Ch. 6 - Everything has a price (older version)

[A/N: Alright, I've posted the re-written Ch. 6 just a few minutes ago, but I've already seen 2 comments saying that they prefered this one rather than the newer one. Because of this, I'll post this chapter too. Please make a chapter comment saying which one you prefer. The one that wins will stay and the other will be deleted. It's your choice and I'm fine with either. Also, I'll delete all comments that were on this older version of the chapter just so it's easier for me to see the votes. But, 'Aeternabilis' posted an interesting comment, so here's my answer: The MC will have an incentive for upgrading his universe. Thank you for reading and enjoy!]

[3186 words]

*STAB*

Due to the fact that Gabriel jumped from 10 meters high, the knife's blade easily penetrated through the flesh, pierced the skull and impaled itself on Bertolt's brain. This might not have killed him due to the Shifters' insane healing factor, but it made him collapse on the ground with a limp body.

Reiner was almost panicking and started to run away because a Titan had just appeared out of nowhere, but when Reiner turned his head to call for Bertolt, he only saw Gabriel standing in front of his fainted body. The girl was following him, running, but wasn't scared or panicked in the least.

"HUH?! BERTOLT!!!!" Reiner screamed as he stopped moving.

From Reiner's loud scream, the girl's attention was also shifted to Gabriel,

"!" She didn't say anything, but her face revealed her emotions, she was clearly surprised.

Gabriel, still high on adrenaline, was completely unfazed by killing a kid, and instead removed one of the pills on his pocket, looked at it for a second and ate it.

*gulp*

Instantly after swallowing, Gabriel felt his brain receiving tons of new information. Knowledge on how to use his new power, how long he could use it for, and how far the range was entered his brain.

Holding his head from the sheer pain of getting this much new information in a second, Gabriel held his urge to scream.

The girl immediately started running towards Gabriel, either to retrieve Bertolt or to kill Gabriel.

Fighting through the pain, Gabriel lifted his head and locked his eyes on hers,

'Stare at a tree.' Gabriel said in his head while he commanded his power to work.

From the vast knowledge that he received from eating the pill, he already knew how to perfectly use this new power of his. It was almost like a slight mind control. He now had the ability to shift a person's attention to whatever or whoever he wanted. The person would remain focused on whatever he commanded for as long as he needed, but after it passed the 1 minute mark, he would start to feel a considerable amount of pain on his brain, one that only increased with time.

Moments after Gabriel issued the command in his head, the girl's eyes seemed as if they lost the light of life and she stopped running, looked to her right and simply stared at a tree.

Reiner was still in the same place, it seemed that due to sheer shock, he couldn't move.

Content that new his power worked well, Gabriel now looked at the Titan on his right, the one that was having a kid for lunch.

'Pay attention to a random cloud.' Gabriel commanded the Titan while both of them were looking at each other.

The Titan moved his head upwards, picked a random cloud in the vast amount of them present and started staring at the cloud, almost as if it was in a staring contest with the cloud.

Now only Gabriel and Reiner were left fully conscious.

Gabriel's head was screaming in pain, maybe due to him using his power quickly in succession or because he gained too much information in an instant, but he still needed to do one more thing before he stopped using his new power.

Staring at the wide-eyed Reiner, Gabriel sent the last command. 'Uhhh...stare at the girl's ass, I don't know.'

Reiner did just as he was told. Walking up to the blonde girl who had her eyes focused on a tree, Reiner got a few meters behind her, crouched down and stared at her butt.

"Damn, what a perv..." Gabriel said as if all of this wasn't his fault.

Since the guilt from killing or at least incapacitating a kid hadn't really hit Gabriel yet, he was still fine with his actions.

Gabriel's head seemed as if it was on fire. It burned with pain.

"URGH....!" He grimaced in pain.

Not having the time to sit down and wallow in pain, Gabriel removed the backpack that was on Bertolt's back. He had a plan for what to do now, but it depended on one small thing...

Carefully searching through the backpack, Gabriel found nothing of importance inside.

Going towards Reiner with his hands on his head trying to somehow lessen the pain, he opened his backpack too.

Ravaging through its contents, he finally found the one thing that he needed, the Titan Injection.

He read on the wiki that if he was a Pure Titan, meaning a Titan that didn't have intelligence and simply existed, he could eat a Titan Shifter and gain its power. From the brief reading, he saw that to turn himself into a Pure Titan, he would need to inject himself with this Titan Injection.

Although eating another human must be disgusting, when you're a Pure Titan you have no control over your actions, so you'd simply eat the human as if he were a burguer.

Placing the needle in the top of the syringe, Gabriel removed the small vile of glass that contained a Titan's spinal fluid and sucked the fluid out with the syringe, filling it entirely.

Doing some quick breaths to gain courage, Gabriel placed the syringe in his forearm and inserted the needle in his vein, injecting the fluid inside his body.

...

He waited, waited some more, and waited just a little bit more, but nothing happened. After a full 30 seconds of waiting, nothing had happened.

"What went wrong? I should have turned into a mindless Titan and eaten these kids here, gaining their powers." He wondered.

