I Became a Hive Mind in the Game

While the operation to nurture the anti-Hive Mind special forces was progressing, I felt that the time to face the grade 0 Hive Mind in Pyongyang was not far off.
And naturally, there’s only one way to face a grade 0 monster without significant losses.
I too must evolve into a grade 0 monster and directly confront its main body.
Therefore, I started efforts to become grade 0, but… how could this go well?
‘…Is this even possible?’
To begin with, the limit that can be evolved by instinct is only up to grade 1, and even in the game, it’s said that the methods are all different, so as I don’t know the method, there couldn’t help but be little result from these efforts.
But it’s not like I’m starting completely from zero, because I have a clue in the form of the message from the status window that appeared before.
[You become aware of @%%:×/.]
[Currently possessed fragments of @%%:×/ (1/3)]
Although I can’t understand, let alone interpret, exactly what has happened, I’ve just vaguely realized.
If I can perfectly analyze or understand this @%%:×/, I can become a grade 0 monster.
Fortunately, I was able to figure out that this uninterpretable mass of special symbols is some kind of mental realm, but with just this, how could I move forward?
‘…Sigh.’
As nothing changes no matter how much self-reflection and contemplation I repeat, I quickly skimmed through the information Tetra collected through the replaced humans to rest my complicated mind for a while.
Chinese industrial spies who were caught rather than successfully infiltrating Nano-Tech company, a hunter guild established using some newly replaced hunters.
While I was briefly checking other things like the first successfully replaced congressman or stock prices that changed due to monster attacks, at that moment.
‘…Hm? Oh?’
I doubted my eyes upon seeing certain information.
‘No, what is this…’
Something that became a fresh shock even to me, who has been through thick and thin becoming like this (isekai’d into a non-human species in a game), was none other than something related to human trafficking.
‘Is this this serious?’
In the underground of South Korea, which has relatively good public safety worldwide even in this era of monsters, surprisingly, numerous human trafficking was taking place.
If one is born as a psychic user with high talent, anyone can live a successful life, so the poorest class in this era tries to secure at least one child with potential rank B or higher by having many children indiscriminately.
The problem is the treatment of children born in this process.
It’s described that the proportion of humans who come out as potential rank B… no, even C rank or higher in potential measurement is usually about 10%.
More than 50% of children are judged as E rank or lower, and in reality, children with potential rank B or higher are at best 1-2% level.
Naturally, as the possibility of being judged as B rank or higher is very low, some of the children of the poorest class who are not considered to be of useful level are sold off by their parents.
It seems impossible how this is possible given that psychic potential needs to be checked through registered family records and compulsory education still exists, but there’s only one reason why this is established.
It’s because the upper class is actively participating in this, beyond that, they are actually leading this human trafficking.
‘These crazy bastards…!’
After confirming children with low psychic potential among the poorest in slums through psychic methods, they directly visit homes and negotiate with parents to ‘adopt’ the children.
If the potential of children from families that can be touched without problems turns out to be high, they send negotiators trained in mental psychic along with specially trained agents to smoothly bring the children.
And these crazy bastards who procure children through various methods besides this method, utilize these children in truly diverse ways.
First, in the case of children with absolutely no psychic aptitude, these upper-class lunatics very carefully ‘package’ these children and sell them to various parts of the world.
Whether it’s a wealthy madman, an illegal child pornography producer, or a farm owner in South America or a warlord in the Third World.
Shockingly, there is enough demand for young children who can be treated in any way, so these children are sold at cheap prices of about tens of thousands of dollars.
On the other hand, in the case of psychic users from E grade to D grade, they can become at least low-grade hunters, so they have various uses in their own way.
There are secret facilities for training expendable agents in places operated like the National Intelligence Service’s black ops, or even more slimy underground organizations.
They pickle them with various chemicals to grow their bodies to adults in 10 years, implant control devices in their brains while cultivating various brainwashing and ability to follow orders.
In about 10 years, a black ops agent at the level of a low-grade hunter who can be used as expendable is completed, so these modified soldiers are consumed in terrible ways under the pretext of “for the country”.
Even if they somehow survive, they die around 30 years old at most due to the side effects of the chemicals used to grow them.
On the other hand, for children who can grow to medium grade with C grade or higher aptitude, the treatment varies greatly.
First, they undergo brainwashing education with chips implanted in their brains, and if they are well brainwashed in this process, their perception is distorted by the psychic of high-level mental psychic users and they are used as private soldiers of high-ranking people.
If they are brainwashed but uncertain, or if they realize contradictions during mission execution, they are stuffed into specially made remote-controlled giant armors and become machines that use psychic power as batteries.
Children in this state basically have self-awareness, but that’s it.
Their limbs are cut off and instead, wires or tubes connected to steel arms and legs are attached, and the torso with the limbs torn off is fixed inside the life support device in the center of the giant armor.
After completely removing the face, they carved out specific parts of the brain and then implanted devices to completely dominate, and more than 40% of the torso with the limbs cut off was replaced with machines.
And finally, for those who can’t be controlled or dealt with at all…
‘Fuck, how can they use people like that?’
Even I, whose perception of humans has blurred as my mind changed anew in the process of forcibly becoming a monster and evolving, thought these bastards were crazy enough to feel disgusted.
I’ll briefly mention that they carved out all parts of the human and left only the necessary parts, turning them into tools that use designated psychic when a specific button is pressed.
Anyway, this disgusting reality was enough to shock me who directly witnessed it.
‘How, how…’
Although I’ve often encountered human disgustingness through media, materials that reveal it this blatantly were different in depth from the media I’ve encountered in the past.
These things that ignore human dignity more than me, a monster, might be suitable to be called monsters. No, they are suitable.
Even though Imperturbability(A) was faintly working rarely, my emotions quickly escalated into anger.
And in the midst of this, a certain thought flashed through my mind.
Is there a way for me to stop that?

※ ※ ※

Thinking coolly, I have no obligation to stop that atrocity called human trafficking, no matter how horrible it is to me.
Rather, if I intervene in the process of nurturing brainwashed private soldiers and distort the process appropriately, I could produce human agents on my side using the enemy’s infrastructure.
So undoubtedly, my reason as a ‘monster’ is instructing me to use this, but…
‘…I don’t want to.’
The ‘me’ who was human in the past didn’t want to do that.
It might sound like hypocrisy for me to say this, having done kidnapping, brainwashing, and even human modification… no, let’s admit it. This is contradictory behavior.
The monster that is me – ‘Bomb Spider’ – can’t possibly be called a good being, to be frank.
But even for someone like me, that doesn’t become a reason why I can’t stop that horrible thing.
I have power, and if I use that power, I can sufficiently stop the evil deed happening before my eyes.
Then, why shouldn’t I stop this?
After all, what moves me is not some grandiose ideology or goal, but purely my own will-
[You recognize the meaning of @%%:×/.]
[Currently possessed fragments of @%%:×/ (2/3)]
…right?