I Became a Hive Mind in the Game

After Seri killed the Orc Lord, the morale of the Orcs who witnessed their ruler being one-sidedly slaughtered before their eyes naturally plummeted.
With Seri, who had killed such a strong Orc Lord without much injury, right in front of them, the Orcs couldn’t overcome the fear that she might pounce on them and kill them immediately.
Therefore, the Orcs began to flee from the fortress without looking back, but…
‘Tell them to deal with those guys, Seri.’
[Yes, Captain!]
The Orcs, shattered into pieces and fleeing without looking back, were being steadily hunted by the 1,000 Lizardman pterosaur cavalry mounted on grade 6 pterosaur monsters.
Thanks to their minds (souls) being connected to the Hive Mind, real-time information sharing is possible, allowing them to fight while borrowing each other’s views, beyond simply sharing Orc positions.
Moreover, the equipment they wear is not ordinary.
While they appear to be primitive equipment made of moderately processed leather or bones, they are actually cutting-edge weapons made using nanomachine-transformed bone or leather particles.
Naturally, mere remnant Orcs from a collapsed force can’t match them, so except for an extremely small number in the single digits, the Orcs who fled from the fortress couldn’t even survive.

Therefore, after dealing with all the Orcs in the fortress, I now changed the organization of the army in earnest to clean up the remaining Orcs.
First, I divided the Drakemen mounted on Gallimimus (tentative name) or Raptors (tentative name) into platoons of about 10 men each and deployed them to hunt scattered Orcs.
By assigning 2 Lizardman pterosaur cavalry to each platoon as reconnaissance and air support, the hunting team to hunt scattered Orcs was completed for now.
And I separately grouped the Drakemen mounted on Triceratops (tentative name) and Ankylosaurus (tentative name) under the name of demolition team, similarly dividing them into platoons of 6 men each.
The demolition team’s role is to directly attack Orc villages, mainly destroying buildings and scorching the earth, while the fast-footed hunting team deals with Orcs fleeing from the scorched villages.
It’s Orc hunting with thorough division of labor like a factory, but I’ve also prepared something in case this isn’t enough.
This special nanomachine developed in Nano-Tech’s hidden secret laboratory is, simply put, a special virus made by possessing nano-spirits into nanomachines.
Normally, it’s just nanometer-sized particles floating in the air, and at the same time, it has enough penetration power to enter the body not only through the respiratory system but also through the skin.
Moreover, this nano-virus that enters the body gradually accumulates inside, and cunningly mimics the body’s organelles like red blood cells, making it difficult to find even with tests.
And if more than 5g of this nano-virus accumulates in a living being’s body, the nano-virus begins to act in earnest.
First, the nano-virus attaches to nearby cells, destroys the cell membrane, and invades the interior.
The nano-virus that has invaded the interior eats the cell organelles, replicates itself to replace that part, and as this reaction occurs in chain, the infected person’s body gradually turns into nanomachines.
And if this continues for about 1 minute, a minimum of 50% to a maximum of 70% of the infected person’s body changes to become like a machine.
Mechanical arms with 3-8 sharp hunter claws protrude, legs usually become reverse-jointed structures and change shape like bird feet to be good for hanging.
In the case of the heart, lungs, and internal organs, only the parts with minimal life-sustaining functions remain, and especially the digestive system transforms into a degraded bio-core to supply energy necessary for survival.
Also, the mouth and respiratory system, which naturally become unnecessary, remain only as parts to supply external oxygen, and one eyeball even changes to become like a camera.
And as the last of these changes, the spine changes. It looks similar to the implant with the thought acceleration function I often use, but it actually contains a quasi-artificial intelligence for combat.
So in the end, those infected with the virus are reborn as monsters that eliminate all visible life forms despite their consciousness remaining intact, with a terrible hybrid appearance of machine and flesh on the outside, but mostly machine inside the torso.

