I Became a Hive Mind in the Game

It had been 37 minutes since the Giant Psychic Whale dropped its psychic stealth and appeared on the front line.
Concentrated attacks from hundreds of thousands of monsters poured onto the Giant Psychic Whale to serve as the target—the anvil, while Theo dealt with the Emperor and his royal guard—the hammer—who were trying to attack in the meantime.
Whether the Emperor knowingly used it or not, he was trying to use a kind of primitive anvil and hammer tactic, but… he was caught off guard.
The Emperor and his royal guard, who had to strike the flank of the monsters attacking the Giant Psychic Whale, were completely blocked by Theo.
Objectively judging, the Emperor and his royal guard are very strong.
The Dolphinman Emperor, who was a boss monster in the game, can give buffs to the monsters he leads, and this has remained intact now that it has become reality, providing special support to the royal guard.
In addition, the royal guard Dolphinmen, who are both the boss’s minions and part of the pattern, are buffed and stronger than regular grade 4 Dolphinmen, and a total of 100 such monsters protect the Emperor and attack together.
Moreover, the Dolphinman Emperor, being the boss, is quite powerful as a grade 3 boss monster, and this is underwater, his home turf.
So to sum up, the Dolphinman Emperor and his royal guard are roughly equivalent to the power of 2-3 high-grade (grade 3) monsters, but…
[Transmission. Support unnecessary. Can handle alone.]
‘Alright. I’ll leave that to you.’
[…Affirmative.]
Theo is not just a monster at the level of 2-3 grade 3 monsters.
A grade 1 humanoid monster meticulously designed solely for combat by a Hive Queen with transcendent intelligence, wearing a suit that the Hive Queen used all technologies on without caring about cost.
Moreover, on top of this, the monster was given a weapon—the Combination Blaster—with built-in artificial intelligence and an A-rank core that can only be used by grade 1-2 monsters.
There’s no way Theo, who can easily handle an elder-class Giant Psychic Whale (grade 1) with sufficient experience alone, would be defeated by such miscellaneous beings.
The royal guards wearing armor similar to him were primarily eliminated by the Combination Blaster, while the Emperor himself was tied down by Theo’s main body.
And the Dolphinman Emperor, left alone, couldn’t defeat Theo, who was moderately controlling his strength for capture despite resisting with all his might, and was eventually captured by Theo while resisting.
Meanwhile, at the same time. The Giant Psychic Whale facing exactly 437,914 monsters is, surprisingly, completely evenly matched.
Of course, it’s not doing something stupid like having an attrition battle with a high-grade monster… to be precise, it’s more like the Giant Psychic Whale is struggling to block our overwhelming firepower.
If the force field is close to the concept of additional HP that increases fixed defense power, the mechanism of the psychic shield is simply a shield that increases defense power the more psychic energy is invested.
Therefore, while the psychic shield is advantageous when dealing with relatively many weak enemies, no matter how you look at it, it’s hundreds of thousands of monsters firing a volley at one grade 3 monster.
Unless it maintains the shield with all its might, it’s clear that its body, which is tough but not hard, will melt under that overwhelming firepower, so it had no choice but to do nothing but defend.
‘Theo, finish it.’
[Affirmative.]
And in the midst of this meaningless attrition battle, as Theo, who had dealt with the Dolphinman Emperor, joined in, the stalemate was instantly resolved.
The Giant Psychic Whale, which had almost exhausted its psychic energy defending against the volley, couldn’t withstand Theo’s offensive for long, and eventually ended up in a similar state to the Dolphinman Emperor and was dragged to the sea monster production base located in the bay (terrain).

