I Became a Hive Mind in the Game

This diving suit that Theo wears over her existing white Valkyrie suit is, if I had to compare it, close to the Hulkbuster from Ma■.

It reaches a height of about 3 meters, and the body proportions are appropriately adjusted according to height.
However, there was a physical problem with just getting into such a wide suit – you’d have to forcibly cram yourself in as if folding your body.
So after much consideration, I used space expansion, one of the representative technologies developed by Seonggwang Group, to expand the internal space of the torso.
This way, it’s possible to remotely control without actually inserting arms and legs into the disproportionate suit’s limbs, and at the same time, various armaments or parts could be equipped in the extra space created by the absence of the occupant’s body inside.
Thanks to applying space expansion technology to both arms as well, space was created to insert a kind of replaceable cartridge inside the arms, ultimately allowing for switching to any desired weapon at any time.
Air cannon for underwater combat, laser as a versatile weapon, energy, and somewhat ambiguous plasma or harpoon. Even drills or missiles are installed.
Of course, among these weapons mounted on the arms and legs, there are no main weapons to be used.
The air cannon has too short a range, only increasing the power of punches, while laser or energy is limited to long-range checks. Plasma weapons are quite unstable underwater, and missiles are just anti-monster torpedoes.
The drill… more precisely the oxygen drill, is closer to a weapon for destroying obstacles or attacking fixed targets, and the harpoon is precisely just a high-speed mobility device attached to the end of a wire connected to an anchor.
The actual weapon for taking down powerful hostile life forms—high-grade monsters—is the ultra-large comprehensive weapon held in hand. It’s named the Combination Blaster.
Three A-rank “Blaster” type bio-weapons (laser/energy/plasma) are attached to the main body like a kind of bayonet or grenade launcher.
The main body part is a kind of psychic blaster 5 meters long, with an A-rank bio core inside as a power source, making the power of its maximum output attack comparable to Theseus’s energy breath.
And besides this, the suit has separate means of attack.
Three pairs of auxiliary arms embedded in the form of nanomachines inside the back armor plates are capable of tearing medium-grade monsters in half on their own—but that’s not all.
Thanks to being linked with the replaceable cartridges built into the arm parts, these auxiliary arms can either use weapons from the cartridges attached to their ends or use the built-in close combat weapons (psychic claws).
Of course, I didn’t neglect the need to keep up with the swift marine monsters of the deep sea.
The legs—especially the calves—are equipped with organs that use the core’s energy to produce fuel for boosters, and there are boosters on the soles of the feet that use this fuel.
Multiple auxiliary boosters that double as thigh protection armor are mounted around the waist, and if necessary, additional boosters can be attached to the suit using nanomachines.
Like these boosters, as long as there are enough nanomachines, various parts can be created as much as needed, so the ability to cope with situations is quite high.
And naturally, when comprehensively evaluating these elements, Theo can sufficiently face off against the powerful high-grade monsters of the deep sea.
So finally, I could start a full-scale invasion towards the lost territory of the seabed.

※ ※ ※

After completing the design of monsters to fight in the sea, obviously, this alone is not enough to immediately recover the lost underwater passages.
It’s just that the design is finished, but the monsters that need to fight in the sea haven’t been produced yet… but there’s one problem.
The monsters I’ve created are only designed to operate in the sea, so even if I create these marine monsters, I can’t transport them to land.

Since they can’t even breathe outside the sea in the first place, the production site must be connected to the sea—and now those passages connected to the sea are the ones I’ve lost.
If it’s underwater, no matter how many connected passages we open, those damn dolphin-heads will find them, and if we build production facilities on land, it will undoubtedly become a headache if humans discover that we can advance into the sea.

‘Theo, annihilate all hostile life forms approaching the location.’
[Affirmative.]

Therefore, my choice is to create a new passage connected to the sea and build a production base there, and send Theo, wearing the already completed suit, to defend against the Dolphinmen who find and attack this production base.

Screech! Screeeeech!
Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep beep!

As if noticing that energy was gathering to create production facilities and new monsters, the Dolphinmen attacked the production base while screaming madly, but Theo was very strong.

Wooong—Beep beep beep beep beep!!!
Crunch crunch crunch crunch!
Whoosh—Slash!

