I Became a Hive Mind in the Game

September 24, 2■■■.
On this ceasefire-defense line located in northern Gyeonggi Province, a battle was in full swing to fend off the monsters of the Pyongyang Hive Mind pouring down from above, as usual.

“Fire! Fire!”
Kwaaaaaaaaang!
“Good!”
Kiiiiiiii—piupiupiupiupiu!!!

Lasers, energy shells, high-explosive shells and armor-piercing shells, grenades, and even plasma blobs and missiles.
All sorts of weapons pour down on the approaching monsters, but the monsters boldly charge towards the humans, using their weapons regardless of whether their bodies are damaged or not.

The energy shooters and laser shooters attached to their bodies fire light bullets made of pure energy and high-power lasers indiscriminately, and their psychic abilities crush turrets and the shields protecting them, compressing the humans inside.

Occasionally, unlucky humans have their entire bodies shattered by weapons wielded by monsters that have approached closely and become their prey, and such situations were frequently occurring in various parts of the frontline.

Of course, if you consider that thousands of monsters die to kill one human, the exchange ratio is overwhelmingly in favor of the human side.

However, while the Hive Mind’s monsters are merely expendable and mass-producible tools, human soldiers are resources that are difficult to replace and parts that make up society.

The time and money spent on training, various equipment, and human life itself. Since nothing is unimportant, the government inevitably began to hunt monsters with the help of civilians.

And this civilian help is the professional monster hunters commonly called hunters in the world.

“Team 1, advance. Teams 2 and 3, provide covering fire. Team 4, prepare fire support.”
“”””””Yes!!!!””””””

In one corner of the frontline, dozens of people wearing powered suits painted mainly in yellow and white—the 13th Division of Seonggwang Guild—were engaged in combat wielding various weapons.

On the front line, there are two Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) painted in yellow and white, and four Giant Armors—manned powered suits boasting a size of about 4 meters—which were supporting the aforementioned soldiers.

The Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) serve as moving screens with the power of shields and armor plates based on energy produced from the mounted bio cores, and demonstrate overwhelming firepower using mounted autocannons, laser machine guns, and anti-monster missiles.

On the other hand, the four 4-meter class Giant Armors play the role of giant infantry. Two boldly engage in direct combat with monsters wielding tactical shields equipped with force field generators and close combat weapons, while the remaining two in the rear provide fire support with heavy weapons.

The medium infantry wearing powered suits deployed between these heavy equipment actively use their respective weapons to provide fire support.

The weapons they’re holding boast at least medium machine gun level firepower, and some show appropriate responses to the situation through unique weapon systems such as psychic flamethrowers or plasma weapons.

And while they’re fighting hard at the front like this, support continues to come from the rear. They use the same chassis as the Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs), but the difference is that the weapons they use are mortars.

There are only 4 in total, but the firepower that spews 6 anti-monster mortar shells per minute is more excellent than any weapon against simple low-grade monsters.

Lastly, there’s a team composed of special individuals with a completely different feel from these military-style teams.

Seonggwang Guild 13th Division Captain Lee Sujin, Vice-Captain Theresia and her 7-meter class Giant Armor, and 4 medium-grade psychic users.
These 6 psychic users are evaluated as an overwhelming force equivalent to the entire 1-4 teams combined.

“Hup!”
—Slash!

First, Team Leader Lee Sujin. She is a reinforcement-type psychic user specializing in physical enhancement psychic abilities, and at the same time, a hunter who uses human techniques with physical abilities comparable to a decent medium-grade monster.

The greatsword and other weapons she favors are psychic weapons that increase their power by flowing psychic energy on the surface, and she has reached a level where it’s possible to launch psychic slashes through several techniques.

In contrast, the other four psychic users are just ordinary wizard-type psychic users who spread shields and use telekinesis, but even this alone is actually a tremendous force.

They can restrain monsters using telekinesis or protect allies by spreading psychic shields. They can burn enemies with psychic flames or crisp up monsters with psychic lightning.

And there was someone who played an active role on the battlefield in a different way from these psychic users—Vice-Captain Theresia, who, although her capacity as a psychic user was at a low level, used it to control a 7-meter class Giant Armor.

Giant Armor. A bipedal war machine that links the brain of the pilot inside with the machine to unify all actions, considered less effective than tanks on general battlefields but more efficient than any weapon when dealing with monsters.

Their sizes range from 2-meter class that’s practically worn to over 10-meter class separately classified as Titan Armor, among which the 7-meter class is evaluated as a sufficiently powerful weapon although slightly inferior to the popular 8-meter class these days.

The energy cannons mounted on both hands, despite being short-barrel types focused on rate of fire rather than firepower, can instantly kill medium-grade monsters in a defenseless state, and the laser autocannons deployed throughout the body simply grind up miscellaneous monsters.

