Ch.4747. ‘Reconstruction’

It had been 37 minutes since the Giant Psychic Whale dropped its psychic concealment and appeared on the front lines.

Serving as the anvil—the target—the Giant Psychic Whale was bombarded with concentrated attacks from hundreds of thousands of monsters, while Theo confronted Emperor and his royal guards—the hammer—who were attempting to attack.

Whether Emperor knew it or not, he had been trying to use a primitive hammer-and-anvil tactic… but he was caught completely off guard.

Emperor and his royal guards, who should have been striking the flank of the monsters attacking the Giant Psychic Whale, were completely blocked by Theo.

Objectively speaking, Emperor and his royal guards were extremely powerful.

Dolphinman Emperor, who was a boss monster in the game, could provide buffs to the monsters he led, and this ability remained intact now that it had become reality, providing special support to his royal guards.

Additionally, the royal guard dolphinmen, who were both minions of the boss and part of his attack pattern, were not only affected by these buffs but were also stronger than ordinary Grade 4 dolphinmen. About one hundred such monsters protected Emperor while attacking alongside him.

Moreover, Dolphinman Emperor himself, being a Grade 3 boss monster, was quite powerful, and they were fighting in his home territory—underwater.

So to summarize, Dolphinman Emperor and his royal guards had combat power equivalent to about 2-3 high-rank (Grade 3) monsters, but…

[Communication. Support unnecessary. Can handle alone.]

‘Good. I’ll leave it to you.’

[…Affirmative.]

Theo was not merely a monster equivalent to 2-3 Grade 3 monsters.

He was a Grade 1 humanoid monster meticulously designed for combat by a Hive Queen with transcendent intelligence, wearing a suit created with all available technology regardless of cost.

Furthermore, this monster was equipped with the Combination Blaster—a weapon with built-in artificial intelligence and an A-rank core typically used only by Grade 1-2 monsters.

Theo, who could single-handedly face an elder-class Giant Psychic Whale (Grade 1) without difficulty, would never fall to such trivial opponents.

The royal guards wearing armor similar to Emperor’s were prioritized and eliminated by the Combination Blaster, while Emperor himself was pinned down by Theo’s main body.

Left alone, Dolphinman Emperor resisted with all his might but couldn’t defeat Theo, who was moderately controlling his strength for capture purposes. Eventually, Emperor was captured while resisting.

Meanwhile, at the same time, the Giant Psychic Whale facing exactly 437,914 monsters was, surprisingly, holding its ground in an even match.

Of course, it wasn’t doing something foolish like engaging in a war of attrition with high-rank monsters… To be precise, the Giant Psychic Whale was barely managing to block our overwhelming firepower.

If a barrier field is similar to additional HP with fixed defensive power, the mechanism of a psychic shield is essentially a shield whose defensive power increases with the amount of psychic energy invested.

Therefore, psychic shields are advantageous when facing relatively numerous weak enemies, but even so, we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of monsters firing simultaneously at a single Grade 3 creature.

Unless it devoted all its energy to maintaining the shield, its body—tough but not impenetrable—would surely melt under that overwhelming firepower. Consequently, it could do nothing but defend.

‘Theo, finish it.’

[Affirmative.]

As this meaningless war of attrition continued, Theo, having dealt with Dolphinman Emperor, joined in, and the stalemate was instantly resolved.

The Giant Psychic Whale, having depleted almost all its psychic energy defending against the barrage, couldn’t withstand Theo’s assault for long. Eventually, it suffered the same fate as Dolphinman Emperor and was dragged to the sea monster production base located in the bay.

※ ※ ※

After Dolphinman Emperor and the Giant Psychic Whale were brought to the bay, which had been completely transformed into a factory for producing marine monsters, they were naturally modified by my attentive hands.

First, I exposed their spines and replaced them with artificial spine implants made of nanomachines, and substituted parts of their brains with bioengineered tissue I created.

After that, the modification approaches for the two diverged.

For Dolphinman Emperor, I limited modifications to restoring damaged parts.

This was because Dolphinman Emperor’s abilities were specialized for command, and his ally/species enhancement ability used both psychic energy and hormones—improper modification could cause him to lose this enhancement ability.