There wasn’t even a need to use the specialized weapons.
Theo rapid-fired laser shooters that protruded from the backs of both arms, turning the Dolphinmen company into a beehive, and swung psychic claws mounted on the auxiliary arms on her back to mince the Dolphinman general (grade 5) who engaged in close combat.
She crushed the Dolphinmen’s livestock monsters just by swinging her hand, and these actions were repeated so swiftly and efficiently that the combat looked mechanical.
No matter how disadvantaged in weight class a humanoid monster might be, that only applies within the same grade.
Theo single-handedly annihilated an army of thousands of Dolphinmen, and later even activated the Combination Blaster in auto-fire mode to massacre surrounding monsters.
The underwater was dyed red with the blood of slaughtered monsters, and chunks of corpses floated or sank on the sea surface.
Because the production facility was intentionally installed in a bay (terrain) favorable for defense, this marine pollution appeared even more severe, and naturally, Theo, who had dealt with all the monsters inside the quite wide bay, guarded the entrance of the bay and started the massacre again.
And about an hour after impartially massacring all approaching life forms like this, finally, Hive Mind’s marine monsters were born from the completed production facility and began to roam the sea.
As soon as they were born, these monsters first began to clean up the battered and polluted bay (terrain) interior.
Hive Piranhas eat small pieces of corpses, and Hive Tunas eat large pieces of corpses.
Hive Octopuses extend their tentacles to pull down corpses floating on the sea surface and devour them, and monsters that have eaten too many corpses and are full return to the production base to become nutrients.
The cycle of an enormous amount of corpses being entirely eaten by Hive Mind monsters and becoming monsters again continued to repeat, and I kept supplying nutrients on top of this.
Thanks to this, at the point when the cleaning was finished, the number of monsters existing here—reached 10,000 low-grade and at least 2,000 medium-grade monsters.
It’s absolutely no comparison to the land corps that easily surpasses 500 million low-grade monsters, but still, if we compare only medium-grade monsters, it’s a force of about 2-3%, which is sufficiently effective.
And now, a completed force that could sufficiently appear as an event boss in the game is gathered in this narrow bay (terrain).
So, from now on—it’s time for counterattack.
We must kill those dolphin-heads who dared to invade my territory and also dominate the nearby sea with my monsters.
Only by constantly expanding and expanding again, thus increasing the power of me and my monsters—us—can I survive…

※ ※ ※

The being that stood at the forefront of the Hive Mind—my monsters’ advance—was unexpectedly the Hive Tuna.
You might ask why I don’t put the most powerful Theo at the forefront to massacre the enemy, but that’s ignorant talk.
In this world—Project Monster—it’s standard to face high-grade monsters with equally high-grade monsters or hunters.
If the enemy’s high-grade force collides with our low and medium-grade forces, you might think it’s good because we can intercept the enemy’s low and medium-grade forces with our high-grade force, but this is an act that only causes great damage to both sides.
Even if we win, all that’s left is a devastated army and one battered high-grade force, and sometimes there are cases where a high-grade force is defeated by multiple low and medium-grade forces—so the standard use of high-grade forces in this world is to intercept the enemy’s high-grade forces.
Anyway, back to the main point. In the case of the Hive Tuna at the forefront of our side, although it’s no different from heavy cavalry, it’s acting as a bio tank for now.
While forming a curtain of fire by shooting energy bullets from the horns all over its body to grind down the enemy, it also serves as a shield for the Hive Piranhas providing supporting fire from behind.
Although the power of each energy bullet shot by a single Hive Piranha might be mediocre, when hundreds gather and concentrate firepower on a single target, they can take down even a medium-grade monster.
And behind these troops, the Hive Octopus with its huge body is focusing on support.
It heals the wounded, supplies energy, and sometimes comes to the front line to directly attack the enemy or serve as a shield for allies.
If you add up the number of Dolphinmen among them—the Dolphinmen that can actually fight—it’s roughly several million, but this vast number is dispersed across a wide territory, so my monster corps always outnumber the enemies they face.
Moreover, they’re not particularly inferior in power, as all of them are monsters connected to a single collective intelligence—the Hive Mind.
They share vision in real-time to designate priority targets, complement each other’s blind spots, and I, as the commander, constantly check the enemy’s position in real-time and continuously redeploy troops.
In addition to this, Theo occasionally helps within the limits of recovering health or energy, and troops are continuously replenished, so my corps have been winning every battle they fight and have been able to secure territory twice the size of the original underwater territory.
And this tremendous military achievement was accomplished in just 3 days after the corps was completed.