I Became a Hive Mind in the Game

After the lasers poured down on Theresia, silence fell in the alley as her survival couldn’t be confirmed due to dust and smoke.

While everyone was tensely aiming their guns, the smoke slowly cleared—and what appeared from the cleared dust and smoke was Theresia, covered in blood and full of holes all over her body, yet still glaring with her eyes and aiming her pistol.

“What—”
Piew!
Whoosh—Thud!

The laser that flew from the muzzle pierced through the head of the man who was acting as their leader, and immediately aimed at the head of the female hunter next to him—but this pistol didn’t fire any additional lasers.

“Shoot! Shoot!”
Piewpiewpiewpiewpiewpiewpiewpiewpiewpiewpiewpiew!!!

Laser machine guns mounted all around fired wildly at Theresia, and unfortunately, Theresia, whose head part was penetrated, collapsed right there.

Thud!

“We, we killed her!”
“We avenged the boss!”
“Serves you right, whore! It’s good to see you dead!”

As these noisy guys were saying, Theresia’s life signs had indeed been cut off.

But these guys, who didn’t care about their dead leader at all, were just noisily chattering, intoxicated by their self-proclaimed achievement, and among them, one hunter who was still somewhat keeping his wits spoke up.

“Wait! Let’s confirm the kill first!”
“Her head was pierced, but she could still be alive…”
“Fine, then you who brought it up go cut off her head.”

Since Theresia had been moving even with a large hole in her chest earlier, they could all agree on the fact that they needed to make sure it was over.

“Whew… I’m going.”

So, the hunter who had spoken up earlier took a hunter knife in his hand and approached the corpse.
The hunter, who was a reinforcement-type psychic user, enhanced his physical abilities and brought the knife in his hand to Theresia’s neck, slowly separating the body and head of the corpse.

Slash, slash, slash, slash… Swoosh.

“…Ugh.”

As Theresia’s blood that splattered during the cutting process got on his skin, the hunter, disgusted that the blood of a non-Korean had touched his body, somehow managed to completely separate the head from the body.

“Is it over?”
“Can’t you see? …Something dirty got on me, I want to go wash quickly.”

The hunter who was looking at the separated head for a moment and then spoke like that to the hunter who called him, lifted the head to dismember the corpse and sell the implants—

Blink.

“Uh, uwaaaaah!!!”
Thud!

Suddenly seeing the corpse’s eyes blink, the hunter was startled and dropped the head he was holding onto the floor.

“What?!”
“What’s going on? Did a bug jump out of the corpse or something?”

As other hunters snickered and mocked the startled hunter, the angered hunter was about to argue that he saw the decapitated corpse blink its eyes.

But he couldn’t say that.

Whish—Swoosh!
“Guh, uhhh…”
Slash! Thud!

Because the moment he was about to open his mouth, four tentacles that suddenly protruded from the back part of Theresia’s torso moved quickly and killed him.

One tentacle with a blade resembling the tip of a harpoon at its end pierced through his heart, and then the remaining three tentacles, wrapped in psychic energy, sliced the hunter into pieces.

“S-shit, what’s that!”
“I don’t know!”
“Damn! Shoot! Shoot!”

As tentacles sprang out from the corpse’s torso and blatantly sliced up a person, the surprised hunters were in disarray and couldn’t gather their wits.

Doooooo—Pung!
“Ku, kuaaaaaaaaaah!!!”

And meanwhile, suddenly one of their heads exploded with a bang from what seemed to be psychic power.

The sight of brain matter, bone fragments, flesh, and blood scattering in all directions was enough to plant shock in everyone’s minds, and meanwhile—the corpse continued to move.

“S-shit! Hey! Look there!”
“It doesn’t have a head!!!”

Theresia’s torso, walking calmly even without a head, aimed the four tentacles protruding from the back of its waist and suddenly started to distort its appearance.

Its size swelled to about 2.5 meters, and accordingly, the muscles throughout its body expanded, tearing off the skin.

The legs twisted their skeletal structure, changing to a reverse joint structure, and an additional claw grew from the heel part of the feet, revealing sharp hook-like claws.

The arms lengthened disproportionately to the body size, and the fingers were grotesquely distorted, with the fingernails at the tips transforming into a form close to hunter claws.

Finally, instead of the severed head, a new head regenerated in that part. It had two pairs of eyes, all red without distinction between whites and pupils, and a single tentacle resembling long, strange hair grew from the back of the head.

