I Became a Hive Mind in the Game

South Korea barely managed to hold on after giving up Gangwon-do and some rural areas to monsters, so it was impossible for North Korea to survive the monsters.

According to information obtained through hunters, monsters that poured in through the Manchuria region easily pushed through North Korea, and as a result, the entire North Korean region is currently in a complete apocalyptic situation.

Various animal-type monsters flourished and altered North Korea’s nature, and North Korea, which has become a habitat for great nature that could be believed to be Jurassic, has been occupied by three types of monsters.

First are the animal-type monsters. They just wander around North Korea without particularly gathering, but they cannot be ignored.

As a result of repeated survival competition by fighting among themselves, more than 8 high-grade monsters of grade 3 or higher have appeared, occupying nearby areas of their habitats and forming forces.

The monster that particularly catches my eye is the grade 1 beast-type monster Sanguyn (Mountain Lord), which has always played a leading role in Korean Peninsula-related events.

This monster, which resembles a tiger as its name suggests, is a giant monster over 20 meters tall covered in long white fur all over its body.

Originally, it was just a wandering boss that suddenly appeared somewhere in South Korea, but now it is said to be raising its offspring, small Sanguyn, in the northern part of Baekdudaegan.

Its size of 20 meters in height alone is a massive mass weapon, but despite being this huge, it’s also incredibly fast.

In addition, its fur shows high protection against attacks that are not bullets, such as psychic, energy, or lasers, and with more than 20 bio cores existing inside its body, it contains and produces tremendous energy.

Just when you think what kind of monster this is, considering that humans managed to push away such a monster from South Korea, humans cannot be underestimated after all.

On the other hand, there are monsters that cannot be ignored, even if they seem trivial compared to these high-grade beast-type monsters. These are individuals commonly called humanoid monsters, characterized by appearances resembling races from fantasy novels.

Orcs, ogres, trolls, lizardmen, minotaurs, centaurs, goblins, mermen, beastmen, etc. They usually have the appearance of distorted humans or humans mixed with animal forms, and in most cases, they are named after the fantasy novel races that resemble their appearance.

As individual entities, frankly speaking, humanoid monsters are inferior to other monsters. In terms of physical aspects, they rarely rise above medium grade, and except for certain individuals born with it, they can hardly use psychic abilities.

But instead, what is given to these monsters is intelligence. Although significantly lower than humans, they often possess ‘intellect’ different from beast-type monsters.

In addition, humanoid monsters have low instinctive hostility towards humans. In game terms, if the AI of other monsters is rush & stop to shoot, humanoid monsters use tactics, albeit crude ones.

Ambush, surprise attack, luring, drive hunting, encirclement, and even retreat. It’s not wrong to see them as primitive tribes with overwhelming physicals, having a civilization level roughly from the Paleolithic to Neolithic period.

And lastly, there is a monster in the North Korean region that is uniquely described in the main story’s perspective. It is the grade 1 Hive Mind in Pyongyang.

Usually, when it comes to hunting grounds where Hive Mind-type monsters appear on the South Korean server, the 38th Defense Line is almost the only one, due to the overwhelming scale of the Hive Mind here.

It has eroded the entire Hwanghae Province and is continuously launching offensives towards Pyeongan Province and the south. Unlike me, it has revealed itself above ground and installed all sorts of giant biological facilities, resulting in overwhelming productivity.

Hundreds of thousands of medium-grade monsters, billions of low-grade monsters. And commanding these monsters are command towers, and about 10 high-grade monsters.

It has been treated as the final boss of normal servers, showing such overwhelming quantities, but… the situation has changed.

It is said that after being pounded by missiles loaded with anti-psychic warheads, its psychic shield went down and air defense network was neutralized, then regular ballistic missiles with nuclear warhead-level power rained down like rain.

It was a money-wasting operation that might have consumed several percent of South Korea’s annual budget in just a few minutes, but the effect was reportedly very excellent.

The Hive Mind has been annihilated, and the remaining legion is led by surviving high-grade monsters – that’s how it’s said to be, but the reality is a bit different.

The truth known only to high-ranking officials is that in Hwanghae Province, where the Hive Mind was annihilated, hundreds of new Hive Minds have grown and are engaged in fierce survival competition.

With more than 7 identified grade 1 Hive Minds, it’s being left alone as they can’t carelessly touch it for fear of what might happen, but… well, there’s no need to conflict yet.

※ ※ ※

Anyway, while the North Korean region has become such a mess, conversely speaking, it’s safe to say there are no distinct focal points or monsters that could threaten the state.

