Western border, Green Valley Agricultural Zone.
This had once been the Human World's largest grain-producing region, with wheat fields stretching as far as the eye could see. When the wind swept across them, they looked like a golden sea.
But now.
The gold was gone.
In its place was endless black.
Black insects, like a tide, covered the entire ground.
They gnawed on wheat, trees, and houses. They could even bite countless pits into concrete and metal fences.
Wherever they passed, not a blade of grass remained.
Fine white insect eggs floated through the air. One breath was enough for them to enter the lungs through the respiratory tract.
Those who were parasitized would see insects writhing beneath their skin. Within three hours, they would lose their minds and become mutated creatures that knew only how to attack.
"Hold the line!! Hold it for me!!"
At the army's blockade, the commander raised his gun and shouted himself hoarse.
The soldiers wielded flamethrowers, spraying wildly at the swarm.
The wall of fire swept through, scorching swaths of insects black and killing them.
But the next second, even more insects surged up from underground, like black waves, instantly spilling over the wall of fire.
They crawled up the soldiers' bodies, burrowed into their clothes, and bored into their skin.
Screams rose one after another.
The blockade collapsed at the slightest touch.
This was the Myriad-Erosion Insect Mother.
The Fourth Calamity that had spilled out of the Dark Continent.
It did not need to act personally.
It only had to hide underground and keep laying eggs to spawn endless swarms.
Parasitism, reproduction, plague.
Together, the three formed an extinction-level ecological collapse.
In just three days, three agricultural towns in the west had completely lost contact.
Of the hundreds of thousands of people, some