Savagery (Chapter)

A jolt runs through officers across the Garrison and Military Police the instant Zeke Yeager screams, and Dot Pixis drops his cup in alarm. When Falco Grice wakes in a Yeagerist carriage describing an electric shock through his body, Hange Zoë grasps that Niccolo was right about the wine and that Zeke has activated his power. Deep in the Titan Forest, Zeke abandons Levi Ackerman to a swarm of transformed Survey Corps soldiers, mocking him with the question of whether he can really cut down men who did nothing wrong. Levi hesitates only briefly. The spinal-fluid Titans move with unusual speed and cunning, yet he carves a path through every one of them.

Confident that no one could slaughter his own comrades, Zeke rides a Titan toward the forest edge while musing that only his half-brother Eren truly understands him. A blood-soaked Levi intercepts him armed with Thunder Spears. Zeke transforms into the Beast Titan and hurls skull fragments from his last remaining Titan, but Levi uses falling branches as cover, drives his spears into the nape, and blasts Zeke out of his Titan. He drags the broken man away by the head, refusing to grant him a quick death.

In Shiganshina, Floch Forster marches a captive Hange to Keith Shadis's training grounds and demands the 109th Training Corps swear loyalty to Eren and the Yeagerists. Trainees who comply are ordered to prove themselves by beating Shadis, the symbol of the old regime, until he cannot stand. Zeke later wakes in a wagon with a Thunder Spear buried in his gut, wired to a detonator at his neck. Levi methodically slices away pieces of his legs to block any transformation. Slipping under from the pain, Zeke asks after his missing glasses and drifts into a memory of playing catch with Tom Ksaver as a boy.

Zeke's scream converts the Survey Corps soldiers who drank his spinal fluid into Titans, confirming Niccolo's suspicion about the tainted wine.

Levi kills the entire Titanized escort alone, then defeats the Beast Titan in the forest with Thunder Spears and takes Zeke prisoner.

Floch and the Yeagerists seize the 109th Training Corps, forcing the trainees to batter Keith Shadis as proof of allegiance.

Levi rigs Zeke with a Thunder Spear detonator and mutilates his legs to prevent another transformation, while Zeke's fading mind turns to Tom Ksaver.

The chapter shares its title with the anime episode Savagery, which adapts these events. Its Japanese title reads 暴悪 (Bōaku).

Levi's retort to Zeke, that the Beast Titan's holder never grasped how many comrades the Survey Corps has cut down to get this far, serves as the chapter's defining line and explains why the Titan horde failed as a shield.

The closing flashback of a young Zeke playing catch sets up the following chapter, Sole Salvation, which explores his childhood in full.