Especially underground is almost empty. At most, only ultra-giant worms or mole monsters, or ant nests are the extent of underground monsters, all of which I’ve encountered once or twice in the underground of Gangwon-do that I’ve already occupied.

Worms vary in size, but strong individuals are just ordinary giant earthworms around grade 5, moles are just animal-type monsters about human size, and ants don’t even need to be mentioned.

Anyway, thanks to this, I was able to expand underground almost without interference. I know how to deal with any monsters that might interfere as I have a record of dealing with them all, and at the same time, I produced and deployed monsters that inhabit underground to counter them.

Reptilian wyrms, created by analyzing the body structure of worm-like Worms from here, create passages just by passing through, and then monsters based on reverse-engineered mole monsters are deployed to solidify the passages.

Then I extend my flesh along those passages to erode them, create my avatar bodies at certain distances to form facilities that can produce at least low-grade monsters, and create intermediate bases, and that’s it.

Ah, occasionally other monsters invade and occupy intermediate bases, so I’ve built defense systems in case of emergencies.

I didn’t forget to properly deploy about 200 low-grade monsters at each strongpoint, and install defensive biological facilities that are equipped with weapons and attack enemies at intervals.

Repeating completely identical structures in each area to interfere with location identification was also one of the ways to form such a defense system.

In fact, cases where other monsters invaded underground by chasing monsters returning after hunting were quite frequent, so it was clear that preparing like this would help one way or another.

And while expanding occupied territory mainly underground in vacant areas like this, I came up with one trick to prepare for any situation and for more active activities.

※ ※ ※

Seonggwang Group Headquarters, Chairman’s office located on the top floor.

The chairman of Seonggwang Group, who was enjoying his usual solitude sitting in his chair after finishing most of his regular daily routine, had his solitude broken for once in a long time.

“Mr. Chairman, the young lady has arrived.”

“…Tell her to come in.”

His youngest daughter, who was so precious to him and had been busy working as a hunter, visited after a long time.

“Father, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you.”

“Yes, our youngest. As you said, it’s been a long time.”

Although they were one of the top chaebol families in the country, his family circumstances were quite good. So they spent about 30 minutes catching up on recent news and making small talk, and only after that could they get to the main point.

“Now you can tell me. My daughter, what brings you to visit this old father?”

“I have a favor to ask.”

“…A favor? What kind of favor?”

When he wondered about his daughter, who objectively belonged to the category of successful people even if you remove the halo of being a second-generation chaebol, making a request she didn’t often make, his daughter opened her mouth, for some reason slightly embarrassed.

“Well, actually…”

She went on at length about the content of her request for quite a while, and since Sujin wasn’t particularly skilled in eloquence, the explanation became very long with unnecessary words added.

And after the explanation ended. The chairman shook his head gently at her miserable speaking skills that he couldn’t cover up no matter how hard he tried, but for now, he summarized her request and asked again.

“So… during the last time when human contact was cut off in the Gangwon-do area, you received help from a stateless mercenary group and want to formally hire those mercenaries?”

“Yes…”

At first glance, it might sound like she wants to bring a gang or mafia organization into the country, but in fact, such stateless mercenary groups are not that rare in this world.

More precisely, such stateless mercenary groups range from gangster-level groups with stolen or picked-up weapons to regular armies of countries that have perished or split at the hands of monsters and are wandering around after giving up their nationality – and the mercenary group his youngest daughter was talking about was close to the latter type.

“You’ve finished the investigation, of course?”

“Yes, here. I’ve finished everything I could do on my end.”

Saying that, Sujin placed a paper envelope she had been holding onto his desk.

The chairman, who had been quietly staring at the envelope, which was quite thick, soon opened his mouth.

“No matter how much you investigated, you know additional investigation is needed, right?”

“…Yes.”

“Good. I’ll contact you again when the investigation is complete.”

As the chairman said that and gave the order to leave with his eyes, the youngest politely bowed to him and left the chairman’s office.

And the moment it was confirmed that the youngest had boarded the elevator, the chairman asked the bodyguard standing quietly in the corner.

“…Is there anything strange?”

“No. There are no traces of physical brainwashing or external psychic interference at all.”

“I see, if you say so, then it must be so.”

Although he had felt a slight sense of discomfort from his youngest daughter, there really was no problem since his bodyguard, a former high-ranking hunter, said there was no problem.

The sense of discomfort that seemed different from the past was probably due to the experience of having her life endangered at that time.