The afternoon sunlight was stretched thin by the gray-green spore clouds. Although noon was when the slime mold fruiting bodies were least active, this pattern was reversed during the transition from spring to winter.
Even constrained by the sunlight, the more suitable temperature had instead breathed life back into the frozen fruiting bodies, gray gas slowly drifting from their mouths and noses.
However, perhaps because their prey had yet to appear, they made no unnecessary movements.
They merely stood silently amid the devastated streets, their vacant eyes facing the direction with the strongest signs of life.
As though they were waiting for something.
The Alliance soldiers watched them as well, light and heavy machine guns propped along the window ledges.
It was not yet the best time.
They too were waiting—for the slime molds to gather in the streets, then they would call in artillery to tear them apart and use machine guns to harvest the remaining stragglers...
The Alliance's Sector 06 was located around the middle of the defensive line, which had been divided into twenty sections. The pressure here was not as severe as in Sectors 10 and 11, nor was it as relaxed as in Sectors 1 and 20. At the moment, all was calm.
At Position 1 on the foremost line, atop the roof of a reinforced abandoned office building.
Commander Fountain held binoculars in his hands, staring motionlessly northward.
In the direction he was watching, a four-wheeled pickup truck welded with steel bars and a scoop drove out through the open gate under the cover of four players, heading toward the Gnawers wandering close to the position.
Aside from the Level 20 veteran driving, the other four had only recently entered the game.
They carried bolt-action rifles in their hands, crowbars or short blades on