captain Levi or Commander Erwin when she got the chance.
She reined in the horse when she got to the top of the hill. Oruo was right, you could see for miles. The only decent stand of trees was the one where Commander Erwin had set up the main encampment. To one side, she could see the Levi Squad's camp, to the other, the Hange's. She turned outwards. Also clear.
Or … wait
A strange motion caught her eyes She turned back to watch the distant tree line. They were mixed trees, different types, different heights, so they all moved differently in response to the slight breeze. But still, there was something… Petra had seen wind drive waves in the grass, was this just…?
There it was again. A wave in the trees. Moving the sturdy trees as well as the willowy ones. Then a flash of something light, the color of sapwood. She dropped her eyes just in time to see a tree trunk move. Not swaying in the wind, but swinging like a pendulum. She loaded a red smoke canister and fired into the air as she spurred her horse into a gallop.
.
"Red smoke, Commander!"
Erwin turned to face him. "Which unit?"
The young lieutenant shrugged his ignorance. "Halfway between Levi and Hange, sir."
"Well neither of those two are likely to make mistakes. Tell the new recruits to arm up, saddle up and prepare to break camp. In that order."
.
"Red smoke, Commander Hange!"
"Our patrol?"
"Levi's ma'am."
"I doubt they'll leave us anything to mop up, but we'd better go take a look."
.
"Red smoke, Captain."
"Petra?"
"Yes sir."
Levi nodded. "Saddle up. We'll come back for the camp supplies if we can."
.
The Titan broke the cover of the trees with that curious side-to-side waddle so many of them had. It slowed down and cocked its head with that sickening childlike expression that told Petra a human was about to die.
She loaded fresh blades into her sword hilts as the horse cleared the rise.
A boy, mid teens perhaps, dressed in black, stood his ground against the Titan. He had a sword in each hand, but no spare blades.
The Titan was standing there, dumbly considering the kid. Its midsection had been sliced open, half a meter deep. It held its guts in with a handless arm. The lost appendage was half steamed into nothingness, indicating the kid had wasted no time in mindless terror. The Titan's abdomen and legs bore dozens of cut marks, but without ODM gear, the kid had no way of reaching the nape. It reached for the kid with its remaining hand. She stood in the saddle and with a shout, launched the grappling hook into the Titan's shoulder and reeled herself in. She sliced the joint, causing the arm to sag uselessly then turned and took the nape.
The Titan crumpled under her. She shifted her balance and rode the falling monster to the ground. It was a trick she had picked up from Captain Levi, but it was oddly satisfying. "Suck it, Oruo!" she crowed. "That makes 10 solo." She hopped down and looked at the kid in black. "Or did you want to share credit on that one?"
"No," the kid said, "that one was pretty much yours." He eyed the steaming carcass. "Head and the neck, huh?"
"Just the nape of the neck," she corrected him. "Strike zone is one meter long, ten centimeters wide, you gotta cut deep enough to sever the spinal cord. What are you doing out here, anyway?"
"To tell you the truth, I'm not entirely certain. In fact, I'm not even certain where I am. What floor is this?"
Petra stared at him. The kid must have some kind of concussion. "What do you mean floor? We're not in a building, we're outside."
The kid whipped his head from side to side. "Huh," he muttered under his breath, "no pillars. I didn't think they had built the world. I didn't know there was anything outside the walls of Aincrad."
Definitely a concussion, Petra thought. That Titan must've really hit him hard. "Aincrad? Is that the name of your village?" she said gently. She'd never heard of it, but she wasn't from the north.
He looked at her like she was nuts. "Aincrad is the name of the castle," he said. "I have an apartment in the town of Algade."
He said both of those names as though they should mean something to her. Poor kid, he had no idea how very small his portion of the world was.
The Titan blood had finished evaporating off of her clothing and weapons so she resheathed her swords. In response, the kid flipped his swords onto the scabbards on this back. "I'm Kirito by the way."
"I'm Petra." She put two fingers between her lips and gave a long whistle. Very shortly, her horse cantered up, then slowed and bumped her affectionately with its nose. She rubbed its neck and looked at Kirito.
The black swordsman just shrugged. "No horse. I'm not a good rider."