The mouth opened vertically instead of horizontally, with densely grown sharp teeth and a long, elastic tongue inside.

And the time it took to mutate… or more precisely, return to its original form up to this point was only 4 seconds.

Piewpiewpiewpiewpiewpiew!!!
“Throw! I said throw! Throw the grenades!”

Panicked by the monster-like transformed appearance, the hunters poured attacks wildly at Theresia, but Theresia took them on her body without any problem and attacked the hunters.

She wrapped them with her tongue and threw them, swung the tentacles that could extend up to 7 meters in length to dismember the hunters’ bodies.

She charged while blocking laser machine guns with the psychic shield surrounding her body, stabbed the sharp hunter claws on her long arms into bodies, and then used those hunters as meat shields.

The alley wasn’t very wide, so she could maximize her mobility even more, and therefore, it didn’t take long for Theresia to deal with just a few hunters.

※ ※ ※

‘That was close…’

At the same time, looking at the dismembered corpses through Theresia’s vision, I was hurriedly calling other monsters—the Nina series—to clean up the scene while breathing a sigh of relief.

No matter how much I had the Hive Mind’s super-intelligence, I couldn’t predict something like an extremist group doing something without thinking of the consequences.

[Mother… I’m sorry.]

‘No, this is just an accident. You… for now, take some time off.’

So while comforting the self-blaming Theresia, I simultaneously ordered her to take a vacation to secure time.

[I understand, Mother.]

‘…Alright.’

It was to restore some of Theresia’s functions damaged by this battle, while at the same time improving Theresia’s combat abilities.

This was also a reward for what she had done so far, but above all, it was shocking that she was taken down by such guys in her human form without returning to her monster form, which is her true appearance.

In this battle, honestly speaking, if I hadn’t retrieved Theresia’s mind and soul to the Hive Mind at the point when she was turned into a honeycomb by lasers, she would have just died.

This was partly because Theresia let her guard down, but in fact, more than that, one of the problems was the discrepancy between her monster state and her human form, or more precisely, that the specs of Theresia in human state were too weak compared to the software.

In her monster state, she has specs that far surpass low-grade monsters. Her vitality that allows her to regenerate and move even with her head cut off is basic, and she also has overwhelming physical abilities and psychic abilities at the upper tier of grade 7.

Although far inferior to medium-grade monsters, she can easily take down low-grade monsters or hunters, but in human form, it’s a different story.

The durability of her body is penetrated even by civilian-grade laser machine guns at best, and in case of injuries like having her head cut off, regeneration is out of the question, and burning her last vitality to return to monster form is the limit.

Therefore, I decided to grant Theresia, who was now judged to have an extremely low possibility of betrayal, abilities befitting a medium-grade monster to prevent her from dying ridiculously anymore.

Theresia
Grade :: 4
Level :: 85
Abilities
Strength :: 105
Agility :: 135
Vitality :: 100
Intelligence :: 145
Resistance :: 100
Energy :: 135
Leadership :: 50
Traits
Monster Gene (B), Predator (B), Hive Mind (B), Subjugation (EX), Human Mimicry (B), Versatile Psychic User (B), Bio Core (B), Degraded Subjugated Species Control (C), Psychic Storage (C), Close Combat Expert (C)
Skills
Wave Blocking (B), Self-Camouflage (B), High-Speed Maneuver (C), Telekinesis (C), Psychic Shield (C), Psychic Suggestion (D), Psychic Lightning (D)
Biological Weapons
Plasma Shooter (B), Thorn Tentacles (C), Hunter Claws (C)

Even so, I didn’t add any additional functions. Although the overall numbers were low, it was already complete in terms of trait and skill composition and ability balance.

Therefore, I only intend to increase the ranks of abilities, traits, skills, and biological weapons, and finish the modification by adding two attack means to compensate for the lack of offensive power.

First, there’s the skill Psychic Lightning (D). To be frank, this attack, which is For■■ Lightning, is not only powerful but also meaningful as a means to link with the next attack method in that it’s so fast it can’t be avoided and has stun and paralysis as additional effects.

Plasma Shooter (B), a weapon that boasts the strongest firepower among ranged weapons but sacrifices many things in return, is famous for being notoriously inaccurate due to its characteristic of decreased accuracy in exchange for increased power of the monster’s biological weapons.

But my design was to compensate for this low accuracy characteristic with the paralysis and stun effects of Psychic Lightning—and although it might actually be effective, it seems it will work more or less according to my intention.