I Became a Hive Mind in the Game

First, the ecosystem stabilization problem is actually very simple.
I place Hive Mind monsters imitating native monsters along the coastline, and especially in places with high influx, I build monster production facilities on land that humans call outposts.
Obviously, monsters appearing on such coasts are bound to be at a disadvantage against land-type monsters in forest or mountain combat, and monster production facilities can build monsters and defensive structures to protect the facility.
Therefore, this allows us to block monsters on land without arousing suspicion from humans, while also being able to check for possible human sea attacks without suspicion.
However, compared to the coastal attack problem, which is simpler than expected, recovering the lost underwater territory is expected to be very difficult.
This is because human technology, tactics, or strategies cannot be applied to monsters designed to face marine monsters at sea—and to understand the reason for this, we first need to know about the characteristics of marine monsters that differ from land monsters.
First, since marine monsters operate underwater, they are relatively less affected by terrain. And because of this, marine monsters are much larger than typical land monsters.
In both the Project Monster series and in reality, being large means having stronger physical abilities and durability, while also having the capacity to incorporate more functions into the body.
In addition, there is more than enough nutrients in the sea for these monsters to eat.
There are seaweeds that have overgrown and mutated into various forms due to the influence of monsters, and there are also monsters that play the role of tiny to small life forms like krill, plankton, or sardines in the changed marine ecosystem.
Thanks to this, even more monsters grow in the sea, which already has a larger area than land, and the quality of sea monsters is more standardized compared to land.
Even medium-grade monsters that might be rulers of an area on land are just intermediate predators and prey to be eaten by even more powerful monsters at sea.
Therefore, to dominate a certain area in the sea, one must be at least a high-grade monster, which is why high-grade monsters exist in similar proportions to medium-grade monsters in the sea.
There are at least 32 high-grade monsters in the East Sea alone, some of which appear as bosses in events that frequently attack coastal areas in the game.
Even in the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of Giant Psychic Whales, whose adults are high-grade monsters, move in groups, so the ocean is virtually completely in the hands of monsters now.
In this sea, which is no different from a demon realm, various existing warships are almost powerless.
In the early stages of the great crisis of monster appearance, most active warships and weapons mounted on them, with few exceptions, were only prepared for attacks aimed at sea, air, or land.

So against living warships—marine monsters—attacking with thick force fields underwater, weapons designed to deal with other thinly armored warships or submarines were powerless, and this trend continues to this day.
No matter how advanced technology is used, ships floating on the sea or other weapons inevitably lack anti-submarine capabilities to deal with monsters that penetrate deep into the sea and target targets on the surface.
Even if you make a specialized giant armor for underwater use using marine monster corpses, it can barely fight on par with monsters two grades lower, let alone equal-grade marine monsters.
Most hunters are specialized in fighting on land, so it’s fair to say they become less than half as strong underwater compared to on land unless they use related tech.
Therefore, for these reasons, unlike on land, using human technology at sea is meaningless.
Rather, at sea, ordinarily strong marine monsters created by absorbing marine monster genes like other Hive Minds are more efficient.
So while dealing with Dolphinmen and other monsters that keep entering through underground passages, I started creating new monsters using the genetic information of marine monsters I had collected in advance.

Hive Piranha
Grade :: 7
Level :: 91
Stats
Strength :: 15
Agility :: 25
Vitality :: 20
Intelligence :: 5
Resistance :: 10
Energy :: 20
Leadership :: 0
Characteristics
Monster Gene (E), Predator (E), Hive Mind (E), Subjugation (EX), Underwater Combat Expert (D), Cooperative Combat (D), Lightweight Reinforced Scales (D)
Skills
Swimming (E), Heat Detection (E)
Bio-weapons
Energy Horn (E)

First, there’s the Hive Piranha.
This piranha, 1 meter long with a horn on its head good for stabbing while charging, is simply a marine version of Hive Infantry that’s good for general use.
The horn is a dual weapon that is an energy weapon that increases power by flowing energy on its surface, while also being an energy shooter that can fire energy bullets from its tip.
Its speed is very fast among low-grade monsters, and its durability is also decent thanks to defensive skills, making it a monster that can perform well in both close and long-range combat.
And if there’s Hive Piranha as the sea’s Hive Infantry, naturally, we need monsters to play the role of tanks or heavy armored weapons.
The name of this monster that plays the role of the sea’s Hive Tank is Hive Tuna, which, as the name suggests, is a marine monster that closely resembles a tuna.