Petra bit her lip to avoid saying anything. This kid had been stranded out in Titan country with no horse, no ODM gear, no spare blades and no knowledge of how to kill a Titan. Someone was trying to murder this boy. Sick bastard. As if humanity wasn't on the brink of extinction without twisted people trying to speed up the process. "If you don't have a horse, then you better ride with me. Titans are fast and you can't outrun them on open ground."
She mounted and he jumped lightly onto the horse behind her. "Where are we going?"
It was a good question. She calculated how long to get to camp to drop the kid off and back out on patrol. Too long. She hated putting a civilian at risk, but her duty was to watch for Titans while the main body of the regiment rested. "I need to finish riding this patrol. I'm with the Special Operations Squad of the Survey Corps. We're out here mapping the territory."
"That settles it then," the kid muttered. "You're not an NPC."
"A what?"
"I didn't mean to offend you. But I can't see your cursor. However, NPCs almost never step in the save players and they definitely don't map out territory."
It was a good thing she couldn't turn around in the saddle. She wasn't sure what an "empty see" was, but she was pretty sure her face might have shown that she was no longer sure if he had a concussion or he was simply crazy. Either way, she couldn't leave him out here.
.
Levi stood on the hill with his fists clenched. This was the correct location, as the spent smoke shell attested, but there was no sign Petra. He spoke quietly, almost to himself. "If you spotted one from here, why didn't you fire a second round when you reached it? And if you met one here, why is there no blood?"
"Hoof prints on the ground sir," Eld said. "Heading west. From their depth, she took off at a gallop."
The other squad members breathed a sigh of relief. It didn't mean she was safe, but at least she hadn't died here.
.
"So are you mapping terrain, monsters or both?" Kirito asked conversationally.
"Both. Why?"
"Because there's two more of them over there."
Petra halted the horse; this time she did crane her neck to look at the kid. He seemed totally unperturbed. Then she followed his gaze. "Where? I don't see them."
"One's behind that rock and the other is just below the rise. But they are both coming towards us."
"How do you know they're there if you can't see them?"
"I have a really high Search skill. It's incredibly tedious to develop, but it's worth it if you play solo."
"Play? You think hunting Titans is a game?"
"No," his voice dropped, "this is definitely not a game."
Something in his tone told her that she wasn't the only one who had watched friends die. She didn't have an answer, so she looked in the direction he had indicated.
A head appeared over the far side of the hill. Ten meters. A second one came out from behind the rock, this one six meters. She wasn't sure her horse could outrun them carrying double, but with no backup, no buildings to use her ODM gear - and the kid having no ODM gear at all - running was their best bet. "Hold on tight!" She spurred the horse into a gallop. The uneven ground, rocks and shrubs made looking away even for the few seconds it took to load the gas flare a risky proposition. Looking up and down between the broken field and the canister supply caused the first canister to not lock into place firmly and it fell off the gun when she raised it. "Shit!" She said. She didn't have an unlimited supply. For the next one, she took the risk and looked down, jamming the gun onto the shell. She felt it click solidly into place, raised the gun and fired. She looked back up just in time to see the horse stumble on a half hidden rock then almost recover, just to drop its hoof in rabbit hole. With a sickening crack of its left front leg, the horse went down.
.
Hange and two of her squad came up the south face of the hill. "What do we have?"
Levi said nothing, just stared with cold fury at the unanswering western horizon.
"We don't know yet," Eld answered for him.
"Red smoke sir!" Oruo called out, although it was unnecessary. Everyone on the hilltop had seen it.
"Shit," said Gunther. "That's a ten, maybe fifteen minute ride from here."
"Then quit flapping your jaws and get moving," Levi snapped. He turned sharply towards his own horse only to have Hange grab his sleeve.
"You wouldn't be so cruel as to deny me a chance to observe a living Titan up close, would you?"
"I would absolutely be that cruel," he glared at her as he swung himself into the saddle. "Unfortunately, you outrank me."
A jubilant "Woo-Hoo!" Escaped her lips before she turned to her squad members. "Keiji, head back to camp, fill them in and double the patrols. Nifa, report to Commander Erwin. Everything we know so far."
"Yes ma'am!"
Hange mounted her horse and took off after Levi who hadn't bothered to wait for her.
.
