I Became a Hive Mind in the Game

So while Theresia’s upgrade was progressing after temporarily returning to the base, I was busily expanding my territory bit by bit around the area.

The direction of expansion is north and east, that is, underground of the Baekdudaegan and the East Sea.
This is to leave a multi in Japan in a similar way to Tetra left in Gangwon-do in case of any unforeseen situations, while at the same time, it was close to preparation to now fully dominate North Hamgyong Province and Manchuria, and further, the whole of North Korea.

And to dominate North Hamgyong Province, there’s something that must be done first.
That is to eliminate all the high-grade monsters ruling North Hamgyong Province.

There are 4 high-grade monsters in North Hamgyong Province. Among these, 2 are just ordinary monsters, not bosses, but the other 2 are different.
One is a long-standing named boss monster that appeared in the game, and the other is a boss monster that only existed in the setting—and simultaneously exists of the same species worldwide.

First, for the two ordinary monsters, Gumiho and Centiyad, we don’t need to pay much attention.
Gumiho is a grade 2 animal-type psychic specialized monster, and Centiyad is a grade 3 animal-type monster resembling a centipede, both are low grade and characterized by solitary life, so our grade 1 dragon—named Theseus—can easily handle them alone.

But the other two are both boss monsters and grade 1 monsters, so they are by no means easy opponents.
Although we have Theseus, a grade 1 monster and dragon on our side, Theseus is just an ordinary monster, even if slightly modified.

On the other hand, the other two grade 1 monsters—the Fire Dragon of Mount Baekdu and the Mountain Lord of Baekdudaegan—have received full boss monster corrections.

Boss monsters in the Project Monster series are basically larger than ordinary monsters, and due to the nature of VR games, the larger the body area and size, the easier it is to be hit, so all creatures in the game receive bonuses to their abilities and HP proportional to their size that are not visible on the status window.

In addition, all monsters are given various bonuses when in their designated home territory, and in the case of bosses, they often gain additional special abilities on top of these bonuses.

Although such bonuses might be just because it’s a game… considering that various elements of the game have been transformed in various ways and applied to this world, it was an element that could never be overlooked.

And besides this, boss monsters have special traits or skills, or biological weapons or patterns.
There was a hedgehog-type unique species monster with hundreds of shock lances on its back, an Orc Grand Shaman with a special pattern of wrapping psychic flames around its entire body, and a Troll capable of flight with bat wings.

Just as many boss monsters have their unique characteristics, the Fire Dragon and Mountain Lord also have their own special abilities.

Basically, the Fire Dragon, which inhabits a suitable volcano on the server, can spew lava breath that deals both physical and fire attribute damage, and the Mountain Lord has a skill called “Shadow Clone”.

This skill, which summons a clone that looks exactly like itself but is made entirely of shadows, has traits and biological weapons at 1 rank lower than the original, although it can’t use skills, and its abilities are 80% of the original.

Therefore, while essentially facing a grade 1 boss and another monster of about grade 2-3, the tiger monsters under the Mountain Lord’s control should never be underestimated.

There are at least 7 grade 4 boss-level tiger monsters who are the wives of the male Mountain Lord, and the baby tiger monsters that grow rapidly to grade 7 in 10 days easily exceed several hundred.

Considering that there was a pattern in the past game boss era where these cubs, after becoming medium-grade monsters and becoming independent, would call other tiger monsters, although the numbers might not match a Hive Mind, the medium-grade monster force can be considered equal.

However, compared to this, our grade 1 monster, Dragon Theseus, has such a big difference that he would definitely lose if fighting the Mountain Lord’s main body.

This largely stems from the difference between flying monsters and ground monsters, as the weight, which is one of the key elements of close combat, is much lighter for flight, and the muscles are concentrated more on the back than the legs for flight.

Therefore, Theseus, who should take advantage of this ability to fly and face the Mountain Lord with ranged attacks… unfortunately, the Mountain Lord is a monster with near-top grade psychic resistance, and Theseus’s ranged attacks, except for psychic, are limited to flame breath.

As a result of sending out Hive Flights to check, since it’s located lower than the Fire Dragon, given that the enemy we’ll face first is of this level, I need to deal with it.

Therefore, I decided to make additional modifications to Theseus to subjugate the Mountain Lord, while also creating an additional high-grade monster that could deal with the Mountain Lord’s shadow clone.