*DING*

With the sound of a notification, Gabriel's phone vibrated.

Removing it from his pocket with a headache that only got worse as time passed, he began to read a text that appeared at the lockscreen. He already knew that every text that appeared out of nowhere was sent by Lucas, so he read it with attention.

"Nothing happened because you are not a Subject of Ymir. Only those with Ymir Fritz's blood, even the slighest amount of it, can turn into Pure Titans or Titan Shifters. I can make you a Subject of Ymir, but only if you give up the mission's reward of 70 Tokens. Yes or no?" The text read.

Gabriel was now in a tough position. On one side, if he became a Subject of Ymir he would be able to gain unimaginable power, but on the other side, he would be able to buy the new grade of Fabricator and a lot more stuff, or even use it to gain dozens of 24 hour abilities with the 70 Tokens...

But, that's when he discovered a loophole on Lucas' text. It only said that he needed to give up the 70 Tokens, but it didn't say anything about the rewards from the secret quests that he might complete! Maybe he already completed a few and would still gain a small amount of Tokens!

With this thought in mind, Gabriel agreed to the proposal. "Yes, I'll give up the 70 Tokens in order to become a Subject of Ymir."

*DING*

"Glad doing business with you!" Another text read.

Not even having the time to react to this text, Gabriel's body started to deform and in seconds, he became a Pure Titan, one with no intelligence or will. His body now measured 7 meters in height and he was a naked, massive human-like creature who ate humans for fun.

He looked at Bertolt's body that lied on the ground in a puddle of blood and walked towards it. Bertolt was exuding a large amount of steam from the place where the knife was stuck in, so it looked like he wasn't dead yet.

Gabriel's face was now completely contorted and carried a smile that went from ear to ear.

Grabbing Bertolt's lump body as if it were a cat's, he moved his head upwards and brought it right above his mouth. Opening it wide and dropping Bertolt inside, a gush of blood flew out from the small gap on his mouth that had his legs.

Strangely enough, even though Gabriel was now a mindless Titan, Reiner, the girl and the other Titan were still under his Attention Change power.

Munching on Bertolt's body for a few seconds, Gabriel finally swallowed it.

1 minute later, a large amount of steam was released from Gabriel's Titan's nape, and coming out of it was noneother than Gabriel himself, now in human form.

Taking a few seconds to completely regain his consciouness, Gabriel's eyes started to fill with tears as he standed in the middle of the smoke.

"W-What have I done.....?" He muttered to himself. "I ate a FUCKING KID.....a innocent k-kid....I ATE HIM!"

Guilt now started to become present in his mind as the truth of what he had done dawned upon him.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" He screamed.

His head was, now more than ever, still in deep pain from the use of his power, but now it was even worse due to his complicated emotions.

"I-I need to eat Reiner and the girl too...." Gabriel said with a conflicted tone.

There was always a price to pay for power. The one he had to pay was killing and eating 3 innocent kids. Would they become genocidal maniacs in the future? Absolutely. Were they now? Definitely not. He needed to eat these 3 kids so that he could survive in the future worlds he would visit. He knew that some fictional worlds had planet-destroying beings on every damn corner of the street, so what could he, a normal squishy human, do against them? At least by eating these kids he would be able to better defend himself against threats that would once be able to completely annihilate him.

Moving these guilty thoughts to a deeper part of his mind, he steeled his resolve and decided that he would now eat Reiner and the girl.

He already knew how to turn into a Titan from the wiki, so he bit his hand and made only one thing present in his mind: the goal to become powerful by eating the kids.

*KRAKOOM!*

A bright yellow lightning fell from the heavens and struck Gabriel's body, but instead of killing him like it should, it started to model Gabriel's Titan, the Colossal Titan.

A few moments later, in the place that Gabriel once stood, was a 60 meter tall humongous creature.

With a gigantic body that lacked skin, arms that were disproportionately long, and feet that were swollen and pilar-like, Gabriel's Colossal Titan stood in its full glory. Like all Titans, his gigantic Titan was genderless and lacked sexual organs, but his physiology was clearly modeled after the male sex.

'Holy hell, I'm tall...' Thought Gabriel as he saw everything trough his Titan's eyes. He was currently inside his Titan's nape, the weak point of every Titan.

Focusing on his current objective, Gabriel cleared his mind and moved his arms towards the dazed Reiner and girl, grabbing them. His movements were slow and steady due to his gigantic body.

With the 2 small little kids in his hands that now seemed to be recovering their consciousness and were not being affected by Gabriel's power anymore, he hurriedly yeeted them inside his mouth, making sure to not just swallow them, but actually bite and kill them. If he only swallowed them, then there was a chance that they would not die and turn into a Titan inside his stomach! Imagine that! So, just to make sure, Gabriel bit them and completely destroyed their bodies inside his mouth as their blood and Cerebrospinal fluid went down his throat.

