I Became a Hive Mind in the Game

The East Sea, located east of the Korean Peninsula where South Korea is situated.
It’s certainly wider than land—but not so wide as to be called vast, yet this sea where numerous life forms (monsters) live is largely dominated by 4 factions when viewed broadly.
First, the most common monsters and… those who are actually wrong to call a faction. These are ordinary animal-type monsters.
Although the territory they purely occupy is wide, they are not a single faction from the start, but just neutral small factions.
A group of tens of billions of grade 10 monsters resembling sardines, wild giant seahorse groups, aquatic sub-dragon species, and various other factions.
It’s just including monsters that would normally be called “etc.” as if they were factions, so they don’t actually influence the hegemony competition in this East Sea.
Therefore, there are actually three factions in the East Sea, and among them, the faction considered to have the strongest individual power is the Giant Psychic Whale group.
These true dragons of the sea, which can become adults classified as high-grade monsters if they just grow with continuous nutrient supply, even move in groups of dozens.
However, this doesn’t mean that Giant Psychic Whales moving in groups are weaker than monsters acting alone.
Overwhelming physical abilities from their huge bodies, psychic abilities at a level that makes you wonder if it’s not cheating considering their physique—about the level of psychic-specialized monsters, and cooperation between their kind that’s hard to find in other monsters.
They’re in the upper ranks among high-grade monsters living in the marine environment in terms of pure power, and they even amplify each other’s psychic abilities by resonating them, so their combat power is truly the strongest.
Also, there’s a surprising fact: these whales are called whales but are actually closer to fish.
Therefore, these monsters show an ecology similar to some fish, laying hundreds of billions of eggs and leaving it to luck for even one to survive, but if they grow to sub-adult (medium-grade) or higher, they instinctively seek out and join a group, so it’s fair to consider them a single collective.
Of course, perhaps as a price for these characteristics, the Giant Psychic Whales currently existing in the East Sea number only about 70, including sub-adults, and have the smallest territory among large factions.
In addition, there’s a faction quite different from other monster factions, namely humans.
The coastline and its nearby waters, and various affiliated islands like Jeju Island, are protected by South Korea, which has killed all nearby monsters to secure sea routes, while islands like Ulleungdo or Dokdo have given up sea routes in exchange for using air transport means to come and go while hunting only monsters near the islands.
In addition, South Korea and Japan are cooperating to protect the security of Tsushima and its surrounding waters, as well as the waters near Hokkaido and the Maritime Province for trade—blocking the outside and inside of the East Sea and leisurely cleaning for the safety of the East Sea.
Of course, as they have to spend several tenths of their military budget on this blockade alone, the cleaning is actually just maintaining the status quo. In the case of humans, although they are strong, tremendous losses accompany territory expansion.
And there’s a faction that contrasts with the Giant Psychic Whales, which fight with high quality and small numbers, namely the Dolphinmen.
These amphibious humanoid monsters, which look like bipedal dolphins with arms and legs, have formed a vast kingdom in the mutated underwater environment and developed a primitive civilization.
Of course, there’s the disadvantage of not being able to use fire because it’s a civilization that grew based underwater, but instead, they are superior to other monster civilizations in the technology of utilizing marine monsters.
Low-grade monsters like giant seahorses have become so common that they have a status similar to chickens, while medium-grade monsters are treated like slightly precious livestock—like horses or cattle in the middle ages and early modern period.
Thanks to this domestication technology, monster by-products are abundant, so even ordinary low-grade warriors (Dolphinmen of about grade 8-9) have at least one weapon made from monster bones.
Elite low-grade warriors (grade 7) can wear one set of armor made from low-grade monster skin or scales, and medium-grade warriors (grade 6) or generals (high-grade warriors/grade 4-5) are fully equipped with gear made from medium-grade monster by-products.
Also, one of the characteristics is that the equipment they use is of such good quality that, except for its low durability and slightly lower performance, it’s not much different from the equipment of most hunters of the same grade.
Moreover, they have tamed thousands of juvenile Giant Psychic Whales and even succeeded in raising two of them to adults—grade 3.

Thanks to this, they have three high-grade monsters as their forces, including their monarch, the Dolphinman Emperor (grade 3), and under him are about 10,000 medium and high-grade warriors (grades 4-6).
Add to this hundreds of thousands of low-grade warriors (7-9), and roughly 10 million reserve Dolphinmen (non-warriors), plus tens of thousands of tamed livestock monsters, which is an incredible force, but…

Kii, iiiiii—
Swoosh!
Beep beep beep! Bwaaaah!
Boom! Oooh—Keogh!

At least now, in the Dolphinmen’s 4th city—Green Land—which was being invaded by the Hive Mind’s corps, this content didn’t resonate at all.

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Green Land, a city named after plants that are the result of seaweed bizarrely mutating due to monster influence, is characterized by buildings constructed using the seaweed that was originally on the city site, as the name suggests.
The square buildings use thick, tall seaweed as pillars, making it feel like a modern city with multiple angular houses stacked haphazardly like apartments.
The surrounding area is very flat with no complex and rugged terrain like underwater mountain ranges, and in the nearby wide plains(?), an enormous amount of seaweed grows, which the Dolphinmen use in various ways.
Seaweed that grows thick like trees is used as building material, and for seaweed that bears fruit(?), they build vast farms and professionally cultivate the fruit there.
Tough seaweed is used to make various tools commonly used in daily life, and soft seaweed is used for food or as feed for livestock monsters.
Because of high food production capacity and abundant seaweed making it easy to raise livestock, the 4th city was nominally the Dolphinmen’s top food production site—and perhaps because of this, now, this wonderful city has become the first target of the Hive Mind.
And the start of all this was when a Dolphinman reconnaissance team accidentally discovered monsters eroding through the underground.
In the case of this monster group, there were over several hundred monsters at the level of medium-grade warriors or high-grade warriors, and thousands at the level of low-grade warriors.
In terms of scale, it’s not even 1% of their Dolphinmen forces, but the problem is that if these monsters advance just a few tens of kilometers in the direction they’re heading, they’ll reach the Dolphinmen’s 2nd city.
The 2nd city was a military city that guards against the surface and serves as a fortress, so it was built with bricks cut from rock, and therefore, while its defense is quite high, if the underground foundation collapses, it will collapse as is.
In addition, it also serves as a logistics warehouse storing large amounts of military supplies and preserved food, and it’s also a city that blocks the path to the 1st city, which is the capital, so they reacted somewhat excessively and repelled those monsters.
Although quite strong, once the Dolphinmen brought a grade 3 Giant Psychic Whale, the monsters couldn’t withstand it, so the Dolphinmen thought this incident was over, but…
The real problem occurred next.
The shamans (psychic users) detected that the remnants of those monsters had settled in a bay (terrain) near the 4th city and started something, and naturally, the Dolphinmen sent soldiers to deal with the remnants—but the result was total annihilation.
Moreover, according to the last message sent by a shaman on the brink of death, the soldiers were annihilated by just one monster, which means that the monster existing there must be at least grade 3 at the very minimum.
Therefore, they tried to buy time by hastily sending soldiers while calling for high-grade forces, but… it was obviously impossible.
The monster group, which had somehow secured tens of thousands of troops, easily crushed the unfocused time-buying soldiers and advanced quickly, grinding all visible life forms.
And as a result of this advance, the 4th city began to feel fear as the communication from reconnaissance soldiers sent for scouting or time-buying soldiers was cut off one by one, and they started to strengthen their defenses even more, but…
Even before the high-grade forces arrived, the 4th city was already in a situation of being attacked by monsters.