With thick nanomachine armor plates, force fields, and psychic shields added, the defense is so strong it could be called a walking fortress, and thanks to boosters mounted on some joints, it’s unimaginably agile for its size.

Of course, paradoxically, Giant Armors are much more noticeable due to their size and strong, making them the first targets aimed at by monsters on the battlefield.

Therefore, Giant Armor pilots are mostly top elites, and this was also true for Theresia, the pilot of this 7-meter class Giant Armor.

Theresia, the former leader of a stateless mercenary group that operated between North Korea and Manchuria, became a Russian-descent woman who obtained South Korean nationality and became a member of Seonggwang Guild after saving the life of Lee Sujin, the youngest daughter of Seonggwang Group.

She began to be known to the public for her activities during the invasion of the Hive Mind ‘Bomb Spider’ in Gangwon-do, and recently she has become popular nationwide as she continues her activities on the ceasefire line defense line.

Her record is excellent, having subjugated as many as 79 medium-grade monsters in accurately counted cases alone, and she’s also beautiful in appearance, being a Slavic beauty with perfect blonde hair and blue eyes.

The machine she pilots is a heavily modified 3rd generation 7-meter class Giant Armor from Seonggwang Defense that became famous after appearing in a popular movie, and stories of her saving the lives of frontline soldiers several times have been reported in articles.

As conditions for deliberately gaining fame and popularity were crammed in, she became the face of Seonggwang Guild that the guild was pushing, and was even selected as a promotional model for Seonggwang Defense’s new products.

And of course, not everyone liked this continuous success.

※ ※ ※

After the appearance of monsters, naturally, the world fell into chaos.
Countless people died, and enormously wide areas were occupied by monsters.

In this process, it was in a way natural for society to fall into chaos as well, and as a result, various groups with extreme tendencies appeared.

True communists who ignore private property… or rather just Reds, neo-Nazis, specific gender supremacists, extreme nationalists, pro-■ factions claiming everything should be devoted to a specific country.
All sorts of crazy people gained power and expanded their influence, to the extent that there were incidents of openly fighting with other groups in the middle of the city to manipulate society as they pleased.

However, as more than a hundred years have passed since the day monsters appeared, these extreme groups are gradually fading away as society stabilizes and public order normalizes, but…

They may have faded, but such lunatics still remained in South Korea.

“We execute today!”
“That fucking whore… we can finally kill her!”
“Let’s chop up the corpse and sell it! Since she’s a bitch who sold her body to Seonggwang, she must have expensive implants in her body!”

And one of these lunatics was this extreme nationalist group targeting Theresia, who ‘dared’ to obtain South Korean nationality despite being a disgusting Slav—the self-proclaimed Great Han National Sole Alliance.

Blinded by extreme nationalism and ethnocentrism, they have been killing foreigners who naturalized to South Korea until now, and this time they are trying to kill Theresia, who has recently become popular, because she’s an eyesore.

One might ask how mere delusional psychopaths like this can target an active medium-grade hunter, but in fact, they thought there was some possibility and planned this.

First of all, this Great Han whatever is an organization… or something too pitiful to call an organization, consisting of 14 people in total, all of whom are active low-grade hunters who were contract workers at the same large guild but failed to convert to regular employment, being pushed out by hunters who immigrated from other countries.

Therefore, they have monster-hunting equipment that they prepared themselves since equipment isn’t provided by the guild for contract workers, and they have skills good enough to be contract workers at a large guild.

However, not all medium-grade hunters are the same. Since reflexes and judgment are more important than direct combat power for pilots, they generally invest in implants related to those aspects rather than combat.

Therefore, the combat power of pilots tends to be not very high even if they’re medium-grade hunters, and although stronger than low-grade hunters, they’re considered far inferior to medium-grade hunters who directly engage in combat.

In other words, this Great whatever Alliance thought they had a good chance for these reasons, and they had prepared an ambush just in case.

The whatever group, having occupied the entire alley that Theresia always passes through when returning home, had installed weapons and traps in every corner of the alley and were waiting for Theresia to return.

1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, and 4 hours… as the waiting time grew endlessly and they were getting bored, information that the target was approaching was transmitted through the radio.

[Target approaching! Target approaching!]

Finally, it was time for the reward for waiting.

Step, step, step, step, st—
Clank—Thud!

The moment she entered deep into the alley, suddenly shutters came down from the alley passages, completely sealing off the entire alley.

“…What’s this?”

Naturally confused by this situation, Theresia unconsciously activated her psychic shield and was about to draw the laser pistol for self-defense from her waist—

“Fire!”
“Dieeeeee!!!”
Whooooooosh!!!!

Suddenly, psychic flames poured down on her, weakening her shield, and then hundreds of laser beams poured down on the weakened shield.