Kirito felt, more than heard, the horse's leg snap. The animal let out a terrified whinny as it tumbled forward. He jumped free but his companion was not so lucky. Petra's foot got tangled in the stirrup. The horse instinctively twisted to protect its head, rolling to the side, shoulder hitting first, followed by the entire weight of its body coming down on Petra's trapped leg.
Kirito ran over to her. He considered the horse. It had broken its neck in the fall. Odd that it hadn't vanished. Must be considered a food item. His strength parameter should allow him to shift the weight of the horse, but how to do it without further injuring her leg? He could hear the monsters - what had she called them? Titans? - getting closer. He might have to risk the injury.
"Don't bother," she said. "Just get out of here. I'll buy you whatever time I can."
"I won't lose another party member," Kirito said. "I'd rather die trying to save them then leave them behind."
He turned to face the approaching Titans, unsheathing his swords as he did so. "Injuries slow them down, but only the nape of the neck is a kill strike, right?"
"Yeah," she gasped out. "You could take the entire head, but if you miss the nape, it'll just grow back."
"Got it."
Petra watched him charge towards the Titans without hesitation. He puts the entire 103rd Cadet Corp to shame.
.
The ground shook as the Titans came at them. The ten meter, with his longer legs, was in front. Gotta stop them from reaching Petra, he thought. Then I can go for the kill.
Kirito ran at top speed, dodging the giant hand that reached for him. He laid his sword out flat, slicing the tendon on the front of the Titan's ankle, then used the resistance and his own momentum to swing around the back side and sliced the Achilles' tendon with the other sword. The monster fell forward on its face. For good measure, he brought the sword in at an angle for a second strike, taking a chunk out of the back of the ankle to slow its regeneration. The six meter Titan lumbered past, ignoring him in favor of Petra, trapped underneath her horse, clearly easier prey.
.
Kirito needed some altitude, so he swung up onto the fallen ten meter's calf and ran up the leg, across the back, timing it so he reached the oversized head just as the six meter passed. He flipped the swords around into a reverse grip then stabbed into the Titan's back. It immediately arched its back in surprised pain, but stopped moving towards Petra. It reached, one hand down over the shoulder, one up from the waist, trying to get to that one spot on the back you could never quite touch. Kirito twisted this way and that to avoid the grasping hands until the upper came close enough. He stabbed the crystalline sword into the hand and when the Titan jerked it away, Kirito rode with it, giving him the altitude he needed. He pulled the sword out, dropped to the shoulder and sliced the nape as Petra had told him. The Titan crashed to the ground, and, his support gone, Kirito was dumped unceremoniously onto the ground on his butt. So much for looking cool. As it turned out, battle healing could do nothing for your pride. He'd have to ask Petra how she did that riding to the ground thing.
The ten meter was dragging itself along the ground, still trying to reach Petra.
Kirito doubled back to the 10 meter whose legs were starting to heal. He ran in front of its eyes, distracting it from the trapped Petra. It was now crawling towards him as he was the closer target. When it reached out, he raised his swords and sliced through the palm of the hand. Then he dodged around the arm, leapt back up on the nape of the neck and cut it. The Titan began to steam and slowly disappear. He jumped down and went back over to Petra. "You OK?"
"Better than I would've been."
Kirito simply nodded. "This is probably going to hurt some." He put his back onto the dead horse began to push it up and away. "See if you can pull your leg out." She let out a grunt as she crawled, and pulled the leg out rather than moving it, attesting to the damage. The ankle was severely messed up. Kirito eyed it with detachment. "I'm out of healing crystals," he said. "I don't suppose you have any?" Again, she looked at him like he was crazy.
"No, I don't have any healing crystals."
He nodded. He didn't expect she would. She would've used it already if she had. "Probably better splint it then."
He began looking through the nearest stand of trees searching for one that was reasonably straight with a diameter about 10 cm. He tapped the tree lightly to make sure it wasn't an immortal object before unsheathing his swords. He made a clean horizontal cut at shoulder height then rolled the blades around while waiting for the tree top to tumble off, followed by three parallel vertical cuts and finished with another horizontal cut at hip height. Four boards fell off the newly made stump. He picked up the two center boards and brought them over to Petra. "Sorry, my woodworking skills are zero, so this is the best I could do."
She stared at the boards. "What are you talking about? You sliced up that tree in single pass cuts and the boards are exactly the same size."