This monster, which will naturally be known as a high-grade monster produced by the Hive Mind as I don’t intend to disguise it as a wild monster, is a humanoid monster named Theo, following Theresia, Tetra, and Theseus.

Theo (Hive Valkyrie)
Grade :: 1
Level :: 79
Abilities
Strength :: 3250
Agility :: 8565
Vitality :: 4750
Intelligence :: 3150
Resistance :: 4600
Energy :: 5500
Leadership :: 2500
Traits
Monster Gene (A), Predator (A), Hive Mind (A), Subjugation (EX), Bio Core (A), Versatile Psychic User (A), Imperturbability (A), Aerial Combat Proficiency (A), Firepower Projector (A), Human Mimicry (A), High-speed Computation (A), Super Regeneration (B), Clairvoyance (B), Close Combat Proficiency (B)
Skills
Psychic Construct (A), Psychic Stealth (A), Composite Detection (A), Swift (A), Psychic Shield (A), Telekinesis (B), Gravity Manipulation (B), High-speed Flight (B), Evasion (B), Advanced Weapon Techniques (B), Physical Enhancement (B), Mental Manipulation (C)
Biological Weapons
Valkyrie Suit (A), Psychic Shooter (A), Psychic Sword (A)

As can be seen from the appearance, it will look like a human wearing something like a suit at a glance, and indeed, if you strip off the Valkyrie Suit (A), which is a type of biological weapon, the appearance is female, resembling Theresia.

However, just as with Theresia, this is merely a disguise, and the appearance when the human skin is stripped off is not much different from other humanoid monsters.

And this similarity in appearance to other humanoid monsters is also true in terms of trait and ability composition.

The abilities, traits, and skills are close to those of a high-speed maneuvering type monster capable of both close and ranged combat, but as a difference from other monsters, I gave Theo a biological weapon called ‘Valkyrie Suit (A)’.

This suit, made of black fibers and pure white metal that are part of the body, boasts tremendous performance thanks to completely taking and customizing Seonggwang Defense’s top-tier reinforcement suit technology for high-grade hunters.

Its defense is strong enough to withstand a direct hit from a top-grade plasma weapon even without a force field, and it has auxiliary thrusters attached throughout to increase speed several times.

Also, the wing parts attached to the arms can be detached and used as psychic shooters flying around or for defense, and it has almost all the convenience features we can think of attached.

It’s even capable of operating in outer space as some of the technologies being developed for space expansion that we’ve been preparing recently have been applied, so its function as equipment can be considered top-grade.

‘…Oops. I almost forgot.’

And while I was focusing on Theo’s design for a while, I suddenly realized that I had almost forgotten to manipulate information.

Previously, as I evolved into a grade 1 Hive Mind and carried out a large-scale invasion, I significantly reduced the scale of the forces I send down at appropriate times by outwardly presenting a war with Theseus to prevent waste in this process.

However, since this subjugation will superficially be a collision between Theseus and the Mountain Lord, the scale of the disguised war between me and Theseus should naturally be reduced.

Therefore, I, whose war with Theseus has stopped, should send a moderate scale invasion, if not as large-scale as before.

‘This, they’ll definitely take and use it over there…’

Therefore, despite knowing that all the monsters I send will be hunted, dismembered, and become resources for humans, I inevitably started preparing to send monsters south through Tetra.

‘Theresia, when you finish the modification and return, move immediately to the Gangwon-do front. As before, it seems you’ll have to play the hero.’

‘Understood, Mother.’

Since these are monsters that will be sacrificed and wasted anyway, it wouldn’t be bad to rather increase Theresia’s fame by instructing her to deal with them.

In addition, while at it, I gave orders to my puppet Nano-Tech and made several preparations in advance so that they could intervene in this situation.

Thanks to diverting new employees under the pretext of training and replacing them with identical monsters, Nano-Tech is virtually no different from being entirely composed of Nina 79, so there’s no particular interference.

Therefore, I negotiated with the government side to obtain various rights in exchange for deploying the guild under Nano-Tech, which I had been slowly preparing for a while, to the Gangwon-do front where manpower is lacking as everyone avoids it, using Nano-Tech’s capital.

From the right to preferentially purchase monster by-products, to receiving a certain percentage of monster by-products sold by the government side free of charge, and supplying Nano-Tech’s products to the military.

For me, who intends to exert influence over the entire South Korea in the future, I think it was an excellent contract in that I can infiltrate Nano-Spirits into the military.