I Became a Hive Mind in the Game

Right after finishing the inspection of the nearby underground airport after a long time, I returned my core consciousness to the main base and immediately tried to establish countermeasures against that grade 0 Hive Mind, but…

‘If such a thing were possible, I would have swept away humans and everything else long ago!’

Naturally, it was by no means an easy task.

And to explain why, we first need to understand how strong and dangerous a grade 0 Hive Mind monster is.

Grade 0. It’s a grade that refers to the highest-grade monsters, one step higher than grade 1 monsters classified as high-grade, and as there’s a difference in classification grade, its combat power far surpasses that of grade 1 monsters.

Of course, it’s not as much as the difference between medium/low grades where one rare mob (Hunter Raptor) with good compatibility can handle thousands of boss (me) low-grade mobs (my monsters), so the combat power of the highest-grade monsters is usually evaluated as equivalent to about 3-5 grade 1 monsters.

But naturally, if this were all, since I’m a grade 1 Hive Mind, I could just produce several high-grade monsters and beat it up, so there’s no need to blame the management team just for knowing about the existence of grade 0 monsters.

Therefore, the reason I’m so wary is because of the S-rank trait given to the highest-grade monsters.

Unlike general traits that are usually divided from E to A rank, S-rank traits are rare and unique traits that only grade 0 monsters can have, and only one.

A representative example is the Ultra-giant (S) of the Living Island, a highest-grade giant turtle monster, thanks to which the Living Island is the size of Ulleungdo, has tremendous close combat stats, and above all, its HP exceeds 8 hae (800,000,000,000,000,000,000).

In addition, Lobriter, the final boss of the 5th installment event, has a trait called King of Monsters (S), which is a trait that dominates and strengthens monsters of lower grades on a global scale.

And although it might be more trivial than these, still clearly a highest-grade monster, the Pyongyang Hive Mind has a trait called Psychic Being (S) that all grade 0 Hive Minds have.

If you have this trait, as explained earlier, the main body, or more precisely, the consciousness of the main body, moves to the psychic dimension, making direct interference between each other impossible.

However, while the Hive Mind can use the body from when it was a grade 1 Hive Queen intact and can possess all the monsters it creates, to take it down requires very tricky and few methods.

The first method is to take it down by using the fact that grade 0 Hive Minds can interfere with each other as they are in the same psychic dimension as fellow psychic beings.

It’s a method that I can actually use and has quite a high possibility, but… there’s one very big problem.

That is, since the grade 0 Hive Mind of Pyongyang is a being formed by seven Hive Queens combined in some way, naturally, even if I evolve to grade 0, I would be weaker than it.

Therefore, inevitably, I concluded that the first method is impossible.

On the other hand, the second method is one that shows more possibility than the first—the method of killing all the monsters that are part of the Pyongyang Hive Mind.

A grade 0 Hive Mind becomes the collective consciousness of monsters itself, so it doesn’t die as long as even one monster that’s part of the collective consciousness is alive, but because of this characteristic, it can’t exist if there are no monsters to maintain the collective consciousness.

This is considered the most orthodox method as it has been implemented in-game, but naturally, the difficulty is unimaginably hard.

Even a grade 1 Hive Mind can produce a monster army in the hundreds of millions, but a grade 0 Hive Mind can produce an enormous number of monsters by essentially extracting all the energy from the land.

However, the area they dominate is similar to mine, so roughly calculated, the limit is about 2 billion.

But even this will mostly be low-grade monsters, and except for the seven Hive Queens, there’s not even enough capacity left to produce separate high-grade monsters, so in terms of pure monster quality, we have the advantage.

Therefore, I judged that this method has a relatively high possibility and continued to create monsters while constantly pondering other methods.

And a representative example of these other methods, the third method, is the one with the highest possibility of occurring currently—a war between humans and the grade 0 Hive Mind.

As it’s noticeable that the production company intentionally created it as a crisis for the Korean Peninsula server, even if I don’t do anything in particular, someday the grade 0 Hive Mind will directly clash with Korea.

If I intervene here and induce a collision, naturally, the war will happen even faster.

And in this process, both sides will suffer damage that is by no means trivial, so the method is to gobble up both weakened sides, but… there’s one serious problem with this method.

That is, regardless of which side loses, it’s only disadvantageous for me.

