I Became a Hive Mind in the Game

October 30th, one day before Halloween.
The shocking news that the 67th high-grade monster, specifically a Hive Mind, had appeared near the ceasefire line defense line in North Korea struck the entire country.

And following this news, as it was revealed that the location of this Hive Mind’s appearance was in the Gangwon-do area, where the quality and density of deployed troops were the lowest, people naturally fell into panic.

Citizens living in the surrounding areas hurriedly joined the evacuation procession heading south, and the government set up temporary shelters for these people who had turned into refugees while simultaneously moving military troops.

Also, all the artillery of nearby units aimed their barrels towards the predicted invasion routes, and hundreds of reconnaissance drones crossed the defense line to locate the Hive Mind.

In addition, the government mobilized all available forces to prevent the creation of a second Pyongyang Hive Mind.

Immediately, a mobilization order was issued for hunters across the country, and they were deployed to intensively managed areas. Of course, this was no exception for Seonggwang Guild under Seonggwang Group.

As most of them were quite powerful hunters and used current military equipment, they were deployed to the most intense battlefields—and among these deployed hunters, there were some unusual ones.

They were the hunters of the hunter team directly under Lee Sujin, a mid-grade hunter and granddaughter of Seonggwang Group’s chairman, known as the Lee Sujin team.

These individuals were originally a wandering mercenary group from the northern region, but they experienced a life reversal when they were scouted by Seonggwang Group after coincidentally saving Sujin, who was the team leader.

However, such life reversals tend to become objects of envy. These individuals, who gained even higher positions than those who had built up achievements through all sorts of hardships, were in a position of being wary within the guild.

‘What a pathetic act. Humans are indeed… as Mother said…’

Of course, this was seen as a trivial and foolish act by Theresia, who could be called the leader of those who were treated with such wariness.

She could understand the cause of such behavior through psychology learned from psychology books, but naturally, Theresia, a monster innately connected to the Hive Mind, couldn’t comprehend it.

Although not much time had passed since they, disguised as a mercenary group, joined the guild, they showed overwhelming and superior performance in all aspects compared to other existing hunters.

In combat power, in achievements, and even in usual conduct, they were producing excellent results following the Hive Mind’s instructions.

So Theresia naturally thought their position should rise, but… human ugliness was beyond her imagination.

They try to steal achievements, can’t even touch good equipment. There were even a few times when they attacked them disguised as friendly fire in joint operations.

This is despite the fact that the leader of this team is Lee Sujin, clearly the youngest daughter of Seonggwang Group.

Ah, of course, Sujin never tolerated such actions from other hunters.

The team leader of another team who tried to steal achievements was stripped of his team leader position, and the supply officer who tried to give them used and low-grade basic supply equipment was expelled from the company on charges of embezzlement and bribery, hit with a lawsuit bomb.

In addition, the perpetrators of intentional friendly fire disguised as misfire were even handed over to criminal trial and ended up in prison, so they were really all pathetic guys to an ‘artificial’ degree.

As if someone had used mental psychic powers to manipulate them.

Anyway, regarding Sujin who protected them like this, Theresia didn’t feel as much aversion as she did towards other humans, even though Sujin was human, not a monster.

And to say this in reverse, it means that Theresia is now experiencing extreme aversion and severe stress every time she deals with humans other than Sujin.

Thanks to various control devices implanted by the Hive Mind, she doesn’t stab them to death unable to overcome her instincts, but that’s just the extent of it.

Whether they try to seduce, be hostile, or act friendly, Theresia and the monsters were experiencing extreme aversion reactions and murderous desires every time they encountered anyone except Sujin and her bodyguard.

As a result, for Theresia, no, for all disguised monsters, this task was causing serious stress just by performing it.

But despite these adverse conditions, Theresia was feeling happiness from the act of carrying out orders itself rather than feeling particularly unpleasant.

This wasn’t because Theresia was a masochist at all, but simply because of the happiness generator, one of the various control devices that the Hive Mind had placed on Theresia.

The happiness generator, a biological tissue implanted in the emotion-related part of the monster’s brain tissue, makes the subject feel the highest level of happiness the moment they perform a specific action, as its name suggests.

And in the case of Theresia and the monsters, the happiness generator activates the moment they follow the orders of their mother, the Hive Mind, so she was always in a state of being engulfed in happiness, even though she didn’t look like it at all outwardly.

‘Happyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappy──────’

“Theresia?”

Therefore, while she was feeling happiness for a while, the team leader—Sujin—opened the door of the room where she was and entered calling Theresia’s name.

“Yes, Team Leader.”

“Get ready to move out soon. The enemy’s first wave will arrive soon.”

“Understood. Then my Giant Armor is…”

“It’s being maintained in hangar 8. Sejun will be there when you go, so get an explanation from him. Got it?”

“Yes. I’ll do that.”

The infiltration monster, Theresia, answered and bowed her head to Team Leader Sujin.

Feeling the approach of her siblings through the Hive Mind, and at the same time, with a heart of remembrance for those who would be sacrificed by her hand and make her a hero.

※ ※ ※

At exactly the same time as confirming the human side’s reaction through Theresia.

While producing ‘ordinary Hive Mind troops’ to send in order not to arouse human suspicion, I started preparations to produce a high-grade—specifically, a grade 1 monster—to serve as the supreme commander.

Of course, at this point, not long after evolving into a Hive Queen, producing a high-grade, and even a grade 1 monster, is bound to be burdensome.

Even after installing large-scale dedicated, and even disposable production facilities, it consumes energy equivalent to thousands of medium-grade monsters to produce just one.

But even so, I had to produce a grade 1 monster for the following two reasons.

First, only high-grade monsters can deal with other high-grade monsters.

Even the weakest high-grade monster, a grade 3 monster, depending on its type, can single-handedly annihilate my entire legion, and fundamentally, the difference in abilities is more than 10 times, so they’re in a different league.

So inevitably, rather than taking the dangerous action of directly facing high-grade monsters myself, I need a monster that can repel other high-grade monsters on my behalf.

On the other hand, the second reason is to prevent meaningless troop consumption through a false hostile monster that will wage a fake war with me, that is, to create a pretext for me to no longer send down monsters in the future.

Usually in games, to give clear individuality, both in design and performance, they make them different from other types of monsters, and this world was influenced by that, but for me, it doesn’t really matter.

I plan to make the appearance look like an animal type, and by appropriately utilizing the psychic abilities that have grown upon becoming a grade 1 monster, I intend to ‘appropriately’ transform the psychic waves emitted during the production process into waves similar to those of animal-type monsters.

And if a grade 1 monster is completed in this way, similar to an animal type, I will reduce the frequency of sending valuable troops to the human front by disguising mock warfare with this guy.

Of course, to deceive the human side, we’ll have to fight for real, so there will be unavoidable troop losses, but that level can be thought of as the cost of gaining aerial combat experience and learning how to cope with grade 1 monsters.

Well… from the start, just deceiving humans alone is worth bearing that level of troop loss.

Anyway, with clear and necessary reasons, I started preparations to create a high-grade, specifically a grade 1 monster.

After creating a large cavity in the underground area a bit to the west, I began constructing biological facilities for production according to the expected size of the creature—58 meters in body length.

And now the last thing to decide is the appearance, but… I had already made up my mind long ago.

Of course, the first grade 1 monster should be a perfect life form that is big, beautiful, and cool—a dragon.