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

Vision was rapidly blurring, not from smoke and dust, but from spores accumulating, corroding, and leaving sticky streaks on the gas mask and goggles.

Breathing became difficult; the filter canister quickly became saturated and clogged due to the extremely high concentration of spores and colloids. Each inhalation felt like passing through a waterlogged cotton wadding, laborious and carrying a sweet, fishy smell of death.

The skin feels itchy, burning, or cold and numb everywhere—that's a signal that spores are frantically trying to invade through the damaged areas.

In my ears, the screams, coughs, and vomiting of my comrades, mixed with the sticky sound of spores falling and the low, mocking surging of the distant horde of fungi, formed a symphony of the apocalypse.

The defenses are dissolving and collapsing from within.

"Hahaha... Come on! You son of a bitch!! Come on—!!!"

However, amidst this dissolving, death-sweet rain of despair, a hoarse, insane laugh, yet imbued with a metallic, indomitable will, erupted!

It was the left-wing air defense position, with the only remaining quadruple 25mm anti-aircraft gun whose barrel was already slightly red and deformed!

The one who manipulates it can no longer be fully called a "human".

Gunner Liu Kaihua's entire upper body chemical protective suit was riddled with holes from the spore rain, and his exposed skin was covered with dark red fungal spots and emerging white mycelium.

The inside of his gas mask goggles was covered with an ever-thickening network of mycelium, and his vision was already a blurry, swaying white light.

Fresh blood mixed with the viscous fluid of fungal hyphae seeped continuously from his nostrils and the corners of his mouth, dripping onto the scorching cannon and making a hissing sound.

He could not see his goal, and he was suffering pain comparable to being bitten by millions of ants!

But with his strong willpower, he still desperately raised the cannon muzzle toward the deep purple sky that was pouring out death!

At this moment, memories of the past flashed through my mind like a slideshow: the wasted years of lying at home sponging off my parents before the apocalypse, the exile like a stray dog ​​after the apocalypse...

It was the leader! It was the countless survivors from the Zhanjiang and Guchenghu settlements who lined the streets to welcome him!

For the first time, he, a useless person who had been cursed for 20 years, found a purpose in life. He realized that even a lecherous, lazy, and cowardly person like himself could be valued, recognized, and needed!

"Long live the leader! Humanity will prevail!!!"

In his final moments, he screamed hysterically, his voice shattered by the growing fungal hyphae in his throat, yet he used his last strength to press the firing button!

Thump thump thump thump—! ! !

The cannon trembled violently!

The scalding hot cartridge cases, carrying gunpowder smoke and the gunner's blood and mycelium, clattered out and landed near his feet, which were also beginning to mutate, yet he still held firmly to the firing pedal.

The orange-red fire whip, defying the pouring rain of spores, stubbornly and relentlessly lashed towards the deep purple sky of death!

The trajectory of the tracer bullets stood out starkly against the thick rain of spores, and it was also all the more tragic.

When the shells hit the spore cloud, they didn't explode in flames, but rather created strange cavities that were temporarily dispersed by the shockwave and then filled with even more spores.

negligible.

But this is a counterattack!

It is the final, hoarse roar of humanity, trapped in a desperate situation and already half-rotten, against natural disaster!

The ammunition handler standing nearby was unaware that the gunner, Liu Kaihua, was already dead. At this moment, his entire lower body had lost its human form, enveloped and assimilated by the wildly proliferating hyphae and mucus tissue, as if it had grown out of the ground.

But his upper body, shrouded in the black smoke from the anti-aircraft guns, continued to move mechanically, bit by bit, as he picked up the shells and inserted them one by one into the empty magazine.

Fine mycelium was constantly emerging from his mouth, but his eyes were fixed on the blurry back of the gunner, until the very last moment when his arm fell limply to his side.

In another machine gun bunker that was about to be completely covered by mycelium, the gunner was already silent, his body and the machine gun almost "grown" together by the mycelium.

But the assistant marksman, a young soldier whose face was half covered in mycelium and whose eyes had turned cloudy white, groped his way to take over the marksman's position with trembling hands, nails falling off, and hands that were also beginning to become mycelium-covered.

He can't see or hear.

He simply relied on muscle memory to aim the scorching gun barrel at the glowing light that was beginning to surge again below the city wall.

Pull the trigger.

Da da da……

The gunshots were hoarse and intermittent.

Until the last bullet was fired, until the mycelium completely sealed his mouth and nose, swallowing up his last bit of consciousness.

"Hold on... for the brothers behind... hold on for one more second... every second counts..."

The vague vows vanished in the rain of spores.

...

Meanwhile, on the reconnaissance battalion's position, Gu Chengyun slumped down beside a pile of ammunition boxes, facing the gap in the city wall where the rising and falling tide of fungal beasts could be seen directly on the horizon. The severe infection had completely robbed him of his human form, making him look like a discarded, melting wax figure.

He could no longer feel the coldness of the city wall, nor the hardness of the ammunition box beneath him.

The pain, like being stabbed by millions of tiny needles, burned by flames, or having ice picks chisel into his bones, had exceeded the limits of what his nervous system could bear, becoming a pervasive and omnipresent presence.

His vision was completely covered by a layer of ever-thickening, wriggling, pale mycelium, leaving only extremely blurry light and shadow.

In my ears, the sticky sound of spores falling, the harsh friction of fungal beasts scraping against the city wall, the sporadic but tenacious roar of gunfire in the distance... all sounds seemed to come through a thick, water-soaked quilt, distorted and distant.

His breathing almost stopped, and he could clearly feel those cold, slippery filaments frantically growing, tangling, and blocking his throat and trachea.

Each extremely faint rise and fall of the chest brought not oxygen, but a suffocating feeling of more fungal friction and sweet, fishy mucus backflow.

He tried to move his fingers, but the thought seemed to travel across mountains and rivers without any response. His arms, legs, and even neck felt as if they were nailed to the ammunition box with steel nails.

He suddenly thought of the movies he had seen in the past, and the heroic protagonists who, when facing death, showed smiles of relief, mockery, or fearlessness.

He wanted to smile like that too.

For my short, struggling, fearful, yet ultimately unexited, twenty-odd years of life.

For the older brother who "dropped" him here, who is probably in a terrible predicament right now.

For the parents I will never see again, for Wanying and the others...

He strained his facial muscles, trying to create an arc.

Failed...

Because at this moment, he had long since lost control of his facial muscles...

On the verge of death, in his fading consciousness, he managed to move his lips, and thick, fungus-covered blood foam spilled from the corner of his mouth, trickling down...

'Brother...it hurts so much...it hurts so much....'

'Mom, please don't...blame my brother...'

Am I...a...hero?

...

BOOM————————!

Just as Gu Chengyun closed his eyes, a crisp ringing sound rang out, and the fungal beast that had just emerged from the gap was melted into the soaring flames!

The reconnaissance battalion's ammunition detonated!

Within the rising mushroom cloud, a torn photograph, about the size of a thumb, danced wildly in the air currents, a string of handwritten, delicate blue characters stubbornly shimmering with a faint light:

02.11.03, safe transport...