Swallowing them whole, Gabriel immediately felt that he now had 2 more Titans he could use, the Armored Titan and the Female Titan. Due to the name 'Female Titan', many people think that this Titan can only be used by women, but that's a misconception. Like all of the Nine Titans, the Female Titan is genderless. It physiology is only modeled after a female because of its current (well, former now) wielder, the blonde girl who was called Annie Leonhart. The 'Female' is only a title given to it, same as 'Armored' or 'Colossal'.

As he was thinking of his 2 new Titans, a thought crossed Gabriel's mind, 'If the girl who was with Reiner and Bertolt was also a Titan Shifter, then it's very likely that that other boy who got eaten by the random Titan is too a Titan Shifter! That Titan should be watching that random cloud still... let me find him.'

Turning his head in order to search for the small Titan, he found nothing of the sort. Looking closer towards the place that had a hole on the ground, formerly the random Titan's hiding spot, Gabriel saw a young naked girl lying on the grass, unconscious.

'Hmm...this must be the girl who was the random Titan. So that boy did indeed posess the power of a Titan....well, I've eaten 3 already, what's 1 more?' He chuckled at his really fucked up train of thought. Right now he wasn't really thinking straight, he was in a fully objective-mode, almost as if his heart had become ice.

Quietly and slowly grabbing the unconscious girl from the grass, Gabriel placed her head in between his 2 sets of teeth and closed it with all his might. Although his heart was icy cold right now, he didn't want to give her a painful death so he removed her head first.

Finally eating her entire body, he also felt like he gained another Titan power, the Jaw Titan.

Very happy with his work, Gabriel's Colossal Titan lied down on the grass and out of its nape, Gabriel appeared in his human form. Around his eyes were large striking scars with the same color as the Colossal Titan's flesh.

"Well, that was a feast." Gabriel said as he was completely covered in the steam that the Colossal Titan's nape released.

Jumping on the grass, he made his way inside the forest, back to the tree that he had slept on.

Finding the right tree after 20 minutes of searching, he used the shovel near it to remove his backpack from inside the ground and placed it on his back.

Getting the phone out of his pocket, Gabriel checked the application that showed the countdown and percentage,

[Time left until Shiganshina Attack]

[If it were to happen,12:58:49]

[Likelihood of Shiganshina Attack happening]

[0% - Not happening]

[Return to universe]

[Yes / No]

"Hm.... I've already completed the mission, but what about the hidden quests? I don't know how many there are and I don't know if I even completed any of them yet, but I think I'll stay here for a few more days just to try and do everything possible in this world. Since I won't be gaining the mission's main reward, I should try to complete as many hidden quests as possible. I have no idea if I'll be able to return here one day, so I should just do the best with what I got." He said to himself.

Placing the phone back on his pocket, Gabriel started to make his way back to the place where Reiner and the kids were.

The sun was coming up at the moment, so the scenery was one of tranquility and peace. It made the actions that Gabriel had done resurface back to his mind with full power.

"I-I'm a disgusting human being..." He cried due to his actions, "I KILLED AND ATE F O U R INNOCENT KIDS.... FOUR!.....A-At least it was for a good reason.....I needed to do this, if not now, in the future.....The places where I'll be travelling to won't give a fuck if I'm prepared for it or not. My morality will be tested countless times.... Sometimes, even I won't know if I'm in the right or wrong. Actually, right or wrong is complete bullshit! Everything in this world is subjective.... what's wrong for me may be right for someone else and vice-versa.....everything's like that. I did what I had to do, I did what I thought was needed, but would Reiner's mother think the same? Would she think that her son getting eaten by me was the right choice? No. And what can I say in return? Fuck that!

"I need to ice out my heart. I can't be the same emotional coward that I am right now..... This journey of mine will be ruthless and cruel. Killing will be an everyday ocurrence in the worlds I'll go to. It's survival of the fittest out there, and if I'm not strong enough, I'll be killed without a second thought. If I don't prepare my heart, soul and mind for this than It's best if I just kill myself right now rather than suffer. This is what I have to do. It's kill or be killed." Gabriel finished his long talk with his feelings.

With his words, his mind was slowly being cleared from the guilty thoughts that lingered around. He already realized that the people he had killed today would only be the beginning. In this long journey of his throughout various worlds, taking a life would become the least of his problems and he knew it. It was better for him to prepare himself from the get-go than to wait until his mind was already filled with guilt which would only serve to cloud his judgment.

Now with his mind in the right place, Gabriel continued to walk towards the place where he ate Reiner and the others.

Removing the phone from his pocket, Gabriel began to scroll through the Explore tab on Instagram as many posts filled his feed. One in particular caught his attention though,

"Huh? Why does this post have a picture of me on my Titan form?.....wait." In the end of his sentence, Gabriel realized something.

Even though he didn't have that much time to research this world before he came here, he had a phone here! With Wi-Fi! And Google!

Quickly closing Instagram, Gabriel opened Safari and searched 'Shiganshina'. He forgot the name of the world that he was in and only remembered Shiganshina.

As his search loaded, he clicked the first option which was the same wiki that he read before,

"It worked! How didn't I think of this before!" He lightly slapped his forehead, "Attack on Titan huh....let me learn more about what I can do in this world!"