The last leader of the world starts with an elite infantry squad!

Liu Yong's body began to tremble violently, like a candle flickering in the wind.

He staggered back a step, bumping into the scorching sandbag behind him, his fingers scratching futilely at the outside of his protective suit around his neck, leaving only meaningless marks.

His gaze, through the murky blindfold completely obscured by dancing mycelium and bloody sputum, was rapidly fading away, its last glimmer of human pain and despair.

In this situation, Gu Chengyun was completely frozen in place.

His gaze passed over Liu Yong's hand scratching his neck, past the other man's trembling body, and focused intently on Liu Yong's face—or more precisely, on the inside of Liu Yong's gas mask goggles.

At first, it was just a blurry stain and shadow, but as Liu Yong trembled violently and the internal hyphae proliferated wildly, Gu Chengyun saw it clearly.

Behind that narrow lens, blurred by bloody sputum and inexplicable growths...

It's not the pupil, and it's not the white of the eye.

It was a patch of pale mycelium dancing wildly, growing ever denser, as if it possessed life!

They are growing wildly inside the mask's narrow space, almost filling every inch of the space!

"!!!"

Gu Chengyun's breathing suddenly stopped, and a chill rushed from his tailbone straight to the top of his head, instantly freezing his limbs and bones!

Spore infection! I learned about it in military academy textbooks!!

"teach……"

Liu Yong finally managed to squeeze out two syllables from his throat, so indistinct they were almost inaudible, a mixture of churning phlegm and the rubbing of fungal hyphae.

This was his final, desperate cry to humanity.

Immediately afterwards, his whole body suddenly thrust forward and then arched violently backward, as if something was about to burst out of his body!

Beneath the hazmat suit, a chilling, eerie sound came from within, like a wet cloth tearing apart mixed with rapidly multiplying foam!

"Back off—!!! Everyone back off—!! Get away from him—!!!"

"Where are the medics?! Where are they?! Why aren't they coming?!"

Gu Chengyun's roar echoed on the noisy city wall, carrying a tremor he himself was unaware of.

Several soldiers nearby, startled, instinctively stopped what they were doing and looked over with suspicion at their comrade Liu Yong, who was behaving strangely and trembling violently.

"Instructor, our company's medics..." A lieutenant platoon leader rushed over, his face still covered in soot from carrying ammunition. He was out of breath, and his voice carried anxiety and a hint of barely perceptible fear.

"...They were killed by the fungal beasts that broke through the defenses earlier! New ones haven't been sent in yet!"

The lieutenant had barely finished speaking—

"boom!"

A loud, yet strangely muffled, cracking sound suddenly came from where Liu Yong was!

The sound didn't sound like the explosion of flesh and blood, but more like... an over-expanded bladder filled with wet cotton and fermented matter, forced to burst by internal pressure!

There was no blood and gore flying everywhere as expected, and no pieces of internal organs scattered.

Because in just under two minutes, all the soft tissues and organs belonging to humans in Liu Yong's body had already been eroded, decomposed, assimilated, and devoured by the wildly growing network of mycelium!

What exploded was his dark green hazmat suit, which was bulging and deformed, covered with irregular protrusions.

From the gaps in the torn clothing and the helmet from which the mask finally flew off, gushing out were pale white mycelium that danced in the air like willow catkins in winter, yet possessed an eerie vitality!

They are not simply debris.

Each wisp of mycelium unfurled and twisted in the air, as if possessing its own independent consciousness. Illuminated by emergency lights and distant firelight, it fluttered down like a deathly "snow" that covered only a few meters in radius.

These mycelia are extremely light and spread rapidly with the airflow from the explosion and the turbulent airflow above the city wall!

Some of them landed on nearby sandbags and immediately tried to burrow deep into the fibers as if they had come to life.

Some of the soldiers that drifted further away landed on their shoulders, helmets, or even near the air intake valves of their gas masks!

"what?!"

"It's mycelium! It exploded off Liu Yong's body!"

"Don't touch them! Don't let them get on you!!"

...

The quick-reacting soldiers screamed in terror, frantically patting themselves or using their bayonets to pry open the mycelium that had fallen onto their equipment.

However, Liu Yong's self-destruction seemed to be just an insignificant fuse that ignited the silent powder kegs that had long been scattered throughout the city walls.