Hive Tuna
Grade :: 5
Level :: 91
Stats
Strength :: 225
Agility :: 225
Vitality :: 300
Intelligence :: 100
Resistance :: 255
Energy :: 100
Leadership :: 0
Characteristics
Monster Gene (E), Predator (C), Hive Mind (C), Subjugation (EX), Bio Core (C), Underwater Combat Expert (C), Psychic Resistance (C), Tireless Stamina (D), Superhuman Strength (D), Bio Lightweight Armor (D)
Skills
Swimming (C), Charge (C), Hardening (D), Endurance (D)
Bio-weapons
Great Energy Horn (C), Energy Horn (C)

To summarize this creature in one sentence, it’s a marine monster that looks like a kind of knight with armor plates on its skin, and including the large horn on its crown, it’s a giant tuna with a body length of 10 meters.
And as can be seen from this appearance, this giant tuna uses charging at the enemy with its horn as its main weapon, like a medieval knight.
The armor plates on the skin—the outer skin—are thinly and strongly arranged in a hydrodynamic structure like crustacean shells, so they don’t hinder swimming due to weight while having excellent shock absorption.
In addition, thanks to the Endurance skill, it twists its body just before being hit to minimize damage, and it can also harden its outer skin by consuming bio-energy, so its defense is very excellent.
The body structure designed with all kinds of modern technology like hydrodynamics and the powerful muscles built into that body naturally guarantee fast speed and allow it to have an advantage in close combat.
The horn doubles as a close-range psychic weapon and a long-range psychic shooter/blaster, allowing for flexible performance, and besides the large horn, there are auxiliary horns along the back that can also check surrounding enemies.
And as mentioned earlier, while Hive Tuna has a role and abilities close to a sea knight just like its appearance, this monster—Hive Octopus—is a psychic-specialized monster unlike the creature that became its appearance motif.

Hive Octopus
Grade :: 5
Level :: 91
Stats
Strength :: 105
Agility :: 225
Vitality :: 220
Intelligence :: 100
Resistance :: 255
Energy :: 100
Leadership :: 0
Characteristics
Monster Gene (E), Predator (C), Hive Mind (C), Subjugation (EX), Bio Core (C), Underwater Combat Expert (C), Versatile Psychic User (C), Octopus Regeneration (C), High-speed Computation (C), Shock Absorption (D)
Skills
Swimming (C), Psychic Healing (C), Psychic Stealth (C), Psychic Shield (C), Telekinesis (D), Psychic Construct (D), Energy Supply (D)
Bio-weapons
Suction Cup Tentacles (C), Laser Blaster (C)

Its appearance is just a giant octopus. An ultra-giant octopus with 8 tentacles over 20 meters long and an oval sphere-like body 8 meters long.
Therefore, it might seem like just an extremely large, weak monster like a giant squid on the outside, but… far from it.
With the tier 1 physical defense characteristic Shock Absorption (D), Octopus Regeneration (C), which is an upgrade of super regeneration and an exclusive characteristic of octopus monsters, plus various psychic skills.
Unlike other monsters considered to have high defense and toughness, Hive Octopus is a rather rare type of tanker monster that is tough because of its strong durability in terms of taking hits and recovering.
In addition to this tanking ability, Hive Octopus is given various psychic skills and skills for support.
Psychic Stealth (C) and Psychic Shield (C) for increased survivability, Telekinesis (D) and Psychic Construct (D) for self-defense, plus Psychic Healing (C) and Energy Transfer (D) for support.
Add to this the fact that the effects of support-type skills against targets contacted by the suction cup tentacles are increased, and this grade 5 monster will play a role as both a tank and supporter in my naval corps.

※ ※ ※

While diligently developing new monsters like this, after completing the Hive Octopus, I suddenly had a thought.
That is, with my current situation, I absolutely cannot produce high-grade marine monsters.
I currently have a total of 6 high-grade monsters excluding myself and Choi Seo-rin, and maintaining these monsters consumes quite a lot of resources, making it a bit burdensome to increase them further.
In addition, even if I were willing to bear that cost, I happen to not have any genes of high-grade or above marine monsters.
I could clumsily create monsters by patching together genes of low-grade marine monsters… but that would be a waste of energy, and monsters created that way would be limited to grade 3.5 at best.
So I repeatedly pondered—and after much consideration, I decided to give Theo a diving suit specialized for underwater combat to wear over the Valkyrie suit and entrust her with underwater combat.