Ch.8888. New Unit

At some point as yet another invasion was coming to an end, I—the cause of these recent major incidents—was currently holding a reflection meeting to identify areas for improvement regarding this incident.

‘So humanoid mid-tier monsters were more important than I thought…’

First, it concerned the importance of mid-tier monsters—specifically land-based humanoid mid-tier monsters—which I hadn’t noticed until now.

More than I had realized, the advantages of elite heavy-armored infantry stand out in modern infantry warfare, so I needed a different form from my existing monsters—heavy-armored infantry that could blend in and operate among regular infantry.

Special Orders operate in units of ten—and they’re specialized for infiltration or air drops, so they don’t mesh well with regular infantry, while Hive Starlights are specialized for aerial combat and far from heavy armor.

As for Hive Riders, well, they’re cavalry riding griffins, so there’s no need to elaborate.

Therefore, I took genes from these two humanoid monsters and fused them together, resulting in the creation of a new monster: the Hive Heavy Troop.

Hive Heavy Troop

Rank :: 5

Level :: 100

Stats

Strength :: 135

Agility :: 115

Vitality :: 165

Intelligence :: 120

Resistance :: 175

Energy :: 60

Leadership :: 100

Traits

Monster Gene(EX), Predator(C), Hive Mind(C), Subjugation(EX), Bio Core(C), Marksman(C), Melee Combat Expert(C), Psychic Resistance(D), Superhuman Strength(D), Rapid Regeneration(D)

Skills

Endurance(C), Concentrated Fire(C), Comprehensive Weapon Mastery(C), Protection(D)

Bio-weapons

Stormtrooper Suit(B), Rapid-fire Laser Blaster(C), High-output Energy Shooter(C), Energy Sword(C)

These monsters wear Stormtrooper Suits—bio-powered suits designed to perfectly protect against firepower below a certain threshold, essentially becoming part of their bodies—and stand as robust heavy infantry at approximately 2.5 meters tall.

Normally, they fire laser blasters mounted on the backs of their hands, but when encountering heavily armored enemies, they can dispatch them with high-output energy shooters (pistols) held in their hands, and can cut down approaching enemies with energy swords.

Additionally, the Stormtrooper Suits have built-in psychic barrier functions, allowing them to protect allies while unleashing a barrage of fire on enemies.

Beyond this, they come equipped with various information-sharing functions and special vision technologies as standard, along with helmets that coordinate with the wrist-mounted laser machine guns to assist with firing and display targeting reticles in their field of vision. I could confidently say that my heavy infantry surpassed human heavy infantry at minimum.

But completing these heavy infantry—the Hive Heavy Troops—wasn’t the end of the reflection meeting.

The new military branch I discovered I needed through this battle was a non-commissioned officer monster that would command the Hive Infantry, which could be considered regular infantry.

Until now, in the 16-member Hive Infantry squads, the individual with the longest combat experience implicitly acted as the commander, and this method worked without major issues, at least against monsters.

However, when fighting against human armies this time, the lack of clear rank and command authority sometimes led to chaotic actions resulting in total annihilation.

Therefore, judging that I needed to clearly establish command authority, I created a new mid-tier monster for middle command—the Hive Sergeant.

Hive Sergeant

Rank :: 6

Level :: 100

Stats

Strength :: 75

Agility :: 70

Vitality :: 101

Intelligence :: 130

Resistance :: 65

Energy :: 50

Leadership :: 150

Traits

Monster Gene(EX), Predator(C), Hive Mind(C), Subjugation(EX), Bio Core(C), Field Commander(C), Melee Combat Expert(C), Charisma(D), High-speed Thinking(D)

Skills

Small Unit Command(C), Monster Enhancement Hormone(C), Comprehensive Weapon Mastery(D), Advanced Command(D)

Bio-weapons

Sergeant Suit(B), Plasma Shooter(C), Energy Sword(C)

Hive Sergeant. A middle-command monster about a head taller than the bipedal Hive Infantry, based on the Hive Heavy Troop.

However, its combat power is insignificant compared to the Hive Heavy Troop, and furthermore, it ranks among the lower tier in combat ability among mid-tier monsters.

This is especially true despite being equipped with a top-tier pistol called a small plasma shooter (plasma pistol), an energy sword considered a tier-1 close combat weapon at the mid-tier level, and a Sergeant Suit that is equivalent to the Stormtrooper Suit in combat support functions.

Its combat-related stats barely qualify as mid-tier, and with only one direct combat skill, it tends to rely heavily on the functions of the Sergeant Suit. If paralyzed, it could be taken down by dozens of low-tier monsters, but…

In exchange, the Hive Sergeant possesses excellent command abilities as a middle commander.

This command doesn’t provide buffs to nearby allies as expressed in games, but instead offers something more powerful—comparable to having a professional player assisting with control.

Additionally, I installed a skill that disperses monster-enhancing hormones—obtained from the Pyongyang Hive Mind subjugation operation—making it quite effective from a middle command perspective.

Anyway, after completing this second monster, I concluded that I needed a psychic-specialized monster as the final addition to these supplementary branches.

Previously, I simply created psychic-specialized monsters and deployed them to battlefields as needed, but through this battle, I discovered this was quite inefficient.

Psychic users specialized in psychic abilities, like psychic-specialized monsters, not only perform better when mixed with frontline troops but are also very useful in supporting those frontline forces.

However, even if I wanted to deploy psychic-specialized monsters individually, their production cost isn’t particularly low, making it quite burdensome.

While pondering this deployment issue, an idea suddenly occurred to me.

Through the passage to the psychic dimension at the center of the psychic storm I maintain to protect my base, all kinds of wild psychic creatures enter and spread throughout the psychic storm.

Of course, most are killed or absorbed by the psychic creatures I’ve created, but looking at these creatures gave me an idea.

What if I captured these wild psychic creatures, dominated them, placed them in control protection devices, and modified them into mobile machines that use psychic powers?

It might sound foolish at first, but upon further consideration… it wasn’t a bad idea at all.

Wild psychic creatures inherently possess at least mid-tier monster level psychic abilities, and through their own cycles, they can use psychic energy infinitely within their respective limits.

The only issue is that in the real world, when psychic powers are activated, the psychic energy used scatters in all directions, preventing these cycles from activating. If I could prevent the psychic energy from dispersing, wouldn’t that solve the problem?

Based on this idea, I created a machine based on the vessel my main body used, placed a dominated wild psychic creature inside, and conducted a test run—

‘Oh? This is more useful than I thought.’

The result revealed that a machine possessed by a psychic creature could become a more powerful weapon than imagined.

The appearance is somewhat comical—a cabinet with machinery installed on both sides, equipped with short, thick arms and legs—but regardless of its appearance, this machine had various applications.

The chassis itself has high durability and can deploy psychic barriers passively, so equipping energy shooters or other ranged weapons instead of arms makes it function effectively as a walking tank.

Moreover, even if such a machine is disabled, the psychic creature inside—serving as both power source and pilot—operates independently of the chassis and can use various psychic abilities, making it perfectly functional as a fixed gun emplacement.

And surprisingly, the cost required to produce these psychic creature-mounted machines is only about 20% of that needed for a psychic-specialized monster of the same level.

The chassis can be mass-produced cheaply using abundant steel and nano-spirits, and capturing wild psychic creatures is also quite simple.

By changing the manufacturing process to use fabrication equipment sourced from nano-tech, the production costs decreased even further—

Thus, I achieved the remarkable feat of having one psychic creature per squad.

It was a tremendous accomplishment—mass-producing hundreds of thousands of creatures stronger than low-tier but weaker than mid-tier monsters.