The Pyongyang Hive Mind, although unintentionally, is also playing a role in blocking the advancing Korean humanity, so if they are defeated in a situation where I haven’t grown sufficiently, humans will advance unhindered.

But paradoxically, even if Korea falls, a problem arises. If a grade 0 Hive Mind occupies the Korean Peninsula where no humans live at all, it’s obvious what external forces will do.

Anti-psychic missiles are basic, and they will erase the Korean Peninsula, which has become an uninhabited zone, by pouring various nuclear weapons or tactical nukes.

Therefore, this method was put on hold, and only the last method remained for me.

It’s using an anti-psychic bomb, which has never appeared in the game but still has a fairly high possibility.

Due to the nature of the anti-psychic bomb that nullifies all psychic effects within its range, it’s even more fatal to a grade 0 Hive Mind that is maintained only by collective intelligence without a body.

In my case, even if all connections with other monsters are severed, at least the main body remains, but for a grade 0 Hive Mind without a proper main body, the severing of all connections means death.

While the anti-psychic bomb is an excellent weapon in many aspects, for this very reason, we shouldn’t expect humans to detonate it in Pyongyang.

This is because, in this world, the anti-psychic bomb affects humans as well, so it operates as a kind of nuclear weapon concept.s exposed to the explosion of an anti-psychic bomb, more precisely, humans with the potential to be psychic users, suffer severe internal injuries as their high psychic abilities run wild, the higher their psychic user potential.

However, in this Project Monster world, virtually over 90% of humans have at least a little talent as psychic users, and the higher-ups tend to enhance such talents through procedures or whatever.

And anti-psychic bombs or missiles are characterized by a very wide effect range so that they can reach ground targets with anti-psychic waves even if shot down in the air.

Therefore, it’s impossible for the human side to use it, and of course, it’s impossible to hijack a strategic weapon treated on par with nuclear weapons with just a few humans.

So, there’s only one method left.

That is, for me to make it myself and use it on it.

※ ※ ※

To make an anti-psychic bomb, the primary thing needed was the blueprint.

As for the making itself, if there’s a blueprint, it’s just a matter of replacing various precision parts according to the blueprint with monster biological organs, so if nothing else, the blueprint is absolutely necessary.

But naturally, there’s no way to easily obtain the blueprint for a weapon treated on par with nuclear weapons. So, while I was considering whether there might be someone suitable for ‘switching’ among the senior researchers in that field.

[Mother, I’ve found the blueprint.]

‘…What?’

A report came in from Theresia, who I hadn’t given much thought to, saying she had found the blueprint for an anti-psychic bomb.

‘What do you mean, you found it? Where?’

Naturally, shocked by this news, I asked Theresia for additional explanation, and I was at a loss for words at the answer that came back.

[It came up when I searched on the internet.]

‘…? What did you say?’

[When I search on Goggle, the blueprint for an old-type anti-psychic bomb is listed right above the images. The principle is also explained in detail in a paper. For now, I’ll send the collected data to Tetra.]

‘Uh, okay…’

After the communication ended like that, after pondering this incomprehensible situation, I was finally able to reach a conclusion only after analyzing the blueprint transmitted from Tetra.

In short, this blueprint was, if compared to reality, like an incredibly old-fashioned design like Little Boy or Fat Man.

Due to technological limitations, it was too large to be fired as a missile, and the cost was so high that producing one would take several tenths of a year’s budget, so it was the blueprint of a weapon that was used once and immediately replaced.

Moreover, the paper is just an explanation of the principle of anti-psychic, so creating an anti-psychic bomb with this would only be possible for a developed country… at least a middle-power country.

It requires hundreds of thousands of various precision parts that are only produced by specific companies, at least a B-rank or higher bio core must be used, and even with numerous trials and errors in the process of experimenting with the theory, it’s unknown whether it will succeed, but…

All these conditions are only by human standards.

Precision parts can be sufficiently replaced with monster biological organs.

Producing high-grade monsters is burdensome, but a single bio core is not burdensome at all.

Experiments to implement theory into reality can be solved through in-brain simulations created by the power of superior collective intelligence.

Although the resources consumed are by no means small, nonetheless, compared to the value of the anti-psychic bomb, it was nothing, so I invested energy into producing it without hesitation.

And as a result, I became able to produce biological anti-psychic bombs that can be used at any time.

Although separate means of delivery are needed, nonetheless, having a method that can be dealt with at any time brought peace to my mind.