The climax in their romance happened when our MC escaped from the base with his spore. Our ML came to retrieve him and his spore and recieved a command to kill MC on sight. However, you'd think the way ML reacted upon seeing MC would seem as if he had disregarded this order.. But then he held a gun at MC head and told him he had to kill him. It was so breathtakingly tragic like I could literally see our MC and ML heart crying even tho the author didnt write anything. This is how you know the characters were written so perfectly because I had fallen so deep into the story. And then MC whispered to ML in half fear half sadness, that he 'hated'ML. No other words were mentioned. But I could tell they prob stared at each other wondering who would give in first. Then the ML tossed the gun away and embraced MC tightly. MC Also started bawling. He didnt say sorry for those words but I could tell ML didnt believe him when he said he hated him.

This is towards the end where MC had left ML. In his dying body, he cried to his companion. Since MC is a mushroom, he isnt able to comprehend human emotions. But he doesnt understand that his love for the ML had made him human. In his dying breath he finally understood he loved ML. He wanted so badly to see him yet told his companion to tell him MC left the base.. Not that he died. My heart felt so much hurt.

at least 95% of the human population at the start of the story - which is already a fraction of the population that once was - is dead by the end of it.

a major background world building/plot point revealed in the second book is that all fertile women are forced to give up their freedom and be repeatedly imp**gnated over and over again. This is first revealed from the pov of a fertile child, so reading between the lines they must start underage

there's a "happy ending" in the sense that humanity isn't completely annihilated, only mostly wiped out, and the two main characters are among those spared.

I wanted more romance. I also wanted the MC to be more useful. He seemed pretty useless most of the time. I mean, most of the time people had to pull him out of danger cause his reaction time s**ked. He barely knew how to protect himself. ? And he was a bit of a cry baby towards the end. But I'm glad I got to see him grow into his emotions.

Also, some of the science theory was kind of boring and often contradicting each other so it was hard to follow some of the logic, so I skipped over some of those parts.?

in a post apocalyptic world where the planet lost its magnetism and mutant creatures multiply and diversify, stealing genes from each other and preying on human to get their mental ability and infecting them with their own to turn them into mutant, most of humanity survive in fortified cities covered by artificial magnetic field in order to repulse the infection

in all that, a little mushroom happen upon a dying human explorer and accidentally get infected with human genes and memories, able to take the appearance of the human, it start to search for his spores that were collected long ago by a "judge", an human trained to recognize infected people and kill them on the spot to protect humanity

the background of the story is gloomy, but it is not dehumanising, every person is well fleshed out, every death is heavy, and there is a lot of those, yet you still want to root for an happy ending and for the judge and the little mushroom to resolve their difference and be at peace