Therefore, the modifications applied to Dolphinman Emperor were limited to partial brain replacement, spine implants, internal nanomachine generation organs, and hormone/psychic amplification devices.

However, the Giant Psychic Whale was thoroughly modified, completely opposite to Dolphinman Emperor’s case.

This was due to the Giant Psychic Whale’s unique psychic abilities, which they had independently developed while adapting to their deep-sea environment.

The problem was that these developed psychic abilities specialized in mental effects, making it too easy for variables to occur if connected to the Hive Mind, such as seizing control of some monsters or backing up consciousness to escape control.

Therefore, the various modifications applied to it were largely intended to control the Giant Psychic Whale through physical and mechanical means that its mental psychic abilities couldn’t overcome.

Nanomachines that assimilated with skin tissue, nanomachine generation organs, and pathways for nanomachines were implanted into its skin, not only changing the skin material to metal but also adding hardening functions and additional armor formation capabilities.

For its muscles—sturdy due to being a high-rank monster but in the lower-middle tier among high-rank monsters—semi-biological, semi-mechanical muscle fibers were created through the same process as the skin.

Its eyes, which had atrophied due to minimal need in the dark deep-sea environment, were replaced with neon-eyes that glowed purple, allowing high-output psychic beams to be fired from its enormous eyes.

The skull area was completely covered with various mechanical control devices, and the brain was separated from the spine and connected instead through electrodes and wires, requiring it to go through control devices to manipulate its body.

The digestive system, which was practically a vestigial organ for a monster that fed by absorbing energy, was completely removed and replaced with various auxiliary organs.

Four mechanically controlled B-rank bio-cores, a Liver of Purification used for detoxification and contamination removal, an assisted mechanical heart that produced nanomachines to replace the functions of various blood cells, and an anti-psychic bomb that could be detonated remotely.

At some point, I became obsessively fixated on mechanizing the monster, but I don’t regret it.

After all, a giant mecha-whale that shoots beams from its eyes is the very embodiment of fantasy.

※ ※ ※

Not long after completing the modifications of these two newly captured high-rank monsters, I resumed the dolphinman subjugation that I had temporarily paused for reorganization.

However, this subjugation was different from the previous approach of erasing everything in sight. It was conducted with the full cooperation of Dolphinman Emperor, who had “voluntarily surrendered” to our side.

Dolphinman Emperor, who possessed the Subordinate Species Control (B) trait similar to my Subordinate Control (A) trait, quickly persuaded other wary dolphinmen to gather, while I began modifying their capital city.

It was a beautiful city made of rock-carved bricks, extremely sturdy seaweed, clay, and various materials, resembling a city from a typical fantasy novel… but such aesthetic elements were no longer necessary.

After completely destroying the city with a barrage from the Hive Tuna and Hive Piranhas I had brought in large numbers, I decided to use the well-prepared ruins of the city as they were.

After creating tunnels deep underground to connect the city to the main body’s territory, I built an enormous bio-city on the ruins.

This city, filled with various biological facilities created for a single purpose, was entirely made of my flesh and thus took only about three days to build.

After construction was complete, I ordered Dolphinman Emperor to use his Subordinate Species Control (B) trait to bring in other dolphinmen one by one.

Emperor, whose sense of self had already collapsed during forced assimilation with the Hive Mind, faithfully followed orders and brought dolphinmen using various methods. The moment they arrived in the city…

‘Let’s begin. Put them in.’

Following my command, the monsters placed the dolphinmen one by one into pits within the massive biological facility that was once a city.

And the moment the forcibly dragged dolphinmen were thrown into pits filled with unidentified liquid, their bodies began to dissolve—and simultaneously reconstruct.

Moreover, it wasn’t just their bodies being reconstructed.

The minds of the dolphinmen and monsters forcibly drawn into the Hive Mind couldn’t withstand its overwhelming collective intelligence and collapsed or dissolved. When reconstructed, they had already become monsters of the Hive Mind.

This reconstruction, applying technology adapted from turning Choi Seo-rin into a monster, forcibly subordinated mid and low-rank monsters to me in just 10 minutes. Thanks to this, before long, all dolphinmen in the East Sea were subordinated to me.