Almost at the same time that Liu Yong "exploded" into a sky full of mycelium—

"Ah—!!! My eyes! I can't see! There's something drilling inside!!!"

In the right flank of the 2nd Mechanized Infantry Company's defensive zone, a gunner operating a heavy machine gun suddenly screamed and fell backward, clutching his gas mask goggles tightly with both hands, his body twisting wildly.

Between his fingers, a faint white, thread-like substance was seeping out!

"Cough! Cough cough cough—Ugh—!!!"

Behind another rampart, two soldiers who were passing ammunition coughed violently almost simultaneously.

As they coughed, one of them suddenly knelt down. Several irregular lumps suddenly bulged on the back of their hazmat suit, and they quickly wriggled and expanded, as if something was multiplying wildly under the clothes and about to break out of its "shell"!

"Platoon leader! Platoon leader, what's wrong with you?! Wake up!"

In a relatively intact bunker of the 3rd Mechanized Infantry Company on the left flank, a lieutenant suddenly collapsed to the ground, his body convulsing violently intermittently. Strange hissing sounds and the gurgling of liquid could be heard coming from under his gas mask.

The soldiers who tried to help him up were horrified to discover that, under the collar of the protective suit around the platoon leader's neck, countless tiny white mycelia were emerging like body hairs, and were growing and intertwining at a visible speed!

"My hand! My hand!!!"

A young soldier looked at his hands, which were covered in chemical protective gloves. A small, inconspicuous patch of moldy slime had somehow gotten stuck to the surface of the gloves.

At this moment, in the area where the slime was, the lining of the glove was being pushed up with tiny bulges, as if countless needles were pricking from the inside out!

Immediately afterwards, a sharp, piercing pain spread up my arm!

Wailing voices, coughing, terrified screams, and chilling bodily noises...

Within a few dozen seconds, like a plague, it broke out simultaneously at various positions on the city wall, where order had just been restored and people were taking the time to rest and resupply!

Infect!

A large-scale outbreak of spore infection!

Through damaged protective suits, splashes of bodily fluids from untreated pathogens, inhaled dust containing live spores, and even secondary contamination from mycelium dispersed after a comrade's mutated explosion...

The deadly attack was carried out when the soldiers were most exhausted, most likely to be unprotected, and most in close contact with the source of contamination.

The city wall defenses were instantly plunged into a more chaotic and desperate situation than when facing the head-on attack of the fungal beast horde!

The enemy is no longer just those visible and tangible monsters outside the walls.

The enemy is right beside us!

It's right there in yourself!

It's in every breath you might inhale!

"Stay calm! Don't panic!!!"

Gu Chengyun's voice was hoarse from shouting. He forced himself to look away from the shock of Liu Yong's "explosion" and the mycelium scattering everywhere. His heart was pounding wildly in his chest, almost shattering his ribs.

He saw the soldiers around him who suddenly fell to the ground, screamed, and reacted abnormally. He also saw the fear on the faces of many more soldiers that was even deeper than when they faced the beast tide!

That is the ultimate fear of an invisible enemy, of one's own potential for quiet mutation, and of comrades suddenly turning into monsters!

"Everyone who shows no abnormalities, immediately check your personal protective equipment! Pay special attention to checking the airtightness of your masks and any tears in your clothing!"

"Anyone experiencing a cough, dizziness, itchy skin, or any unusual sensations should immediately self-isolate in the designated area at the rear! Do not contact others!"

"Officers and sergeants, hold your men steady! Clear the carcasses and residual slime from your respective zones! Quickly!"

As Gu Chengyun hoarsely issued orders, he anxiously searched for Battalion Commander Gao Cheng's figure with his eyes.

He knew that his cries alone would seem so pale and powerless in the face of the chaos and terror that had erupted.

We must find Gao Cheng, we must unify command, we must... do something before the defenses completely collapse from within!

However, just as his gaze swept over the area of ​​the left-wing mechanized infantry company, which had just been severely damaged by the paddle shells and was now filled with particularly dense cries of agony, his pupils suddenly contracted again.

Because in the corner of his eye, he saw an endless array of fungal beasts reappear on the horizon beyond the city walls, stretching as far as the eye could see like a tidal wave, spreading outwards...

At the same time, the spore swarms in the air also experienced unprecedented agitation visible to the naked eye...

Desperate situation is looming!