※ ※ ※

After the Dolphinman Emperor and the Giant Psychic Whale were dragged to the bay (terrain) that had been completely remodeled into a factory for producing marine monsters, these two were naturally modified by my caring hands.
First, I exposed their spines and instead implanted artificial spine implants made of nanomachines, and replaced part of their brains with bio-tissue I created.
And after that, the modification aspects of both sides diverged.
First, in the case of the Dolphinman Emperor, I finished the modification at the level of restoring moderately damaged parts.
This is because the Dolphinman Emperor’s abilities are specialized for command, and the Emperor’s ally/kin enhancement ability uses both psychics and hormones, so if modified incorrectly, the enhancement ability could be lost.
Therefore, the modifications applied to the Dolphinman Emperor are limited to partial brain replacement, spine implant, and internal nanomachine generation organs and hormone/psychic amplification devices.
However, in the case of the Giant Psychic Whale, it was thoroughly modified in the opposite way to the Dolphinman Emperor.
This is due to the unique psychic ability that the Giant Psychic Whale possesses; they independently developed their own psychics in the process of adapting to their native deep-sea environment.
The problem is that the resulting psychics are specialized for mental effects, so if connected to the Hive Mind, it became too easy to create variables such as dominating some monsters or backing up the mind to escape control.
Therefore, the various modification procedures applied to it were largely for the purpose of controlling the Giant Psychic Whale through physical and mechanical methods that cannot be dealt with by such mental psychics.
Not only was its skin changed to metal by transplanting nanomachines that assimilate with skin tissue, nanomachine generation organs, and passages for nanomachines to flow, but hardening functions and additional armor formation functions were added.
In the case of muscles, which are basically tough because it’s a high-grade monster but in the lower ranks among high-grade monsters, semi-organic semi-mechanical muscle fibers were created through the same process as the skin.
For the eyeballs, which had degenerated due to little need in the dark deep-sea environment, neon-eyeballs glowing purple were transplanted, allowing ultra-high-output psychic beams to be fired from the giant eyeballs.
The skull area is completely covered with various mechanical control devices, and the internal brain is separated from the spine and instead connected by electrodes and wires so that it can only manipulate the body through the control device.
The digestive system, which was almost like a vestigial organ for monsters that eat by absorbing energy in the first place, was completely removed and various auxiliary organs were installed instead.
Four mechanically controlled B-rank bio-cores, a Liver of Purification used for detoxification and decontamination, an assisted mechanical heart that produces nanomachines to replace the role of various blood cells in the blood, and an anti-psychic bomb that can be detonated remotely.
From the middle, I may have gone overboard, fixating on the irresistible idea of mechanizing monsters, but I don’t regret it.
A giant mecha-whale shooting beams from its eyes is the very embodiment of a dream come true.

※ ※ ※

Not long after the modification of the two newly captured high-grade monsters was completed, I resumed the conquest of the Dolphinmen, which I had temporarily paused for reorganization.
However, this conquest was carried out with the full cooperation of the Dolphinman Emperor who had ‘voluntarily surrendered’ to our side, unlike the previous conquest which erased everything in sight.
The Dolphinman Emperor, who has the Lower Species Domination (B) characteristic similar to my Subjugated Species Domination (A) characteristic, instantly recruited and united other Dolphinmen who were extremely wary, while I began to modify the city that had been their capital.
It was a beautiful city that looked like a common fantasy novel city at first glance, made of bricks carved from rocks, very hard seaweed, and clay and various materials, but… now these aesthetic elements are unnecessary.
After completely destroying the city with a volley from the massive number of Hive Tunas and Hive Piranhas I brought, I decided to use the city site as it was, which seemed well-prepared despite being in ruins.
After creating a cave deep underground to connect the city to the main body’s territory, I created an enormous bio-city on top of the city site.
This city, full of various bio-facilities created for a single purpose, was part of my body made entirely of my flesh, so construction only took about 3 days.
And after the construction was finished. I ordered the Dolphinman Emperor to use the Lower Species Domination (B) characteristic to bring other Dolphinmen one by one.
The Emperor, whose self had already collapsed in the process of forcibly assimilating with the Hive Mind, faithfully followed orders and brought Dolphinmen using various methods, and the moment the Dolphinmen arrived in the city.
‘Let’s begin, put them in.’
Following my order, the monsters put the Dolphinmen into pits in the giant bio-facility that was the city, one by one.
And the moment the forcibly dragged Dolphinmen were thrown into pits filled with unidentified liquid, their bodies began to melt—and simultaneously began to reconstruct.
Moreover, it’s not just the flesh that’s being reconstructed.
The minds of the Dolphinmen and monsters forcibly dragged to become part of the Hive Mind couldn’t withstand its overwhelming collective intelligence and collapsed or melted, and when reconstructed, they had already become monsters of the Hive Mind.
This reconstruction, which applied the technology used to turn Choi Seo-rin into a monster, forcibly subordinated medium and low-grade monsters to me in just 10 minutes, and thanks to this, before long, all Dolphinmen in the East Sea were subordinated to me.