"That's Sword Skill, not Woodworking Skill. Do you have anything we could tie these on with?"
"In the saddle bag." Her voice sounded matter-of-fact but she wondered again who was this kid? She watched him rummage around in the bag "grab those smoke canisters, and see if you can find where I dropped the flare gun.
He picked out what was needed and began tying up her leg. "There are three more coming in from the west. They don't seem to have noticed us yet. Do these things travel in packs?"
She wondered if he was talking to distract her from the pain of setting her leg. "More like waves. They don't seem to interact or act in any coordinated manner, but we can go weeks without seeing any, then we get a bunch all at once."
He gently released her leg and stood up. After a quick scan, he walked directly over to the gun.
"Ok, that Search thing you do is a really useful skill." She loaded the canister into the gun and fired into the air.
.
"Purple smoke!" Oruo called out.
"Distress signal," Eld said at the same time.
"Keep moving!" Levi answered. "If she's still firing signals, she's still alive."
They altered their destination to match the origin of this third signal.
.
"No wait!" Kirito called out, but it was too late. The smoke signal had already left the gun. He watched for a few seconds. "I don't know if your party saw the signal, but the Titans did."
"Well I'm not outrunning them this way." Petra looked at her leg then over at the nearby trees. "Maybe the ODM gear can get me high enough they can't reach." But the trees weren't that high. They might save her from a six meter, but they wouldn't do anything against a ten or above.
Kirito eyed her. His initial impression — fearless in attack, duel wielding, a clean kill — was that she was a high level player, but he was forced to reevaluate. That leg should be well on its way to healing. Battle healing was rare among mid-level players and unheard of in low level players, but all the higher level players he knew were quite adept; it was suicidal not to be. Which meant he couldn't let her face off against those Titans. It would be the Moonlit Black Cats all over again. "So what happens if one of those Titans grabs you, anyway?"
"They eat you."
"That sounds unpleasant."
"Even worse, because they don't have digestive systems, they spit out the body parts like a cat hairball."
Kirito frowned. Whoever designed this scenario was sick. On the other hand, one the first time, two the second time, three the third time. Twisted but not imaginative. However this time, they were not all coming in from the same direction. That upped the level of difficulty considerably. One from the southwest, one from the west, one from north by northwest. The middle one would get there first. If he cut the ankle like he did before, that would leave two, but they would be coming from almost opposite sides.
Petra struggled to get up on her one good leg.
"You can't walk; that leg won't hold weight."
"No," she said, "but once it gets close enough, I can use the ODM gear to get airborne and it won't matter as much."
"You'll be flying right up his front. Won't he just grab you and eat you?"
She click the sword blades into the hilts. "He can try."
He looked at her for a second and nodded sharply with a short grunt. "Take the northwest. I'll keep the other two off of us." Northwest would arrive last. If he was fast enough, he could knock the other two out in time to help her. But he would have to be very fast.
.
The Special Operations Squad galloped past a half evaporated Titan corpse. Eld glanced over at Oruo. "Looks like her dating life is not as dead as you thought."
"Oh, bite m-ahh," Oruo called out as a small spurt of blood came out of his tongue.
"I'm not even going to comment on the irony of this moment," Levi said under his breath.
"Captain!" Gunther called out.
Ahead they saw two dead Titans, and a mile further on three live ones — a twelve meter and a pair of ten meters— converging on two people: a kid in black with mismatched swords and Petra. She just stood there, awkward and unmoving, while a Titan charged her down.
"What the…?" Levi said under his breath.
"It's her leg!" Hange said.
They glanced down. Petra was balanced entirely on one leg; the off leg was immobilized in a splint.
"Damn," Levi said. "Eld, Gunther, take out that Titan. Oruo, get her out of there. I'll get the other two."
"Yes sir!"
Levi hadn't waited for the acknowledgment before he broke formation. He headed directly for the twelve meter coming up from the southwest. Sensing a larger collection of people to target, it turned to face the squad and began lumbering towards them.
Levi kicked his feet free of the stirrups and launched himself at the Titan. He lodged his grappling hook into the Titan's chest then fired the ODM to swing wide. He fired a second grapple into the back, released the first hook and reeled in hard, using the momentum and torque to increase the force of his strike, cleanly slicing the nape. First contact to kill was less than ten seconds. He turned to the second, aimed the grapple and prepared to fire when the Titan sunk to his knees. The kid with the mismatched swords had cut one ankle and completely removed the other foot. Levi adjusted his trajectory downwards, fired the line and reeled himself in when he heard Hange yell "Don't kill it! I want to cut into it!"