Of course, the limitations of this virus are clear.
The machine-monster born from the infected person’s mutation is at least grade 8 monster level, but at best, it’s limited to grade 7 monster level, and while machine-monsters don’t attack each other, they attack everything else, even if it’s me.
It can’t survive inside psychic users above a certain level or monsters above medium grade due to the flow of psychic energy or force fields, and even if infected, one dose of nanomachine treatment, which is very easy to develop, cures it.
In addition, because the virus’s lifespan is at most a few minutes, it can never be used as an ordinary biological weapon, but instead, there’s nothing better for use like poison gas.
And now, I’m thinking of using this nano-virus on an Orc village in the outskirts of the plains.
By spreading this to turn all the Orcs in the outskirts of the plains into machine-monsters, forming a kind of dead zone (inaccessible area) to prevent Orcs from going outside the plains.
‘Tetra, for a moment… No. I’ll do it myself.’
At first, I was thinking of entrusting the control of the Hive Flight to be used for spreading to Tetra, but thinking again, I decided it would be better to move directly, so I decided to move the Hive Flight myself.

[Activating Parallel Thinking(A).]
[Activating Psychic Stealth(A).]
[Activating Psychic Stealth(A).]
[Activating Psychic Stealth(A).]
[Activating Psychic Stealth(A).]
[Activating Psychic Stealth(A).]

Immediately after developing the Hive Flight concealed with Psychic Stealth(A) at a secret airfield located somewhere in South Hamgyong Province, I quickly sent the Hive Flight to each target point.
And it didn’t take long for this monster with capsules hanging from its lower belly to reach the airspace of Orc villages located at the edge of the plains.
In just a few minutes, the Hive Flight arrived at the target point and dropped one of the capsules it was carrying on its lower belly in the middle of each village.
Crack—Hisssssssssssssss…
This capsule, about the size of a rugby ball, broke due to the impact of the fall, and the nano-virus that was tightly compressed inside the broken capsule spread quickly like gas diffusing.
Keck! Keurk! Kegek!
Kiiiii… Thud!
The Orcs exposed to high concentrations of nano-virus choked and fell to the ground, and soon began to convulse violently, screaming, perhaps due to the terrible pain caused by the process of body mutation.
From their mouths, gaping so wide they seemed unlikely to ever close, waste flowed out in the form of foam, and almost at the same time, the mutation of the Orcs’ bodies began to become visible.
The first to change was the skin. The green skin, mainly on the torso and head, was torn apart, and metal pieces took its place in the gaps, beginning to naturally replace parts of the skin as if they should have been there from the beginning.
The next to change, surprisingly, was the lower body. Whether the original legs fell off and new ones grew in their place, or a new pair grew from the pelvis, the forms differed, but commonly, the newly formed legs had a reverse joint structure.
On the other hand, the change in arms was even more irregular.
Except for the fact that suddenly some part of the body swells up and a mechanical arm bursts out through the flesh from that part, everything else differed in all aspects.
After arms protruded that differed in various aspects including transformation form, number, size, number of joints, shape, presence and number of fingers, presence and shape of attached blades, and more.
Lastly, with the head becoming cyborgized, all Orcs and monsters present here, regardless of age or gender, transformed into machine-monsters.
Ch, chiii… Chiiiii?
Except for the single exception, the only medium-grade Orc left in the village.
Naturally, there’s no way machine-monsters that are at best grade 7 could match a medium-grade Orc, but the same was true for the medium-grade Orc whose brothers and family had become machine-monsters.
Chiii… Puwiiiiii!!!!
The medium-grade Orc, unable to bring himself to touch his grotesquely transformed family, couldn’t even pick up a weapon, and should have at least pulled out his force field for self-protection, but…?
‘Oh? Could it be that shocking?’
Perhaps this sight was quite shocking to the medium-grade Orc, as he stood still in a daze and died, giving his body to what used to be his family.
‘Ah, then I can’t test it…’
Originally, I was planning to snipe and kill the medium-grade Orc from the air, but perhaps due to unexpected family love, the medium-grade Orc died standing still in a daze.
And just as I, having confirmed that this phenomenon was occurring in other villages as well, was quietly about to leave again.
Swish!
Suddenly, there was a sound of flesh tearing from the Orc, and simultaneously, changes occurred in its body, instantly turning the medium-grade Orc into a machine-monster.
‘Oh? …Could it be?’
After a moment of surprise. Thinking carefully, perhaps the nano-virus could infect and mutate even medium-grade monsters that it originally couldn’t infect if they were corpses.
‘Then, I don’t need to deploy medium-grade monsters separately. That’s fortunate.’
Of course, I was just glad that with such medium-level machine-monsters present, I wouldn’t need to deploy monsters separately to stop fleeing medium-grade Orcs.