Levi gave an exasperated sigh at having to alter his tactics twice for the same Titan. He severed the shoulder muscles on both sides, rendering the arms useless to prevent the crazy woman from getting eaten while she studied it, then for good measure, slid down the back and severed the spine midway. It crumpled forward.
"Woohoo!" Hange practically jumped out of her saddle in excitement. "You're the best, Levi. Throw me your knife so I have two for the dissection."
"Whatever," Levi said in a bored tone. "Just don't lose track of time so it regenerates, gets up and starts killing us again." He walked over to talk to the kid.
"Who's the brat?" Oruo asked Petra in exactly the same tone Levi had just used.
Eld nudged Gunther in the ribs and nodded towards Oruo and Petra. Oruo had a crush on Petra, but she found his constant imitation of Captain Levi to be annoying. Plus the kid had obviously just saved her life. Oruo might be a phenomenal Titan slayer, but he had a lot to learn about women. Eld and Gunther stood back to watch.
"His name is Kirito and he's got a better chance of becoming Captain Levi than you do," Petra snapped. "He got two solos and two assists without ODM gear. Would have been three solos if he'd known about the nape on the first one. And probably five solos and one assisted if you hadn't shown up when you did."
Levi narrowed his eyes. Petra was generous, but she didn't usually exaggerate. "Suppose you tell me exactly what happened."
Kirito shrugged. "The horse went down and she was injured. We couldn't outrun them so we had to fight. Oh, and she should get the XP from that first kill as a solo. I would have gone for the head next and if that didn't work, gone for the heart. I would only have hit the nape by dumb luck."
Levi just looked at him. "Back it up, junior. What the hell were you doing out here in the first place."
Kirito scrunched his face in thought. "Honestly, I think the system might have glitched. I was scouting the Boss Room on the 72nd floor and he got between me and the door. I tried to warp out, but he destroyed my teleport crystal just as I was activating it. It dropped me here."
Levi was forced to wonder if the kid was insane. But then, listening to Hange cackle madly, promising the Titan she wasn't going to hurt it even while she was dissecting it, insanity wasn't uncommon in this regiment. Further questioning got derailed when the aforementioned Titan started to twitch its arms. They all turned just in time to see the healed Titan reach back and grab Hange off the back of his neck.
Both swordsmen sprung into action. Kirito leapt up and severed the hand while Levi went for the nape. The hand holding Hange dropped to the ground. Kirito cut the fingers to free her before the steam could start to burn.
"Woah! That one almost had me." The damned woman almost sounded pleased. "Thank you, Kirito and thank you Levaaaahhhhhhh! What did you do? You killed it!"
"You're welcome," said Levi.
"No!" Hange wailed. "Erwin said I could have another one if we could catch it."
"We're in unmapped Titan country," Levi said. "We have an injured soldier. We're two horses short as it is; we can't spare any more to drag this thing."
Hange stared mournfully at the Titan corpse. "No, no, no. Please don't die yet." She cut a lock of hair like a momento, but that too evaporated.
"Um, what are you doing?" Kirito said, but it was Petra who answered.
"She's trying to study the Titans, but they're really hard to study; alive they want to kill you, but as soon as they're dead, they steam into nothingness."
"What's to study?" Kirito said. "They're just ones and zeros."
Abruptly, Hange forgot the steaming Titan. "Oh no, they're much more than just here or not, dead or alive. There's so much we don't understand. For example, they have no reproductive organs, so how do they reproduce?"
Kirito considered. "Most of the monsters have a spawning point."
"A spawning point? Like a spawning place?" Hange's eyes suddenly grew wide. "Like a hive… only the queen lays eggs, the rest are sexless workers… Kirito, you're a genius. Where have you been all my life?"
"Um…"
"But where is the hive?" Hange began pacing back and forth excitedly. "They mostly come in from the south, so if we move beyond the walls, we should be able to find a place where they originate…"
Great, Levi thought. An insane teenager paired with an insane Hange. This day was just turning out to be peachy.
•-—- -—-•
